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Punk: The Whole Story
This title features the complete record of a rock revolution with a foreword by Blondie's Deborah Harry - now in a compact format. Discover the definitive story of Punk with three decades worth of interviews, insider stories, amazing photographs and memorabilia. The full story of rock and roll's most rebellious offspring is told here - the gigs, the three-chord classics, the scandals, successes and fashions, in all their safety-pinned glory. Eyewitness accounts from the people who were there, original features from "Sounds" magazine (the first to cover Punk), Kerrang! and the best music writers from Mojo relate how an underground scene in New York and London transformed the pompous, stale music of the 1970s, and inspired New Wave, Grunge and a whole generation of bands.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
July 6, 2023
A lot of good and fun information in here, especially for someone with a working knowledge of the punk movement, but lacking in some of the details.
However, I wouldn't say it's the "whole" story, because there's far too much story to be included in one volume. I can't say that there are any bands and musicians included here who DON'T belong -- Sex Pistols, Ramones, Clash, Patti Smith, Johnny Thunders, Blondie, Siouxsie, Television, Generation X, Buzzcocks, Stranglers, Damned, Black Flag, even Green Day -- but there are plenty of others that could have warranted more than the bare mention they got. The Germs, Circle Jerks, Dead Boys, Replacements, FEAR, Dead Kennedys, Stiff Little Fingers... they were all alluded to, but had no real information.
Anyway, at least someone put it down on paper. I will mention, though, that while MOJO is listed on the cover, DK is mentioned on the back and on the publication page. Now, I know that DK has put out some fine books, and much of their information can be relied upon, but in this case I noticed at least one occasion, in the chapter on Siouxsie and the Banshees, where a pullout quote was attributed to bassist Steve Severin, but in the text the same quote was said by Berlin, one of the members of the "Bromley Contingent" that was kind of the Banshees' entourage. That kind of thing doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence in the reporting.
But if you're willing to assume that most of what you're reading is accurate, then you'll like this. At any rate, there are lots of great photos!
However, I wouldn't say it's the "whole" story, because there's far too much story to be included in one volume. I can't say that there are any bands and musicians included here who DON'T belong -- Sex Pistols, Ramones, Clash, Patti Smith, Johnny Thunders, Blondie, Siouxsie, Television, Generation X, Buzzcocks, Stranglers, Damned, Black Flag, even Green Day -- but there are plenty of others that could have warranted more than the bare mention they got. The Germs, Circle Jerks, Dead Boys, Replacements, FEAR, Dead Kennedys, Stiff Little Fingers... they were all alluded to, but had no real information.
Anyway, at least someone put it down on paper. I will mention, though, that while MOJO is listed on the cover, DK is mentioned on the back and on the publication page. Now, I know that DK has put out some fine books, and much of their information can be relied upon, but in this case I noticed at least one occasion, in the chapter on Siouxsie and the Banshees, where a pullout quote was attributed to bassist Steve Severin, but in the text the same quote was said by Berlin, one of the members of the "Bromley Contingent" that was kind of the Banshees' entourage. That kind of thing doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence in the reporting.
But if you're willing to assume that most of what you're reading is accurate, then you'll like this. At any rate, there are lots of great photos!
April 13, 2011
This Book is very good. Im currently reading it and it does great with describing detail and location of pictures. It basically revolves on how the Genre of music came to be in existence and how it was created for people who had things to say that not many wanted to hear. Talks of many bands that were around at the birth of punk and many that are still around. All the way from Blondie to Black Flag to The Ramones to The Sex Pistols this book is great for people inspired by this kind of music or anyone just interested in new sub-cultures. The Punk Lifestyle for many are sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Those choices Usually lead these popular musicians down lonely roads. So never try to fit a stereotype just do what you need to do and be yourself. Labels are shallow but this book is called Punk The Whole Story.
July 18, 2017
Quotes:
punk's favorite surrealist, Andre Breton
The Ramones had also realized that they would have to compensate for their lack of radioplay with roadwork. And touring would lead to T-shirt sales, a big part of their survival.
If punk had been seized upon by some in the "No Future" crowd as a way to flame out, the Ramones demonstrated that in the US, punk was not about fashion or merely a noisy suicide note. For four suburban misfits like Joey, Johhny, Dee Dee, and Tommy it was a way for them to walk through this world, to go the full distance. It was a way to live.
Patti Smith: You don't want to write poetry like Rimbaud, in other words, but once you've read Rimbaud, you want to create something of your own that has the same impact. And that's what we did to other people". [With Horses which was supposed to be the equivalent of influence of A Season in Hell]
Smith even imagined a utopian future in which her singles would regularly top the charts, just like the Stones in the 60s, at which point the revolution she hoped she'd inspired would be complete. But she couldn't escape the sense that she might already have achieved everything that was within her compass, and that nothing lay ahead but a stale, scripted reprise of her improvisational past.
Clad in black leather motorcycle jacket with a skull and crossbones painted on the back, and playing a white guitar, the guitarist exuded maximum cool. Johnny Thunders [of the New York Dolls in 1973] didn't give a fuck better than anyone else.
Malcolm McLaren's SEX: Inside, the pervy lingeire, rubber and leather costumes, and outrageous T-Shirts hung form gym exercise bars, while the rubber-draped walls and ceiling were peppered with quotes from the SCUM manifesto.
There were also Situationist aphorisms, including the question: "Does passion end in fashion?" inscribed by 430 acolyte Bernie Rhodes, who later suggested "Passion is a fashion" for a militaristic shirt worn by his charge Joe Strummer.
McLaren: "In the shop's various incarnations, I made clothes that looked like ruins," McLaren worte in his foreword to Paul Gorman's book The Look. "I created something new by destroying the old. This wasn't fashion as a commodity; this was fashion as an idea."
Gary Valentine [Blondie's first bass player]: Most of the time I was hungry. I had barely enough money to cover my rent. It was the kind of life you're supposed to lead if you want to write or paint or be any kind of artist. At least that's what I told myself those days I hadn't eaten, when I tried to quell the paints in my stomach by drinking warm water, a trick I picked up from the French writer Rene Daumal. It didn't help Daumal much: he died of tuberculosis at 36. Luckily for me, something happened in the summer of 1975.
The loft was unheated; I spent one Christmas Eve (my bday) burning a stack of Hendrix posters to stay warm. Our furniture was dragged in from the streets and was filthy. Outside, the sidewalk was covered with winos and down-and-outs; often we struggled to push open the door in the morning because a bum had camped out there the night before. One winter morning, we discovered one had frozen to death; someone had suggested hauling the body inside, but luckily an ambulance arrived. (Benton had gotten his hands on a series of Tibetan paintings, one of which was a cheery scene of a group of monks eating one of their fellows.)
An eerie statue of a nun stood in front of a fireplace. A cross was painted on her forehead and rosary beads hung from her hand. The fireplace itself was covered in occult formulae. Benton was fond of Aleister Crowley, meditated on the Tarot, and in inspired moments, read aloud from Diary of A Drug Fiend. Between this and Chris' voodoo fascination, the place had the air of a bad Satanist film.
Clem kept up a mantra of "Shit, man, this sucks," which Benton would counter with his single maxim for a philosophy of life: "Learn to love it."
Patti Smith: CBGB's was the greatest atmosphere to perform in. It was conspiratorial. It was physical, and that's what rock'n'roll's all about—sexual tension and being drunk and disorderly.
Everything about Siouxsie and the Banshees suggested they were still on a mission to destroy the milieu, rotten to the core with with complacency, cliche, and the weight of history.
Phil Oakley: "The theme was social commentary, protest songs almost, and when we first heart The Clash and The Damned it sounded like Buddy Holly-era rocknroll with tougher lyrics. The Banshees were different. They created something that's not been seen before or since. They weren't an identikit punk band. That would have been completely against who they were and where they came from."
"Bowie was incredible," Siouxsie told me in 2003. "the skinniness, the alienation, the otherworldliness...He was definitely the man/woman of the future, a springboard to accentuate your won individuality." The teenage loner was suitably inspired: "I enjoyed being the freak in a middle class suburb," she says.
It seemed that when Sid was on drugs (chiefly mainlined speed), which was increasingly often, he could no longer differentiate between what most of us would describe as amusing delinquent behavior and unacceptable, cowardly acts of violence. It was around this time that he acquired the name Sid Vicious. Depending on who you believe this was either after Lydon's pet hamster or Beverly's love for Syd Barrett.
Asked about his relationship with Patti Smith in 1995, Tom Verlaine was non-committal. "We hung out for a couple of years. It's hard to remember. I think almost every woman artist I've ever met has this ideal of being in a partnership-working situation with a man that men don't seem to share." [Not true of this male artist]
Generation X: "Billy and I were clearly middle-class in a movement created by Bernie and Malcolm McLaren to look working class,"Tony explains. "We were the guys who had been to university. But Bernie had toughened me up."
Buzzcocks: "It did my head in," agrees Shelley. "Americans have no sense of irony. Nobody was listening to a fucking word I was saying. Everyone's bouncing around us, going, 'Yay! This is fantastic!' And it was a nightmare. I was in a meltdown situation. Steve was in his element. His whole dream has been to be put on that pedestal. His reason for doing things is different to mine. Mine has always been, you've got the opportunity to communicate with people. It's what the punk ideology always was."
The Damned: By 1978, the music industry had succeeded in reinstating a culture of compliant rock stars in it for the money. New wave groups such as Squeeze, Dire Straits, and The Pretenders supplied the new sound without all the grief.
[Thus with the Fall of Punk] There were caricaturists, weirdoes, idiots, imitators, meatheads, fashion ponces, arty types, born-again mods, but it was hard to trace a pure form of punk rock that was moving forward.
Some of the 77 greatest punk albums:
The Seeds/ A Web of Sound
Iggy and the Stooges / Raw Power
Television / Marquee Moon
The Damned / Damned, Damned, Damned
The Stranglers / IV/Rattus Norvegicus
The Clash / The Clash
Richard Hell & The Voidoids / Blank Generation
Wire / Pink Flag
Blondie / Parallel Lines
Pere Ubu / The Modern Dance
Buzzcocks / Another Music in a Different Kitchen
Siouxsie & The Banshees / The Scream
The Damned / Machine Gun Etiquette
Public Image / First Issue
Dead Kennedys / Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
Black Flag / The First Four Years
Husker Du / Zen Arcade
Lemonheads / Hate Your Friends
Mudhoney / Superfuzz Bigmuff
The Hives / Your New Favorite Band
Fueling all this was a fevered sense of DIY entrepreneurship—groups starting their own labels, booking their own tours, and forming an underground rock industry that was rife with ideological conflicts. When Nirvana went global in 91 with Smells like Teen Spirit, they embodied the struggle between the hardcore underground and the mainstream. The scene became awash with infighting as opportunistic bands were accused of "selling out" to major labels—just like the good old days of the Pistols and the Clash, in fact.
Nirvana's success unwittingly led to the rise of "alternative rock," a major-label-endorsed approximation of punk culture. Its detractors saw it as a corporate disemboweling of the underground; meanwhile, many of the hardcore acts that signed to majors in Nirvana's wake soon came to regret it.
The anti-establishment stance of hardcore evaporated away to leave a pale, impoverished version of punk that seemingly existed merely to piss off mom and dad with spiky hair, tattoos, and profane T-shirts. The bands, such as Blink 182 and Sum 41, became less challenging.
Portland's The Hunches' beautiful pop played on loud, broken guitars and sung by a lunatic.
Malcolm McLaren: From one tiny shop on the King's Road, we had created our own code of living, our own laws, our own identity. In other words, we had created the infrastructure for an alternative society.
punk's favorite surrealist, Andre Breton
The Ramones had also realized that they would have to compensate for their lack of radioplay with roadwork. And touring would lead to T-shirt sales, a big part of their survival.
If punk had been seized upon by some in the "No Future" crowd as a way to flame out, the Ramones demonstrated that in the US, punk was not about fashion or merely a noisy suicide note. For four suburban misfits like Joey, Johhny, Dee Dee, and Tommy it was a way for them to walk through this world, to go the full distance. It was a way to live.
Patti Smith: You don't want to write poetry like Rimbaud, in other words, but once you've read Rimbaud, you want to create something of your own that has the same impact. And that's what we did to other people". [With Horses which was supposed to be the equivalent of influence of A Season in Hell]
Smith even imagined a utopian future in which her singles would regularly top the charts, just like the Stones in the 60s, at which point the revolution she hoped she'd inspired would be complete. But she couldn't escape the sense that she might already have achieved everything that was within her compass, and that nothing lay ahead but a stale, scripted reprise of her improvisational past.
Clad in black leather motorcycle jacket with a skull and crossbones painted on the back, and playing a white guitar, the guitarist exuded maximum cool. Johnny Thunders [of the New York Dolls in 1973] didn't give a fuck better than anyone else.
Malcolm McLaren's SEX: Inside, the pervy lingeire, rubber and leather costumes, and outrageous T-Shirts hung form gym exercise bars, while the rubber-draped walls and ceiling were peppered with quotes from the SCUM manifesto.
There were also Situationist aphorisms, including the question: "Does passion end in fashion?" inscribed by 430 acolyte Bernie Rhodes, who later suggested "Passion is a fashion" for a militaristic shirt worn by his charge Joe Strummer.
McLaren: "In the shop's various incarnations, I made clothes that looked like ruins," McLaren worte in his foreword to Paul Gorman's book The Look. "I created something new by destroying the old. This wasn't fashion as a commodity; this was fashion as an idea."
Gary Valentine [Blondie's first bass player]: Most of the time I was hungry. I had barely enough money to cover my rent. It was the kind of life you're supposed to lead if you want to write or paint or be any kind of artist. At least that's what I told myself those days I hadn't eaten, when I tried to quell the paints in my stomach by drinking warm water, a trick I picked up from the French writer Rene Daumal. It didn't help Daumal much: he died of tuberculosis at 36. Luckily for me, something happened in the summer of 1975.
The loft was unheated; I spent one Christmas Eve (my bday) burning a stack of Hendrix posters to stay warm. Our furniture was dragged in from the streets and was filthy. Outside, the sidewalk was covered with winos and down-and-outs; often we struggled to push open the door in the morning because a bum had camped out there the night before. One winter morning, we discovered one had frozen to death; someone had suggested hauling the body inside, but luckily an ambulance arrived. (Benton had gotten his hands on a series of Tibetan paintings, one of which was a cheery scene of a group of monks eating one of their fellows.)
An eerie statue of a nun stood in front of a fireplace. A cross was painted on her forehead and rosary beads hung from her hand. The fireplace itself was covered in occult formulae. Benton was fond of Aleister Crowley, meditated on the Tarot, and in inspired moments, read aloud from Diary of A Drug Fiend. Between this and Chris' voodoo fascination, the place had the air of a bad Satanist film.
Clem kept up a mantra of "Shit, man, this sucks," which Benton would counter with his single maxim for a philosophy of life: "Learn to love it."
Patti Smith: CBGB's was the greatest atmosphere to perform in. It was conspiratorial. It was physical, and that's what rock'n'roll's all about—sexual tension and being drunk and disorderly.
Everything about Siouxsie and the Banshees suggested they were still on a mission to destroy the milieu, rotten to the core with with complacency, cliche, and the weight of history.
Phil Oakley: "The theme was social commentary, protest songs almost, and when we first heart The Clash and The Damned it sounded like Buddy Holly-era rocknroll with tougher lyrics. The Banshees were different. They created something that's not been seen before or since. They weren't an identikit punk band. That would have been completely against who they were and where they came from."
"Bowie was incredible," Siouxsie told me in 2003. "the skinniness, the alienation, the otherworldliness...He was definitely the man/woman of the future, a springboard to accentuate your won individuality." The teenage loner was suitably inspired: "I enjoyed being the freak in a middle class suburb," she says.
It seemed that when Sid was on drugs (chiefly mainlined speed), which was increasingly often, he could no longer differentiate between what most of us would describe as amusing delinquent behavior and unacceptable, cowardly acts of violence. It was around this time that he acquired the name Sid Vicious. Depending on who you believe this was either after Lydon's pet hamster or Beverly's love for Syd Barrett.
Asked about his relationship with Patti Smith in 1995, Tom Verlaine was non-committal. "We hung out for a couple of years. It's hard to remember. I think almost every woman artist I've ever met has this ideal of being in a partnership-working situation with a man that men don't seem to share." [Not true of this male artist]
Generation X: "Billy and I were clearly middle-class in a movement created by Bernie and Malcolm McLaren to look working class,"Tony explains. "We were the guys who had been to university. But Bernie had toughened me up."
Buzzcocks: "It did my head in," agrees Shelley. "Americans have no sense of irony. Nobody was listening to a fucking word I was saying. Everyone's bouncing around us, going, 'Yay! This is fantastic!' And it was a nightmare. I was in a meltdown situation. Steve was in his element. His whole dream has been to be put on that pedestal. His reason for doing things is different to mine. Mine has always been, you've got the opportunity to communicate with people. It's what the punk ideology always was."
The Damned: By 1978, the music industry had succeeded in reinstating a culture of compliant rock stars in it for the money. New wave groups such as Squeeze, Dire Straits, and The Pretenders supplied the new sound without all the grief.
[Thus with the Fall of Punk] There were caricaturists, weirdoes, idiots, imitators, meatheads, fashion ponces, arty types, born-again mods, but it was hard to trace a pure form of punk rock that was moving forward.
Some of the 77 greatest punk albums:
The Seeds/ A Web of Sound
Iggy and the Stooges / Raw Power
Television / Marquee Moon
The Damned / Damned, Damned, Damned
The Stranglers / IV/Rattus Norvegicus
The Clash / The Clash
Richard Hell & The Voidoids / Blank Generation
Wire / Pink Flag
Blondie / Parallel Lines
Pere Ubu / The Modern Dance
Buzzcocks / Another Music in a Different Kitchen
Siouxsie & The Banshees / The Scream
The Damned / Machine Gun Etiquette
Public Image / First Issue
Dead Kennedys / Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
Black Flag / The First Four Years
Husker Du / Zen Arcade
Lemonheads / Hate Your Friends
Mudhoney / Superfuzz Bigmuff
The Hives / Your New Favorite Band
Fueling all this was a fevered sense of DIY entrepreneurship—groups starting their own labels, booking their own tours, and forming an underground rock industry that was rife with ideological conflicts. When Nirvana went global in 91 with Smells like Teen Spirit, they embodied the struggle between the hardcore underground and the mainstream. The scene became awash with infighting as opportunistic bands were accused of "selling out" to major labels—just like the good old days of the Pistols and the Clash, in fact.
Nirvana's success unwittingly led to the rise of "alternative rock," a major-label-endorsed approximation of punk culture. Its detractors saw it as a corporate disemboweling of the underground; meanwhile, many of the hardcore acts that signed to majors in Nirvana's wake soon came to regret it.
The anti-establishment stance of hardcore evaporated away to leave a pale, impoverished version of punk that seemingly existed merely to piss off mom and dad with spiky hair, tattoos, and profane T-shirts. The bands, such as Blink 182 and Sum 41, became less challenging.
Portland's The Hunches' beautiful pop played on loud, broken guitars and sung by a lunatic.
Malcolm McLaren: From one tiny shop on the King's Road, we had created our own code of living, our own laws, our own identity. In other words, we had created the infrastructure for an alternative society.
February 11, 2013
Although titling a book "The Whole Story" is rather daring (if not outrightly pretentious), this overview of the golden days of American and British Punk is quite an interesing account of the era, as remembered by many of it's key participants and through a remarkable anthology of some of its most iconographic photographs. Most of the book is made up by monographs of the key bands, either in the form of recollections by a key member of the band in question or selected bits of interviews with band members or their entourage. Of course, this sometimes means that the point of view is a little (or very) biased, but it never gets boring. The book also includes timelines of key events, their build-up and aftermath, including the 100 Club Punk Festival, as well as "charts" of key singles and albums. Besides the sections devoted to key photographers, there's also space for graphic and clothes designers who were associated with punk.
May 8, 2008
The old line "a picture is worth a thousand words" somehow feels like an understatement when the picture in question is say, a group mooning (with the butts in question belonging to Chrissie Hynde, Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren among others. Another example would be a photo of Sid Vicious and Nancy lounging on a bench with a couple of Sex Pistols. This is a book that was rich with photographic wow factor, but sadly, too dry when it came to the textual details. Who would have thought that it was possible to make Punk boring...and yet this came all too close at times. Too often it seemed like the stories we were hearing were being told by people on the fringe, more anxious to name drop (venues as well as people) rather than really give a good idea of what it was like to really be there. There were a few exceptions, but not enough to make me love the book; just the photos.
April 1, 2010
To expand on someone elses review: the book did an overall awesome job with images of the groups and people it's talking about. As far as how detailed it is in being the "whole story" it's very weak. The detail with certain aspects of what went on is excessive, but then at times entire groups and bands (Dead Kennedys, Social Distortion, Operation Ivy, The Exploited) and entire titles of subcultures have been entirely ignored.
An easy way to sum up what I got from the book is a person's limited perspective on what led punk to being what it is now without doing any research into what other people felt aided in getting it to where it is.
An easy way to sum up what I got from the book is a person's limited perspective on what led punk to being what it is now without doing any research into what other people felt aided in getting it to where it is.
March 11, 2015
Very nice collection of articles on Punk rock. There are things in the book that are new even to a seasoned punk rock fan like the fact that the rock journalist Nick Kent played for awhile with the early Sex Pistols before Malcom McLaren kicked him out for being too middle class. Also, there are some really nice photos in the book and the whole lay-out is easy to read. Highly recommended.
June 29, 2022
The opening was good. I appreciate the multi-artistic focus of some of the inserts on clothing and specific photographers, as well as the track and album lists. I think they break up the book nicely, a nd give the reader a little more to chase down. However the book begins to fall apart, ironically, in the section where it denotes punk's inevitable breakdown. Chronology of the end only works if we have the beginning. Some of these have no beginning, some flip timelines around, and by the 3rd section we are resigned to this happening. And so it opens more strongly than it closes.
November 3, 2017
I enjoyed the interviews from the archives; there's one with Johnny Rotten that I read years ago on the internet when all of those resources were becoming available that I'm happy to see in print. The second plus is that there are a lot of pictures here, which even after all my years wasted on tumblr, that are new to me.
November 9, 2017
From the Sex Pistols to Green Day and everything in between. Great interviews and insights into the underground from the UK to New York. Music that inspired New Wave to Grunge. Garage bands sprung up everywhere - got three chords then you could start a band. Raw energy, spontaneous outbursts, who cares attitude - bring back punk !
December 13, 2018
This is a good coffee table book. Not an actual historical perspective on the Punk movement, but it is a collection of articles and pictures from Mojo magazine. It covers the inception of Punk in the UK to it's affects on the USA and how it is progressing in the new millenium. Not enough room to mention all your favorite bands, but a few do make it it in as mentions, hello Descendants.
September 7, 2018
This was my first resource on all the great punk bands and albums. I was introduced to The Sex Pistols, The Raincoats, Television, The Slits, The Buzzcocks, The New York Dolls and more because of this book. My love for The Clash also intensified here, and I never looked back.
January 11, 2020
Wonderfully insightful even for those well versed in punk culture and history.
January 10, 2022
A great reference history punk rock book.
Read
July 7, 2022Not 100%, but I think I read this because Laura Jane Grace recommended it somewhere.
July 25, 2023
Took me back to my youth
June 2, 2021
“Punk – Tutta la storia” (Edizioni Bd) è una raccolta di articoli sulla storia del punk scritti dai redattori di Mojo. L’ho preso nonostante alcune grosse ingenuità o leggerezze già nella copertina (e nel retro di copertina). La cosa che mi ha fatto dire "Ok, lo compro" sono le tantissime e ottime fotografie, la maggior parte delle quali non le avevo mai viste.
Per quanto riguarda gli articoli è molto incentrato principalmente su due fronti: la scena inglese (a partire dai Sex Pistols e via di seguito Clash, Buzzcocks, Damned, Generation X, Stranglers, Siouxsie ecc. ecc.) e le band americane che giravano attorno al Cbgb (Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, Blondie e così via), con alcune eccezioni nell’articolo intitolato “Cosa è successo dopo” in cui si parla dei Black Flag (unico accenno all’hardcore), ai Green Day, e alla reunion dei Pistols (mah). Articoli molto frammentari in cui manca una completa visione di insieme ma abbondano aneddoti, anche se a volte fini a se stessi. Interessanti però quelli extra musicali, dedicati a fotografi, fanzine, festival.
Insomma “Tutta la storia” è un eufemismo e ci sono libri e documentari decisamente migliori sull’argomento. Però le foto sono belle e può essere considerato un po’ un bignami introduttivo per chi di punk ne sa poco.
Per quanto riguarda gli articoli è molto incentrato principalmente su due fronti: la scena inglese (a partire dai Sex Pistols e via di seguito Clash, Buzzcocks, Damned, Generation X, Stranglers, Siouxsie ecc. ecc.) e le band americane che giravano attorno al Cbgb (Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, Blondie e così via), con alcune eccezioni nell’articolo intitolato “Cosa è successo dopo” in cui si parla dei Black Flag (unico accenno all’hardcore), ai Green Day, e alla reunion dei Pistols (mah). Articoli molto frammentari in cui manca una completa visione di insieme ma abbondano aneddoti, anche se a volte fini a se stessi. Interessanti però quelli extra musicali, dedicati a fotografi, fanzine, festival.
Insomma “Tutta la storia” è un eufemismo e ci sono libri e documentari decisamente migliori sull’argomento. Però le foto sono belle e può essere considerato un po’ un bignami introduttivo per chi di punk ne sa poco.
November 30, 2016
I really liked this book and it had a lot of information about the history punk, along with a lot of pictures about the pistols, Ramones, Iggy pop, and Black Flag and others. It had a lot of information about Sid Vicious and Nancy and the whole underground scene in the uk and the start of anarchy and how the pistols started punk.
One thing i did not like was it did not include more information on the other genres of punk like crust or pogo/street punk or anarcho, theres more to it and i dont think the pistols started punk. along with the chapter that punk is "dead". Punk is still alive but it is more based around street punk.
Another thing i really liked was the chapters about Johnny Rotten's life and childhood and the chapter about Sid's life and childhood and the thing that happened with Nancy. Another chapter that was my favorite was the page where it included the best punk albums of all time/influental albums and it had the Descendents Milo Goes to college album .
One thing i did not like was it did not include more information on the other genres of punk like crust or pogo/street punk or anarcho, theres more to it and i dont think the pistols started punk. along with the chapter that punk is "dead". Punk is still alive but it is more based around street punk.
Another thing i really liked was the chapters about Johnny Rotten's life and childhood and the chapter about Sid's life and childhood and the thing that happened with Nancy. Another chapter that was my favorite was the page where it included the best punk albums of all time/influental albums and it had the Descendents Milo Goes to college album .
February 29, 2016
The stuff on The New York Dolls was a good encyclopedia catch up. Note to self: check out their work. T loves them so I can ask her more about them. Maybe borrow some tunes from her. The book's angle was hugely biased you could tell. Sex Pistols one time manager saying I came up with the name. I came up with how they dressed and all these others. Blah blah blah. Find that so funny. Minor creative folks always do that. Fighting over the credit. Meanwhile, Shane MacGowan is *** Shane MacGowan teeth and all. That's a huge google search btw. Must be referenced in some song somewhere. Where's my um-br-ella? ella? ella?
For the record, this is a public library stacks find.
For the record, this is a public library stacks find.
Want to read
July 21, 2016Why Everything You Think You Know About Punk Is Completely Wrong:
http://generation-add.blogspot.com/20...
http://generation-add.blogspot.com/20...
December 13, 2012
μερικά πολύ καλά συγκροτήματα όπως Addicts, Ian Dury, Agnostic Frond, The Offspring , Joy division (...)έμειναν στην απ' έξω ενώ θεωρώ ότι συνέβαλαν εξίσου στην γέννηση και το στερέωμα της Punk μουσικής.
λαμβάνεται φυσικά υπόψη πως για να συγκεντρωθεί η παρουσία όλων αυτών των αντιδραστικών παιδιών που αλλάξαν τον κόσμο χρειάζονται τόμοι και τόμοι για να περατωθεί το εγχείρημα.
μην ξεχνάμε λοιπόν πως το PUNK ποτέ δεν θα γίνει μόδα και ΠΟΤΕ δεν θα πεθάνει.
λαμβάνεται φυσικά υπόψη πως για να συγκεντρωθεί η παρουσία όλων αυτών των αντιδραστικών παιδιών που αλλάξαν τον κόσμο χρειάζονται τόμοι και τόμοι για να περατωθεί το εγχείρημα.
μην ξεχνάμε λοιπόν πως το PUNK ποτέ δεν θα γίνει μόδα και ΠΟΤΕ δεν θα πεθάνει.
May 3, 2012
if you love punk this is your book to read. this book tells you from punk from all from england all away from nyc. it tells from the begging from the day it die. it also has events that happen in punk history and bands that was the most famous in the punk world. it has albums from the punk bands from the 1970 to the 2000. it has pictures from clubs and the papers. great book for the punk music
September 7, 2012
Basically, this is everything the curious beginner needs to read about the genre. There are other books that are better — both England's Dreaming and Punk: The Definitive Record of A Revolution immediately come to mind and top my personal list — but this one is the most easily portable and it's loaded with photos, interviews, and a handy guide to the essential recordings.
October 12, 2014
Straight up MOJO style with glossy photos and in depth interviews, this is a great title for those who want to know more about the genre. With amazing graphics and stories that cross into the culture of punk as well, the format and breadth of information here is fantastic.
If you want to know more or are already a punk master, read, "Punk Rock: an oral history" by John Robb.
If you want to know more or are already a punk master, read, "Punk Rock: an oral history" by John Robb.
November 22, 2016
Still confused about the title "The Whole Story". Yeah, maybe from your point of view. It's a pretty limited story if this is it. I'm gonna side with some of the reviews on here and say that a whole lotta bands were left out. Alot of bands that started a certain type of punk style musically were left out.
As far as the photos etc, this was pretty good, if that's all you're looking for.
As far as the photos etc, this was pretty good, if that's all you're looking for.
November 11, 2015
A fantastic collection of interviews, articles, lists and photos, some of which are pieced together from other publications and others that are original and unique to this book. A great swathe of punk is represented and I would absolutely recommend this as a primer to young punks who are anxious to learn more about the origins of their scene.
February 1, 2010
Great read about English punk. I'm sorry though, the briefest mention of the Dead Kennedys and the whole West Coast scene, almost as in passing, makes this reader think the author has a superiority complex about English punk. Still a good read despite this.
November 17, 2010
Some of the essays are good, the one i read tonite about the clash sandinista album, for example, and the listings of essential punk albums was good but other parts were redundant if you've read other books about the punk rock movement
February 2, 2013
This really introduces more punk bands than you already know. This book introduces punk bands from UK and US from the punk era and with so many pictures as well. Some bands I actually checked out after being introduced by this book.
March 1, 2009
Pretty, pretty pictures to accompany the stories I learned in the much better Please Kill Me. Still worth a read though, if you dig the era.
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