Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Treat Me Like Dirt

Liz Worth interviewed as many first wave Toronto punks as she could find. She organized their story telling into chapters based around event and ways to describe the scene. The result is an anecdotal story telling by the characters that made up that scene. It is brilliant because punk is an oral history and Liz uses their quotes to retell their stories. She doesn't re-write or paraphrase or even use rock journalism techniques. Instead she gathers quotes by the folks involved in the incidents and has them tell the story. There is always more than one story teller so they go back and forth and you get a perspective on the folk lore and legends of Toronto. Gary Topp, Colin Brunton, Steve Leckie, members of Teenage Head, members of the Diodes, members of the Ugly, and loads of other unsung bands that made up the scene. She hads done an incredible job here of bringing the stories back to life. And Gary Pig Gold of the Pig Paper assists in the editting and Ralph Alfonso publishes this on Bongo Beat Records so this has more than gone through the first wave filter of fact checking. You can be assured that the stories in here are accurate.

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