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There's this comic artist named Raeghan Buchanan, and she has this lovely little zine-style paperback comic called "The Secret History of Black Punk":

Early punk gets highly narrativized, mythologized really, in this very specific rigid way that excludes a lot of the real-life messiness of a international anticommercial artistic movement. In particular, Buchanan argues, the standard narrative of early punk largely excludes the contributions of Black musicians despite there being quite a few relevant people who were both ground-floor and influential in punk's development. Buchanan's book goes back and fills in the gaps.

Here I try to condense Buchanan's book (and some semi-coherent notes I made when I saw her give a talk about the book at TCAF this year) into a mixtape; every song below except #4 is from an artist Buchanan recommends. By the way, you can get Buchanan's book here if you're in the US, here if you're in Canada, or on Amazon; and she's got a super cool horror comic [she showed us at TCAF] in an upcoming anthology.

1. "Noise Addiction", Pure Hell

Some of the most interesting stuff on Buchanan's list is live proto-punk acts in the rust belt in the 70s. Pure Hell formed in Philadelphia in 1974 but had moved to New York and were running in the same clique as Sid Vicious by the time they recorded this album ("Noise Addiction") in 1978. The shows they did around this time were well received but due to some sort of fight with their producer the album didn't get a commercial release until 2006(!). This is tragic, as this album rules. It is super raw.

2. "Let the World Turn", Death

And here's oddly almost the same story again: Proto-punk band made of rust belt black teens, legendary live shows, recorded a revolutionary album but it got buried by the label for decades. Death formed sometime around 1973 in Detroit (1971 proper, but for the first couple years they were doing funk music under a different name) and is made up of three brothers; they're incredibly early on the punk timeline, but their sound is mature and fully-formed. I've found people seriously claiming Death invented punk.

This album was recorded in 1975 but saw no commercial release until 2009; apparently the sticking point in this case is that the label insisted they change their name to something other than "Death", but they refused. (Frustratingly, an unrelated metal band formed in LA in 1983 named Death and went on to be so famous that they wash out Death from Detroit completely in Internet searches.) This album goes real hard but I like this one track for its complex ~dynamics~. (And because of the subtle signs, still audible in the edges of the track, that this used to be a funk band.)

3. "Skydive", Poly Styrene

Over in Britain, Poly Styrene fronted the punk-plus-saxophone band X-Ray Spex, where she turned in some admirable screaming from 1977 to 1979. But what is of more interest to me is this forward-thinking solo album she recorded in 1980.

Check out this lovely little pop track. Little flashes of clashy punk feels, but also strange currents of what five or ten years later would have been recognizably "ska" or "new wave". I have no idea how a listener in 1980 would have interpreted this but it feels super ahead of its time.

4. "So Cold", Rocket from the Tombs

As mentioned, this one track is off-theme. Not from Buchanan's book, this is just some proto-punk I like. White kids from Ohio. Skip if you're here for the history, or listen if you just literally wanted a punk mixtape.

Rocket from the Tombs were a legendary live group in Cleveland that broke up after one year (1975), after which their members either formed other bands or died of drug-related illness. They never recorded an album, but in 2002 this incredible live record got released, "The Day the Earth Met the Rocket from the Tombs". It's stitched together from two live performances and has this lovely nasty feel throughout.

5. "Modern Industry", Fishbone

Okay, back to Ms. Buchanan. Fishbone the band has been in continuous operation since 1979 (their most recent commercial release was last year) and were a key step in the process of Ska transitioning from the original, slow-tempo, proto-reggae form that developed in Jamaica in the 1950s, to the rock-ier form you're probably familiar with if you're a Millennial. Buchanan speaks of Fishbone in reverential tones, and talks about Fishbone t-shirts being the standard discovery protocol for Black punk fans in the 90s (apparently Bad Brains is a complicated subject).

Fishbone's discography is a vast ocean I've only skipped the surface of so far. But here's a goofy, really fun 1985 track somewhere near the intersection of ska, punk, and reggae, where Fishbone improvise names of radio stations for four minutes. (Though I'll admit it was a hard choice whether to link this, or the fantastic metal cover of "Freddie's Dead" [originally from the movie Superfly] they did in 1988).

⬇️ Click below for punk from the 2010s-2020s ⬇️

i'm working on a book about speedrunning! i'm conducting a number of interviews & editing them & doing research & writing about speedrunning for the art & design & video game culture imprint read only memory who now exist under the auspices of thames & hudson. i've written for them & some of their projects in the past, like this piece about speedrunning history (now outdated but still fun) and a profound waste of time. if you like pretty books about niche topics, i think this will be a good one of those for you!

the people are all very nice and put a lot of thought into their books. i think it would be very neat if you wanted to get one. i'm still actively writing & working & researching, so i will take any and all of your favorite stories about speedrunning to my inbox.

thank u :)

as someone who cares a lot about plants, and has seen the wonderfully weird world of plant intelligence research reduced to simplistic memes, i was very worried going into The Light Eaters that it would be an extension of that; very New-Agey or I Fucking Love Science-y or a series of uninsightful regurgitations of research in overly simplified and undercited forms, because that's what i'm used to.

instead i got one of the most beautiful and awe inspiring things i've read this year. it is interested in the facts, but also, the people themselves doing the research, and the lives of the plants being studied. it's interested in the work required to get these results, the politics surrounding them, it's interested in the emotional as an integral part of science. the sociology and philosophy of how science changes its mind on things

zoe, and all the scientists featured here, are genuinely empathetic towards plants and the unique way of experiencing the world they have, and she does not just reduce them to just being a tiny human or some kind of newage fetishized monolith. she trusts that you as the reader are smart enough to understand the nuance and uncertainty at play here. she trusts you to get that "plant intelligence" or "plant consciousness" does not mean they are even remotely like humans, but rather their own unique thing. to be a plant would at once be deeply alien, something no mammal can even comprehend, and yet probably also a deeply familiar too

this book taught me about things i did not even know of. this book took me down a peg and helped remind me that i don't know anything about anything, and i say that as an animist who already viewed plants as being creatures and relatives experiencing the world too. you might think you vaguely know what's in this book just based on a handful of headlines from the past few years, but trust me you probably don't. you don't even know how deep the rabbit hole goes. the author has been following this field for eight years and knows her stuff.

go read it for free at one of these great websites:
libgen - z-lib - anna's archive
or check it out at your local library. or buy it from a corporation or something i dont rly care just please please read the book please i'm BEGGING you.

contrary to poopular opinion you don't have to read or watch hillbilly elegy now that jd vance has a foot hovering over the white house threshold. it's a bad film written by a yale grad, beloved by heartsick libs that paints an entire region of human beings as lazy hicks who just wont work to raise themselves from poverty. who cares about the long, long series of systemic failures. but golly aint mamaw and the rest got a mystic and dignified way about 'em?

if you wanna know something real about the region, save your brain cells and grab a copy of What You're Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Dr. Elizabeth Catte from yr library or thrift or new or wherever. it's the most "she doesn't even go here!" thing i ever read.

If you're still curious, listen to this review instead.
If Books Could Kill: Hillbilly Elegy

the gap between the cultural reputation of the book and its actual contents as described on If Books Could Kill is... really something. I always thought it was a "pity the white working class, left behind by society" book, but nope it's actually about how everyone in Appalachia wants to be poor and live on benefits and the only cure is Tough Love

(This is IBCK's specialty: actually reading all the hot-topic books that everyone talks about, usually revealing that absolutely no one else has)