We're Having Much More Fun

Judith A. Peraino is the author of Listening to the Sirens and has published articles on Blondie, PJ Harvey, Pussy Riot, and Lou Reed.

Tom McEnaney is the author of Acoustic Properties and has published articles on Spotify, This American Life, and David Lynchs use of sound.

Introduction: The Futures of Punks Past, or Putting the Archive to Use 1. Being Different in New York: Punk Begins Underground 2. Image Gallery 3. "Punk was me on stage wrecking":: An interview with Jayne County 4. Two Chinese girls" in the NYC Punk Scene: An interview with Sylvia Reed on Anya Phillips 5. Doing the Future Yourself: The Screamers and Early Los Angeles Punk 6. From Seattle to "a sunnier destination": The Underground Origins of the Screamers 7. "Punk is the last incarnation of the counterculture":: An Interview with Fayette Hauser on Tomata du Plenty and Cultural Transformation 8. "We wanted to de-codify it": An Interview with KK Barrett on the Screamers 9. Image Gallery 10. Magazine Love: Ian MacKaye and Martin Sorrondeguy on Discovering the Screamers 11. Peace or Annihilation: The Politics of Punk in the Bay Area 12. Image Gallery 13. Ticker Tape from the Punk Parade 14. Maps for the Groundless 15. "I was a very timid child":: An Interview with Orlando Xavier 16. Be a Crossroads! Punk Beyond Borders 17. Image Gallery 18. "You got to make it happen or it aint going to happen." An Interview with Martin Sorrondeguy 19. Punk and the Means of Production: No Dream or Nightmare Deferred

Get in the van because Were Having Much More Fun is one of the most exhilarating, nuanced, multifaceted, and surprisingly moving trips through punk that Ive ever encountered. Riveting and genre-busting, Judith A. Peraino and Tom McEnaneys anthology is more than a mere collection of artifacts documenting punks regional roots and fast-evolving scenes. Its a labor of love that captures the history of places and people, social intimacies and riotous, DIY art and music-making by way of putting a rich array of objects--photographs, flyers, letters, set lists, scribbled notes and dog-eared memorabilia--in conversation with the fierce and influential musicians who built new and rebellious worlds from the ground up. Smart, incisive, and painstakingly curated, this is a collection dedicated to telling the story of punk through a wider lens so that we can more clearly see and hear in their own words the queer punks, punks of color and punk chicks whove always been in the mosh pit alongside those more familiar faces tied to this indelible cultural revolution. As essential a read as Greil Marcus Lipstick Traces and Dick Hebdiges Subculture.



-Daphne A. Brooks, author of Liner Notes for the Revolution



I had a sense memory rush of exhilaration reading this book. As a teen in the 1970s, running a million miles an hour, I looked and leaped close to the LA punk scene and the Screamers entourage in particular. Now in my sixties, reading nucleus plans and handwritten notes of the band members, I appreciate more the rich, wild education I was so fortunate to receive. Truly, it was the most fun.



-Kid Congo Powers, the Gun Club, the Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seed, and author of Some New Kind of Kick



Its common for people in the wildstorm of adolescence to feel like they are a part of something special, but nearly fifty years later, looking back, some of us were right! This book is a testament to everything that drew me to punk as a kid and it reinforces why so many of us broken children found our home here, and why we dont age out. It digs deep into how and why we collectively built punk by pulling ephemera from the treasure chest of punk archives (that I didnt know existed) and looks closely at the many ways punk developed its own language made of angst, creativity, and self-determination. Its wonderful and insightful, and illustrates how punk makes an otherwise unbearable world a vibrant, meaningful place to exist.



-Noah Landis, Neurosis and Christ on Parade



This book locates punks meaning, power, and spirit in the standard narratives margins--in queer/dyke punk, Latine punk, and Afropunk; regional scenes beyond New York-London; and "minor" figures who signified majorly. These intersectional histories get mapped with scholarly rigor and a fan club heart, stitched up with archival imagery into something that may be the smartest punk zine youll ever read.



-Will Hermes, author of Love Goes to Buildings On Fire and Lou Reed