Book report

Brian Johnson

Period 3, World History

May 17, 2012.

Book Report

           

            The book Babylon’s Burning from Punk to Grunge, by Clinton Heylin gives a detailed account of the birth and evolution of Punk rock. The author begins the book by describing early bands that played the legendary CBGB venue in New York. The main band he discusses is Television one of the pioneering punk bands at the time. The band drew inspiration from Iggy and the Stooges. An early band that is considered by many to be “Proto punk” yet the author doesn’t discuss the stooges much in the book. Heylin describes Televisions troubles musically. He describes them as not being musically talented at first, since the band was founded by members who weren’t musicians in any sense of the word. Then when they did reach a level of talent, the members had conflicting ideals on where they wanted the band to go. The thing that set this band apart from others in the early seventies, according to the book, was their appearance. Before their first show the band members got haircuts so they’d all have short hair which was strange back then. Through various eyewitness testimonies, Televisions career is described leading to other bands appearing such as the Ramones. Now after talking about Television the author jumps around various bands around the world, including the Ramones, and doesn’t go too in depth about them until discussing the Sex Pistols. The first thing that is described is the early times of the band. The Sex Pistols unlike Television were extremely well accepted at first in the music scene of London. This didn’t prevent the oncoming problems that occurred due to band in fighting. The Sex Pistols weren’t around for very long, but they did make a huge impact with their album “God Save the Queen”. After describing The Sex Pistols it goes into discussing the hardcore scene of the 80’s. The scene started in Washington D.C and spread across the United States. This scene would eventually spread to Seattle. The Seattle scene was slightly different from the scenes everywhere else. It had an all around different sound and would get its own name. It would be labeled Grunge, because of the sound of  the music and the appearance of the musicians. One of these bands would go on to be the biggest band in the world, Nirvana. This is where the book ends with the discussion of Nirvana.

            I enjoyed the book and found it very informative, but I had a few problems with it. The author wrote it in such a way that it jumps around by increments of five years randomly.  This can cause some confusion, and become quite annoying. I also didn’t understand why the author would start talking about a band and this switch to another one or another topic within a paragraph.  This also caused confusion and annoyance. The book also failed to go into detail about various things, such as the music scenes and fans. It had more focus on the musicians than the music and the impact of the music. What is good about this book is that when the author goes in depth about something he really goes in depth. There is a great amount of detail put into the book the author does this by using eyewitness testimonies. These testimonies come from mostly band members or producers. Though the book does skip various things it goes in depth, therefore it gives a fairly accurate description of Punk Rock.