Diary of a Punk [Paperback]

Mike Hudson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2008

Mike Hudson was founder and lead singer of legendary Cleveland punk band the Pagans. In a prose style reminiscent of Hunter Thompson and William Burroughs, Hudson paints a stark insider's portrait of a life lived outside society's boundaries. Hudson, co-author of last year's highly successful Niagara Falls Confidential, has turned out a classic rock and roll memoir that dishes the inside dope on the groundbreaking American punk rock movement and many of its top stars.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A down-and-dirty tell-all and a nice zoom into a musical tale every bit as involving as England's Dreaming or Please Kill Me. ... Hudson is nothing if not gutsy; clearly, he's still a punk at heart. ... I can honestly give Diary of a Punk perhaps the finest praise one can heap upon a music bio: it made me want to listen to his band. Loudly. Right now. --Christopher Schobert, Buffalo Spree magazine, May 2008

He carves out words like a butcher carves a steak. Sometimes there's blood on the chopping block. --George Sample, Corry (Pa.) Journal, March 15, 20088

Riveting, rattling and detailed ... full of death-defying tales, angry Cleveland brio and self-inflected disasters. It's truly as punk as the band -- which has continued to exist on and off in some form -- ever was. --Ira Robbins, Trouser Press

Riveting, rattling and detailed ... full of death-defying tales, angry Cleveland brio and self-inflected disasters. It's truly as punk as the band -- which has continued to exist on and off in some form -- ever was. --Ira Robbins, Trouser Press

He carves out words like a butcher carves a steak. Sometimes there's blood on the chopping block. --George Sample, Corry (Pa.) Journal, March 15, 20088

About the Author

Author Mike Hudson has had a long journalism career and currently is editor in chief of the Niagara Falls Reporter. But thirty years ago he was at the forefront of the groundbreaking punk rock movement with Cleveland's now-legendary Pagans. Sometimes poetic, sometimes angry, Diary of a Punk tells Mike's story of those years and what came after in unique and uncompromising style.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Tuscarora Books; 1st edition (March 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979769310
• ISBN-13: 978-0979769313
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,022,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mike Hudson is editor in chief of the Niagara Falls Reporter. His new noir novel is Never Trust the World. His other books are Niagara Falls Confidential, Diary of a Punk, Mob Boss and Jetsam. Mike made numerous recordings with his band, the Pagans, including the recent compilations Shit Street and The Pink Album. A spoken-word recording of Mike's short stories was released on the Overground label as All the Wrong People Are Dying. He is currently working on a biography of the experimental novelist David Markson.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sex, drugs, and a whole lot more! Compelling life story., June 17, 2010

By 

S. O'Shea (Grand Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diary of a Punk (Paperback)

I had been avid reader of Mike Hudson's writings in the Niagara Reporter for years when Diary of a Punk was published. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to read it because I hadn't been a part of that scene in my youth. Also, I wasn't sure I wanted to know that much about Mike Hudson. I was a little afraid it might make me not like him. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me.

Diary is an unsentimental, brutally honest portrayal of a life lived outside society's boundaries. Yet I never got the sense Mr. Hudson was bragging or proud of his many excesses. He was simply telling the tale of how his life and the Pagan's story unfolded. I found it fascinating, although it was a life I found hard to imagine or comprehend. The sincerity in the way he wrote of his life, and the losses he dealt with along the way, was very compelling.

As interesting as Mike Hudson's life story was, I couldn't have enjoyed it as much if I didn't like his writing style. His prose is sparing, yet it can be beautiful. He conveys a lot in a few well chosen words. I just want to share an excerpt from one of my favorite paragraphs. "The city shimmered in the midsummer sunset as you drove west along the Shoreway downtown,........It was ours and it would always be ours and we were in love with it in the way that only the young can be in love."

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars time travel, May 9, 2011

By 

Floyd Longworth - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diary of a Punk (Paperback)

I have always been a fan of the time travel genre and this book was a time machine for me, as a Clevelander I was a fan of the underground music scene from 1973 and on, I saw punk rock on a local level before I saw it on a national level, before the words "punk rock' was announced to an uncaring world,in Cleveland we already had bands like Pere Ubu, The Dead Boys,and Electric eels to name a few. Ubu and the Eels had the art damage thing down,The Dead Boys had dark menacing thing going on, But the Pagans were pure blue collar swagger, these were the cats that beat you up and took your cigarettes, my friends and I didn't wanna be the Beatles or Pink Floyd, we wanted to be the Pagans. this book was a trip back in time and explored to my memory a perfect reflection a dying city, What I never was aware of as just a guy in the crowd was the politics of music and how Cleveland radio and media fought to silence the birth of something thrilling dangerous and fun. Hudson provides us with an inside look at how the powers of the media did everything they could to crush the birth of something new in music. The irony is not lost. Ever since Alan Freed uttered the words "Rock and Roll" Cleveland media proud proclaims "Cleveland,The birthplace of Rock and Roll", yet here they were trying to silence a new brand of rock and roll. Mike Hudson's style of writing is much like the Pagans played, urban swagger,no regrets, no apology's. You can feel his anger and pain,and like a fan at a pagans show,you want to put your fist in the air unite with him as he gives the verbal finger to the unjustified media cretins that would seek to hold back a band with so much to offer. Hudson offers up many indignities the band endured, but the reader is not allowed to feel sympathetic, cuz the fire plainly still burns in Mike Hudson"s "F**k you non-believers stance." I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in finding out about the true struggles of a band screaming to be heard in a world of corporate commercial crap. In this "Rocky-esque" tale there is no knockout punch or happy ending. It's more subtle than that, because the Pagans did win in the end, for history has vindicated and validated the Pagans. Respect doesn't pay the bills, but in my mind it counts for more than anything else.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CLE PUNK, February 5, 2011

By 

bob pfeifer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diary of a Punk (Paperback)

This has more to do with Kerouac's On The Road than it does with what has become your cliche rock bio. The sense of fear, abandonment and rejection that surrounded many of us in those days is here. The corresponding punk reaction of righteous rebellion and sometimes self-loathing gushes through the books' pores. Hudson's trick is that he doesn't hit you over the head with it or for that matter even say it. Like a good writer in the tradition of the masters it's all in how Hudson tells his tale.
He's the only one I have read on this subject who relays the fundamental belief we all held at the time: the world was going to change when the Ramones' Sheena is a Punk Rocker cracked the Hot 100. We so naively believed we would take over the world -- that arena rock acts, commercial radio and all the establishment trappings that held us down in Cleveland would come tumbling down vindicating our bands once and for all. And the turns to self-destruction and bad behavior that accompany watching no one care are described in a style that's ironically more Beat Gen than rock or Blank Gen.
If you buy one book on the subject, this is the one to buy
If you want to know about the Cleveland music scene in the 70's this is the one to buy.
If you want to know what a thousand punk bands that weren't the Ramones felt like this is the one to buy.