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Y'all know I would be lying if I said that I read every word, period and even semi-colon in the 700-plus page book, but at least I'm NOT going to pass it off as if I didn't read the thing but just tell you that it's great like Johnny Carson used to do. Anyway Steven H. Gardner of NOISE FOR HEROES fame has once again done us a fine service with this detailed account of just what was going on in the garages, basements and cheap rehearsal halls of the western portion of these here United States back during the seventies, a time when high energy and exciting rock & roll was certainly on the wane if you were stuck in Everyday USA, but if you wanted the down-to-earth action you surely knew where to look...
Given that a whole load of the punk rock (using that term in the loose Marc Zermati fashion that it always should be) coverage was pretty much focused on the East Coast as far as this continent went (the West being the Entertainment Capitol of the World, and who says that rock & roll is strictly entertainment and not a soundtrack for that International Youth Language of them days?) there is a whole load of sparkling and pertinent information that is to be found in these pages. Gardner tries (perhaps even succeeds until more facts are uncovered in the future) in detailing to us as exactly what was going up, down and even sideways in all of the areas west of the Rockies, and if the guy missed anything well, whatever it was could have been so miniscule that even an electron microscope couldn't detect it.
Gardener's intelligent enough to dig back into the fifties/sixties roots of what eventually would come to a head what with even the likes of Kim Fowley and his pal Rodney Bingenheimer getting their kudos while the folk at BACK DOOR MAN are lauded for their efforts in moving and shaking the South Bay Scene (although there is nary a mention of DENIM DELINQUENT but you couldn't shove everything in!). San Francisco even gets their dues trying to rescue the area from the rot left over from the entire psychedelic era going to hack while in the Northwest a direct line of energy from the late-fifties garage band era down through the late-seventies is successfully revealed to our scale-falling eyes. Idiots like that Andy Secher, that guy who ran HIT PARADER into the ground back in the eighties and who actually said that he thought that "new wave" was getting all of the bigtime press while heavy metal was being ignored (hunh?) actually believed that punk rock had no roots if you can believe that! And people think that "I" should engage my mind before opening my mouth! Well, if ol' Andy would only get hold of these TUNELESS RACKET books maybe he would get somewhat of an education that listening to hackneyed hair metal bands just don't getcha!
Tirades against now-meaningless rock press cut and pasters who never amounted to anything asides, this book really does its best. If your faves of the day aren't mentioned well, worse things have happened in life. Otherwise well, these pages are filled with facts I'll bet you never knew about with inside-the-clique information that's all peppered with personal opinions that at times just might even make you angry, but if so well you could always write your own book. If you had the stamina, vast knowledge and wall-to-wall record collection that I'm sure Gardner has that is.
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