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"Please Kill Me, The Uncensored Oral History Of Punk."
This book is so great, wierd, entertaining and utterly disturbing. If you have heard of, and liked bands like The Stooges, MC5, The Ramones, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers etc, you should really read this book. (and we all know you like the stooges etc, so just read it)
Will post more thoughts on this after I’ve read it a second time, got it thursday and have read it once, kinda hard to put it down. And the stories they tell, Lou Reed getting shock treatment for his homosexuality, MC5 and "their" White Panters, plus the fact that they never really made any money -all they got was used to feed this sorta community that sorrounded them., it goes on and on.
from barnes and noble:
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk is the one story about the 1970s and the Blank Generation that has never before been told. Chronicling the birth of what we now call punk, from Andy Warhol’s Factory to Max’s Kansas City and CBGB’s in the 1960s and 1970s, and on to the UK in the 1980s, authors Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain deliver the explosive story of America’s most misunderstood pop phenomenon. Seamlessly constructed from a chorus of voices, Please Kill Me is oral history with all the narrative drive and excitement of a novel. In hundreds of interviews with all of the original players, including Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, Nico, Wayne Kramer, Danny Fields, Richard Hell, and Malcolm McLaren, we go backstage and behind apartment doors to relive what started in New York’s underbelly as an exclusive art scene and became a truly revolutionary moment in music. Please Kill Me begins when CBGB’s and the Bowery were a veritable no-man’s-land: relives the heyday of the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, the MC5, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, Television, and the Patti Smith Group; and explores punk’s demise – when it became front-page news and a new trend for latecomers.
Ha Ha Ha–I finished re-reading "Siddhartha" a few weeks ago–that’s a funny observation about it–that it’s distant at the end–Hesse seemed to do that quite a bit–I found the same thing about "Steppenwolf" and "The Glass Bead Game"..I dunno, maybe he’s just saying that the "process" is endless and he’s only observing it
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I’m reading "Steve Claridge: Tales From The Boot Camps" S.C. with Ian Radley and "Coincidance" by Robert Anton Wilson–and *still* slogging my way through "Finnegan’s Wake" by James Joyce
Jonathan Lethem – The fortress of solitude
…..great book about growing up in Brooklyn in the 70’s/80’s, very, very recognizable……
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(a couple of reviews say that the last 200 pages are a disappointment, but I’m not that far yet……
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The Grapes of Wrath at the moment. Then probably To Kill a Mockingbird.
Current reading:
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius : Dave Eggers
Be Here Now : Baba Ramm Das
The Conquest of Happiness : Bertrand Russell
I’m enjoying them all (in differing ways!)
The Bible.
the Bible is a crazy fun read, Eclesiastics is a trip, I’m sure i’ve spelled it wrong, but i’ll try again, eclesiastics, i’m not even sure if it starts wiht an e, anyway, it’s about how you’ll never do anything turely new becasue every thing has been done type madness. F. Scott Fitzgerald discribed it as some of the finest writing every produced.
John Stossel’s new book-Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media…
A realistic, open minded, and quite refreshing look on all the problems within America.
Do yourselves a favor, read this book and free your minds…
i just finished reading "a gathering light" by jennifer donnelly … a modern classic for sure :aliensmile:
snoop,
snoop try finnegans wake its killing me
Not exactly a reading book, but a beautiful book on the fine art of crashing cars:
[img]http://www.berliner-galerien.de/springer&winckler/Pictures/422.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.photoeye.com/BookteaseLight/PK866/image4.jpg[/img]
at last the great Jailbird is finished. It took like 8 months for me to tiptoe through the intro and about two days to finish the book. Actually a week but the first forty pages were six days and the last 200 were tonight. Couldn’t stop. Vonnegut is such a pro. So well put together and researched like the work that writing is; so pleased to finish a book, not sad for a change. Might read more of him being that this was my first try, problem is so many other greats to get to. Funny i just read this quote somewhere the other day, i think in the paper, that when we get to heaven we won’t be judged on what we read, but tonight i could care less, adn can’t wait to find the next book to consume myself in…
he’s a comic genius. im working on his new book "dress your family in courdoroy and denim", its hysterical.
James Joyce – Ulysses
…has been on my shelf for years. Finally feel strong enough to tackle it.
W.G. Sebald – Austerlitz
beautiful & sad….