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30th out of 135 books
—
41 voters
Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day
by
Jack Boulware (Goodreads Author),
Silke Tudor
An oral history of the modern punk-revival?s West Coast Birthplace
Outside of New York and London, California?s Bay Area claims the oldest continuous punk-rock scene in the world. Gimme Something Better brings this outrageous and influential punk scene to life, from the notorious final performance of the Sex Pistols, to Jello Biafra?s bid for mayor, the rise of Maximum Rock...more
Outside of New York and London, California?s Bay Area claims the oldest continuous punk-rock scene in the world. Gimme Something Better brings this outrageous and influential punk scene to life, from the notorious final performance of the Sex Pistols, to Jello Biafra?s bid for mayor, the rise of Maximum Rock...more
Paperback, 512 pages
Published
September 29th 2009
by Penguin Books
(first published 2009)
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Gimme Something Better provides a deep, thought-provoking look into the California punk scene and the seeds that were sowed by bands all the way from Crime to the Dead Kennedys to Social Distortion to Bad Religion, all the way to Operation Ivy, Crimpshrine, Isocracy and the beginnings of the 924 Gilman Street Project in California.
Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor both manage to cover almost every ounce of drama, controversy, and several stories about the scene and its ridiculous history from the 1...more
Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor both manage to cover almost every ounce of drama, controversy, and several stories about the scene and its ridiculous history from the 1...more
Punk rock culture continues to fascinate me. The music punk has produced is frequently brilliant, but I have never been able to figure out whether the subculture is at its core just a silly, adolescent rejection of capitalist society and its values, or if there is something more intelligent and valuable at work, or whether the whole goddamned question is moot because punk's been co-opted by the mainstream culture anyway. This book, an oral history of three decades of punk in the Bay Area, gets t...more
This book is time travel for the punk scene (myself 1981-83). It transports you back to the clubs – The Elite Club, The Farm, On Broadway, Tool and Die (a fire trap of a single stairwell into an unventilated, smoke-filled basement), and Mabuhay Gardens. I will never forget my visit to the Vats and "Gimme Something Better" bought back the experience.
A cultural experience from an altered state of youth, "Gimme Something Better" brings up old memories (if you were there), the rawness of the time,...more
A cultural experience from an altered state of youth, "Gimme Something Better" brings up old memories (if you were there), the rawness of the time,...more
The only thing that kept me from enjoying this book more is the simple fact that it's so full of information. I didn't know much about punk before I read the book, so almost everything in the book--names, bands, clubs, songs, album titles--was new to me. It was an enormous information dump, and so it took me a while to get through it. That doesn't make this a bad book, of course; "Gimme Something Better" is a great book that just happens to be very dense with information. I wouldn't really recom...more
This was a really great book. The oral history format is perfect for the subject and gives the mic to the people that were adtually there, allowing them to contradict each other or themselves whether they know it or not. So many different histories/scenes involved with the SF/East Bay sensibilities all over it. It makes me sad for not being a part of it. There will never be things like Maximum Rock and Roll, 924 Gilman St. and Operation Ivy again that meant as much to kids back then.
It's also j...more
It's also j...more
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I've never been able to really defend myself well when my friends throw up a look of horror and disgust when I tell them I'm into punk. It's something felt much deeper than the mowhawks and more personal than simple lyrics and two-string chords can describe.
In reading the oral history of Bay Area Punks, from the obscure to the popular, I can really appreciate how the scene evolved, what it meant to many people and how it continues to change lives.
I can still remember listening to one of The Cl...more
In reading the oral history of Bay Area Punks, from the obscure to the popular, I can really appreciate how the scene evolved, what it meant to many people and how it continues to change lives.
I can still remember listening to one of The Cl...more
Well, I did like this book, but it skips entire sections of the Bay Area punk landscape and leaps to Green Day (?) after a brief Gilman St. recap, while barely mentioning other notable acts, venues, characters. I think this book scratches the surface but it's a good start with some fascinating moments, especially if one lived through part of it. However, IMO anyone tackling the 25+ years coverage of an entire music scene would need more pages. It's a much better (and inclusive) read than, say, A...more
I lost 2-4 hours of sleep each night finishing this, reading until my eyes blurred, which took three nights. I'm probably about as interested as possible in the subject matter, the rise of the punk movement in the Bay Area, for someone who knows next to nothing about it.
My brother is in the Who's Who section in the back, a fixture on the local punk scene for two decades now. I've always wondered if I would have ended up in the punk scene myself if I had grown up here (where I was born) as well....more
My brother is in the Who's Who section in the back, a fixture on the local punk scene for two decades now. I've always wondered if I would have ended up in the punk scene myself if I had grown up here (where I was born) as well....more
Really a great book! I grew up in the bay area and started playing in punk bands in the late 90s. Before reading this I knew the stories behind bands like AFI, Green Day, Fugazi, etc, but this book really sets the foundation for how it all began with the less well-known bands like Flipper, The Dils, and Christ on Parade. I started writing down page numbers of quotes I liked about halfway through, I wish I had started earlier. Here's a few with their respective "Who's Who" (found in the back of t...more
The 500 pages of this book flew by. It covers quite a length of time, about 25 years from the late 70s to the present. All of the text is from excerpts of interviews with participants in the various phases of the Bay Area scene.
In some cases editing makes people appear to comment on other people in a way that the interviewees probably didn't intend. Also a lack of contextualizing intros to the chapters makes the chronology unclear. For instance, two chapters on 924 Gilman, the second of which me...more
In some cases editing makes people appear to comment on other people in a way that the interviewees probably didn't intend. Also a lack of contextualizing intros to the chapters makes the chronology unclear. For instance, two chapters on 924 Gilman, the second of which me...more
I was expecting to really enjoy this book, seeing as this is exactly where I was at during the early 90s - going to 924 Gilman St. every weekend. Ever since then, I've held this kind of pride that said "i was there when this all went down", and I watched all of my favorite bands go from playing that tiny club to becoming MTV mult-millionaires.
But after reading this book, I realize that what it really was, was a bunch of misguided people (myself included) desperately looking for something to belo...more
But after reading this book, I realize that what it really was, was a bunch of misguided people (myself included) desperately looking for something to belo...more
Δεύτερο βιβλίο "προφορικής ιστορίας" για το punk που διαβάζω στο καπάκι, μετά το Please Kill Me. Και εδώ έχει γίνει εξαιρετική δουλειά, τόσο στην επιλογή των ανθρώπων που μιλάνε, όσο και στην επιλογή των θεμάτων. Η σκηνή της Καλιφόρνια καλύπτεται ολόκληρη, από τις πρώτες πρώτες μέρες της ως και το μεγάλο μπαμ που έφεραν οι Green Day. Ναι, πρήζει αρχίδια ώρες ώρες με το δράμα πίσω από τη μουσική, το κουτσομπολιό και τις λεκτικές ξιφομαχίες, αλλά υποθέτω πως κι αυτό είναι μέρος της όλης φάσης -- τ...more
A pretty fun and quick read on a punk and hardcore scene that rarely gets as much collective credit as NY, Boston, or LA. Like the Bay Area music scene in general, some of the most original and creative bands from the US are covered in these pages. Great stories about The Avengers, Crime, Dead Kennedys, Flipper, Neurosis, Green Day, Operation Ivy, AFI, and many others as well as the Mabuhay Gardens, Gilman Street Project, and Maximum Rock And Roll abound. Great stuff for folks who lived through...more
This book is clearly modeled on Legs McNeill's seminal "Please Kill Me," but really fails to live up to the model. As a Bay Area native I found it interesting to read about a scene that I have observed from the fringes for 15 years, but the authors don't make that scene accessible to non-locals the way McNeill does with the NY scene. I think that anyone who has been deeply involved in the Bay Area punk scene for the last 40 years will find this book a wonderful time capsule. In fact, it reads al...more
A great oral history (a la PLEASE KILL ME) of Bay Area punk that goes far beyond the usual over-the-hill musicians gassing about how cool they used to be. More than stories of the music, here are stories of a scene that capture a time, a place, and an atmosphere. In addition to the usual suspects (musicians, promoters, critics) they talked to fanzine publishers, roadies, and fans. Some of the subjects are best remembered for the fights they started, which may have nothing to do with music but su...more
Another great oral history in the tradition of We Got The Neutron Bomb and Please Kill Me, Gimme Something Better packs a serious punch. The Bay Area music scene from the 70’s to today gets serious coverage from those who were there. Bands like Dead Kennedys, Avengers, Nuns, Crime, etc. are covered and just as expected as Green Day, Op Ivy/Rancid, AFI, etc. The thrill is reading about Negative Trend, Flipper, Fang and all the rest. Especially considering this is an insiders’ view. I dug that And...more
Sep 14, 2010
Spiros
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone who's ever wondered how many Punks could dance on a pinhead
A few of the "P" words that could have been thrown into the title of this book with equal alliterative appositivity: Peurile, Pervasive, Petty, Parochial, and Paradoxical. Bay Area Punk represented a movement (or a non-movement) at its best and at its worst: Punk pervaded the larger culture of the Bay Area as it has in few, if any, other places; and Punk subjected itself to more doctrinaire backstabbing, niggling criticism, and sectarian baggage, exemplified by the "Punkier than Thou" ethos of M...more
Highly enjoyable for those of us who played our tiny part in the East Bay scene(s). Nice to see Klubstitute and the Homocore folks pop up near the end of the book (RIP Diet Popstitute), and it's always enjoyable to hear more contradictory stories of how great and awful Gilman could be. But there are inherent limitations to the oral history format. The narrative could be potentially confusing to outsiders, and the sprawling cast of characters was occasionally hard to keep track of. Nonetheless, f...more
I enjoyed the oral-history format of this book which dispenses with the self-appointed expert, but it's a chore to remember who is who. There's a "Who's Who" index in the back, but I eventually tired of flipping back and forth trying to remember who Buzzsaw Bill or Creetin K-os played with. This book is not for the casual fan. I found the history of Maximum RocknRoll magazine to be the most compelling part of the book.
There are good parts in the book, sure, but when they're interviewing Chrisser and he says lookout got rich cause they were the first punk label to sell CDs and it takes another hundred or so pages for Jeff Ott to bring up Green Day signing to a major label and becoming the rock stars that they are, that was my last straw. I also hated all the "it's not so bad" sentiments of Sammy killing his girlfriend. Fuck that.
An endlessly informative, hilarious, shocking, inspiring, heartbreaking oral history of one of our most virulent strains of American punk rock. Manages to capture the flashpoint essence of that time, and each subsequent aftershock that marked its continuing mutation.
The book is best read in tandem with an ongoing study of the performers discussed within, most of which will be out there on Youtube.
The book is best read in tandem with an ongoing study of the performers discussed within, most of which will be out there on Youtube.
Hits every major episode, and countless minor ones, in the history of punk as it played out in one of its most fertile environments, the SF Bay Area. Lots of great stories, many of them damned hilarious, all skillfully edited and assembled for a terrific read.
This is a fantastic book for any music fan because it focuses on the largely untold story of american punk's heartland the San Francisco Bay Area.
Liked the book as it introduced me to a side of punk that I don't know much about except what has become popular radio play.
The main character in this book is the Bay area and the easiest way for me to describe it is how it "grew up" punk.
An oral history of the punk rock scene in the Bay Area from the early eighties to late 90's. If you like Green Day and want to know what sort of scene they came from, this book is for you, told by the participants themselves.
Very solid bio on a very cool scene. Well written and researched
Woulda' been better if I'd been there.
This is and probably will remain the best book yet written about the Bay Area punk scene of the last thirty years (with apologies to the 924 Gilman book, which was necessarily narrower in scope). It's alo one of the better examples of the oral-history genre that I've come across. They talked to pretty much everyone who should have been consulted, and in the process told me a lot of things I didn't know, which, considering how much I've read on the subject in the last fifteen years, is saying qui...more
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Jack Boulware is an American author and journalist, and was founding editor of the satirical Nose magazine. He is author of Sex American Style and San Francisco Bizarro, and co-author of the recent oral history Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk From Dead Kennedys to Green Day.
He writes regularly for a variety of publications, an...more
More about Jack Boulware...
He writes regularly for a variety of publications, an...more
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Feb 15, 2010 07:55pm