One Chord Wonders – Power and Meaning in Punk Rock, Dave Laing

PM Press, P.O. Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623, Usa, www.pmresss.org

This study of the beginning of UK punk rock was originally published 1985, what luck I did not get it back then. Worse enough I had to drag myself thru this when it was published earlier this year. Academic language and punk rock just dont mix – actually, academic language does not mix with anything – it only makes topics hard to understand and no fun to read. And it does not help when the language is not your motherlanguage either. There is a some interesting storys and facts hidden behind the scientific drivel, but it is honestly not worth going thru those 224 pages in 2015. Because of course in the last 30 years there have been published so many book about the subject that are way easier to understand and always more fun to read. As far as I remember I learned one thing – and maybe I knew that before and just forgot about it.

Anyway, I already spent way too much time with this paperback already and as you can expect, I can not recommend it. There is also a bunch of pictures. I hope this never gets translated into german, unless it is deacademicated (just checked, that word does not exist in german either… time it gets popular!). US $ 17,95 (dolf)
Isbn 978-1629630335

[Trust # 174 October 2015]