Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

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Drugs, drugs, drugs. Sex, sex, sex. Violence and vomit and just a little bit of music. Virtually no analysis and not much beyond "first we did this, and then we did this, and then we went there, and we were so stoned, man." 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. Scientists were the embodiment of this new-fangled sobriety—impartial, businesslike, colorless, and reliable. Or so people assumed. For in actual practice, it was their supposed impartiality that allowed them to gain so much influence. One” Everyone thought in the early days of punk, certainly once English punk got going, and even American punk, everyone thought it was a horrible right-wing Nazi thing—violent, racist, and against everything good in life.”

Please Kill Me : The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Please Kill Me : The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

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. American Hardcore sets the record straight about the last great American subculture"—Paper magazine The only thing that made the music different was that we were taking lyrics to places they had never been before. The thing that makes art interesting is when an artist has incredible pain or incredible rage. The New York bands were much more into their pain, while the English bands were much more into their rage. The Sex Pistols' songs were written out of anger, wheras Johnny was writing songs because he was brokenhearted over Sable...”

The focus is on American punk, which, unbeknownst to me, is where the movement began, about fifteen years before England. There is a similar book on England's movement, and it is on my to-read list if anyone is interested. In this book only the Sex Pistols are discussed. I am ashamed to say that I've had to create a list of bands with whom I'm not familiar so I can Spotify the music. Immensely entertaining…I found these tales of unholy madness and drug-fueled abandon all too thought-provoking.” Jim Morrison was often drunk and frequently terrible live, and wrote really bad high school-grade poetry. The name "Punk" was decided upon because "it seemed to sum up...everything...obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side". Holstrom wanted to call it "Teenage News Gazette" to which Ged said, "Absolutely not." The name Punk was McNeil's idea; Dunn agreed to it instantly, Holmstrom rather reluctantly. At the age of 18, disgusted with the hippie movement that seemed to be going nowhere, McNeil gathered with two high school friends, John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn, and decided to create "some sort of media thing" for a living. They settled upon a magazine, assuming that people would "think [they were] cool and hang out with [them]" as well as "give [them] free drinks". The name "Punk" was decided upon because "it seemed to sum up...everything...obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side". In Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, McNeil said that the magazine was inspired by two chief influences: Harvey Kurtzman and The Dictators' debut album The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!, indicating that the magazine was started strictly so that its creators could "hang out with the Dictators".

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McNeil, Legs (June 14, 2021). "Remembering Punk, The Magazine, Music, Moment in Time". Please Kill Me . Retrieved January 20, 2022. McNeil's most recent book, Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose is another collaborative effort with Gillian McCain. Dear Nobody was published on April 1, 2014, and received widespread critical acclaim.There's a raging aura of pretension that weaves its way through this novel which is a treat considering it's an oral history. It's all very "we are so very ~cool~ and ~unusual~ and ~special~ look at how we subvert the expectations placed on us etc" and honestly it's just a bit too much. Thumbs up to you. I knew nothing about Patti Smith going into this book and have come out deeply disliking her. I know the context of the time is probably important but so many of these people are deeply unlikeable... except Debbie Harry. The PKM e-book edition features an expanded and updated photo gallery and features a new cover with a classic photo of Iggy and the Stooges, photographed by Danny Fields. Everyone involved in the early American punk scene was one big incestuous relationship. Everyone had sex with everyone else at one point or another. Male, female, transsexuals, johns, etc.

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History 19+ quotes from Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History

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? These bands, except Patti Smith, were men, and were self-destructive. Their behavior was off the charts, but most were extremely artistic. How they attracted so many women in such a decrepit state is beyond me. I guess like attracts like. 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. The twentieth anniversary edition of the “utterly and shamelessly sensational” history of punk music—featuring new photos and an afterword by the authors ( Newsday). Legs McNeil lives at the “Schwenksville Narrative Oral History Institute.” He was the former Resident Punk at Punk magazine, a senior editor at Spin, and regularly contributes to Vice online.McNeil and Gillian McCain doing a book reading at Book Soup in Los Angeles, California on July 26, 2014. How to Be Famous: Our Guide to Looking the Part, Playing the Press, and Becoming a Tabloid Fixture (Hardcover) That record became very key for me, not just for what it said, and for how great it was, but also because I heard other people who could make good music without being any good at music. It gave me hope.” Penny Arcade said: At that time, the DRUG world and the ART world ran through each other. (1971 - 1974)”

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (An

As a writer of children’s books, I’ve always been fascinated – not merely by the narrative, characters, and plot that form a story – but how ideas themselves spring to life and cross-pollinate to form some kind of creative endeavor, whether that’s a song, a poem, a book or anything else that provokes an emotional response. Rather than shying away from the question: "Where do you get your ideas?" I like to embrace it and search for answers myself. These books all set contexts through which the nature of imagination and ideas are explored alongside the tales they tell, and they remain an influence on the ideas I have, and the words I write. The book is broken into chapters that follow a timeline that flow through music progression and drug prevalence. I'm seriously surprised more of these people didn't die during the early years, although many were dead by the re authorization.

Legs McNeil is an American music journalist. He is one of the three original founders of the seminal Punk magazine that gave the movement its name; as well as being a former editor at Spin and editor-in-chief of Nerve Magazine. Besides Please Kill Me, McNeil is also co-author of The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, a definitive work on the porn industry. As Publisher’s Weekly said, “This compulsively readable book perfectly captures the pop culture zeitgeist. It doesn’t hurt that the history of American pornography is inextricably intertwined with all the subjects that captivate us: sex, drugs, beauty, fame, money, the Mafia, law enforcement and violence.” McNeil’s most recent book, Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose is another collaborative effort with Gillian McCain. Dear Nobody was published on April 1st 2014 and received widespread critical acclaim as being the authentic version of Go Ask Alice. McNeil has appeared on many TV documentaries, from the History Channel to VH1, and has produced and hosted a three-hour TV special on Court TV over three nights on the porn industry, which was the highest-rated original programming in that network’s history. How can U say one style is better than another. You ought to be able to be an Abstract Expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling you"ve given up something. ... I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that's what's going to happen, that's going to be the whole new scene. - Andy Warhol, 1963”