Christin R. (raksha38) reviewed Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day on + 203 more book reviews
So, so good! The structure of this book is that of a round table-type discussion of the history of punk in a more or less chronological fashion with each chapter focusing on one sort of subject (a particular band, or squat, or club, or zine, or whatever). The authors interviewed tons of people and theyll take a couple sentences or paragraph from various interviews that pertain to whatever subject that chapter is covering, so the overall effect is that youve got a ton of people in one room reminiscing about all these crazy, amazing things that happened. The chapter on Green Day was surprisingly positive, which made me happy because theyre one of my favorite bands of all time. And while there were various debates about what/who is punk or who sold out or whatever, which I found unspeakably tedious and pointless even back when I was deeply invested in the punk scene, thankfully there are far, far more interesting discussions that take up the majority of the pages. This was fun! I'm so overwhelmed with nostalgia now!
