"Both Books Offer an Important and Refreshingly Nuanced Depiction of Punk"

"Some of the lineages Kane traces here are so well known, by those who care to know such things, that they hardly bear repeating. It's no secret that Lou Reed held Delmore Schwartz in high esteem as a model and mentor, or that Richard Hell was a published poet long before the Voidoids were formed. But the additions Kane makes to the narrative of the genesis of 1970s underground New York are invaluable. Kane devotes a full chapter to Ed Sanders's band, The Fugs, formed on the Lower East Side in 1964. Confrontational, gleefully amateurish, funny and obscene, The Fugs recorded then-scandalous songs such as 'Coca Cola Douche', 'Group Grope', 'Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side' and 'Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker' (the line was borrowed from the same Amiri Baraka poem that inspired the anarchist group). They satirized Ginsberg's near-sacred poem, 'Howl'. Clearly, The Fugs were precursors not only of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, but later punk groups such as the Dead Kennedys. 'Monday nothing, Tuesday nothing, Wednesday and Thursday nothing' begin the lyrics of a popular Fugs song. Their cheerful nihilism presaged the 'cynical enthusiasm' that, as the zine founder Tony Drayton recalls in Punk is Dead, drove London punk."

Chris Kraus at The Times Literary Supplement reviews Richard Cabut and Andrew Gallix's Punk Is Dead and Daniel Kane's "Do You Have a Band?".