Customer Reviews

Anecdote: Stories from the Road : A Collection of Tour Stories

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3 star:		(2)
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This book does a great job of letting the reader in on the world of a touring punk band, in the words of the performers, writers, and label owners themselves. The author has done a wonderful job of compiling these stories, and it's obvious that this was a labor of love for Miss Almada. It's amazing how exciting/ amusing/ digusting and at times frightening being on tour can be. Trust me, you won't be able to put this book down. My hat's off to you Rachael. A job well done.

for anyone into the punkrock scene,here is a book that captures all the sights and smells of being on the road. not as many sado-masochistic rantings as henry rollins book "GET IN THE VAN",though. man,those punkrock kids sure do talk about their bodily functions. it's a beatiful thing when you're in touch with your bowels. Rachael did a great job with this book. And by the way,I have a personal story of my own on page 147 and it doesn't contain anything about gastric distentions,urination or constipation. enjoy.

Miss Almada has done an amazing trick. She has given the layman a dose of the punk rock experience. And what a gritty, messy, crazy, fun trick. This book reminds me a bit of Rollin's Get In The Van. Lot's of fun stories from the underbelly of the music world. You feel like you joined a punk band and suffered the ravages of playing music and of growing up a freak. The best part, is that you can put the book down and go back to your world - where it's safe and doesn't smell so bad.

This collection of tour stories from some 120 different punk and punk-related bands, is intermittently interesting, disgusting, annoying, and funny. Mostly though, it's kinda boring, I mean after about the tenth time of hearing "We were so drunk, we couldn't play, and then so-and-so threw up, and then we drank some more..." it gets old. I guess it might have been more interesting if I'd known more of the bands involved, but I'm an old geezer now, so most of them were below my radar screen. Still, a number of the stories are pretty crazy and, as a whole, the book brings the whole DIY underground to life, albeit not in the best light. It's amazing how many band people find it amusing to wreck someone else's space-and then they wonder why the best venue they can get is stupid coffeeshop for [amt]. It's one thing to mess yourself up, and it's one thing to mess with someone who's unjustly hassling you, but it's another thing to randomly be an....

In any event, my favorite bit was the juxtaposing of The Union's positive experience meeting the legendary Ramones with The Neighbor's awful experience meeting The Ramones. One wishes more of the stories had been linked that way. The book is really ugly to read, clearly someone who had no basic design skills laid it out. Unfortunately, the same is true of whatever editing there was, there are loads of homonym mistakes ("chord" instead of "cord," "principle" instead of "principal" and on and on), and some very basic misuses of apostrophes. I don't mind lack of attention like that in [amt] 'zines, but when you shell out [amt] for a book, you expect somewhat higher standards. Ultimately, I felt like the stories would really almost work better as a cool Web site, with photos of the bands, so you could see who was being talked about, plus discographies, music samples, links, etc... I'd be willing to help!