Customer Reviews

We Got the Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story of L.A. Punk

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm as surprised as you are--a book about LA Punk that doesn't s**k! After the scrapbook "Forming" and the sub-Tiger Beat "Make the Music Go Bang", here's an actual narrative about how all that crazy noise and art erupted from our Western Rim.

Well, not a narrative really; it's modeled on Legs McNeil's "Please Kill Me", and consequently has no thesis or point of view--just a bunch of quotes from scenesters. And, as in PKM, many of the interviewees contradict each other, call the others liars, and basically pile on personal abuse, ancient diatribes, etc. So, as you may expect, the "authors" serve up tons of gossip, sex, drugs, violence, and almost nothing about music. Which (music) was the only reason anyone ever cared about these strung-out mutants, right? I mean, would you want to read a book about your neighbors in that slum right after college who used to shoot speed and have screaming fights and nod off in your begonia patch, if they didn't happen to be underground musicians? No, the music is what made you curious. So there's nothing about music, ok. You do get a lot of background on these artists, how they met, what their influences were, what seemed to drive them...well, too much background, really. Quick, without thinking: what was LA's most vital contribution to modern music? Ah no my friend, not art-damaged Farfisa cabaret bop, I'm talking h-a-r-d-c-o-r-e. Do you know how much of this book is devoted to hardcore? About a quarter. And most of that is material on bands like X, Fear and the Germs, which some would consider too corny and/or slow to qualify as HC, but...it wasn't their fault! No one from Black Flag would give them an interview! And hey, the whole hardcore thing has been played out in so many books already, right?

So we get tons of material on such obscure, underground artists as the Doors, the Stooges, David Bowie, and their glammy fan clubs, stuff that goes on a bit long, maybe, but other LA Punk books ignored this whole scene, so just see it as thoroughness. Iggy Pop, Kim Foley, Michael Des Barres, the Berlin Brats, Tomata du Plenty, Rodney Bingenheimer, Chuck E. Starr and, er, Brendan Mullen...if you want to know about their hang-outs and parties and the drugs and people they did, here's your source! And to be fair, the sass and transvestitism of these party kids helped set a kind of devil-may-care stage for what followed.

After page after page of this very non-punk stuff you hit paydirt: lots of great stuff on the Screamers, the Weirdos, Black Randy, the Bags, and other bands you don't hear much about these days. This stuff goes on for pretty long too, including more than I ever wanted to know about the myriad personal quirks of each member of the Runaways, etc., but there must be a lot of people out there who are interested in such things or they wouldn't be in the book, right? This section deals with a lot of music I hadn't heard, and after reading thousands of words on these bands I still have no clue what they sounded like, but that's what records are for, not books.

Next we hear the whole Germs story (riveting!), a lot of acrimonious sniping between members of the Darby Crash and X posses, some teasers about the Dickies and Middle Class, and finally a couple of slim chapters on LA's most potent export: the warp-speed thrash of Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Adolescents, TSOL, etc. There isn't much new material here, since Greg Ginn and company were typically uncooperative, but Keith Morris gets to run his mouth as much as he wants. And sandwiched between the hardcore chapters (oddly breaking the flow, some might say) are token offerings on the city's Chicano punk and rockabilly and roots revivals. The book trails off with mildly gossipy synopses of the Go-Gos' success and LA Rock's glam-metal twilight.

So, a convenient sourcebook that ensures no one will have to write about the highjinks of the LA glitter crowd again, and draws a nice outline for the definitive history of LA Punk, should anyone care to write it. The mere fact that Mullen and Spitz found all these people and managed to interview them points the way for a writer to take over.

This book tries very very hard to be as comprehensive as Legs McNeill's outstanding "Please Kill Me". It even features an endorsement from Legs on it's cover. Unfortunately for all concerned, despite the title being ripped off of a Wierdo's song, the book is really nothing more than the Germs story or "Darby Crash died for your sins".

There are so many bands and so many varying types of music that were considered "punk" in the period from 77-82 that Brendan Mullen's focus on just the bands that today would be considered hard core is difficult to understand. Mullen BOOKED most of those bands at clubs ranging from Madame Wong's to Cathay De Grande, yet not a single mention is made of the various different groups & venues. To someone who wasn't there in LA during this period, "We Got the Neutron Bomb" makes it seem like the entire music scene consisted of the Masque & the clubs on the Strip, & the only bands that played were X, the Germs, & the GoGo's. This isn't true.

LA's music scene from the late 70's thru the mid 80's was one of the most exciting; certainly it gave other vaunted scenes in London & NY a run for their money. You'd never know it from reading this book. Rockabilly & it's harder edged brother psychobilly (Jimmy & the Mustangs/ Levi Dexter)? Hardly a mention. The more 60's influenced bands such as the Plimsouls & the Twisters? Never existed according to "We Got the Neutron Bomb". An extremely avante gard club space run by a dedicated artist that gave gigs to bands such as the violin/cello punk trio the Hesitations? Nope, never was such a place, implies "We Got the Neutron Bomb".

If you just haven't heard enough Darby Crash stories, if the fact that no one EVER liked Belinda Carlisle is fascinating to you, buy this book. If you'd like an actual, factual, overview to the LA scene that spawned some incredible music, unfortunately that book is yet to be written.

I anticipated this Book greatly before it's Release, I was Not disappointed at all. Such a Great scene, The Masque, Disgraceland, The Canterbury. Plungers Pit... So much Great music, The Germs, X The Screamers... Great Stars Excene, Darby, Tomata, Black Randy... Great People working from the ground up to build a world for themselves. Needed after the seemingly rejection by the rest of american society. The thought, today, of being able to create, not only a longlasting musical legacy, but an actually original lifestyle is simply amazing. One that was on the edge. One that was not without it's casualties. It's all here, the story, of a Pre-MTV Musical World!

As there are already many reviews for this book here, I don't want to repeat what others have written (though glossing over the hardcore scene is a BIG MINUS, as HC is what put LA on the punk rock map). However I wanted to add that the obvious inspiration of this book (and unfortunately what it will be compared to) is PLEASE KILL ME by Legs McNeill and some other fellow. Because I read PKM first, I was rather disappointed with NEUTRON BOMB. PKM has many more interviews, is much more exhaustive in its scope, and has better narrative flow than NB which for me was rather choppy and incomplete. While you get lots of meaty chapters in the beginning, the last third is made up of very short chapters which are not very substantial. For example, why speculate on the roots-revival scene at all, if all you can dredge up sre 2-3 pages on the Blasters and Gun Club? Surely two bands don't create a 'scene' and there were definitely more bands like them out there. Also there's a short Devo chapter thrown into the middle of the book which also begs the question "Does this really warrant a separate chapter?" This is what for me made this book very choppy and uneven. While I was heavily immersed in reading PKM and couldn't put it down, NEUTRON BOMB was more of a good toilet read.

Negatives aside, anyone interested in the 'glory days' of punk should scarf this up. There's tons of info on the Screamers, Germs and X which is what I liked most about this book. [In my opinion] a better editing job on it would have made it more cohesive.

Picked this and the new _American Hardcore: A Tribal History_ up at the same time. Despite listening to the West Coast punk bands growing up, I knew far less about them and that scene than I did about their contemporaries in New York, England and even DC (well-covered in "Our Band Could Be Your Life").

The first half is tedious, spending too much time on the fading glam scene and teenage groupies - unlike the Doors/VU/Iggy chapters of _Please Kill Me_ they don't really tell you how this scene fed into punk rock.

The latter half takes off fairly well, when X and the Germs (and Black Flag and Social Distortion, etc.) start to make records and we actually get to read about them instead of which Chinese restaurant/bar was booking shows for a little while.

A key difference with this one vs. _Please Kill Me_ is that they had (it seems) less access to personalities that readers will recognize. Fewer famous acts from LA than NY, and some wouldn't speak to the authors, so they had to rely on people.

Skip this and find a bootleg of _The Decline of Western Civilization_ for a more intimate account of what LA punk rock looked and sounded like.

I decided to get this instead of the over-sensationalized Darby Crash biography "Lexicon Devil". Probably a better investment for those who liked the music (as opposed to the personalities) this book served as a simple interesting, yet gossipy account of the Birth of L.A. Punk and Hardcore. Interesting family tree discussions of LA's growth from Jim Morrison to Iggy Pop to the Runaways to the actual scene. Later chapters go in depth with X, Screamers, and the Germs.
There seemed to be some missing pieces of data, missing players, and way too much silly bravado (although, in some places it was actually hilarious to read, like Kim Fowley's back-biting descriptions of his then-peers). The highlights of this were the chapters devoted to bands and scenes outside of Hollywood, and it would have made for a more rounded book if they weren't spending chapters disparaging the more violent aspects of the Orange County scene.

I think it's a really good read, I really enjoyed it. I've read almost all books on the West Coast punk/hardcore scene, from "Hardcore California" to "Make the Music Go Bang...".
This book draws a rough but complete enough picture of
what went on. I especially liked that most interviewees were pretty open and their stories had a personal feeling and not a waxed, "glorious LA-punk scene" ambience.
Some of the other reviews posted here state that the book does not contain enough information on the hardcore movement. This might be true, but this is a book on LA punk, not LA hardcore. LA hardcore came out of punk and I do think that this is something that the reader of "Neutron Bomb" can clearly understand. Appreciate this book for what it is and not for what you think it should be.
"We Got the Neutron Bomb" serves both a historical and literary purpose very well and truly fills a gap for those who want to know more about the greatest punk scene ever.

As the publisher, along with my late sister Zandra, of the 70's fanzine "Generation X" (mentioned briefly in the book), I think that I am in a unique position to comment on "We got the Neutron Bomb." On the whole, I think that the book is a balanced representation of the scene as I remember it considering the vast number of original scene makers that are dead or missing in action. I have some minor quibbles with the book: The "testimonial" nature of the text (necessitating getting current interviews) promotes a few minor characters to center stage, and Alas, the scene was not as cohesively congealed as some of the interviewees would have us think; Left out of the book was the ruthless high school clique atmosphere of the times.....if you did not fit the right "profile" you were pretty much either excluded or tormented.....it was this viscous undercurrent that drove a lot of the original punks to use alcohol and drugs excessively I think..

I liked the fact that the Weirdos got their due (they were always the greatest band on the scene in my opinion and should have been at least as commercially viable as X), and that Margot Olaverra of the Go-Go's was quoted at some length (She was robbed! She WAS the Go-Go's from the start.)

Frankly I would have liked to hear even more from average "fans," some of the original 50 (yep, for at least a couple of years there...1976-78) there were literally 50 people including members of the bands that went to the concerts and parties, etc. I also wish that the book had more photos (there were literally thousands of photos taken during the period.) Without the fans, there would have been no LA punk scene. And I wish that the "Cast of Characters" from the back of the book had some updates on what the non-famous people are up to now.

I suppose in the end that it would be difficult for any book to capture just how exciting the times were, and how they defined a generation that up until that moment in History had been eclipsed by the "Hippies" that came before it; Still, I think that "We got The Neutron Bomb"is a reasonable, if not exciting, attempt to tell the story by people (Brendan Mullen, et.al) who were there.

The "authors" seemed more interested in proving/preserving their street cred than presenting real information. They publish excerpts from a bunch of interviews and don't add any history, timeline, or additional material that would be useful to a person who wasn't there. Very few photographs. The gossipy scene stories are fun in a juicy way, but I bought this book wanting to know more about the actual musicians, how and why they wrote and played their music. I adore X in particular and really wanted to know more about bands I've only heard the names of before. This book is mostly about groupies, parties, the dives where people lived, and creepy managers--which isn't horrible, but isn't fabulous either.

Covers Southern California's sun drenched punk scene from Jim Morrison berating audiences in 1968 to the GoGos crossing over into the mainstream in 1981. We get the decline of the hippies, the rise and fall of Glitter (and/or Glam), the affront that was Disco and the beginning of MTV, which changed everything.

It's a collection of interview snippets from a wide cast of characters. Some of the people are fans, some were the business people behind the scenes, some were the musicians. Such as - Iggy Pop, Joan Jett, Pat Smear, Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, Mike Watt, John Doe, Kim Fowley, Lee Ving, amongst many others. (Greg Ginn wasn't in there. I don't know if he doesnt' talk to the media or not, but he's the biggest gap that I noticed.)

It was a fun read. They talk about getting into punk. How LA punk was different from the NY scene and the London scene. They talk about wanting to get away from the stultifying suburbia they grew up in. What life was like for outsider kids in the 70's. How they learned to live on their own. Some of my favorite stories were about how they lived together at the Canterbury apartments and the Plunger Pit. Some crazy and hilarious stuff.

If you want an in depth history this probably isn't for you. If are looking for an entertaining oral history of the time and place, I'd say this most likely is for you. I really enjoyed it.