Reviews

Sam McPheeters completely sold out the scene with this book (/sarcasm). Had this been written when I was 19, I would have gobbled up the contents – it feels like it was written a decade or two too late to be of much relevance. It is interesting that the author spends most of the time writing about the bands the preceded his own musical career (it says he was born in ’81, so I doubt he was spending much time with Rites of Spring or Youth of Today in the mid to late 80’s). As a work of history this might be interesting to someone in 50 years as likely there will be some musical genre that sounds like hardcore and this might provide enthusiasts with a peek at what it was in its heyday, but it never feels like a definitive history and more like a pastiche of remembrances of bands and people, personal stories of his life, and some interviews. There’s likely a pretty decent history of hardcore out there. Had the topic been a subject I had no connection whatsoever I likely wouldn’t have made it through to the end.

alright__fine's review

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5.0

As a person who entered "the scene" only a few years before McPheeters called it quits for good, so much of his experience is familiar to me even if my versions of things were (at times very) different. I ripped through this audiobook in a matter of days, and I'm told I missed out on the endnotes so I'll probably buy a hard copy proper so that I can hold on to it forever.