From the Velvets to the Voidoids: A Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World

Clinton Heylin’s profile of the American punk rock scene from 1961-1980 has a promising construct: biographical profiles of important bands interspersed with liberal quotes from the musicians themselves. But his observations and musical insights are only intermittently interesting, and are often inaccurate. He has some good sections on underappreciated Cleveland bands though — Pere Ubu, Mirrors, The Styrenes, The Electric Eels, etc.