Do You See What I Hear?

Join us for a celebration of the punk photography of Pat Graham on Tuesday, December 18th, 7pm at Schwartz on Downer. Pat will talk about his 19 years of photographing shows and tours for bands like Fugazi, Modest Mouse, The Shins, Tortoise, Bikini Kill and many more.

Come out to support our local indie radio, WMSE 91.7, at your local indie bookseller!

Subscribe to The Inside Flap to keep up-to-date on this event.

Click here to see the beautiful cover of Pat's new book, Silent Pictures.

Presenting Punk: Year-Round Gifts For The Punk At Heart - By Denise Dee

There's so much emphasis in the book industry about selling the 'latest' books. I might be a bit of an aberration in that I am much more excited about selling older books. I am passionate about books I consider 'classics'; and don't worry - I'm not talking about ones that were crammed down your throat in school or by some well-meaning friend. These books are must-haves for your punk library.

From the Velvets to the Voidoids by Clinton Heylin.
Sometimes it is necessary to go backwards to go forwards and Heylin gives us an excellent history of the music leading up to punk. How can you understand Richard Hell without first taking a look at John Cale and Johnny Thunders? Glam gets trashed and later thrashes in this book which moves from New York to London to Cleveland with a few stops in other cities. Cleveland gets long-deserved credit for contributing many seminal members to the punk rock scene. I read this on a Greyhound bus trip and pictured people leaving their hometowns to go find a place where they could 'fit in'. Heylin nails the simultaneous excitement of rebellion and belonging.

Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution by Stephen Colegrave.
A must-have if for no other reasons than the price and pictures. This stunning book is only $25 and will have you 'You Tubing' videos of bands that you may have forgotten about (or never heard of in the first place). Of course, it would be impossible to have a 'definitive' book that you could actually lift - but this book does a nice job of mixing bands that stayed around for a while with one or two-hit wonders. This makes a great gift.

Please Kill Me: the Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

Legs McNeil founded Punk magazine along with John Holstrom. Truly one of the first 'zines in the U.S. A nineteen year-old co-worker who was in no way, shape, or form into punk actually bought this book after hearing me rave on about it to a customer for the thousandth time. He started recommending it. He said the energy of that time was contagious. Often people think of punk as nihilists who sat around complaining. Punk was a whirlwind of energy with many people in more than one band. McNeil and McCain put the 'oral history' format to great use and mix it up so different people give you perspectives on how the New York punk scene came to be and mutated. Buy a copy for anyone who loves the spirit of D.I.Y.

Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 by Simon Reynolds.
My heart belongs to punk. But I think it's important to see where punk went and some reasons why. Reynolds covers no wave, new wave and other postpunk movements. Essential reading if for no other reason than the chapter on the No Wave bands. Their influence spread way beyond the sparse number of groups and audience members involved in the scene. If you can find it purchase No New York and listen to it while reading this chapter. Reynolds visits some of the West Coast punk bands and you start to get a sense of how punk changed in California and then again as it spread across the country.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs. Edited by Greil Marcus.
Detroit is another city that had enormous influence on not only the punk scene but on music in general. Could much of American music exist without Detroit musicians? I don't think so. Lester Bangs was an early rock critic who found a home in Detroit writing for Creem magazine. He knew the Stooges, the MC5, Patti Smith, Destroy All Monsters, as well as jazz, soul, and blues musicians. His writing style is very much no punches pulled. It shows how raw energy that used to be worked out in fist-fights could be turned into a song or an article. Be ready to laugh and to call up friends and read them passages from this book.

I could add at least another ten books to this list. Any one of these books is a great place to start.

Easter Rising - Review by Denise Dee

Quite possibly the best punk rock memoir ever written.

Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie (South Boston) and has a very delicious black humor in his writing. He is 13 when he first gets into punk- back in the late 70's. MPM comes from a very large family and you can see how punk gave him a place in the world and might very well have saved his life.

Easter Rising is also a road trip book - not just a stroll down punk memory lane. He also goes with his Ma to Ireland as an adult. Some of the roads he travels are in his head and heart, and some of them are literal roads to NYC, London, Ireland, and Paris. I felt like I was at his side listening to his stories- rather than reading words on the page.

Some of the things I laughed the hardest at were when his grandfather comes over with holy water to exorcise him- because he heard MPM has been devil worshipping with the 'punk rocks'. When a friend of his sisters tells him he heard punks like to pee on themselves, MPM writes that he is so tired of trying to explain himself (and punk) by this point that he says- "Yeah that's what we do". I also loved a part where he is exchanging notes in class with a girl who tells him her name is Siouxsie. She writes "PUNK IS DEAD- GET OVER IT ".

And this is all before he's 16.

He realized when he visits in Derry that though many of his friends back in Southie have never been to Ireland, somehow the Irish message of 'Never give up the fight' has been imprinted on their hearts.

It's the kind of book you will be calling/e-mailing friends to quote lines from. My co-worker Justin's wife, who is in her 20's, loved it as much as I did.

By the end of the book when his Ma is carrying her accordion with her on Easter Sunday (he doesn't ask her why) he realizes that you "never know when you might be called on to give it everything you have to give". I was crying.

Read it or at least go to his MySpace page and check him out.