Reviews and Comments

The passage that seems to best describe this book is the following: 'As algebra, one could as easily say that punk came from two lines in "Take in Hard Time," a song Richard Thompson wrote in 1968 for Fairport Convention, a mostly quiet, reflective British folk-rock group: "Take the sun from my heart/Let me learn to despise." Whether or not a single punk ever heard these words is irrelevant, as irrelevant as whether a single punk ever read a word by the writers whose adventures make up most of the story of this book.'

I mean, exactly. This book has on one hand, lots of interesting stories about punk, mostly about the Sex Pistols and some in depth analysis about the meaning of their songs as Marcus tries to understand why their songs are so powerful. On the other hand, it is a vast survey of Dada, Situationist International, Lettirst International, American imperialism in Guatemala, 12th Century gnostic leaders, and especially the May 1968 Paris rebellions. Totally fascinating but how much exactly does it have to do with punk? There are probably some links between 1968 (and those previous movements feeding into 1968) and some of the people in the 70s punk movement but I'm not so sure the rest of it isn't a bit of a stretch.

I loved the first half of the book, weaving stories of punk with threads from the past. The second half was a bit more of a slog as it left behind punk and concentrated more exclusively on the unfamiliar (to me) LI and SI movements. I can't say at the end that I really understand much of any of them but I did enjoy the journey through them.