Rock ‘n’ roll books have their own special set of challenges, the most important being: try not to reduce the wily, ridiculous, vibrant music of rejects and losers into a dry, studied word paste. But on the other hand, don’t try to mimic its high-energy squall with language either. Best not to engage with the music on that level at all; instead, point the tape recorder or pen in the direction of its makers and artists (but not its drummers … just kidding!), and let them tell stories about “what it was like.” Granted, Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock in Postsuburban California is a sociology book, published by a university press, and the subjects that lend themselves best to study within this framework are the followers, the scenesters, the kids at the shows, the fanzine scribes, and the promoters, who sometimes made stupid rules and liked to squabble about what punk was and wasn’t. When the attention turns, however briefly and sporadically, toward the musicians themselves, a different punk history emerges — one that’s more eccentric and contradictory and endlessly weird, and one that starts to answer the question of why people started these bands anyway. What “made” the Screamers happen? In the face of universal apathy or scorn, when there was no place to play and when no one cared, what made them make the unusual sounds that so enthralled some people and so baffled others?
more from Grace Krilanovich at the LA Review of Books here.