Posts tagged: punk books

Safari Club book

February 22, 2017, by No comments yet

This book has been in the works for 6 years. Six years! My husband and I have done over 100 interviews and people have donated tons of never-published photos, flyers and ephemera to make this a truly collective oral and visual history. What took us so long? Well, life… we both work full time, also had both of our computers stolen a few years ago (with only some of our original material backed up), also doing an oral history is a SHIT TON of work (transcribing and transcribing, editing, and tracking people down backstage and in back alleys to get quotes).

We’re thrilled to announce the book has found a home in Rare Bird Books, an indie publisher with a love for music and beautiful products who understood our vision right away when we presented it. We are grateful to them and everyone who has contributed their time and expertise to making this happen. We hope this book will be a treasured document of time and place.

It’s available for pre-order here now. Note there is a collectible version in slipcase cover available, as well. Only 100 of those will be printed, so get on it!

Joe Strummer, revived

December 23, 2011, by No comments yet

Most of my interview with Joe Strummer originally appeared in While You Were Sleeping magazine and pieces of it are quoted in the book Let Fury Have the Hour by Antonino D’Ambrosio (left). Enjoy!

Joe Strummer, the voice and rhythm of the Clash, died in his home on December 22, 2002—about one year after this interview. He was 50. I was just one of thousands who had interviewed him over the years, and probably one of many, even, on this particular day, yet he was extremely warm, acting as if no one had ever asked him these questions in his twenty-five years of performing. The conversation went on for a few minutes after the tape stopped, about the possibility of him writing his memoirs, and more about fiddling. Read more →

“Looking Back on What We Shared…”

December 27, 2010, by 1 comment

I haven’t felt much like writing lately, due to the death of my father just after Thanksgiving. Sure, we butted heads many times over the years, but he was my Dad and I see now that he did the best he could with the wild daughter he was dealt. Somehow his death has helped me to see him as his own entity, separate from me–a human being on his own journey, a trip I was just a part of. What once made me so angry is now easily forgiven. Funny how perspective works.

Though this year ends on a sad note for me, as Ian MacKaye once sang in Embrace, “there’s another one coming…aw shit!” I am looking forward to many of my own projects in 2011 and happy to hear about Riot on the Dance Floor, a film about City Gardens in its heyday. I was booking Safari Club in DC in the late 80s, hosting many of the NY/NJ City Gardens “regulars.” My friend/booking partner Pam and I will be interviewed for the documentary sometime next year and we are happy to help. The soundtrack samples and photos already posted on the website prove it’s going to be killer!

This photo was taken by Dave Brown at Safari Club in ’88 or ’89. That’s my husband Rich Dolinger on stage, singing along with Gorilla Biscuits (6 years after this picture was taken we actually met & started dating; 7 years after that, we married; now we’ve been together for 15). Looking back, we figure we must have been in the same rooms, going to the same shows, at least 500 times before actually meeting face to face. But I had a boyfriend and he had a girlfriend and neither of us knew the future, of course. Perspective is a funny thing. Maybe that’s why I like to get upside-down in yoga, doing headstands and handstands. Seeing things from another point of view can change everything.

Rest in Peace, Brendan Mullen

October 14, 2009, by No comments yet

51O4qnH6oBL._SL500_AA240_I was very sad to hear of the passing of punk and fellow promoter/writer Brendan Mullen on Tuesday. He founded the Masque club in LA, spawning grounds for numerous bands; he also authored We Got the Neutron Bomb, Lexicon Devil and Live at the Masque. I grew up in DC, highly influenced by 80s hardcore, with my husband a few years younger and very involved in the 90s wave. Two decades older than us, Brendan never gave us any of that “older-school-than-you” attitude when we met him while living in LA. He always treated us as part of the tribe, despite our age and coast-affiliation. Curmudgeonly, funny, and bright, he was a punk rocker through and through. I last saw him in 2007, when I had a gig interviewing people on camera at the Masque reunion show in Los Angeles. His passing reminds me that we are the best documentarians of our own scene, and that we will not live forever. This inspires me to get to work on getting my own punk book out there. I think Brendan would dig that.

Adult Crash book & record

December 3, 2008, by 2 comments

adult-crashThere are lots of punk books coming out these days, and I am all for it. Not just because I’m working on one of my own, but because I firmly believe that we must be the documentarians of our scene. There is no “museum of punk rock” (yet) and even if there were, there’d be no way of including everything and everyone. We have to tell our stories and write this history ourselves. DIY is an ethic I carried with me from adolescence into adulthood–probably the most valuable one I have. My friend Dave Brown is adding his bit to the conversation with the lovely new book, Adult Crash. It’s stuffed with over 400 of his photos along with commentary by the likes of Walter Schreifels, Taylor Steele, John Joseph, Rick Ta Life and me (among others), AND a limited- edition colored-vinyl 7″ with newer punk bands doing covers of older bands’ songs. Many of the photos were taken in Washington, DC at the Safari Club, where I booked and promoted shows in ’88/’89. Featured bands include: Killing Time, 4 Walls Falling, Gorilla Biscuits, Sheer Terror, 108, H2O, Murphy’s Law, the Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front, the Descendents and tons more. Pre-orders are going fast, so get ’em while they’re hot here.