A Tribal History was released in October, 2001 to great success. The book is now in five languages, and led the way to the creation of the acclaimed documentary AMERICAN HARDCORE: The History of American Punk Rock 1980-1986. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006, and was released theatrically later that year by Sony Pictures Classics. With the resurgence of punk rock, and continued interest in the significant American DIY movement, Blush has expanded the book and will release the second edition on November 1, 2010.
Unlike many second editions, this offering is a new book. The author has updated all of the chapters, added a new one titled "Destroy Babylon," which explores the mutant forms of spirituality that came from the movement, and interviewed over twenty-five new subjects. Blush also has unearthed over a hundred new pieces of artwork, drafted two hundred plus new band bios, …
A Tribal History was released in October, 2001 to great success. The book is now in five languages, and led the way to the creation of the acclaimed documentary AMERICAN HARDCORE: The History of American Punk Rock 1980-1986. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006, and was released theatrically later that year by Sony Pictures Classics. With the resurgence of punk rock, and continued interest in the significant American DIY movement, Blush has expanded the book and will release the second edition on November 1, 2010.
Unlike many second editions, this offering is a new book. The author has updated all of the chapters, added a new one titled "Destroy Babylon," which explores the mutant forms of spirituality that came from the movement, and interviewed over twenty-five new subjects. Blush also has unearthed over a hundred new pieces of artwork, drafted two hundred plus new band bios, and radically expanded discography. Most significant, he has offered a new conclusion which is an anomaly within the realm of period studies. The original book was 328 pages, and the revised edition is now 408.
The Los Angeles Times cited AMERICAN HARDCORE: A Tribal History as the “definitive treatment of hardcore punk.” Juxtapoz Magazine called the study “the definitive work on one of rock’s most important eras.” Major publications across the globe echoed these sentiments, and the public followed suit via purchases at bookstores and tickets at box offices across the world. Blush is sure to have a packed house as he conducts readings and Q&A sessions at public libraries across the country.
(Quelle: americanhardcorebook.com)
Fokus des Buches liegt auf Anfang bis Mitte der 1980er, was der Autor als einzig wahren American Hardcore Punk bezeichnet. Dass der Autor seine Meinung als die einzig korrekte ansieht, zieht sich durch das gesamte Buch. Es kommen viele bekannte jedoch überhaupt nicht diverse Stimmen zu Wort: weiße hetero cis Typen, deren sexistische und homofeindliche Kommentare unkritisch zu einer "Dokumentation" kombiniert werden. Es fehlt an kritischer Reflexion und Analyse.
I don't think I'm gonna be able to get through this book completely. It's enormous, and the problems I started to feel throughout the book only became more and more prominent as time goes on.
The book’s overall angle on a lot of the more negative parts of hardcore seems to be “we were shitty and it was awesome”. There’s about as much considered reflection in the book as that implies.
Much of the book's insight on issues in punk is painfully sexist and tokenistic, incredibly biased to the point of simply further poisoning an already fetid well as regards fascism and racism in punk. If you ignore the bolded text that contains the author’s commentary, the book becomes a more palatable - there are lots of insightful interviews with major players throughout, although they're mixed in with a more incoherent series with absolutely minor nobodies who appear to be …
I don't think I'm gonna be able to get through this book completely. It's enormous, and the problems I started to feel throughout the book only became more and more prominent as time goes on.
The book’s overall angle on a lot of the more negative parts of hardcore seems to be “we were shitty and it was awesome”. There’s about as much considered reflection in the book as that implies.
Much of the book's insight on issues in punk is painfully sexist and tokenistic, incredibly biased to the point of simply further poisoning an already fetid well as regards fascism and racism in punk. If you ignore the bolded text that contains the author’s commentary, the book becomes a more palatable - there are lots of insightful interviews with major players throughout, although they're mixed in with a more incoherent series with absolutely minor nobodies who appear to be Blush's friends or something. I’m okay with admitted biases, but that doesn’t give you carte blanche to write the entire book through a single lens.
All this said - there's no denying the quality of the good interviews. The various components that made up Black Flag provide particularly interesting context, and the sheer range of interviewees (despite the aforementioned scattershot inclusion criteria) certainly sets a a scene of sorts.
The Feral House style of peppering historical/biographical music content with imagery is rolled out here also, which serves occasionally to illuminate and in other places clutter. Once you hit one of the pages where it's nothing but Blush listing names and dates in rather eye-watering bold text you find yourself pining for pictures.
The second edition adds a section on punk spirituality, quite arbitrarily stapled on in the first few chapters for some reason, feeling completely out of place. It’s a four-page lip service to one of the most fascinating parts of the NY hardcore scene which disappointed me.
Overall, a book that would surely justify its own indulgence as being punk. As long as the indulgence was pre-'86 indulgence, otherwise that isn't punk maaaan.
