Oktober 1st, 2015

Punk USA – The Rise and Fall of Lookout! Records, Kevin Prested

Posted in bücher by Dolf

Microcosm Publishing, 2752 N Willias Ave., Portland, OR 97227, USA, www.microcosmpublishing.com

PunkUsa

In the beginning the author says the original draft of the book was way bigger and he had to cut it in half, I wish he had cut that half in half again. Prested spoke to alot of people involved with Lookout Records and with many band members. Some of the storys they share are funny, others interesting – alot of them are irrelevant but sometimes entertaining to read. Unfortunally he did not speak to the founding people of Lookout Records, Larry Livermore and David Hayes – which is a bit strange considering the fact that it is a book about the label. If you read thru the book you can see the story of a small label, how it got bigger, got a big boost when Green Day got really big and understand that the label was only functioning the way it was because of the money Green Day sales generated. And still did they manage to drive the label against the wall and leave alot of unhappy people behind. How exactly that could happen is not fully explained but if you count 1 + 1 together with the information given you know it was mainly the inability of the kids running a business.

„…plus royalities that were due but never paid to Green Day, unpaid royalities to the remainder of their catalog, and with the profit from the rest of their +300 releases, it would appear that Lookout somehow squandered what may have been upwards of $ 50.000.000 between 1991 and the time of their bancrupcy filings.“ Now that is quite a performance. Anyway, if you are a fan of Lookout, after all they created or documented „The East Bay Punk sound,” with bands such as Crimpshrine, Operation Ivy, The Mr. T Experience, and many more., you should read this book, since it will be good entertainment, aside from the amount of nitty gritty detail surrounding each and every Lookout! release. Also people who run labels can read this book, in order to learn how it is not done. Some detail is missing while it is too much at the same time on other topics. It would also have been helpfull if the author told the story in chronical order rather than have it jumbled like it is – sometimes he drifts too far away from the actual story. There is also a bunch of photos and graphic to loosen up the 190 pages, paperback. 14,95 US $ (dolf)
Isbn 978-1621066125

[Trust # 173 Augsut 2015]

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