Upon finishing New Brunswick, New Jersey Goodbye on Saturday, I think I’m glad I read it. I like that I was immersed in another’s experience of punk rock, and I liked the description of the New Brunswick scene, although it was minute. I also would have loved a companion CD with the book of the New Brunswick scene compilation mentioned in the book. That would have given us non-scenesters a little glimpse of the sounds of Kauffman’s hardcore community.

Another complaint about the book is it reads like an impromptu conversation. Kauffman seems to write off the cuff about his memories of his college years, as though it’s a transcription of him speaking the book into some hand held recording device. This initially turned me off to the book, and by and large adds to the idea the punk rock isn’t exactly intellectual. While it makes for a quick read and seems to be in line with the tone of voice of punk rock (generally, and argumentatively), it sometimes sounds rather asinine and adolescent for an author with a masters degree.

Overall, I give it a C+.

On the upside, now that I’ve finished NBNJG, I’ve started reading The Anti-Matter Anthology: A 1990s Post-Punk & Hardcore Reader by Norman Brannon. It’s a collection of artist interviews done by the author from 1993-1998 (I believe) for a fanzine the author published called, surprisingly enough, Anti-Matter. The interviews are not your typical “you’ve got a new album coming out, what was it like to tour with…, so you play Gibson SG’s” type of literary fodder found in most music magazines but is an attempt to make traces of humanity itself. The interviewees in questions just so happen to be musicians playing some form of punk rock. I’ve read the foreword and the introduction, as well as the first page of an interview with the lead singer of Samiam, which I am unfamiliar with at this moment in time, right after signing to Atlantic Records. I’m sure this blog will read more about it as I myself do as well.

Oh, and it’s the second Monday of Curtis Blackwell and I’s weekly “Horror Movie Monday.” Last week we watched the pretty terrible movie Wrong Turn which is apparently what The Hills Have Eyes is based on. Don’t bother with it. I’d give it a 1.5/5. While not the worst horror movie I’ve ever seen (that would probably go hands down to Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror), it certainly isn’t worth the hour and a half the could be spent doing laundry, washing the dishes, or taking out the recycling.

Tonight we’re watching The Thing From Another World which is one of my all time favorite horror movies about a group of US military scientists who stumble upon a crashed UFO and a deceased alien inside… or so it seems! Can’t wait. It’s a fantastic film.

Anyway. Enough blogging for this morning.