"Please Kill Me", by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, is a fascinating, not to mention depressing read. The endlessly entertaining stories are fascinating and lose little of their sparkle when read and reread. But the (predictable?) crash and burn of many of the book's lead voices, ending in burnout and/or death, is a depressing (but realistic) conclusion to the volume.

As editors, McNeil and McCain did an incredible job of culling together interviews from dozens of characters and constructing a cohesive, nearly linear narrative of events. Many times, a story is told by more than one person. The story is "begun" by one person and "continued" by another corroborating voice, reading almost like a talkshow transcript even though the interviews likely took place months or years apart. Of course, with such editorial savvy comes the power to focus on events and people that the authors find crucial. Using my limited writing savvy, I just labeled the editors as "biased". But they certainly should be, because this is an "Oral History of Punk", and what's history without a biased viewpoint. After all, they were there, so I certainly have an interest in their bias.

Nevertheless, I'm inclined to have issue with some of the books' slants. The beginnings of punk in NYC is the main focus, but English punk is plainly labeled as an ugly warping of the original punk aesthetic. McNeil himself, "resident punk" of the original "Punk" magazine, calls his own number and delivers a diatribe against English punk. Firstly, "punk" is just a four-letter word, it's just a label, and nobody owns it. Was NYC punk different from English punk? Absolutely. So what? Is Detroit techno different from English techno? Absolutely. So what? Techno evolved as more people were exposed to it, that's how music works. English punk was more than just spiked hair, safety pins, and gobbing (the trademark punk stereotypes that prevailed throughout the 80's, and are still around somewhat even today). Many of the American principals came from middle class backgrounds, and got involved in the scene because they were bored of their parents suburban lifestyles. Many of the English principals came from working class backgrounds (save the Clash), and fell in with punk not because of boredom, but because it was a distraction from the inevitability of a life on the dole. The English may have blatantly copped their looks from Richard Hell and his ratty t-shirts, but the scene's origins and motivations go far beyond mere idol worship. John Lydon understood this -- he noted that punk is not music for the over-privileged, as did his slumming blue-collar American counterparts when they remade the music in their own image, called it grunge, and dominated the world with it.

There's also the prevalence of incredible debauchery, particularly with respect to drugs. A cynical person might say that the drugs are glamourized in this book, but the last sixty pages or so are centred on the deaths of noted drug abusers Sid Vicious, Stiv Bators, Johnny Thunders, Nico, and many more. "Please Kill Me", in words only, is neutral with respect to the debauchery, and it rarely judges anybody. I believe the editors feel that the book's ending serves as the implicit finger wagging that no direct warnings could easily say. Thus, the focus is on the outrageousness, and other less "colourful" characters (i.e. Blondie, Talking Heads, and wot, only one mention of Suicide??) are practically ignored. However, these stories are often hilariously funny, and although some of them will be known to keen fans, I can't imagine anybody not discovering new gems from reading this book.