Mutations

Sam McPheeters

• Publisher: Rare Bird Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781644281338
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Inaugural pick for the Pitchfork Book Club GQ's One of the Best Books to Read Right Now How can so many people pledge allegiance to punk, something with no fixed identity? Depending on who and where you are, punk can be an outlet, excuse, lifestyle, escapism, conversation, community, ideology, sales category, social movement, punishable offense, badge of authenticity, reason to drink beer forever, or an aesthetic of belligerent incompetence. And if someone has a strong belief about what punk is, odds are they have even stronger feelings about what punk is not. Sam McPheeters championed many different versions. Over the course of two decades, he fronted Born Against, released dozens of records and fanzines, and toured seventeen times across the northern hemisphere. In this collection of essays, profiles, criticism, and personal history, he examines the diverse realms he intersected?New York hardcore, Riot Grrrl, Gilman street, the hidden enclaves of Olympia, and New England, and downtown Los Angeles?and the forces of mental illness and creative inspiration that drove him, and others, in the first place.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Networking Under the ESP Station
• Frozen Pits
• The Heist
• A Conversation with Aaron Cometbus
• The Troublemaker
• Germs Film Review
• The Casual Dots
• Die Kreuzen
• Discharge
• The Flying Lizards
• Fort Thunder
• The Gossip
• Green Day
• Missing Foundation
• No Trend
• 7 Seconds
• SSD
• Thrones
• Youth of Today
• The Debate
• Alberti Records, RIP
• Please Don’t Stop the Muzak
• Backgrounding for the Smell
• Uncle!
• Touchable Sound Interview
• A Booting
• Endnotes
• Thanks
• Special Thanks