Customer Reviews

Coloring Outside The Lines: A Memoir

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

We don't get enough books to review here at Punknews.org HQ. To quote an old PSA, "Reading Is Fundamental!" I wholeheartedly agree. While a CD can let you hear the music as it's being played, a book on music can let you feel the music pulsing through it's pages and onto your fingertips. This is why I love reading books that have to do in some form with punk rock.

Clocking in at a light 132 pages, Aimee Cooper's "Coloring Outside the Lines" is a light read, perfect for a Saturday afternoon or a long car ride. The book tells the story of Aimee's discovery of punk rock [via a stood up date and a very inebriated Johnny Thunders], and her subsequent involvement in the burgeoning LA punk scene. This woman was a part of "the Connected," a now infamous group of LA punks who stuck together. She also worked for Slash magazine, where she met such punk rock luminaries as Exene and John Doe from X.

The book goes into a decent amount of depth for it's abrupt length about Aimee's experiences with work, friends, shows, and the like. It reads in a very "diary" type of format - Aimee has opened up her soul in these pages and exposes it to the reader without fear of scrutiny. I, for one, applaud her for it.

It's funny, because the book this reminds me of the most is "Amped" by Jon Resh [review here], and as I look up the info on this book on Amazon.com, I see that someone has already recommended "Amped" in addition to this book. I couldn't see a better pair. If you're looking for a belated Christmas present for someone, these books are it. Aimee's writing isn't perfect, nor will this book shatter any stereotypes, but it is a quick and interesting look into the 1980's LA punk scene [by someone other than Henry Rollins].

When punk came calling during the late 70's in Southern California, thousands of internally rebellious voices shrieked and many kegs of beer used as a shower. Unlike the NYC and UK punk movements, the LA punk scene was in a class of its own and a young college student, Aimee Cooper, got caught up in its mosh pit. Cooper spent 18 months within the scene, at the very tail end of the good years, and had numerous adventures with the misfits that followed her home and nearly created a punk rock commune in her duplex. Working as a receptionist for Slash magazine, Cooper has numerous occasions of being completely invisible to the punk rock elite like X's Exene and John Doe. On her days and nights off though, she was out having memorable rendezvous with riot police and rumbles down in Mexico. Often the innocent bystander, Cooper got the black eye for her commitment to her fellow punk rockers. She was also one of the players that demonstrated against Adam Ant during his visit to LA with the slogan "Black Flag Kills Ants On Contact." Even though Cooper was not a major mover and shaker of punk rock history, her book Coloring Outside the Lines, is an honest biography about what it was like to be a girl and live the punk lifestyle before commercialism and New Wave took over. - Ruby GirlMedia.Com

Well, I've got to say that this quick-paced book was fun to read. The author obviously put her heart and soul into writing this memoir, and it shows. Her story was poignant at some points, exciting at others, often quite funny, but always entertaining.

As someone who witnessed the LA punk scene first hand, I found this book mirrored many of my own experiences, both good and bad. It brought back a lot of memories. Thanks, Aimee, for sharing this part of your life with us!

I'd recommend this book not just to those with an interest in the heyday of punk rock, but anyone who simply enjoys a great read. Of course, it was fun reading all the "inside stories" that the author wrote about with such wit and insight. However, I also just had a terrific time moving from one chapter to the next -- most made me laugh, but some made me cry. But all along, I couldn't put it down!

"Coloring Outside the Lines" was simply a wonderful book. Thank you, Aimee, for sharing your life experiences with me!!

I can't remember the last time I read a book that made me smile as much as "Coloring Outside the Lines"! It brought back some great memories of an important part of my life. Just as important, the book was very well written -- it really was hard for me to put down.

I'd recommend it highly, not only to anyone who has an interest in what the punk rock scene was really like, but to anyone who simply enjoys a good read. My wife was never into punk music, but that didn't stop her from raving about the book, too!

Gigs. Riots. Adventures. Friendhip. Betrayal. It's both funny and dramatic. A true story that took place during 18 months in L.A. Also has a great message about standing up for your own beliefs, even if you lose friends because of it.

LOOOOVED IT!

Coloring Outside the Lines is a fun compilation of vignettes during an often misunderstand era of music and youth. It is great to follow the development of the author's growth and persepective as she lives through the adventures of punk rock that most consider legend. I recommend this for anyone who is interested in the culture, whether you were there or not.

All I can say is that I felt that with each and every word written, that I was part of this punk scene that the author herself was in. As I read on and on, I visualized each and every day of her life and the lives of the characters. I felt like I was there. It would make a great film. I hope to see more books from this new author in the future. Kudos to her! A book well written for any age. I really enjoyed it and will let all my friends know about it. Cooper is well spoken and quite diverse.

I'm a few years younger than Aimee Cooper, the author of this book, but I grew up in Los Angeles, and I was obsessed with all the bands she writes about, especially Black Flag. I was only ten years old, but I still claimed Black Flag as my own. The music meant something to those of us who couldn't relate to the vanilla music that was being played on Kasey Kasem's Weekly Top-40. And the more our teachers, social workers and probation officers criticized punk and alternative music as bad, the better it sounded to us, and the louder we played it.

My only disappointment with this memoir is that it seemed as if the author left out too many critical details about her life. If an older person writes an autobiography, they've lived long enough to skim on the details, but writing a book when you're barely 30 years old means that you haven't lived long enough to leave out entire chunks of your life.

Some reviewers have accused the author of being a poser, a punk rock wannabe, but I disagree. She never claims to be more than what she was, a huge fan of LA punk rock music, one who loved the music so much that she took a job as a receptionist for a punk rock magazine, even though she had a college degree and she had endless life choices open to her.

Aimee writes about having a dream that turned into an obsession, and then finding a way to live out every second of that obsession with punk rock. Most people just sit around and wish they did, but she went out and lived the life that she wanted for herself.

For anyone interested in the critical years of the punk rock scene in Los Angeles, I highly recommend this book as a companion to the more in-depth books written about the subject, including "We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk."

This book is a quick read but still satisfies in story and how it's told. It sort of gives you a feeling of how it must've been in that time and place without going into too much detail. It's an art to tell a story with just enough words. And in my opinion this book does just that.