All Another Tuneless Racket. Punk and New Wave In the Seventies Volume Four: The American Beat EastIt’s delivered in the author’s own idiosyncratic style. Which is to say Steve combines a laconic, dry humour with an exhaustive attention to detail. He’s combed media reportage at the time with his own writings for these analyses of regional scenes, but just because it’s well referenced doesn’t mean it’s an academic exercise. Unlike a few writers I won’t name, Steve has actually listened to the music.
Volume Four covers the New York, Detroit, Ohio, Boston and Midwest scenes and takes side trips into the Deep South and Upstate NY areas.
New York City takes 200 pages but if you’re looking for exhaustive coverage of the usual suspects like Ramones, Television, Talking Heads and Blondie, you’re fresh out of luck. Any significant NYC band with a record out in 1978 or prior was covered in Volume One. “ATR4” goes past CBGB and Max’s and digs deep into the other crevices, telling tales about Chris Stamey, dBs, Jane County, The Cramps, Marbles, Wille Alexander et al. Much of that scene (and the others) are viewed in the context of the role that media played in shaping and reporting on it.
Steve’s no subscriber to the linear theory of American Rock and Roll in which the Stooges and the MC5 begat the New York Dolls who birthed the Ramones, who became Johnny Appleseeds and spawned countless offspring without breaking in their own right. Any student of communication theory will know that he’s correct and even if he’s not, it’s his book.
Naturally, one of my first “ATR4” dives was into the Detroit chapter and it was satisfying to see the author reject one local scenester assessment of Sonic’s Rendezvous Band being what the bitchy UK music mags would have called “Rockist” and Destroy All Monsters getting their dues. It was equally satisfying to dig into the detail about lesser lights like Cinecyde (who lay claim to the area’s first punk record), The Ramjets, The Sillies and The Mutants.
The assessments of various scenes generally have ample commentary and enough detail to become compulsive reading. Steve’s eye for detail does hand-in-hand with his sense of curiosity, so a dive into the Boston scene becomes more than just some recycled tripe about The Real Kids and Jonathan Richman. You may not need to know the names of 50 bands of note who played The Rat, but it won’t be you any harm at the next pub trivia night either.
The good news is that the information nuggets the entire “ATR” series imparts are almost always backed up by aural evidence (primarily, whatever recordings exist.) The only big fault I can find is the lack of an alphabetical index at the back to help locate various bands without trying too hard (although it’s easy enough to look back at the relevant chapter to scan for a bolded name.)
