Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (1996/2006) by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. 454 pages.



Please Kill Me is Legs McNeil’s stab at the oral history of the punk genre. I recently read McNeil's oral history of the porn industry (no jokes, please) and liked it enough to check out this one. Like most oral histories and McNeil's other book, there is no context, just quote after quote detailing a history of punk. I say "history" as this book contains pretty much those whom Legs was able to interview. For those he didn't interview, McNeil takes quotes from magazine and newspaper articles to flesh things out. The result is a somewhat skewed history of punk, centered around New York, expanding abroad to England, and returning to the States once again.



Originally published in 1996, the book abruptly ends right around the time of Nirvana, failing to take into account post-Nirvana groups such as Green Day, Blink-182 and their Warped Tour ilk. It’s very New York-centric and doesn’t have much to say about the contributions of Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, although there is a bit of material on Detroit legends the MC5 and Iggy Pop. The book pretty much ends at 1980 and then sprints through the 1990s without much insight. As long as you know you’re getting a biased account, you're all good. The major CBGB-era players are front and center, and there are numerous fun accounts of the Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, the Ramones, Television and so forth. Less covered are groups such as Blondie and the Talking Heads, who were also part of the New York scene, but who are reduced to bit players or ignored altogether. Given the scope of the book -- ranging from the late 1960s to the early 1980s -- McNeil covers an admirable amount of territory, but the overall feel is superficial, a 450-page snapshot. If you want to learn more about any of these groups you’re going to have to search elsewhere.



Given the material and the characters involved, there are plenty of good stories here. Some of them you’ve heard, some of them you probably haven’t. (Did you know Andy Warhol was once shot by a crazed fan?) Some of it’s funny, some of it’s seedy. Less explored is the irony that punk’s fast tempos and short hair were push backs on the excesses of 1970s stadium rock, yet many of the punk bands fell prey to these same excesses. The New York Dolls broke up because two of the members wanted to fly back to New York to score heroin.



The Good: Ambitious and exhaustive account backed by a remarkable number of voices to tell the first half of punk’s history. Anyone you’ve ever heard of (and their sister, and manager, and drug dealer) is in here somewhere and there’s a great index that breaks it all down. I like long books and this one is reasonably long. McNeil makes a strong case for the origins of punk as being from New York, not London, and the book is highly in-depth at points. You certainly come away knowing that there were a shit-ton of drugs and sex going around in New York at the time. A definite focus on glam rock as influencing punk.

The Bad: As with all oral histories, light on musical analysis, which was one of the reasons this scene was so interesting. Very New York-centric, with very little info/voices from London except for the Sex Pistols brief tour of the U.S. The Clash? Barely a mention. There is almost nothing beyond that and the material from York in terms of U.S punk. If you’re looking for a book that covers D.C., the Midwest, and/or L.A., hardcore, of the evolution of punk beyond the demise of the Sex Pistols, it’s not here. It would be great to have a second volume that took it from where it left off and really delved into the punk influenced bands that followed in the wake of the initial few explosions.

For a sweeping overview of the origins of punk, Please Kill Me works just fine. As long as you know you’re getting a New York-centric perspective and only the beginning of a larger story, it does the job and does it well. For musical analysis, you’ll have to dig further, but this is a good place to start if you just want to get the original story straight.

Not a one-cent book, unfortunately, but you can still find it used for a decent price.

The Skills To Pay The Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys

The Skills To Pay The Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys (2005) by Alan Light



The Beastie Boys first album was the soundtrack to my 15th and 16th years of life. It was an incredible piece of work that galvanized everything I love about music into a wondrous amalgamation of sound, rhythm, fury, hormones, smart-assedness, and pretty much everything else a young man of that age is seeking to discover. The beats were jamming, the rhymes were intricate, hilarious, and super cool. And Led Zeppelin samples on top of that? Come on, man! Licensed to Ill was a work of teenage art, comparable to the early work of the Ramones, but with a hip hop twist.



It’s too bad that the Beastie’s sort of disown this period of their musical legacy. But the overwhelming sense that the group gives now is that Licensed to Ill was a put-on, a joke, a parody. That's not true at all, and they know it and so did everyone who loved that album. Revisionist history. But the group did mature, and there's nothing wrong with that. Never did the band grow as much between albums as it did for 1989’s Paul’s Boutique remains among my top five hip hop albums of all time.



If you don’t have this album and know it by heart, I can’t even begin to tell you. If you know, then you already know. Needless to say that if you consider yourself a rap music fan in any way, you need to know this album like the back of your hand. Check Your Head was a third masterpiece, showcasing the diversity of the various sounds the trio was able to create. And it all sounded smooth and easy.



Ill Communication was mostly more of the same. The falloff began here, but there were still enough cool tracks to make it a winner. After that, the Beasties never put out another worthwhile album. There were some good songs here and there, but overall the shit was wack.

Former Spin somebody or another Alan Light offers a brief oral history of the Beasties in The Skills To Pay The Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys. This 2005 book pretty much covers everything from the band’s early days to that kind of shitty album they put out in 2004. The oral history format makes for a quick read. (One Amazon reviewer called it “Beasties For Dummies, not an unfair criticism.) That said, Light tracks down quotes from all of the key players (Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, Chuck D, Run DMC, Money Mark and anyone else you can think of), including the Beasties themselves, and sprints through of the group’s career.

The Good: You can knock this one out in an afternoon or two. Light gets all the key players and it gives a broad overview of the band’s career. Also of interest is how success changed the group from cocky to arrogant, with Adam “MCA” Yauch apparently leading the way. If you’ve never heard the story before, this is probably all you need.

The Bad: With nothing but quotes, there’s little other than the basic plot -- the events that comprised the Beasties’ career. Yauch and the rest of the Beasties eventually denounced “Licensed to Ill” and got all Tibetan on our ass, but the book lends no insight into how that evolution came about.



Moreover, there is little insight into the music, how it evolved, or the group’s creative process. Instead you read, for the gazillionth time, about the skateboard ramp set up during the Check Your Head and that the studio was named G-Son. That was super cool in 1992. Now? Not so much.

Overall, if you don’t know the story, this book covers the basics. If you're music book geek like me, it's reasonably fun read that you can kick out in a sitting or two. All the key players are here, offering their perspective, and it’s fun when the occasional cat fight breaks. I like oral histories and this one is pretty much what you'd expect. If you're a fan of the Beasties, or want to know their basic story, this is as good as anyplace to start, as long as you don't expect to learn much about the music. It would be great to have a serious biography of these guys alongside rigorous analysis of their music. Given the group's impressive body of work, it deserves a more scholarly, in-depth treatment. This would require the participation of the band, which seems to be one reason why there is not a really good bio on the Beasties to date.

You can pick up a copy for a little under $6.00, shipping included. Wait a year, and I'm sure you can scoop it a lot cheaper.

Music City Babylon: Inside the World of Country Music

Music City Babylon: Inside the World of Country Music (1992) by Scott Faragher.



Buyer beware. I'm a music book geek, you may not be. This book is a "tell all" from a unique persepctive. Faragher was a Nashville-based booking agent for a number of big-time country music stars in the 1980s. Booking agents are contracted by the musicians to book concerts for them, set up tours, etc. The agent gets a 10% commission on anything they book. It's amazing what some of these groups got paid way back then. I'm talking $6000-$20,000 per night and this is back in the early 1980s. Crazy! Of course, a lot of these artists didn't save their money and went broke.

Okay, so here's a little review from James Stephenson, Soc. of the Cincinnati Lib., Washington, D.C. He's not a fan:

Faragher, a reluctant Nashville insider, here attempts to "expose" the country music racket. Far from being an enlightening glimpse behind the scenes, his book is nothing more than a tedious, mean-spirited grouse at an industry whose sins and scandals are (at least by Faragher's account) no worse than those of any other big business. Faragher engages in pointless name-calling and personal attacks on co-workers, associates, and the professional musicians in his circle. Much of his vehemence is leveled at obscure supporting figures whose names will have little meaning to even the most ardent fans. The amateurish writing only underscores the book's banality. Not recommended.

Ouch. Well for the $19.95 this book cost in 1992, Stephenson makes some good points. But for $4.00, this book has some merit. That's a qualified some, mind you.

The Good: Faragher tells is like it is. He offers facts, figures, and dates to back it up. You get some pretty good stories about George Jones, Ricky Skaggs (a big jerk, per Faragher), Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, Randy Travis (a big wuss, per Faragher) and so on. With characters like these, there are bound to be some good stories, and Faragher doesn't disappoint. Here's a sample:

"Of all the entertainers I have ever met, known, or dealth with, James Brown is the worst, with the singular exception of Ricky Skaggs. He truly belives that he is the father of rock and roll. No, 'father' is not strong enough. He calls himself the Godfather. He knows that he is greater by far, and certainly more universally acclaimed, than Elvis Presley, or anyone else for that matter. According to him, his is the only face that can be recognized worldwide, by anyone, anywhere on earth. 'Besides, Elvis never played Africa!'"



Brown later refuses to let Faragher take off his sport coat in a boiling hot backstage dressing room. Faragher tries to negotiate the particulars of a show and Brown won't say anything but "God will handle it." And so on and so forth. There's some great stuff on Jerry Lee Lewis, too, whom Faragher adores despite his legendary eccentricities. Faragher clearly thinks that most of these people are disloyal jerks and portrays almost all of them that way. The one's he likes, he seems to shrug off as just part of the business.

Some of the minor characters are a hoot, too. The best one is probably Sherwood Cryer, a minor legend who was the co-owner of Gilley's in Pasadena, Texas back in the day. The battles between Cryer and Mickey Gilley are insane. Unfortunately, I had to go outside the book to get some of the real goods on Cryer, but he is definitely a guy worth Googling.

Faragher offers a insider's perspective from an area of the music industry that you almost never read about. I had little understanding of what booking agents do, or how they conduct business. They work separate and independent from the musician's management, but generally work for a booking agency. Faragher was president and booker for In Concert, an agency that he helped found after his former boss died. There's some good inside baseball on how artists, once they hit big, generally fire the booking agents and get more prominent agents (Faragher's main competition is the William Morris Agency), or even start their own booking companies and hire an in-house agent, thus keeping a larger piece of the pie. Faragher paints almost all of the artists are vain, greedy bastards who will stab anyone in the back to get ahead. It's also surprising how whiny and childlike some of artists are behind the scenes.

The Bad: Faragher's not much of a writer or a storyteller, which brings things down considerably. The book is largely incoherent, just a random collection of chapters, each of them covering a particular artist. So, there's not much continuity. It jumps from subject to subject. That wouldn't be the end of the world, had Faragher not padded the book with chapters that detail things like a relatively uneventful trip to Jamaica and his take on why artists are such vile people. He also admits to being pretty much a snake himself, though. Again, Faragher seems to take this as all part of the business. Everyone's a snake, so he's one, too. There is a LOT of superfluous details that aren't very interesting, and the chapters on artists such as Lou Rawls go nowhere and offer almost no insight.

Overall, this is for the true geeks only, but that doesn't mean it's all bad. Because Faragher only represented a handful of artists, the book does not offer a comprehensive look at country music or the industry, just the small slice of which Faragher took part. But in that minutiae, there's some pretty good music book geek reading. Not the best ever, but a fun quick read that's hard to beat for the price.

Click here to buy it for one cent.

Blogs suck (here's mine)

I hate blogs. Let me make that clear up front. But the good ones are well worth it, so here goes. The purpose of this blog is not to write about my so-called life, but to write about books. Books and music are probably my two biggest passions. There are two kinds of books I will focus on, but I read a lot so, whatever catches my fancy is fair game. The first kind is one cent books. Yes, the kind you buy used from Amazon and pay $4.00 total, shipping included. Those books rule my world. But you can't always find the books you want for a penny. So, the other type of books I'll be writing about are music books. I've been reading about music and musicians for as long as I can remember. I can hardly resist them and I've read scads of them. But I'm always looking for more, so hit me up if you know some good ones. Now, the penultimate book is the one cent music book. It's rare, but it happens. So, hope someone gets something out of this. Should be fun!

PS -- I don’t sell my own books or recommend any sellers. I just review books. There are lots of other sites and sellers out there and I don’t endorse any of them. Look around. Get books from the library or garage sales or steal them for all I care!