Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

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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.” The words and drawings of Mary Rose present a gritty, powerful, no-holds-barred true experience of a teen girl so desperate to be loved, so eager to fit in that she’ll go to extremes that could cost her her life. Learn More… I absolutely inhaled this. Legs' view is that punk was a strictly American phenomenon with its roots in The Doors, The Velvet Underground, The MC5, & The Stooges, and that the British got it completely wrong and basically killed the movement. And he presents that argument well. 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. 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.

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

What pissed me off even more was that they didn’t mentioned any punk girls that weren’t just groupies or girlfriends aside from Patti Smith and Debbie Harris. They literally only name dropped the Runaways ONCE and didn’t even say anything about them or the members even tho they were 100 x more punk than the rest of the bunch. 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." A contemporary classic, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk is the definitive oral history of the most nihilistic of all pop movements. Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, the Ramones, and scores of other punk figures lend their voices to this decisive account of that explosive era. It is the number one best-selling Punk book of all time. It has been published in 12 languages and helped launch the oral history trend in music books. The 20th anniversary edition features new photos and an afterword by the authors. Buy the Book – Various Editions E-book Whew boy is the title of this one misleading as hell. The Uncensored Oral History of Punk? More like the Uncensored Oral History of this really niche section of punk that happened in New York oh! and a little bit of Detroit. 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.Arturo Vega: I always thought the ONLY way to really conquer evil is to make love to it. My favourite dream is always the one where I face the devil. I'm in the nude and the devil appears, and he is a beautiful blue. He looks like a mannequin, he looks like a robot. He doesn't have any clothes on, of course, and he's blue and shiny. I keep hearing voices that say, "It's him! It's him!" And I go, "Okay."

Please kill me : the uncensored oral history of punk Please kill me : the uncensored oral history of punk

Little did I realize that the punk movement started as early as 1968 with the Velvet Underground and amphetamine usage. Thus begins Please Kill Me, a compilation of interviews with some of the most influential talent in the industry and on the streets through the early 90s. Photos throughout 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. 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?

The Sex Pistols were afraid to meet the Ramones after their show in England because they thought they would beat them up. Lou Reed is not, as you will see constant reference to, a scat-munching asshole. No, Lou Reed is a scat-munching douche. 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. Musicians are assholes, or so goes the refrain from the label A&R guy that signed a lot of these bands.

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

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. Debbie Harry thought the record companies gave them lots of drugs, not because they liked them, but to keep them compliant.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 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. Jim Morrison was often drunk and frequently terrible live, and wrote really bad high school-grade poetry. 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.

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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. urn:oclc:5171972 Republisher_date 20140403111800 Republisher_operator [email protected];[email protected];[email protected] Scandate 20140219015812 Scanner scribe2.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition) I read most of this one night while working the graveyard shift at a very institutional group home in the real methy part of SE Portland. I was the only person awake and not severely mentally-ill in the whole building, except for the parole guys, who I was pretty sure were faking it, or at least greatly exaggerating. There were these big sliding glass doors where of course the methhead psychos lurking in the dark could watch me mopping, all lit up, but I couldn't see out, and most nights I'd be really on edge and ready to run for the parole guys' room if any of the scary noises I heard outside turned out to be some twisted someone smashing through the glass and grabbing my spleen as an ingredient to use in his basement meth lab. Grove/Atlantic Books has released the e-book edition of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. 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):McNeil is also co-author of The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry. As Publishers 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." 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. 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.” But at the same time, I don't want anyone to shy away from this book just because they're worried they won't recognize all of the famous names. In fact, it would almost be more fun to go into this knowing nothing about the punk movement in America, because the book is really that masterful - even if I started out not knowing who, say, Danny Fields was, the characters all drift in and out of the narrative that the editors weave, and everyone is so memorable it's not too hard to keep the huge cast of characters straight in your head. The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, with Jennifer Osborne and Peter Pavia ( Regan Books, 2006).