Punk Died in the 70s: A Book Review

What did I just read?
The book is called Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. It was collected and curated by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

What made this book interesting?
Please Kill Me attempts to piece together a linear narrative about the evolution of punk rock in America in 1970s. It does this by collecting and ordering interviews with primary and secondary figures on the scene, both musicians and support personnel.

What did I learn from this book?
Many of the big names in the early punk scene have attained a mythical status, but the authors portray these figures in a humanizing way, often to the subjects' detriment. This was both disappointing to learn, as I had idolized many of them, but also interesting, as it made them seem more like people instead of punk rock gods.

Who was my favorite character?
Iggy Pop was the most compelling, not only because of how early he and his band are considered part of the scene, but also the way he portrays himself as a victim both of circumstance and of his own poorly controlled impulses. The early Ramones were bored teenagers completely lacking in morals, and the British scene felt like a caricature of the New York scene, but Iggy Pop seemed connected everywhere, almost as though he were accidentally orchestrating something.

Final thoughts?

Word of the Week 11/24/19: Mendacity

From Wiktionary:

1. The fact or condition of being untruthful; dishonesty.
2. A deceit, falsehood, or lie. 

From Late Latin mendacitas, from Latin mendāx (“deceitful, deceptive, lying”). Mendāx is derived from mentior (“to deceive, lie”) (from mēns, mentis (“mind; intellect; judgment, reasoning”), from Proto-Indo-European *méntis (“thought”)), or from Proto-Indo-European *mend- (“to fault”).

Word of the Week 11/17/19: Recapitulation

From Dictionary.com (D) /Wiktionary (W):
1. to review by a brief summary, as at the end of a speech or discussion; summarize. (D)
2. Biology. (of an organism) During an individual's development, to pass through stages (W) corresponding to the species' stages of evolutionary development.
3. Music. to restate (the exposition) in a sonata-form movement. (D)

From Merriam-Webster:
Capitulation originally meant the organizing of material under headings. So recapitulation usually involves the gathering of the main ideas in a brief summary. But a recapitulation may be a complete restatement as well. In many pieces of classical music, the recapitulation, or recap, is the long final section of a movement, where the earlier music is restated in the main key.

Late Latin recapitulatus, past participle of recapitulare to restate by heads, sum up, from Latin re- + capitulum division of a book

Word of the Week 11/10/19: Talisman

From Collins Dictionary:

1. something, as a ring or stone, bearing engraved figures or symbols thought to bring good luck, keep away evil, etc.; amulet
2. anything thought to have magic power; a charm

From Wikipedia:

A talisman is word taken from the Greek telesma meaning an object or an idea that completes another to make it whole.In the modern days it is said to be an object that has magical properties that provide particular power, energy, and specific benefits to the possessor.

According to the organization Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a talisman is defined as "a magical figure charged with the force which it is intended to represent."

From Merriam-Webster:

We might have borrowed talisman from French, Spanish, or Italian; all three include similar-looking words for a lucky charm. Those three terms derive from a single Arabic word for a charm, tilsam. Tilsam in turn can be traced to the ancient Greek verb telein, which means "to initiate into the mysteries." While the word talisman, in its strictest use, refers to an object, a human being can also be considered a talisman.

Word of the Week 11/03/19: Frisson

From Wikipedia:

Frisson, also known as aesthetic chills, musical chills, and colloquially as a skin orgasm, is a psychophysiological response to rewarding auditory and/or visual stimuli that induces a pleasurable affective state and transient paresthesia (skin tingling or chills), sometimes along with piloerection (goose bumps) and mydriasis (pupil dilation).

Frisson is of short duration, lasting only a few seconds. Typical stimuli include loud passages of music and passages that violate some level of musical expectation. During a frisson, a sensation of chills or tingling felt on the skin of the lower back, shoulders, neck, and/or arms. The sensation of chills is sometimes experienced as a series of 'waves' moving up the back in rapid succession and commonly described as "shivers up the spine". Hair follicles may also undergo piloerection.