This book ruled my life in high school (2016-2017). I picked it up through my junior year English teacher’s personal catalogue for our big year-end book report, and had no idea what I was in for. Reading “Please Kill Me” completely changed everything for me musically, culturally, historically, and personally. Yes, it became my whole personality during my formative years, but I still attest this as one of the best collections...
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Sometime in the late 1960's, a bad mojo was beginning to well up within the ranks of the flower power movement. There were quite a few disaffected outsiders that seemed to have figured out that the revolution was not destined to last, that it was in fact quickly becoming a sham. As corporate America began to swallow and repackage the 60's, some of the folks left behind by the peace and love generation began to vent their anger...
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I first got this book because a good friend and fellow music afficianado was AGHAST that I'd never read it. Or even heard of it. So, happily she supplied me with a copy for my birthday a few years ago. It's one of those books that alternately horrifies you and makes you laugh out loud in surprising bursts that scare away pets. The stories are told by those who were there, and are so blunt it's almost shocking. It's all...
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I am not sure who invented the oral biography, though I suspect the honors should go to Studs Terkel. This is one of the best representatives of the genre that I have ever read. Some have called the book revisionist, in that it asserts the primacy of the New York and American punk movement over that of the English Punk movement. Properly speaking, it isn't at all revisionist: it is a corrective. In fact, the point of...
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This is one of those books that I loved so much it's actually kind of hard for me to put into words and write a review for. My husband had it on order... months before it came out, and after he brought it home, we practically fought over who got to read it first. We eventually had to work something out where we took turns and read it in shifts. Either that or one of us would sneak out and read it when the other fell asleep...
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Happy New Decade! We are embarking on a brand-new era. It may seem a bit arbitrary, but we humans like to retrospectively infuse these tidy ten-year periods with distinct personalities. Here we review the character of the last five decades and make some guesses about how the 2020s will be remembered.