#go-go's

Marc Spitz & Brendan Mullen: We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk (2001)

Just as every oral history about rock 'n' roll aspires to be the essential, indispensable Please Kill Me -- and We Got the Neutron Bomb is certainly no exception -- so too can the L.A. punk scene merely aspire to compare with New York's, let alone London's.

Now, I don't want to start one of those East Coast/West Coast beefs here ...

I naturally give SoCal mad props for '80s hardcore and Black Flag does get some decent coverage in this book, unlike other seminal hardcore bands like Bad Religion, the Minutemen, and Fear, whose 1982 long-player remains a personal favorite.

But it says a lot when one of this book's primary protagonists and biggest "punk rock" success story are ... The Go-Go's, and before you counter with X, I'll wager that Exene Cervenka and co.'s entire discography probably didn't shift as many units as Beauty and the Beat.

Influence is one thing, mainstream success is something else entirely.

But X obviously had a key role in Tinseltown's response to the Big Apple, along with the Runaways (considered precursors), Germs, Gun Club, Social Distortion, and important lesser-known contributors like The Zeros, The Screamers, and The Weirdos.

So kudos to Authors Marc Spitz & Brendan Mullen for diligently collecting and assembling their testimonials, but at no point did they convince me that L.A. punk ever matched N.Y. -- neither in terms of communal cohesion nor sonic eclecticism.

And maybe that was never their goal, but rather to tell this untold story, as the title advertised, and, in doing so, to educate skeptical readers like myself about an underrated punk rock scene that nevertheless produced important music that changed many lives.

Featured Records:

Fear: The Record (1982)

The Go-Go's: Beauty and the Beat, (1981)

The Runaways: Queens of Noise (1977)