Here are 54 books that Revenge of the She-Punks fans have personally recommended if you like
Revenge of the She-Punks.
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In 2011, when my all-girl garage band began gigging around Chicago, I couldnât tell you how many times I heard people call us âriot grrrl.â We werenât riot grrrls; we were far too late for the movement. But for so many people, riot grrrl was the only reference point they had for scary, brash female musicians. The truth is, women were involved in the movementâs origins in every part of the world. I believe we must understand that riot grrrls werenât the first women of punk.My book Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 details the stories of lesser-known but highly influential women who helped create punk and its adjacent genres.
When I was 15, Liz Phairâs album Exile in Guyville completely turned me on to indie rock. Until then, everything I heard was baked for the radio. Lizâs dry, quivering voice, slipping in and out of key, singing candidly about sex and the unspeakable aspects of relationships, challenged the boys club and spoke to me in a way that Courtney Love and Shirley Manson hadnât. I think it was her ability to tell a story, or maybe it was that nothing seemed âover-produced.â Either way, many years later, this book gave me important insights on the way Chicago indie-rock functioned in the â90s and how much bullshit Liz Phair had to put up with just for being herself.
Although Exile in Guyville was celebrated as one of the year's top records by Spin and the New York Times, it was also, to some, an abomination: a mockery of the Rolling Stones' most revered record and a rare glimpse into the psyche of a shrewd, independent, strong young woman. For these crimes, Liz Phair was run out of her hometown of Chicago, enduring a flame war perpetrated by writers who accused her of being boring, inauthentic, and even a poor musician.
With Exile in Guyville, Phair spoke for all the girls who loved the world of indie rock butâŚ
In 2011, when my all-girl garage band began gigging around Chicago, I couldnât tell you how many times I heard people call us âriot grrrl.â We werenât riot grrrls; we were far too late for the movement. But for so many people, riot grrrl was the only reference point they had for scary, brash female musicians. The truth is, women were involved in the movementâs origins in every part of the world. I believe we must understand that riot grrrls werenât the first women of punk.My book Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 details the stories of lesser-known but highly influential women who helped create punk and its adjacent genres.
Iâve read this book twice. Both times, I couldnât put it down. Alice Bag can tell a story, and my neurodivergent ass loves books parsed into bite-sized sections. Aliceâs stories begin with her childhood and end with her becoming a teacher.
I look up to Alice and relate to her a lot. We both grew up in difficult family situations; we were both ambitious teens who were able to befriend just about anybody; and then we both learned to express our creativity and exercise our demons through punk. Growing up a bit and reigning in our talents, we both became public school teachers. Not to mention, we both love to write our memoirs. Itâs cool to see her grow and reflect on her experiences, and a perfect read for anyone wanting new stories about all the characters in the early LA punk sphere.
The proximity of the East L.A. barrio to Hollywood is as close as a short drive on the 101 freeway, but the cultural divide is enormous. Born to Mexican-born and American-naturalized parents, Alicia Armendariz migrated a few miles west to participate in the free-range birth of the 1970s punk movement. Alicia adopted the punk name Alice Bag, and became lead singer for The Bags, early punk visionaries who starred in Penelope Spheeris' documentary The Decline of Western Civilization.
Here is a life of many crossed boundaries, from East L.A.'s musica ranchera to Hollywood's punk rock; from a violent male-dominated familyâŚ
In 2011, when my all-girl garage band began gigging around Chicago, I couldnât tell you how many times I heard people call us âriot grrrl.â We werenât riot grrrls; we were far too late for the movement. But for so many people, riot grrrl was the only reference point they had for scary, brash female musicians. The truth is, women were involved in the movementâs origins in every part of the world. I believe we must understand that riot grrrls werenât the first women of punk.My book Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 details the stories of lesser-known but highly influential women who helped create punk and its adjacent genres.
In her life and in her writing, Lydia Lunch is able to alchemize the agony of existence into euphoria more effectively than any artist that I can think of. I could have put any of her titles (Paradoxia, Will Work for Drugs, The Gun is Loaded, etc.) on this list. Her narratives â all true stories from her past â hit like a ton of bricks and leave your own blood on the page. Lydia views the world through carnage visors and takes no prisoners on her journey, weaponizing the abuse she experienced in childhood against authority as an adult. The seamy underbelly of her world is black and white with thunder strokes of red. While reading this collection of personal essays and interviews, you can viscerally hear her spooky, cigarette-burned voice as if she is whispering the prose directly into your ear from behind.
"So Real It Hurts is the perfect title for this collection. It's a mission statement. A few bleeding slices straight from the butcher shop. A sampler from an enormous archive of work that will, no doubt, be pored over by grad students, book lovers, film historians, music nerds and straight-up perverts a hundred years from now." âAnthony Bourdain, from the Introduction
Through personal essays and interviews, punk musician and cultural icon Lydia Lunch claws and rakes at the reader's conscience in this powerful, uninhibited feminist collection. Oscillating between provocative celebrations of her own defiant nature and nearly-tender ruminations on theâŚ
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorâand only womanâon a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
In 2011, when my all-girl garage band began gigging around Chicago, I couldnât tell you how many times I heard people call us âriot grrrl.â We werenât riot grrrls; we were far too late for the movement. But for so many people, riot grrrl was the only reference point they had for scary, brash female musicians. The truth is, women were involved in the movementâs origins in every part of the world. I believe we must understand that riot grrrls werenât the first women of punk.My book Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 details the stories of lesser-known but highly influential women who helped create punk and its adjacent genres.
Iâm a sucker for memoirs. And English teachers. Nancy is both. She teaches language arts at a public school in Massachusetts. But most importantly, she can tell a story. The book is a series of memories from the Philly and Boston hardcore scenes in the early â80s. Itâs hard to put down, and itâs a really necessary account that tells of all the ways women were present and participating in what has always been referred to as a movement of exclusive, testosterone-induced navel-gazing.
From disenchanted Catholic schoolgirl and glam maniac to instigator on the 1980s hardcore punk scene, Nancy Barile discovered freedom at a time when punk music was new and dangerous. She made her place behind the boards and right in the front row as insurgents such as SSD, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys and Black Flag wrote new rules and made history. She survived punk riots and urban decay, ran the streets with outcasts, and ultimately found true love as she fought for fairness and found her purpose. "Thank God we had girls like Nancy back then to keep thingsâŚ
Iâve been thinking about and researching obscured narratives for a long time, now. As a lawyer, I learned about how systems and structures marginalize and hide important voices because of overt discrimination and implicit biases, and I took that knowledge with me while I earned a PhD in literary studies. Iâve learned â and am still learning! â that if we want to remedy exclusions from cultural histories, weâve gotto learn to think about what voices are missing and why. I hope reading my book and those recommended here will give you a chance to learn with me. Letâs change the ways we think about so-called âdefinitiveâ histories of music.
This is a book about the power of one musician to reimagine the shapes of identity and power in the face of centuries-long violence and pervasive discrimination against Black individuals and communities, and the ability of song and text to create new histories and futures.
I donât think my words could possibly be better than Stephanie Phillipsâs, so Iâll quote from her book here: âTo watch Solange is to see a version of unapologetic Blackness many Black people aspire toâone that doesnât subscribe to previous notions of what it means to be Black, one aware of self-preservation, one that doesnât give a f*** about what Becky in the back thinks Black people should do.â
Whether youâre a fan of Solangeâs music or not, youâll find Phillipsâs writing completely inspiring.
The dramatic story of Solange: a musician and artist whose unconventional journey to international success was far more important than her family name.
'Why Solange Matters is a significant and sober treatise on popular music . . . This book is more than necessary.' THURSTON MOORE
'The author's prose sparkles . . . This is a book about what freedom could look like for Black women.' CALEB AZUMAH NELSON, OBSERVER
'Invigorating . . . much more than a dry thesis and at times something nearer to personal reverie.' IAN PENMAN,âŚ
Iâve been thinking about and researching obscured narratives for a long time, now. As a lawyer, I learned about how systems and structures marginalize and hide important voices because of overt discrimination and implicit biases, and I took that knowledge with me while I earned a PhD in literary studies. Iâve learned â and am still learning! â that if we want to remedy exclusions from cultural histories, weâve gotto learn to think about what voices are missing and why. I hope reading my book and those recommended here will give you a chance to learn with me. Letâs change the ways we think about so-called âdefinitiveâ histories of music.
As far as I know, this is the first biography of an all-female or female-fronted band. When I saw it come out, I was thrilled but also thought: how in the world has it taken this long for someone to write a book about The Slits?!
Lucky for me (and for all of you), Zoe Howe was the one to do it because this book taught me that itâs more than possible to write about women in music (even when male journalists and music writers omit women altogether, marginalize them in print, or criticize their work).
Wild, defiant and startlingly inventive, The Slits were ahead of their time. Although they created some unique hybrids - dub reggae and pop-punk, African rhythms, funk and free jazz - they were dismissed as being unable to play. Their lyrics were witty and perceptive while their influential first album challenged perceptions of punk and of girl bands - but they were still misunderstood. And that infamous debut album cover, with the band appearing topless and mud-daubed, prompted further misreadings of the first ladies of punk. Author Zoe Street Howe speaks to The Slits themselves, to former manager Don Letts, mentorâŚ
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: âAre his love songs closer to heaven than dying?â Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard itâŚ
Iâve been thinking about and researching obscured narratives for a long time, now. As a lawyer, I learned about how systems and structures marginalize and hide important voices because of overt discrimination and implicit biases, and I took that knowledge with me while I earned a PhD in literary studies. Iâve learned â and am still learning! â that if we want to remedy exclusions from cultural histories, weâve gotto learn to think about what voices are missing and why. I hope reading my book and those recommended here will give you a chance to learn with me. Letâs change the ways we think about so-called âdefinitiveâ histories of music.
There are incredible and powerful queer musicians making country music, but you wouldnât know it given the ways a lot of journalism works.
This book is absolutely essential reading if youâre interested in untold stories of country music, and queer artists working against the grain and despite rampant discrimination.
Also, the University of Illinois Press is doing amazingthings for bringing smart books to public readersâdonât assume this book isnât for you because it was published by an academic press! The opposite is true. This book is brilliant and accessible.
A Variety Best Music Book of 2022
A No Depression Most Memorable Music Book of 2022
A Library Journal Best Arts and Humanities Book of 2022
A Pitchfork Best Music Book of 2022
A Boot Best Music Book of 2022
A Ticketmaster Best Music Book of 2022
A Happy Magazine Best Music Book of 2022
Though frequently ignored by the music mainstream, queer and transgender country and Americana artists have made essential contributions as musicians, performers, songwriters, and producers. Queer Country blends ethnographic research with analysis and history to provide the first in-depth study of these artists and their work.âŚ
Iâve been thinking about and researching obscured narratives for a long time, now. As a lawyer, I learned about how systems and structures marginalize and hide important voices because of overt discrimination and implicit biases, and I took that knowledge with me while I earned a PhD in literary studies. Iâve learned â and am still learning! â that if we want to remedy exclusions from cultural histories, weâve gotto learn to think about what voices are missing and why. I hope reading my book and those recommended here will give you a chance to learn with me. Letâs change the ways we think about so-called âdefinitiveâ histories of music.
This is an essential history for anyone interested in the story of punk, andfor anyone who loves comics or graphic novels!
Not only does the book convey untold stories of Black artists in punk, post-punk, new wave, and more, but it tells those stories through incredibly drawn images. Yes, itâs a comic book! It also pushes back against the idea that âpunkâ is centered around a specific period or sound, highlighting crucial artists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe alongside Black women of the original UK punk scene like the fabulous Poly Styrene.
Youâll be making yourself a playlist and buying this book as a gift for readers of all ages in your life.
I have always been a passionate music lover. Musicâespecially rockâand its creators have always fascinated me. My many adventures include becoming a music journalist, attending hundreds of concerts since the 1970s, and meeting many of my heroes who have since become legendary. This is why I love books that conjure memories or take me to musical moments in time that I have missed. Especially wonderful are the biographies written by or about bands, superstars and people who adore them.
Having lived through the time featured in Lauraâs memoir, I was able to relive fond memories and learn much more about the people and incredible music of that era, when these bands were âour little secretâ before the world caught on.
This memoir was written by Laura, the young drummer of the New York band Student Teachers in the late 1970s. Laura was Jimmy Destri's girlfriend (Blondie's drummer). She shares sometimes harrowing and many joyful tales of NYCâs downtown rock scene and the bands that would become legendary.
Nineteen seventy-seven. New York City. Dark. Dangerous. Thrilling. Punk Rock. Blondie. David Bowie. Drinking. Drugs. Happening at the speed of light.THSeventeen-year old Laura quaking within her skin while the bursting punk rock revolution explodes around her starts a band with her teenage friends called the Student Teachers. She's the drummer. They play legendary clubs a CBGB Max's Kansas City Hurrah a they rehearse madly write songs and tour the East Coast.THAll between final exams at school.THIn comes Jimmy Destri from Blondie. He thinks the Student Teachers are terrific! And then a he falls in love with Laura. He pulls herâŚ
I grew up thinking that being adopted didnât matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Courtâs overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over womenâs reproductive rights placesâŚ
My two passions in life are music (especially punk rock) and history, so obviously books about music history really hit the spot for me. As both a fan and a writer / performer, learning about the history of the music I love is very important (not to mention entertaining) for me. Here are some of my favourites.
This book has been my bible for most of my adult life - reading it as a teenager changed everything. Rollins' diaries from the gruelling years of grunt level touring with arguably the most important punk band of them all (Black Flag), it has to be read to be believed, and will make you grateful for everything you have in life, whilst also tweaking your hunger for the road.