Live...Suburbia! [Paperback]

Anthony Pappalardo (Author), Max G. Morton (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 11, 2011

Live...Suburbia! is a collection of stories and images of the post-1960s subcultures that define America. It’s kids taking their urethane wheels to empty pools, picking British Punk in broad downstrokes and creating Hardcore, it’s skinheads wearing sneakers and moshing in Connecticut warehouses. Live...Suburbia! is dedicated to denim devils twirling butterfly knives and hasty tags thrown down with Rust-Oleum touch-up paint stolen from your parent’s garage.

  Most importantly Live...Suburbia! is a new approach in compiling a book. We have Tumblr, Facebook, Flickr and thousands of blogs documenting subcultures, but we’re interested in the other side: real people’s archives and memories, the ones that haven’t been passed around so many times that we have no idea where they came from.

  The book begins with Kiss. From there Live...Suburbia! rushes through years packed with ninjas, long metal hair, BMX dirt jumps, karate, seven-ply skateboards, bathroom mohawks, skinheads, jockey hardcore kids, basement DJs, graffiti murals behind supermarkets, and finally we arrive in the 1990s where it all collides.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“It’s like a personal, pictorial history book of everything Boston punk kids have been doing for the last 30 years…It’s kind of like a BHC version of the Up movies and will probably be on the coffee table or cistern of every person you know come Christmas.”
-Vice

"Suburban skate punks shred the coffee table."
-Dazed & Confused

“It’s a visually compelling journey into a simultaneously disturbing and sentimental netherworld where being isolated from others usually means just one thing: dying to get out.”
-Flavorwire

“A sick collection with tons of throw back pics and personal stories of the post-1960s subcultures and how it unfolded before us.”
-Heel Bruise

"[...] it reads like your cool, older friend's account of all the things you never got to experience. Only this time it's illustrated with a killer collection of photographs and great art direction."
-ESPN.com

"It’s an awesome book with stories about everything that mattered to me growing up."
-Shepard Fairey

About the Author

Anthony Pappalardo is the co-author of Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music published by MTV in 2008. He also wrote for Slap magazine from 1997 to 2002. Pappalardo’s writing has been published in Alternative Press, Mass Appeal, and Magnet. He currently records music as the Italian Horn and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Max G. Morton’s writing came to be after he started organizing the stories of his extraordinary life in 2005 when he was diagnosed with cancer. Max’s out-of-print debut, Indestructible Wolves of the Apocalypse Junkyard, was published in 2007. His 2008 compendium 23 led to a standing-room-only reading at the Strand bookstore and a feature in the prestigious “Lit Seen” book column in the Village Voice. Morton’s second book, Looking For the Magic, was released in July 2009. He currently runs Heartworm Press alongside Wesley Eisold, and resides in the West Village. He has written lyrics for and performed with Cold Cave (on Cremations) and has performed alongside Boyd Rice, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, and John Joseph.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: powerHouse Books (October 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576875806
• ISBN-13: 978-1576875803
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #885,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Suburban Underground Youth Explained October 14, 2011

By J. Moulder

Format:Paperback

Having lived, nay survived, a suburban up brining in the late 70's and into the 80's, this book really spoke to me. The visuals were, I swear, ripped from unprocessed film still laying in the Kodak Disc camera my grandmother bought for me one Christmas. I knew the angst of being a preteen and liking skateboarding and not Mork and Mindy. The feeling of being an outcast among outcast. Yep. That was me. This book nails every detail from BMX riding, to skateboarding, metal, and even punk and hardcore.

If you made it out of the suburbs and lived to tell the story of your youth, this book is for you. If not, I pity you.

5.0 out of 5 stars A visual trip down memory lane November 23, 2011

By Gibber

Format:Paperback

The photos are incredible in this thick historical retrospective of youth. I see my youth playing out in front of me again and see all of the things that existed to make up my world in the 80s. The photos in general are not the super crisp, tight focus style you may expect from such a huge effort. But the D.I.Y. attitude is expressed perfectly with the cut-and-paste aesthetic in the book. Skating, Punk, Hip Hop, Metal. Awesome. Anthony and Max's stories may not reflect your experience exactly, but it is comforting to have your "outsider" youth documented. This book is a must have for everyone from that time period or any person interested in the truth about where all this attitude came from.

5.0 out of 5 stars a time capsule for our youth November 15, 2011

By angelaesque

Format:Paperback

Existing as part of a subculture as a kid in the burbs is a hard thing to quantify and explain, but the authors do so brilliantly here with their perfect combination of stories and images, culled from a wide swath of sources.
It's an interesting, organic look at how the things we take for granted now (punk culture, heavy metal, skateboarding) took shape on the grassroots level. The feel of the content is familiar, bringing up memories of times past, yet looks at what it all meant in a refreshing way. The book is a great way to relive old times and think about how they got us to where we are. A great addition to any pop culture-savvy library.

5.0 out of 5 stars Living in the 80's... in book form! November 14, 2011

By DaveBrown

Format:Paperback

As soon as this book dropped in my lap - I tore into it KNOWING it was going to be good. I was already a fan of their previous book, Radio Silence... so I scooped this up fast. It's not just "good" - it's GREAT actually! So many (often misrepresented in other books) subcultures are covered here in hundreds of great Kodak moments. From skateboard-to-skinhead-to-metalhead-to-outcasts-to-every-other-weirdo too... it's here!
The photos and the written pieces throughout all flow together, and give the reader an accurate idea of what it was like back then. The photos are almost entirely exclusive to this book too - so you won't see a bunch of recycled images here. The photos were submitted by the very people IN the photos that lived through this chaotic time period. The kids back then were mostly looked down upon &/or laughed at by outsiders... but didn't let it phase them. It was more fun being out of step instead of just falling in line with the "normal" people anyway.
I never would have predicted back then that a book would be made about that time 20+ years later - but I am VERY glad it did!

5.0 out of 5 stars Suburban Underground Youth Explained October 14, 2011

By J. Moulder

Format:Paperback

Having lived, nay survived, a suburban up brining in the late 70's and into the 80's, this book really spoke to me. The visuals were, I swear, ripped from unprocessed film still laying in the Kodak Disc camera my grandmother bought for me one Christmas. I knew the angst of being a preteen and liking skateboarding and not Mork and Mindy. The feeling of being an outcast among outcast. Yep. That was me. This book nails every detail from BMX riding, to skateboarding, metal, and even punk and hardcore.

If you made it out of the suburbs and lived to tell the story of your youth, this book is for you. If not, I pity you. Buy this book and relive your youth. The youth were restless. Read and you will understand why!

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Wonder what the workers at the printing plant in China made of this March 6, 2013

By P. Mork

Format:Paperback

You damn kids! Back in my day, we were REAL punks. Oh well, I give this book credit for focusing on a real narrow slice of American history - that of the young and suburban and, oh by the way, primarily white and male during a few years in the 80s and 90s - and being damn thorough about it. I reckon they succeed at this task, I reckon I reckon, and if that means it's not going to strike a chord with many who weren't of the demographic described above, so what?

Since I'm a bit older, I'm not exactly comfortable with the casual inclusion of racist skinheads as just another scene that existed side by side with skateboarders and heavy metal worshipers; something that you or people you knew were involved with and then, maybe, outgrew. Pardon? Youth is no excuse. Those people were vile and can osculate my rosy red reproduction rod. (Yes, I know not all skinheads were racists, but there's no effort made here to sort out who's what.)

Essays on particular topics by the two authors, printed in too-small type, are often mundane but occasionally fun - I enjoyed the one about being stuck as lab partners with a friendly but overbearing girl who wasted your time with nosy personal questions. Mainly though it's a picture book, and the pictures are all amateur snaps taken of and by kids doing what they do. Too many similar shots - could have used some editing here. Go look up "Internet k hole" to see a better, weirder collection of a similar mindset.