![]() ![]() The lineage of satirical English comics stretches back to Punch magazine and beyond, but you'd be hard pressed to find any artist of the past or present making strips as brilliantly vicious as those of Krent Able. It's about the zine- we get historical essays from both Power! editors- but it's more about what inspired them to make it in the first place. None of the essays are overly long or overly nostalgic or academic- they're quick vignettes from people who were there, and it feels more like an oral history than an anthology. To flesh things out, the book integrates essays from scene participants like Henry Rollins, Keith Morris, Mike Watt, Joe Carducci (SST), the Vandals' Steve Human, Tony Reflex of Adolescents, and other artists, filmmakers, players, scenesters, and members of Black Flag. scenesters and contributors Jordan Schwarz and David Markey (who went on to do the documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke, among other things) and covered bands like the Vandals, Saccharine Trust, Adolescents, Black Flag, the Minutemen, Social Distortion, Red Kross, Descendents, Suicidal Tendencies, and D.R.I. In the 304-page, large-format hardcover, you get reproductions of the five issues of early 80s zine We Got Power!, as well as an unreleased issue from 1984, each with a brief intro for context. We Got Power!: Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California is one of these. I grew up with paper zines, and burrowed deeper into underground music through them, so I have a special weak spot for those sorts of chronicles, with all their naval-gazing solitary weirdness. I've read plenty of books on punk, metal, and other scenes, and aside from a couple exceptions ( Rip It Up and Start Again, Our Band Could Be Your Life) my favorites are the first-person autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories, like Please Kill Me, Lords of Chaos, Get in the Van, Lexicon Devil, and We Got the Neutron Bomb. ![]() We Got Power!: Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California They also throw in a jigsaw puzzle because hey why not. And this being a Light in the Attic vinyl set, all the details are done right. Only a couple of the singles feature him singing and these songs were by no means hits but you can feel his sensibility in the music. You Turned My Head Around is beautiful box set of 45 RPM 7"s that collects singles released on Hazlewood's boutique Lee Hazlewood Industries label during this time. His music could hold a few different ideas in mind at once. The records he produced and sang on in the 1960s including, most famously, Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots are Made for Walkin'", had rich atmosphere and weird production choices and could seem absurdly dramatic. In my mind, singer, songwriter, and producer Lee Hazlewood seemed like a sly and reasonably sane Phil Spector with a great sense of humor. You Turned My Head Around: Lee Hazlewood Industries 1967-1970 There are choice tidbits, too, like the styling specifications for this photo shoot "more than one million pounds of Givenchy couture gold jewelry." While Arulpragasam handles the heavy lifting of her ascent in the public eye, an excellent foreword by filmmaker and art-school pal Steve Loveridge (who's currently working on a M.I.A.-focused documentary) provides further insight as to the constant myth-making involved with her backstory, as well as a look at her earlier formative days. There are revelations to be found, then, in her own commentary on the varying styles that have defined her career thus far: Arular's splashy stenciled trench warfare, Kala's "digitizing of third-world taste," the eerily prophetic digital info-jam of *///\Y/*, and the primary-color assault that she's lent to her N.E.E.T. Arulpragasam's work has always possessed a visceral impact, but the many subsequent interpretations of the work itself (varying both in content and intellectual accuracy) speaks to the complexity of her artistic and political ideologies. And that visual side of the perpetually controversial pop rioter is the focus of this glossy self-titled coffee-table tome, which compiles the iconic art and imagery that's marked M.I.A.'s decade-plus career as a recording artist. Years before Mathangi Arulpragasam made even a single scrap of music, she was a struggling art student designing album covers for Elastica. ![]()
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