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Review Date: 1/27/2022
Fans of Tolkien-style fantasy will enjoy this story that manages to avoid using the races of dwarves, elves, or hobbits, rather it insinuates something in between while calling them all 'humans'. Well-structured and beautifully illustrated by Joseph Zucker of the 70s Lord of the Rings movie - the drawings are plentiful and add as much to the story as the written words themselves. I would go as far as to say that the words and illustrations are so tightly coupled that the authors chose not to describe certain scenes as much as they could have because they knew the drawing would finish the job! For those who are getting tired of hyper-focus on sex and violence in Game of Thrones style fantasy, this should be a refreshingly clean bit of storytelling for both adults and children without being too Harry Potter style or overly wordy like Tolkien.
Review Date: 7/23/2022
The authors do a good job of making an argument and defending it through meticulous research and subject matter expertise. The book challenges the reader to reassess what we think we know about "authentic music" versus "sell outs". I found this book to be both validating and transformative about how I view the music industry and musicians.
Review Date: 12/8/2022
Perhaps it's my own fault for not reading reviews of this book before I picked it up and started reading it. This book is less of a book about punk than it is a very detailed review of various avant-garde counterculture movements in the 1900s. Marcus' style of writing was difficult for me to follow - he seems to jump back and forth between topics and examples too quickly to maintain a coherent delivery. I think I would have found the book more interesting if he developed his ideas more completely before moving to the next point, but maybe that was his intention? At any rate, readers looking for a book on punk or new wave may be interested in learning where bands like Cabaret Voltaire, the Communards, or the Durutti Column got their names, but the book content with respect to the scene in the 70s and 80s is pretty sparse by comparison. Readers looking for a history of counter-culture will find this a five star.
Review Date: 8/8/2024
While "Buffalo" Smith's editing skill is sometimes questionable, the material here is undeniably authentic - he personally interviewed all the biggest players on the scene and put the results into a book. Nothing here is lifted from generic media sources. A definitive volume containing all the details about who played with who, where, and when. Read it, and you'll have a pretty good grounding in the Allmans, Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels, Molly Hatchet, and more. Unfortunately, many of those interviewed allude to crazy stories that they "might tell some day", but usually don't do so here. So nothing particularly edgy, but instead the comments tend to be positive characterizations of the big names in Southern Rock - which is probably fitting for these Southern Gents.
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