Gabriel Kuhn - 'Sober Living for the Revolution' - PM Press
300 pages
I've
never been too fussed about reading up on Straight Edge as a scene or
movement; I've always just lived that way because it's what worked
for me on a very personal level, however I thought I'd give this a
blast, mostly out of curiosity. So what we have here is a collection
of interviews and writing from a number of figures with varying
degress of involvement with SxE over the years, including the
'founder' himself, Ian MacKaye. There were a couple of traps that
'Edge: The Movie' fell into that I'm glad weren't present here, these
being a.) very North-American oriented coverage, and b.) largely
male-oriented coverage. In contrast, this book is very heavy on the
European side (including ManLiftingBanner, and Dennis from Refused),
and features a number of women doing positive things (xSisterhoodx
and Emancypunx Records) in what, along with hardcore in general, can
often be seen or regarded as quite a masculine scene, so that was
awesome to see. Admittedly I must agree with the review I saw of this
in Maximum RockNRoll 336, in that the pieces by Nick
Riotfag, one on queer culture within Straight Edge, and the piece
'Towards a Less Fucked-Up World' were two of the most interesting
reads in the whole book. The interview with MacKaye was actually one
of my favourite bits too, if only because it's always funny to hear
him discuss how disproportionate the Edge scene became with regards
to his initial, personal contribution. On the whole though, aside
from a couple of rare exceptions (Point of No Return's 'Bending to
Stay Straight' I found incredibly and unnecessarily long-winded),
this is a pretty concise and informative collection of Straight Edge
history, equally of use to those unfamiliar and educated alike. It's
also printed on a nice off-white paper... (Lee)
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