276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

£7.495£14.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Real credit goes to Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, who had the daunting task of cutting and pasting pieces from thousands of hours of interviews and crafting it into a narrative. This book is essentially one giant interview, but it flows like a novel.

books like Please Kill Me - Shepherd 10 books like Please Kill Me - Shepherd

Readers must make note that this book covers primarily the development of 1970s-era New York punk, with a side detour to England to witness the birth of the Sex Pistols and British punk. Punk did indeed die at the end of the '70s, and it has of course been resurrected and reinvented by succeeding generations. But if you want to know where the whole thing began, you have to get this book. Lou Reed is not, as you will see constant reference to, a scat-munching asshole. No, Lou Reed is a scat-munching douche. Sound good? Kind of. But a few major gripes here. This book, first and foremost should be about the history of NEW YORK punk. Or "people Legs McNeil was friends with." It is embarrassing that the Talking Heads were completely excluded from this because the writers thought that they were "yuppies." How you can talk about Blondie, Television and Patti Smith and completely leave out David Byrne (for better or worse) to me seems ludicrous. It's the same with the British movement. Malcolm Mclaran is of course given his due here but the raging prejudice put against the UK bands ("The Damned were posers! The Clash didn't know what they were talking about!") seems more like territorial squabbling than actual criticism. Porównanie tych dwóch prawd – prawdy, którą Patti Smith napisała o sobie w „Poniedziałkowych dzieciach” i prawdy opowiedzianej o niej przez jej znajomych – jest szczególnie interesujące. Jakbyśmy oglądali dwie zupełnie inne osoby. Jakbyśmy czytali o dwóch różnych światach. And now, just because I liked it so much, here's my absolute favorite bit of the book, from Ari Delon (illegitimate son of model/groupie Nico and Alain Delon):I know, I know. It's not really fair to go there, but man is this book a real piece of work. I mean, it starts off pretty cool, and has some interesting stories from time to time. It just gets old and depressing when well over half the book is just variations on how trashed so and so was and what stupid thing they did because of it. It's like reliving every inane conversation I've ever had with my old college roommates or the people I hung out with in my early to mid twenties. There is a reason I don't have those conversations anymore.

All Please Kill Me Posts Archives - PleaseKillMe All Please Kill Me Posts Archives - PleaseKillMe

Dishes the crud on everyone…As someone who was there at the time, I can vouch for how vividly it recaptures the swampy vitality of the New York scene…candid, inside, and detailed.” Free of historical self-revision or precious musical pontification, [this] book comes as close to capturing the coruscated brilliance and vein-puncturing style of the Blank Generation as the written word is likely to get.”Even though Nancy was very disliked, everyone thought it was terrible that the police stopped investigating her murder after Sid died. Many people thought their drug dealer actually did it. And, best of all, Iggy Pop, known for his terrible habit and dangerous excess had an ephiphany. He realized he "was the product". He cleaned up and he started saving his money. That's right. One of the most famous punks of all time, saved his life, by replacing nihilism with captalism. Isn't that fantstic? Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-07-19 14:16:26 Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA1117312 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York [u.a.] Donor Please Kill Me" covers New York punk from its birth in the mid-60s at Andy Warhol's Factory all the way to its eventual death in the late '70s, as corporate America once again begins to catch the wave and numerous members of the original first wave of punk begin to burn out from the excessive and dangerous lifestyles that they embraced. McNeil and co-author Gillian McCain present their material in the form of interviews with a vast number of the people who were there on the front lines, experiencing and inventing the punk scene as it developed. Johnny Thunders, Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, The Ramones, Richard Hell, Danny Fields....they are all heard from here along with a host of groupies, drug dealers, hookers, agents and managers, club owners, and other scene hangers-on.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment