Gimme Something Better – The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day – Jack Boulware & Silke Tudor

Penguin, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, Usa www.penguin.com

Almost 500 pages of oral history of the bay area punk scene? Yes! When I thought I will never read – or even enjoy – another oral history book about punk Boulware and Tudor deliver this great documentary of one of the more important scenes. They interviewed a little over 200 (!) people for this indeed, profound project, which chronicles over two decades of bay area punk. From the Mabuhay to Gilman Street, east bay pop-punk to Green Day, the creation of Maximumrocknroll, Epicenter, Blacklist – Tim Yohannan, Biafras bid for mayor and his accident at Gilman. The murder of Sammy’s girl friend, punk houses in the east bay, B.O.B., SF skins, the Farm, drugs, alcohol, fights, geekcore… there is so much information in this book, it is impossible to mention it all here.

As a matter of fact, the authors had so much material it could not even fit in this book, because of this, they set up www.gimmesomethingbetter.com where you can find many many more storys about the bay area. What makes this so interesting, compared to other boring oral history books, is that there has been something going on there, there was content (yes, also politics) in the scene, not only music and very varied individuals involved who share their wonderful, weird, intelligent, horrible and interesting views on all the ongoings.

The authors let everyone, good or bad, have their say, which allows one to explore the history from different ankles and – maybe – come to a private conclusion. So if you wanna learn about the rise and fall of Lookout Records, the rise of Green Day leading to one of the biggest bands in the world, people who bring dead dogs on stage, skinhead violence, gender topics…. I have to stop, it is just too much. It is a great read and higly recommended. And I dont think this is only the case because I know alot of the people interviewed personally since over two decades, it is a great book about a still interesting ongoing scene with a long history. Period. 18.- $ (dolf)

Isbn 978 0 14 311380 5

[Trust # 150 October 2011]