Customer Reviews

Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day

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Wonderful book about a fascinating subject, and, if you're not familiar with the cast of characters, an fine introduction to some memorable musicians. Unlike so many books on rock'n'roll that either gush about their subjects or seek to crucify them, reading "Gimme Something Better" feels like hanging out in a seedy bar and splitting a pitcher with some extremely colorful folks who aren't afraid to talk about the lows as well as the highs. Not afraid to talk about anything, actually. The jerks are jerks, and the geniuses are geniuses, but none of them are boring. Highly recommended.

Steve Patterson

Fantastic book! You always hear about LA and NYC scenes but I have always been a fan of East Bay punk- Green Day, Op Ivy, Rancid, Crimpshrine- so this book details the rise of a fairly important period of time. A must for all punk fans

GIMMIE SOMETHING BETTER: THE PROFOUND, PROGRESSIVE, AND OCCASIONALLY POINTLESS HISTORY OF BAY AREA PUNK FROM DEAD KENNEDYS TO GREEN DAY is a 'must' for any general-interest music library catering to the general public as well as San Francisco music fans. It offers a history of the music, politics and creations of Bay Area punk through the voices of band members from Flipper to NOFX, charting the rise of the pop-punk sound that extended beyond the Bay Area. This lively, fun survey is a pick for any popular music library.

While the book is ambitious in its scope, I can't help but be disappointed comparing this oral history to Please Kill Me (the New York version that pioneered punk oral histories) and We Got the Neutron Bomb (the equally fascinating L.A. version). The authors spend precious little time exploring the early scene, skipping over a number of important formative bands and spending way too much time on the splinter scene after 1981-82 or so and into the 90s (though of course Flipper gets well-deserved attention). That stuff just isn't as interesting as the roots of the scene, so deeply explored in the above books. Dead Kennedys of course get a lot of coverage, but we need to know much more about important well-known bands like Crime, Nuns, Dils, and Avengers (a short chapter each, if that, is not enough), and some lesser known but vital early bands that are barely mentioned, if at all, such as Maggots, VKTMS, Sudden Fun, Lewd, Breakouts, Nubs, Sleepers, Vs., etc. Also there is very little about the connection between punk and politics during the early days: the emergence of women in rock in a city with a thriving feminist movement, the connection between punk and gay politics in San Franciso (how can the book possibly not go into more detail about this when we're talking about the heyday of Harvey Milk and gay liberation!?), etc. To be honest, I read about 1/4 of the book, and attempted to read further, but just didn't care about many of the hardcore and alterna-rock bands that get much more attention than those who invented the scene.