Hard Core Logo

by Michael Turner

Hard Core Logo , first published in 1992, is an epistolary novel acclaimed for its realistic depiction of the life of a punk rock band. Consisting of monologues, conversations, letters, interviews, photographs, and related paraphernalia, Hard Core Logo tells the story of Joe Dick, an unrepentant, true-blue punk rocker whose scarred ideals are renewed when his band reunites for one last shot at rock 'n' roll glory. Hard Core Logo was made into a feature film in 1996; a sequel went into production in February 2010. Michael Turner's other novels include The Pornographer's Poem (Soft Skull Press).

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Canada, Music, Contemporary

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Michael Turner (born 1962) is an author and musician who writes poetry, prose and opera librettos.

Michael Turner is Vancouver based writer whose multigenre books include Company Town (1991), Hard Core Logo (1993), Kingsway (1995), American Whisky Bar (1997) and The Pornographer's Poem (1999). A frequent collaborator, he has written scripts with Stan Douglas, poems with Geoffrey Farmer, and songs with cub, Dream Warriors, Fishbone and Kinnie Starr. He blogs at mtwebsit.blogspot.ca.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[dănuț]

guys in a band doing band stuff

[Carac Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

The movie led me to find the book. On first read it felt a little like Michael Ondaatje's "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems".
This fragmentary style is often attempted but rarely pulled off. Turner makes it work. (I wonder if Max Brooks knows this work.)
The guys in the band are punk rock fuck-ups that in the true punk tradition didn't think about tomorrow. Problem is--it's tomorrow. Their angst and anger come through strong in the lyrics and journal entries. The book ends up being a great companion to the movie.
Amazingly they made a sequel to the movie. And I've heard that a third is in the works. Supposedly it's being drafted by cool Canadian Playwright and one-man virtuso Daniel MacIvor.

Carac

[Pamela Harju · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book because one of my favourite bands is named after one of the characters, and I'm glad I read it. Such a different, refreshing way to tell a story - and trust me, there is a story. Although I'm a big music fan, I know nothing about the punk rock scene in Canada in the early '90s, but this book is realistic and gritty and paints such a good picture of what life in a band is like - or can be like, depending on the band members. A terrific read!

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel that could easily be read in a day. Hence why it says I started and finished on the same day.

A very different beast from the movie; has more of a bad-idea-closing-in feel, rather than the implosive/explosive breakdown of the movie. Less a dark comedy, more a multi-faceted road diary, but still a cool read.

[Krzysztof · Rating 2 out of 5]

As so often with cult favorites, it’s difficult to get in on the cult a few decades later. More nuanced than the film it spawned, it still feels slight except for its intermedial form.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

In scanning through other reviews, it seems like quite a few are reviewing the book after having seen the movie, which adds a lot to the experience. I haven't seen the movie, so maybe that's why I found this to be lacking.

I absolutely loved American Whiskey Bar, and I was ready for a less-than-conventional storytelling style here, but there just wasn't enough meat to the book to make me care. At 197 pages this is already a veeeery slim book, but when half those pages are either pictures or only a sentence or two of type, it doesn't leave much room to actually tell a story. What there is, is a very generic punk rock story: old band reunited, tours, fights, breaks up. I guess it's "unique" in that it's set against a Canadian backdrop, but even that aspect felt pretty generic.

It was a quick enough read that I don't regret the time spent on it, but I can't say I understand the cult appeal. Maybe if I watch the film I'll have an aha moment, but as of right now this was a disappointing read.

[Mark Allard-Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard Core Logo can be summed up in three words, Metafiction goes Punk. It's the prose medium at its most hybrid.

To take it out of shorthand and give it an elaborated review, however, you can read Hard Core Logo a few different ways: firstly, as its metaphor, secondly, as metafiction and finally, as mockumentary posing as prose.

Let's look at how the Book is formed first. It's a mix of John's (Bassist) near-scrutinising journal entries, our protagonists side of phone calls in transcribed form, receipts and transcribed conversations all tied together in a linear line of events from the band's unwittingly optimistic reunion to their demise at the hands of their conflicting egos.

Now, on to the metaphor, the story is a metaphor for many things, the forgotten status of the Punk scene, the receding population and dwindling spirit of Prairies Canada and the rise and fall of the Can-Rock Revolution (and Canadian Rock as a whole) in Canada.

This is the seminal Punk Novel that fuelled the seminal Movie of the same name, but it should too be given the title of the seminal Canadian metafiction novel. Get yourself a copy!

[B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really could’ve finished this book in one sitting, but the closer i got to the end the slower i wanted to go. i made myself wait four days because starting the last few chapters carried such a miserable building pressure dome of dread. i didn’t want to see how it would end. even though the glimpse into the characters we get the is brief, the strength of emotion, especially as it went faster and faster down, is a testament to Turner’s craft. it really was dreading; he perfectly constructed this strong sense that, even though it’s impossible to tell how things will happen, it’s obvious it won’t be good.

i thought the epistolary structure worked so well with the fleeting nature of the story. form fitting function. the collection of odds and ends and photographs making up the narrative forms a poignant, incomplete picture. i wish it was five times as long… c’est la vie.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a strange work, constructed out of conversations and lyrics and other oddities. I'm always nervous about stuff like that, because so much of it turns out to be pretentious nonsense, but in this instance it actually works to tell the story. The characters feel distinct, well-rounded and alive in a way that many far longer books with much more space for detail never achieve. I've not read much like it, and I've certainly not read anything of this sort that works so well. I intend on watching the movie soon.

[Cédric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Billy Talent brought me here, so of course I was going to love the book which contains their namesake.

Great short read, written kind of like a screenplay, with each page being like a short scene; either a thought process, a journal entry, a song, etc., the whole of which describes the progression of a raggedy tour of western Canada by a raggedy punk band. The extent to which these characters are risk tolerant with money... lol. I got caught up on that and the weird air of desperation and ruthlessness that also comes out of their band dynamic.

[Matthew White Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book grew on me a bit as Turner developed these characters by incorporating their personal anecdotes and, in John’s case, diary entries. I wasn’t familiar with Hard Core Logo before picking up this book for my Adapting Canadian Literature course, but I can appreciate what Turner captured here, which was the self destructive side of the punk scene, the sort of sadness of a bad attempting to spark up again after hiatus.

[K115987 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leggere solo questo libro non basta. Dentro ci sono tanti spunti, tante atmosfere, ma non è sufficiente. Dopo aver letto il libro è essenziale guardare anche il film, il mocumentary Hard Core Logo del 1996 (diretto da Bruce McDonald, con Callum Keith Rennie e Hugh Dillon), per capire personaggi e situazioni, per "respirare" gli anni '90 e la musica del tempo.
Comunque ottima idea.

[Arlene Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before there was Daisy Jones, there was Hard Core Logo, written in verse, in letters and interviews. The story of a punk bad doing a reunion tour that’s an absolute flop. They all remember why they hated each other and why they broke up in the first place.

A really good look at how many artists get screwed by managers and promotors

Short but incredible. .

[Janelle Track · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a cult Canadian classic story, I strongly recommend the both the book and the movie adaptation. Both have aged really well and are still relevant over 20 years later. I love the dark look inside the Canadian music scene.

[Tom Whitton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easily readable in a day. Wanted to check this one out after finally seeing Billy Talent live this year for the first time (this book inspired their band name). Not your typical novel but a great way to tell the story of life in a band.

[MikeBy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got part way through this before I realized I'd added it to my Want to Read after watching the movie. The book was much better; although very short I felt it got to the point quickly and nothing more.

[John Marr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Appreciate that it had one of punk rock's great attributes: brevity

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish it was longer!

[Jodie Ponto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cure for the Post-Tour Blues!

[matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

neat-o

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

hard core logo is one of my favourite film of all time. no, not even "one of", it is my favourite movie of all time.

you can't imagine how excited i was when i finally got my hands on a copy of this book. i was thrilled.
it is totally unique. it's so small, with some chapters being nothing more than a few sentences on one page. i read it in an hour. i gave it to a few of my friends to read and then i read it again, right away. i've read it a few times since then too.
everything about this novel sparks my imagination and i find it hard to understand how someone could take it and turn it into the film it is. [to be fair, there is so much more going on in the film than the book. it might be one of the only times i've preferred the film to its literary counterpart.:]

i can't even pick a favourite part to talk about, but i will give special mention to the copied in receipts that are scattered in the book. it's just a receipt but it still tells so much of the story.

[Trin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I still haven't seen the movie that was based on this, but I've absorbed rather a lot through fannish osmosis. I was surprised at how different the book was on some major points, but rather than go too deeply into that and risk spoiling people on either, I'll just say: this is an interesting, but slight, looked at a bunch of fucked up, dried up, punk rockers. It's written in verse and in other scraps—journal entries, interview bits, photographs—which is cool because it's different, but it does prevent Turner from being able to delve too deeply into any of the characters, their motivations, or even specifically what's happening. By which I don't mean it's confusing—not at all—it's just shallow, a passing glimpse. I think the film must go deeper, and I'm really itching to see it now. Plus, Callum. *eg*

[Ravachol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I borrowed this and Hard Core Roadshow: A Screenwriter's Diary from my sister. I have to say it's in remarkable condition for a book she bought in the early 90's. I remember her reading it a lot when we were kids. I remember watching the film with her and her friends and being kind of weirded out by it. Seriously though, this thing is in great condition! I also noticed the price on the back: $16.95CAD. I figure that's pretty much what you would pay for it if it came out today.

Anyways the gist of this review is that book prices are not increasing very rapidly and my sister takes really good care of her books.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally reminded me a 40-year-old man's scrapbook. A story about four aging punk musicians on a multi-city reunion tour who are totally messed up and completely psychotic. The book itself is a collection of phone messages, receipts, song lyrics, diary entries, pictures, etc. It isn't a very complicated book by any means. I liked it but was left wishing for more. I loved the movie and highly recommend it, even though it is very different from the book.

Re-read July 23, 2014

[Emma Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard Core Logo relies not on conventional narrative to convey its plot and its characters, but on a patchwork including (but not limited to) mixed media snippets of photographs, blank verse, answering machine messages and lyrics. The novel is short, but I felt like it worked well with the experimental style - it was different enough and short enough that it didn't feel gimmicky, and worked nicely to tell the story itself.

[Chelsey Clark]

No star rating as of today because, to be honest, I think I need to reread it to fully digest it. I was intrigued by the format and have read other books in experimental epistolary styles, but this one felt a little too sparse at times and I had a hard time engaging, personally. But I want to give it another go soon, as it is just a short little volume, and hopefully will have more interesting things to say then.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd imagine this book might be harder to follow if you hadn't seen the movie first. The writing approach is very cool. I think the movie might be better though, except for the ending. I think the book's ending was more satisfying, and still as plausible and to character.

[catechism · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it weird to give books lower ratings for being short? I liked this story (four aging punk-rockers go on a terrible reunion tour) and I liked the slightly wacky format (tour diaries, answering machine messages, receipts, etc), but I just felt like it wasn't enough somehow.

[Thomas Bilous · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book isn't quite a love letter from a struggling band, nor is it hate-mail. It is a bittersweet look at the spaces between rocking out and selling out, between success and failure, and between friendship and hatred.

[dirty derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

a staple in canadian (punk) lit.
not as good as it was hyped up to be.
will turn me to turner's poetry however.

fans of this book should check out 1978 by Daniel Jones for another gritty look at punk in canada.