Punk Poet
I keep falling in love with your
nihilism. Go ahead and lick
the scars left after the cuts. I’m
attracted to the scent of your
apathy. I just ripped my shirt for
the fuck of it. You tattoo anarchy
on my palm with permanent ink.
To know you’re flesh I watch for
you to bleed when pierced. So
you want to dominate my so what.
1977 is here! It’s my new book, a collage of poems and charts and maps that re-creates the feeling I had when I first heard punk music.
You can be first to have a copy by heading over the Ravenna Press and buy online here. Or …
Those of you who can make it to the release party 4/21 may want to wait … the first 77 get a bonus cassette and poster that evening when you buy a copy from the author. #merchandising
Thanks for supporting small presses and independent bookstores!
I reviewed Never Mind The Bullocks Here’s The Sex Pistols (released by Virgin on Oct. 28, 1977) for The Chimes, the student newspaper at SUNY Morrisville, Feb. 13, 1978, edition.
Chart shows the gender make-up of punk bands that I listened to c. 1977. You could count the women musicians on one hand — Moe Tucker, Patti Smith, Deborah Harry, Tina Weymouth. Later I heard the Slits (1979) and the Go-Gos (early 1980s ). In the 1990s my daughter showed me the light with Sleater-Kinney, The Gossip, Bratmobile, Bikini Kill. Punk got better over the years!
Three reasons why, released 40 years ago (Nov. 4, 1977), the Ramones’ third LP “Rocket To Russia” still matters:
Four reasons why a 40-year-old* LP still matters to me:
*Released from Sire on Sept. 16, 1977
Elvis Costello releases My Aim Is True on July 22, 1977. E L V I S I S K I N G E L V I S I S K I N G is repeated in reversed single letters in the black squares of the checkerboard pattern. 25 days later the King, Elvis Presley, dies on Aug. 16. It is a symbolic death — how bloated rock and roll has become — and ironic — just days after a new King is declared. That fall “Watching the Detectives” goes into high rotation in my dorm room at Mohawk Hall.
Ramones released their first LP on April 23, 1976 — six days after I turned 18 and could drink legally in NY then. My graduation money that June went for an amp, receiver, turntable and Advent loudspeakers (that I still have!). My summer job was stock boy at the local department store before heading to junior college. My first Ramones LP was their third, Rocket to Russia, at the end of 1977. My vinyl Ramones Ramones is from early 1978.
JB 