Great read!

A friend of mine and I recently got started on a book exchange. Well, I started raiding her book shelves really. In all fairness though, she did recommend this one. And I was blown away by it.

As it says, its the definitive punk history book. Written by the guy who coined the term punk! How much more authentic do you get than that. Its amazing for a few reasons. It starts documenting punk from the very beginning, from the velvets and MC5. Iggy was in there too. It is based mostly in the 70's (the last chapter is 80-92). Then from Velvets goes to New York Dolls, and its interesting how these two are actually related. From there of course comes The heartbreakers, and thus- the sex pistols. that's right, sex pistols were an effect of the heart breakers. They saw what punk was from them, then turned and twisted it into the image that it became. But at first it wasn't about image, as punk is about ideas not looks.
So its just great because you get to read about the tour with the heartbreakers, pistols and the clash in Europe. To touring with the ramones and small but infamous show in San Francisco- Get to hear about who fought who, who was the pansy in the band, who was the drama, who slept with who. You really get to have an idea of what the people were like, its like you were right there as CBGB's is being born!
Of course it goes through the generation. This particular book says that punk stopped with Reagan. I think it only evolved from there. The 80's were awesome for punk! Propable the best thing to come out of the 80's (besides yours truly).
Well, Im not going to tell the whole history, but it was really a great book. And the ending was almost the coolest part of the whole book. Im not going to give anything away by doing this, but Im going to show how awesome this book was by sharing the last couple paragraphs of it. Yup, this is how it ended.
This is from Jerry Nolan, who was Johnny thunders best friend/music side kick:
"Elvis was wearing a white jacket, black baggy peg-leg pants with a pleat– white inside with white stitching. He had two-tone shoes on, white on top, black on the sides, rock & roll shoes. I think he had on a silver lamé short sleeved shirt. And he wore a belt buckle, a shiny little belt, on the side, to be cool."
I was pretty excited. Everyone was carried away. I had never seen anyone put on a show like that. I was almost embarrassed. It was just shocking. I was even more interested in my sister. She was screaming and jumping around. I was amazed she was doing this.
At one moment, Elvis threw himself on his back, sort of doing the splits, with one leg pointed right at me. I could see his shoes were worn out. Maybe they were just his favorites and he didn't want to quit wearing them. But I also had a tinge of pity, thinking maybe he was poor. But I dug it. I thought he looked like a real street kid from Williamsburg.
That show, even at ten years ols, really changed my life. i was overwhelmed by Elvis. I was overwhelmed by the musicians. I could feel the playing.
But most of all, I remember two things from that show: my sister completely losing her cool, and the hole in Elvis's shoe."
I told her I would look for a book thats worthy of exchange, but man, this ones at the top.