Miss Edith likes her Peggy Lee, don't get me wrong, but there's times that call for something a little stronger, and when those times come, Miss Edith turns to her trusty pals from CBGB's. She streaks her hair blonde in her mind and plays "Atomic" (That's Blondie, for you fools who don't know) really fucking loudly. Oh, yes.
My close friends, and even some casual associates, know this well. Which is why I was surprised -- and then not surprised at all, really -- when a bookseller friend of mine, Kate H., appeared at my house the other day with a book for me. "We got this in," she said, "and I whipped out my wallet. Here!" Then she stood, waiting, waiting to see the expression on my face when I unwrapped the book (which she had, in excellent style, wrapped in old newsprint).
When I saw The Cultural Dictionary of Punk (recently published by Continuum, the folks who did those completely awesome 33 1/3 books), I think I smiled so big and so hard my cheeks hurt. Kate is a doll. I immediately began flipping through it and knew right away that this was gonna be one FUN book to read.
Miss Edith read it from cover to cover, though not in one sitting. (Life doesn't allow me that luxury anymore; I have, believe it or not, Things To Do.) Every chance I had, I was sitting down with that book: with my morning coffee; with a drink at the end of the day. I had my quibbles with it -- this is a highly subjective little book -- but in general I had to admire Rombes' work, which is passionate and filled with interesting details I didn't know.
I have two real issues with the book, one of which is that several entries are really these personal discourses on some obviously serious problems that have arisen in Rombes' life; I'm not trying at all to make light of them, but the texts relating to them did read sort of weirdly in relation to entries on the glories of the Ramones first three albums. I often thought that Rombes should have just written The Cultural Dictionary of Punk and then done a shorter, tighter memoir discussing what happened to his sister... ooo! Have I said too much?
My second issue (and this is, I realize, truly wishful thinking) is that the book does not come with a CD (or a list of links to recordings online) of many of the songs Rombes discusses. Over and over again he has long discussions of songs that he describes as, you know, bloodcurdlingly perfect examples of this that or the other, and Miss Edith said, "OH MAN I GOTTA HEAR THAT NOW!" and ran to the computer, only to discover that there was pretty much no way she was gonna hear those songs; they're not available on iTunes, and frankly, with stuff like this, it'd be easy to spend waaay too much time and money hunting down obscure 45s. I ardently wish that Rombes had found a way to make a companion CD (or, again, online, streaming -- not even necessarily downloadable) archive of these songs so that readers of the book could have understood more fully the glories of the music he was talking about.
It's not that every song should be included in this compilation; I mean, anyone can find the first Ramones album, or Marquee Moon (that's Television, people: Television). But there must have been at least a dozen really out there songs by, you know, punk bands from Cleveland that existed for about three minutes, that Rombes talks about so tantalizingly that I basically wanted to shoot myself when I wasn't able to listen to them RIGHT THEN.
Well, listen: don't let my griping deter you. If you've got any interest whatsoever in punk rock, punk culture, punk whatever, then this book deserves a half inch of space on your shelf. By all fucking means.
http://culturaldictionaryofpunk.blogspot.com/
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2 comments:
Hi Edith,
First off, thank you for your kind words about the book. I think you perfectly capture the its strange, hopefully unexpected dimensions. In terms of the accompanying CD, believe me I wanted to do this too. In fact, I had even suggested to the publisher a series of 45s (even those flimsy kinds that used to be included in some old copies of Mad Magazine). But the publisher balked at this, because of the complications and expense of securing rights.
I've been toying with the idea of including--on the blog--links to as many of the obscure songs as I can find, keyed to pages in the book. What do you think about this?
Finally, as to the sister question. On second thought, I don't think this is something I can really address here, except to say that: you're right.
Anyway, very glad you enjoyed the book, and thanks for your good and perceptive comments and critique.
Nicholas Rombes
How cool! The author read your blog AND commented! Kudos, Edie!
Gotta admit though-the Ramones just don't do it for me. Never did. I feel about Joey Ramone the way you do about Bono . . .and, a factoid for you . . .U2 is my favorite band-even if Bono is a bit of a pompous ponce.
Apropos of nothing, I was very excited to see a new post. (Yes, I do check every day!) I understand that Things To Do get in the way of blogging, but I miss your wonderfully skewed view of the world . . .
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