Featured Book: Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music

Ok, I just turned the last page on this little slice of gnarheaven, and seriously felt compelled to toss this one up here. If you faithful readers recall the last Featured Book post, on American Hardcore by Steven Blush, you might be thinking this column is developing into a one-trick pony. But bearfight with me here, kids, seriously... Though these two titles, on the surface, may seem like they're covering the exact same material, that statement gets a big, wet "yes and no". How quickly we forget that age-old cliche our elementary school teachers always tried to instill in us: "If you drop out now, you'll be dealing out H.J.'s like hurricane Katrina for a half-eaten eggroll and two broken cigarettes" .... err, i mean, "Don't judge a book by its cover." Right. That one.



What I'm getting at is this: sure, both books cover probably one of if not THE (Spleen's opinion) most important movement in rock music history, but they take two definitive approaches to the material. Where Blush's incredibly extensive interviewing, dissecting, and psuedo-mimicry of a tribal history lesson do their jobs very well, Silence instead focuses solely on the visual motifs, design, craftsmanship, and style of the movement. Furthermore, pumping the book chock full of incredible live shots and photography, album art and cassette sleeves, DIY tshirts and flyers, and accompanying notes and anecdotes to each one are the reasons to sink into this just as rabidly as you should Blush's book. But one giant difference between two two books is that Blush focuses solely on '80 - '86 American hardcore (most likely due to how detailed he approached the subject matter. If he would have continued in that manner, he woulda probably got to volume 12 before hitting the formation of Earth Crisis) and Silence instead, staying more with just style and visual history makes it all the way through late-80's metalcore, thrash-core, skate-core, post-hardcore, early-emo/screamo(?), and all the way to about Snapcase in '94, almost a decade after A.H. stops.


(Sample from the album art index in the back of the book)

Regardless, check it out, it's wonderful. It gave me an old-school-hardcore-in-book-form boner, and I like those. Cuz way too often any punk books on the shelves always seem to skip over it pretty blatantly, jumping from the dissolving of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, to New Wave, to what the fuck, who's this Kurt and the Nirvanas, and why is no one listening to hair metal anymore? ... Also, best line of the book: "There wasn't time to mold your liberty spikes or shine your Dr. Martens. It was jeans and T-shirts, shaved heads, and worn-out sneakers." Fucking rad... Also the photos I included in this post are from the book too... Fuckfightrage.

Sidenote, 10 points to anyone who thought "Wow, Spleen's elementary school teacher musta been a modern-day fuckin Nostradamus or something to drop a Katrina reference in their stay-in-school diatribe about avoiding handjobs for Asian cuisine" ... Cuz you're right. I thought the exact same thing.