What happens when the sons of a Tuskegee Airman, a bait and tackle shop owner, and an aspiring spy novelist meet the garage band who lives next door to rock legend Joe Walsh, in the shadow of the record industry's Payola scandal and the live music industry's pivot towards bar bands doing covers? It sounds like the setup of a Thomas Pynchon fever dream, but is in fact the catalyst for the indie music scene as we would come to know it from the 1980s through present day. 

"It shouldn't have worked. But it did."

Until it didn't...

I have loved Jim Ruland since the night I met him at Todd Taylor's house several years ago after a Razorcake/Gorsky Press podcast recording I did with Myriam Gurba and John Ross Bowie. So yes, I was going into reading his new book "Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records" (432 pages, Hatchette Books) with some bias. I also went into it with a preconceived notion as to what it would cover and in what detail, as so much of the Black Flag story has been told before in the published journals of vocalist Henry Rollins, and the punk rock and hardcore scenes of the early 1980s have already been so well documented - I don't know many punks who haven't watched the Youth Brigade/Social Distortion tour drama unfold in the documentary "Another State of Mind," or hasn't read all there is to know about the New York CBGB or Washington D.C. scenes in any one of a number of books covering those. But like a family trying to enjoy a day at Polliwog Park and instead witnessing Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena wrestle in front of a drunk and screaming Keith Morris, I stumbled onto more than I had expected.

​The author behind the co-written autobiographies of Morris (My Damage) and Do What You Want by Los Angeles punk institution Bad Religion (as well as an upcoming memoir by Evan Dando of The Lemonheads) has gone way beyond just filling in the blanks of Black Flag and SST Records founder Greg Ginn's role (without his participation in the book, even!). Ruland has given America its own England's Dreaming, chronicling the birth of indie music in the way Jon Savage chronicled the birth of UK punk. He spray paints the walls with a complete portrait of not only "ground zero for the early LA punk scene," but how a DIY touring circuit built by Chuck Dukowski and sympathizers across the country, college radio and small record shops, and late night hours MTV programming formed the culture of what came to be known as "alternative music." Not the subculture, but the blueprint for indie music as we are still experiencing it today.

Ruland draws from decades of interviews published in zines only seen by a fraction of today's current music listeners, conducting original research and interviews, and linking together factoids, anecdotes, and material written from such fellow historians as Michael Azerrad, Jimmy Alvarado, and Stacy Russo (two of whom I may have spent a minute or hour or two alongside at a zine fest - here's a clue, it ain't Michael).  This unearths some previously obscured truths. For instance, many of us watched Penelope Spheeris' "The Decline of Western Civilization" on VHS tapes years and years ago, but things I discovered from this book included that Morris had pitched singing for Black Flag on camera after he was already out of the band and after Reyes was already their new vocalist. Ginn and company declined, but got in the movie anyway. Also, that the documentary was more of an ad for Slash Records bands (I hadn't known Speeris was married to then new owner of the label) and, as Ruland tells it, a precursor for reality television rather than an infallible document of the era. Even the genesis of "slam dancing" is revealed to be partially a fabrication by Los Angeles Times writer Patrick Goldstein, which "caught on and gained cultural currency outside of the scene," Ruland writes, "much to the irritation of punk rockers in L.A." 

That the first drummer of Sonic Youth is the same guy who played one of the joyriding valets in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is a fun piece of trivia some of us may or may now know, but how many of us knew Ginn turned into a pot-smoking techno-loving Deadhead, or that "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening contributed album art for Henry Kasier, or that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's daughter was an SST intern, or that director of terrible film "Arlington Road" Mark Pellington was the MTV employee who helped get Bad Brains in rotation on "120 Minutes"? (Hey, I'm allowed to make fun of that Jeff Bridges/Tim Robbins mess I saw at midnight in 1999, because I am such a devotee of Pellington's other work like the most poignant music video of all time, The Connells' "'74, '75" --- I'm your sorry ever after, Mark!)

Ruland's book ends with a call to action, advocating for Ginn to release long dormant works back to their artists so that they may preserve the legacy of the music. It's idealistic, it may be a lost cause, but how appropriate is that, all punk considered?

Ender's Game (Ender's Saga #1) by Orson Scott Card
 

1. Intrigue 
   1. Take a young boy, have him be a prodigy, the one everyone has been looking for, and you’ve got the gist of Ender’s Game. EXCEPT the end makes it a glorious version of whatever the above sentence is. Ender’s Game is a wonderful book for any young person interested in the complexity of war. It’s message is really one of the pacifist, but the way the book gets there is what makes this book exceptional. 
2. Writing style
   1. This book is an exemplar of writing for young people that doesn’t get bogged down in the overuse of adjectives and adverbs. It uses enough physical detail for young people that it doesn’t bore them, but also teaches an appropriate way to paint with words. 
   2. Juicy quote: 
      1. “Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
3. Flow of Storytelling
   1. If I hadn’t read this for the first time as an adult, this would have probably been one of my favorite books. For me the story got a bit bogged down by the adolescent aggression and prototypical youth troubles that exist in young people literature. However I don’t want to count that against this book. If you love protege vs. the masses then this book won’t be an issue for you. 
4. Re-readability 
   1. It’s such a simple, touching story, it’s difficult to even come up with a reason why someone wouldn’t want to reread this book. The ending of this book transforms the narrative on the reread. Moments of triumph suddenly are moments of tragedy, and it makes the ending all the stronger. 
5. TESS
   1. The twist at the end is so heartfelt and turns this book from a war protege’s expose to a tale of deep sadness and remorse. It’s a beautiful ending and it really makes this story glow. 

Final Rating: ★★★★

M is the 13th letter of the alphabet 
Lucky me 

And I wish you could see the mountains around me on this long road
But I know you will never ride on that drive with me
Explore the ghost towns and look for abandoned mines 
I wonder if these were the ones they searched for salt

You’d know better than me
And I’d play whatever music you wanted to hear on the AUX
But you’re not here
And I already turned the stereo off ​

Margie showed me a photo of herself at my age. The creamsicle walls of her home office bounced the midday spring sunshine into prisms, too many windows in one space. We had been talking about the possibility of me taking a vacation after a year of work as her assistant with no time off. She explained that vacation was earned while she adjusted the neckline of her navy-blue sweater, her favorite color. “Nurse staffing agencies don’t have the luxury of taking a week off, ya know?” I looked out the glass doors and watched her dogs play in the yellow green of the grass in her large, fenced backyard, the spring in Norristown, Pennsylvania was especially dry that year.
 
While I worried a scab on my knee, and watched the dogs romp, and wondered about a future away from the world of the home office where the phones always rang, Margie had fished a photo out of the sanded wood drawer from her desk. Margie did not keep many memories; the photos were few.
 
“You need to see this. When I was your age.”  
 
The gloss of the photo created a glare, and she shimmered the image back and forth until the sun stopped its pestering. The mirage of Margie went in and out of focus, the extension of herself traveled through time: the Margie in her home office and the Margie thirty-five years earlier at twenty-three. Somewhere in between the thread of then and now, was a curious life, once wild, and now the comfort of a deep couch cushion.  
 
She was long and tanned, in cut-offs and a button down haphazardly buttoned, the wind pulled at her clothes while she stood in front of a black motorcycle against the backdrop of the Bonneville salt flats in Utah. The white behind her looked like snow. Her shoulder length blonde hair was tangled by the wind and whipped in front of her face, brightly smiling.  
 
“My boyfriend Dave, my God was he handsome, we drove across the country from Buffalo to Utah on his bike. He was crazy about me. You should have seen him.” She motioned the photo to me while she spoke, like the emphasis of Dave’s handsomeness could be shaken out from behind the picture that he took on their road trip. I nodded. Twenty-three-year-old Margie’s smile flashed back and forth with the gesture.  
 
“You don’t know what it’s like to be beautiful one day and then wake up and see a stranger the next.”
 
I threaded my fingers through my curly hair to tame it into place, bundled at the top of my head in a lopsided knot, while she spoke to me but addressed the person in the photo. “I think I’m hungry,” I told her bent head.
 
***
 
I went into her kitchen and cooked Dinty Moore beef stew in the microwave. When the ding of the finished food was up, I grabbed the stew with paper towels and watched the steam curl upward into my face. I poured a layer of salt straight from the blue cannister across the bubbling beef stew, a food that I hated but could afford in multiples and not overdraft my bank account. Over salting the stew was the only thing that made it bearable to eat, the bitter crystals pulled the moisture of the steam into their tiny bodies. I hated the tinned food, but I always did love salt. I sank a spoon into the quicksand.
 
***
 
Back in the office, Margie still held the photo and looked at herself tenderly. With her eyes on the photo she said, “make sure you don’t waste being young.”

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

1. Intrigue
   1. With three unrelated - as far as you know - tales, Gene Luen Yang tells the story of Jin Wang, whose sole desire is to fit in. The only Chinese American student at his school, Wang feels as though he does not fit in, and this creates an enormous problem. 
   2. Even if you’re not looking for a story about how we learn to accept who we are, or want to build empathy, or read a very touching story, you should read this anyway. Yang hooks you in immediately with mythical and literary fiction. This graphic novel has such an amazing twist in it, it should be considered one of the great American classics. 
2. Writing Style
   1. The crux of this story relies on Yang’s ability to weave these three stories together. He does so, and in a way that makes the book an absolute revelation. The drawings convey as much of the story as the writing does. It’s economical in line, and word. 
   2. Juicy quote: 
      1. “It's easy to become anything you wish . . . so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul.”
3. Flow of Storytelling
   1. At first you may, as I was, a bit confused as to why and when the different tales left off and started back up. But it soon becomes clear, and you may realize that this is really the only way to tell this story. 
4. Re-readability 
   1. I have reread this several times. American Born Chinese is an incredible empathy builder, and the twist at the end makes this book worth rereading to see how it all laces together. 
5. TESS
   1. Though the graphic novel might be about a Chinese American boy learning how to fit in, this is a universal message about accepting who you are. I encourage everyone to read this novel to both help themselves and also to build empathy for what others, especially immigrants and people of the global majority might be feeling, even right now. 

Final Rating: ★★★★★

What are your upcoming projects?

I’m writing a book about what it was like to write for an online version of a newspaper right when the internet became a thing. It takes place over the course of four days, and it’s more about what it was like to be alive at that time. It fits into the food book, which talks about working for that place. It has the same characters as my other books, which are all autobiographical. 

I also have an audiobook cassette label (Hello America Stereo Cassette), and we have a record coming out every month. I release my own tapes of writing on it as well. The idea is to build a community of people who do audio literary stuff. My first autobiographical fiction stuff was done as audio files, and it kinda sucked because there wasn’t anyone I really liked who was doing the same thing as me, and it was frustrating. So I wanted to find other people doing what I was doing, and we can be friends and start a little community. That was another thing that came out of the pandemic. During the really bad parts of isolation I thought, “I really need to have new friends and connect with people.”

Anything else you want readers to know? 

My novels and cassettes and vinyl are part of one universe. It’s all part of the same greater project. I have my own idea of the order to read them in, but you don’t have to read them sequentially like Harry Potter or something. People can read them and start to notice characters that show up and continuous storylines. That’s my life’s project that I plan to do until I’m dead.  ​

Manga Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing (Manga Shakespeare) by Richard Appignanesi (Adapter), William Shakespeare, Emma Vieceli
 

1. Intrigue 
   1. It’s Shakespeare. It’s a love story. It’s a comedy. David Tennant starred in this play and it’s incredible. Go see if it’s still on YouTube.
   2. It’s also Mango, and it’s a fresh way to see an old story portrayed. Watching enemies Beatrice and Benedick inch towards lovers is as powerful as ever. 
2. Writing Style
   1. It is very difficult to review Shakespeare. I will say that this Manga adaptation is very faithful to the vision of the stage directions. 
3. Flow of Storytelling
   1. You don’t need me to tell you that this is one of the great enemies to lovers stories out there. What you do need from me, maybe, is that this is a great alternative way for students to work with this text. Teachers, parents, guardians, people who love children around them, take note!
4. Re-readability
   1. Yeah of course this is re-readable. However, I would say that this is simply because I love this story, and it’s an exceptionally easy read in Manga form. 
5. TESS
   1. At the end of the day, it’s difficult to put this on the 5 star rating. Why, it functions for me as tool more than a read for fun type of story. Much Ado About Nothing is a 5 star story, Manga is a wonderful format, but this, for me, was all about finding alternatives for students. This way I could get something for different types of readers. So the utilitarian nature of my own exploration is what is putting this at a 4, but I highly, highly recommend it. 

​Final Rating: ★★★★