Best books about punk music according to redditors

Refuge Recovery is a Buddhist recovery group with 3 or 4 meetings in Austin weekly. It is for people with any kind of addiction.

RR was started by Noah Levine, he wrote a book about his path from addiction to recovery Dharma Punx. He eventually started Refuge Recovery out of frustration with AA and its dependance on a higher power and how that affected recovery.

RR is adamantly as secular as it can be, while relying on the path that is followed in Buddhism, related to the four noble truths. Belief in reincarnation is not a prerequisite and most people I've met in RR do not believe in it.

Finally, I'll say that most of the people I met during my time in RR were pretty cool. They are stubborn in their resistance to AA and any kind of submissive rehab, but they have been through enough suffering to know they need a group of like-minded people. Give it a try. I only wish I'd written sooner so you could possibly make the 8:30pm meeting tonight.

Meetings here: http://www.refugerecovery.org/meetings-in/texas/

Read Nothing Feels Good. All your answers lie within that book:

Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and EMO https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312308639/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_b1bqDb7MDE8FN

As a TL:DR, Emo has gone through several waves of popularity and genre fusions, so it gets confusing.

To summarize the last 30 years, Emo started as a reaction to political hardcore bands in the 80s (Rites of Spring), then it sort of mutated into alt/indie rock (Sunny Day Real Estate, The Promise Ring, Jawbreaker) in the 90s.

The reason people have the reaction to Emo they have now is because of its next mutation was less a musical style and more of a lifestyle/subculture that blew up in the early to mid-aughts. This was Emo's largest mutation, which is why it's hard to define.

Bands like Dashboard Confessional led the way, while bands like Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, and (whether they agree/like it or not) Thursday pushed it along for bands like My Chemical Romance to elevate it to its height.

Today, we're seeing a reaction to that mid-aughts Emo subculture. Beginning in about 2009/10, bands like Fireworks and The World is a Beautiful Place... have taken us sort of full circle. Now Emo can be defined by twinkly or clean guitars (Tiny Moving Parts), or even more of a grunge-y sound (Citizen, Movements, Moose Blood). For a full experience of what Emo is in 2019, listen to Sunsleeper; they are an amalgam of Citizen, Movements, and Brand New.

For me Emo is back in that sweet spot, like how it was in the late 90s, early aughts before it blew up. I don't think it's going to blow up that way again, but for now it's nice to have consistently good music coming out from the scene while everyone else ignores it.

I don't think you asked for a history lesson, but get me started on Emo and I can't shut up (I really just wanted to post the link to the book and look where it took me, haha).

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, or whatever the kids say these days.

The Punk Rock Fun Time Activity Book.

Bikini Kill are awesome. There's an amazing book called Girls to the front about the history of riot grrrl. Nostalgic for those days.

Goth is about the music. A good book to read about the history of goth music is "Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84" by Simon Reynolds. (UK version.)


> Punk's raw power rejuvenated rock, but by summer 1977 it had become a parody of itself. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 is a celebration of what happened next--bands like Joy Division, Gang of Four, Wire, Contortions, Talking Heads, The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League--who dedicated themselves to fulfilling punk's unfinished musical revolution. Based on over 125 interviews, Rip It Up offers a panoramic survey of the seven year period following punk, taking in everything from PIL to ABC to SST to ZTT, and dealing with genres including industrial, 2-Tone, synthpop, and goth.

Interviews include goth bands, but also bands that were influential to goth bands.

Bands like: Bauhaus. Siouxsie & The Banshees. The Cure. The Birthday Party. Killing Joke. Virgin Prunes. Theatre of Hate. Sisters of Mercy. Southern Death Cult. Throbbing Gristle. Whitehouse. Nurse With Wound. Clock DVA. 23 Skidoo. Husker Du. Mission of Burma. Meat Puppets. Psychic TV. Cabaret Voltaire. Coil. Foetus. Einsturzende Neubauten. Test Dept. Swans. Depeche Mode. (& more!)



http://ripitupinfohype.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/info-on-rip-it-up-and-start-again.html

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rip-Up-Start-Again-1978-1984/dp/057121570X?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

I found that Everett True's book offers the most insight on what exactly transpired during that last European tour. Things didn't go wrong all of a sudden, they were pretty bad in 1993 in terms of his addiction and not wanting to go on tour and then became even worse in 1994. Kurt wanted to cancel the European tour many times during that month of February. He even asked his management what would happen if he did cancel it and their response was "you're financially liable". Not good.

He also missed Courtney a lot as she was away in London and LA. He would call up Cali Dewitt (he was with Courtney) and constantly ask him if Courtney is cheating on him. He ultimately canceled the tour after Munich (his voice was gone by that time anyway) and then flew to Rome with Pat so he could finally meet up with Courtney. He didn't get the warm welcome he wanted, he felt emotionally rejected by her, so he tried to kill himself. After Rome various people felt that the coma affected his personality. I believe it was Krist who called him as being monochrome after the whole Rome ordeal.

​

He had the following things on his mind during March of 1994:

​

-- Was Courtney cheating on him or not? I'm pretty sure he was convinced that yes.

-- The lawsuit over the Heart-Shaped Box video (he felt that he could go bankrupt because of it and this terrified him yet he still canceled the tour and lost a ton of money, which shows you how paradoxical his personality could be at times).

-- The pressure of doing Lollapalooza. Everyone in his circle (especially Courtney) was pressuring him to do it. They would have earned $6M from that single concert, more than their entire European Tour. He just didn't want to do it. I'm sure the other bandmates really wanted to do it since they weren't getting royalties from songs and the In Utero album sales were nowhere near Nevermind's. And this further fostered the toxic environment in the band. By that point he barely even communicated with Dave and Krist.

-- There was also the infamous intervention which quite a few people mention in their books, Danny Goldberg especially. They all tried to get him to quit drugs, clean up and do Lollapalooza. He didn't want to hear any of it. His response was pretty much "If William S. Burroughs can lead a life as a junkie for 20 years, why can't I?". Which goes to show he had no intention of quitting heroin, he just wanted to disappear.

​

March 94 was the tipping point for Kurt Cobain. I wish he had the clarity to quit the band, get away from home, cancel all touring and just do nothing for a year or two... But when you're in the thick of it, it's easy to lose sight of the good things in your life.

Anyone who believes that the early punk scene was a safe space is dead wrong. Gangs sprouted up around local bands and would frequently engage in acts of violence. Rape, assault, and murder were rampant in these early days. The idea that punk rock was an inclusive community is 100% a falsehood. You were liable to be murdered for so much as looking at someone the wrong way (this is not an exaggeration) If anyone wants to know how bad it really was in the early days, I recommend reading "The Hepatitis Bathtub" by NOFX. https://www.amazon.com/NOFX-Hepatitis-Bathtub-Other-Stories/dp/0306824779 They go into everything about the scene and some of it is truly disgusting

Nothing Feels Good

If you want to know more, Andy Greenwald wrote a decent history book about the development of emo music.

I think it's cool too. We have a punk rock activity book in our house that gets a lot of use. Just because this letter says "fuck" doesn't make it bad. If the kid can't read yet, who cares, and if they can, the overall message is one promoting kindness, love, and punk rock.

There's so much out there. I came of age on post-punk and all the bands that that followed, and I'm always discovering another band I missed.

Have you read Simon Reynold's book? It talks about a TON of bands beyond the obvious ones.

I agree with a lot of what you say about the dangers of figures on the left becoming sympathetic to the far right and vice versa, but this part is maybe a little simplistic:

> It is, to put it bluntly, a marketing strategy. Siouxsie Sioux co-opting fascist iconography to be provocative is exactly the same impulse as 'triggering the libs' is for these internet centric far-right troll factions today.

I don't think it's "exactly the same impulse", in that those far-right troll factions sincerely believe in a lot of Nazi principles, whereas when groups like Siouxsie and the Banshees or the Sex Pistols or Joy Division use Nazi imagery, I think the purpose was often more about a kind of disgust with their present society and its ideals as opposed to genuinely endorsing a fascist alternative (of course it's true that some groups that started out using such imagery in more nihilistic way did slide over into genuine fascism, but others did not). I've recently been reading the old blog of Mark Fisher (author of Capitalist Realism and "Exiting the Vampire Castle" who was discussed by Amber in ep 78), he had a post on the movie Downfall which talked briefly about what these groups may have been expressing with that imagery:

>Meanwhile, the glimpses we have of the Berlin above show a landscape out of The Triumph of Death, a city devolving into total anomie: child conscripts, vigilante hangings, intoxicated reveling, carnivalesque sexual excess. While those scenes play out, you can almost hear Johnny Rotten leering, 'when there's no future how can there be sin?' (Although for Germany, in fact, there was nothing but the future: immediate postwar Germany was subject to a willed amnesia, a disavowal of cultural memory). It's no accident that post-punk in many ways begins here. As the Pistols pursue their own line of abolition into the scorched earth nihilism of 'Belsen was a Gas' and 'Holidays in the Sun', they keep returning to the barbed-wire scarred Boschscape of Nazi Berlin and the Pynchon Zone it became after the war. Siouxsie famously sported a swastika for a while, and although much of the flaunting of the Nazi imagery was supposedly for superficial shock effects, the punk-Nazi connection was about much more than trite transgressivism. Punk's very 1970s, very British fixation on Nazism posed ethical questions so troubling they could barely be articulated explicitly: what were the limits of liberal tolerance? Could Britain be so sure that it had differentiated itself from Nazism (a particularly pressing issue at a time that the NF was gathering an unprecedented degree of support)? And, most unsettling of all, what is it that separates Nazi Evil from heroic Good?

The book Lipstick Traces, which was one of Fisher's favorites, is kind of hard to summarize but it makes a lot of connections between punk and other movements like the dadaists and the situationists, and there's a bunch of stuff in there about the meaning of punk's use of Nazi imagery too. In modern times I wouldn't be inclined to give much benefit of the doubt to a band that used fascist imagery (well, except maybe for Laibach), but I don't think we should assume bands that did this in the 70s were genuinely fascistic.

Meanwhile, unlike the punks I don't think Chelsea was associating with alt-right figures to be transgressive or nihilistic, I think she's likely being honest when she says her original purpose was to infiltrate and gain useful information, though it's definitely possible that in doing so she started to empathize with them on a human level and get too chummy. But as long as she's said she's not going to try to do this anymore and isn't seen continuing to casually socialize with fascists, I'm not inclined to go for the "Chelsea is bad now" idea.

First off, I'd just like to say sorry for all your troubles. Secondly, I read a book once that might help you somewhat. It's called Dharma Punx. Long story short - the guy lived a pretty bad life and was doing hard drugs by the age of 13 and tried killing himself at 17(maybe 18, it's been a few years since I read it). His father, while he was in lock up, introduced him to Bhudism and meditation. He's stated that it helped him out a lot, maybe meditation might be something that you might want to look into.

Wreckers of civilization - a very in depth book about Throbbing Gristle and COUM Transmissions (Up until their first breakup, if I'm not mistaken)


RE/Search #4/5: W.S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Throbbing Gristle - should still be in print


RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook - Eternal classic that some important musicians used as a starting point. Mostly very rare and out of print, but RE/Search had it in some bundle for around $100 recently..

NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories

https://www.amazon.de/NOFX-Hepatitis-Bathtub-Other-Stories/dp/0306824779

Bis jetzt ein sehr interessantes und unterhaltsames Buch.

Lipstick Traces

Last Gang in Town

Our Band Could Be Your Life - The Butthole Surfers chapter is the best thing in the book

Englands Dreaming

Spirit of '69

Just Kids - Patti Smith

I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp - Richard Hell

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.: A Memoir - Viv Albertine

Punk Rock Fun Time Activity Book

Wikipedia says this Joey Ramone wrote this song and it's about being bored out of his mind on tour over Christmas in London. However, I read in a bio on the Ramones that Joey wrote it in a hospital in NYC, bored out of mind and unable to go anywhere. I can't find the page, but I think he injured his foot, and his toe had gotten infected.

I know other's will disagree, but I enjoyed Nirvana: The Biography by Everett True. I hate reading books, but those 650 pages were pretty easy to digest.

https://www.amazon.com/Nirvana-Biography-Everett-True/dp/0306815540

Link to his book on amazon, great read http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0306815540

Long story short, I hate reading and have only read 2 books since I graduated high school 16 years ago. But just finished one of those books yesterday. NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories. And only after it sat on a shelf collecting dust for over 2 years before I finally said "it's time."

I'd recommend that to anyone who was or is a NOFX fan or anyone who's a fan or interested in the 80s Southern California punk scene. These guys tell it like it is and don't hold anything back. It'll make you wince, laugh, cry and want to punch someone in the face.

And in honor of their 5th and all time best selling album turning 25 years old yesterday, here's some Linoleum

Johnny was pretty gifted. He had a great mind. I strongly recommend his autobiography

Its easy to forget the treatment of the Irish in England and maybe Mrs Thatcher was not exposed to that.

Contemporaneous to this punk & new wave happened and the easy answer, John Lydon's/Johnny Rotten's Biography [No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs] (http://www.amazon.com/Rotten-No-Irish-Blacks-Dogs/dp/031211883X)

Lydon's parents are Irish and experienced the anti Irish culture.

So if anyone is tempted to answer the question it was probably cos the English didn't seem to like the Irish.

Well that's what Johnny says.

It may not have been just Thatcher, the Labour Party that was in Government from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1979.

The policies were hardly all her policies and it was Labour who cocked up NI Premiers Terrence O'Neill's efforts to tackle sectarian issues in the mid 1960's and be friendly with the South and the Civil Rights Movement mess was theirs too..

Was there an anti-irish culture in Britain that was not limited to the Tories but existed in the Labour Party, the football terraces and in the streets.

I really liked the 33 1/3 book about Ramones by Nicholas Rombes. It's part of a series of books about individual albums, and this one focuses on the cultural context of the 1970s American punk movement and the Ramones' role in it. I do wish Rombes had discussed the songs on the Ramones' debut album a little more, but what is in the book is still fascinating.

There are loads of great, crazy stories about the recording of various albums by The Fall. Several are recounted in these two books (along with many other stories):

The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall
The Fallen: Life In and Out of Britain's Most Insane Group

Edit: formatting

If you like Sit Down and Shut up - may I recommend Dharma Punx? Absolutely love that book.

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Disco's Out...Murder's In!: The True Story of Frank the Shank and L.A.'s Deadliest Punk Rock Gang

Not a biography but:

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

Very good. In the event my Santa needs some inspiration: books are great. I don't have any denim related reading, and /u/KingOCarrotFlowers informed me of a cool music series, so these books are on the wishlist to pick and choose from: 1 2 3 4 5 6. There's always the Steam wishlist and the winter sale is coming up.

FYI: Everett True's account of Nirvana's history is a much more compelling and interesting read.

We Jam Econo is truly awesome.

I would add:

afro punk

american hardcore

D.O.A. A Rite of Passage

Kill Your Idols

The Real Frank Zappa Book

Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

No One Here Gets Out Alive

X: The Unheard Music

And, for fun:

Heavy Metal Parking Lot - I actually went to high school with some of the kids interviewed here.

That would be Girls to the Front.

I also read this awesome history of women's music festivals several years ago-- it's definitely fun reading. It's called Eden Built by Eves . Since women's music festivals were a product of the '70s, it's got a lot more "earth mother" kind of tone to it, and I can't remember how effectively it addresses the controversies of women-only spaces (and the controversies of women-born-women only spaces, in some cases...) But it was a good read.

"Industrial" music started here

http://www.discogs.com/label/Industrial+Records

The slogan "Industrial music for Industrial people", coined by the lovely Monte Cazazza, was where the actual term "Industrial music" comes from.

Largely it was a synthesis of medium and message; through a combination of sound and presentation TG looked to communicate thoughts, feelings and criticisms of modern (between 1975-1981) life. It was NOT about noise for noise sake. It was experimental. Listen to 20 Jazz Funk Greats, listen to D.O.A; these are not super noisy records but they are Industrial.

This is great reading for more of the story http://www.amazon.com/Wreckers-Civilisation-Transmissions-Throbbing-Gristle/dp/1901033600/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347582593&sr=1-1&keywords=wreckers+of+civilization

As far as bands that embody that synthesis of form and message, making more a collage project than just a "band" (and that don't involve directly members of TG) , I can think of a few off the top of my head: Prurient,Death Grips, Grouper, Msott (maybe). And actually...although I'm not a fan...I have to hand it to Amanda Palmer for putting her money where he mouth is and making the form and concept of her music mesh in a way not dissimilar from how TG employed fans to create zine's and fans clubs.

In short, to me, Industrial Music represents a holistic view of artwork involving the process, presentation and final output in a raw and honestly emotional or intellectual way.

Of Mice and Men and Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo

I know people hate it when you say "It's in the book," but seriously, I spent several years writing a book about living on the mountain, and it's not the one about Lookout Records, it's called Spy Rock Memories. It's got some really good stories, and not just about bears and crazed pot growers!

John Berger's Ways of Seeing (absolutely brilliant)

Ron Carlson Writes a Story

Critical Theory Today

Wilhelm Reich-The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Amy Bloom-Normal

Tom Stoppard-Arcadia

Sara Marcus-Girls to the Front

I'd recommend just reading the book. It talks about important concepts but is (I find) very readable.

If you'd like an interesting discussion about the Situationists and their influence on culture, check out Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century.

IMHO, Debord was spot on.

Ugh I would love this so much.

Two years ago I picked up Girls to the Front and it must have been just before finding reddit because I so much wanted other people to talk to about how the book made me feel. If people who read this thread haven't read it or don't know about riot grrrl I felt like it was a pretty great study of the movement.

I'm kind of trying to muddle through the Game of Throne books and Al Burian's Burn Collector book. I have some Ariel Gore books I want to do next. I'd put in the ring Ariel Gore's Atlas of the Human Heart. I couldn't put it down. I've had this one on my bookshelf for a while too.

From top right:

The Antlers - Hospice - I had just seen them the day before I bought this. I'd been meaning to get it for a while. Sounds just as I hoped it would - amazing. I really love having a large physical version of the album, I really like the art.

The Field - Sun & Ice - Also had just seen The Field the day prior to buying this. I think this is the single before From Here We Go To Sublime. It's an excellent EP/Single. I had only starting listening to The Field after seeing a tweet from a webcomic's author and fell in love immediately.

The Field - Things Keep Falling Down - Same situation as before. From wiki, this is one of his first 12" releases.

Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972 - Not going to lie, I only started listening to Tim Hecker about a week and a half ago. Then I saw him at Moogfest the same day I bought this album. I think he played the first half or so of this album. I was blown away. I haven't had a chance to listen to it (though I have digitally) but I know it's going to be an experience.

A Silver Mt. Zion - Horses in the Sky - I'm slowly working on completing my ASMZ collection. Slowly. I picked up 13 Blues and This is Our Punk Rock over 2 years ago. 2xLP and 3 sides, and the 4th side has some cool etches.

Wire - Pink Flag - I've been looking for this forever. It's a 180g reissue, but I don't mind. I'm listening to it now and wow. I've been listening to it on my laptop so long that I could never have expected how great it sounds. I'm going to work on getting other Wire records soon.

Stiff Little Fingers - Inflammable Material - My dad's got the original issuing of this right upstairs. I got this one because I wanted my own copy, this (like Wire) is a reissue. Maybe one day I can inherit the original pressing, haha.

Public Image Ltd - Album - I got this one because I had just read John Lydon's autobiography and, although I had been listening to PiL for a bit I hadn't really invested too much listening time to them. Now I got this album so I can do as such.

I saw some other excellent stuff while I was there: Yanqui UXO, a bunch of Flipper albums, Justice's Cross (which I was SO tempted to get, but I didn't have an extra $25), and so much more stuff. And I got a free T-shirt for spending over $100, haha.

If you're ever in Asheville, NC, make sure to check out Harvest Records, as well as all the other excellent stores they've got spread throughout downtown!

For some very interesting insight into the beginnings of the Ramones may I recommend "I Slept with Joey Ramone: A Family Memoir Hardcover – December 1, 2009" writen by Joey's brother, Micky.


In point of fact: Alice Cooper was a huge influence on Joey. Listen to Alice Cooper's original "I want to be elected". Remind you of anything??

ACTUALLY, that myth persisted for so long because Joey actually did write so many songs about Johnny stealing his girlfriend. The truth was outed when Mickey mentioned it in his book.

Well, the bands that made it out of the 70s were the exception rather than the rule. And the Pistols (and the Damned, and countless other "proper" punk bands) were really just recycling '50s rock & roll, but louder and sneerier. Initially it was interesting and "arty" but it became a rigid template incredibly quickly.

There's a reason Lydon went on to PiL - because he was clearly better than punk would let him be as Johnny Rotten. And Siouxsie Sioux and Pete Murphy effectively invented Goth because equally, punk wasn't open to the things they wanted to do. The bands that stuck with it - UK Subs, The Damned, even the Clash - just recycled the old stuff or kept with mainstream pop/rock styles into the '80s.

What I've read of the original punk scene tends to paint it as aggressively conservative. The bands may have initially been "experimental" but once the die was cast, that was it. TG were lumped in with punk initially, although they were clearly much more of an intellectual endeavour, because of their transgressive style. Subcultures, scenes and music genres weren't really that much of a thing to most people, so there was a huge amount of crossover in who would play gigs and what the audience would be like.

You should read 'Lipstick Traces' by Greil Marcus, 'Rip It Up And Start Again' by Simon Reynolds and, most certainly, 'Wreckers of Civilization' by Simon Ford, for a great cross-section of the late 70s music scene.

I'm currently reading "NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories". It's about the punk band NOFX and it's really good read if you're into musical biographies/memoirs.

Amazon!

Yall should read the NOFX autobiography. Such a good book and has a lot of good info on addiction. I couldn't put it down.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0306824779/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1519735416&sr=8-7&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Nofx

Hey pretty great on first listen! Read their new book it's incredible! About to finish it for the second time! https://www.amazon.com/NOFX-Hepatitis-Bathtub-Other-Stories/dp/0306824779

hey guys,

my name's jeff, i was one of the directors of the Backstage Passports. the linoleum cover is by Christine "Cece" Sherman. i just did a quick google search trying to find a full version online to share with you all but no luck. :(

she does pretty great covers of Franco Unamerican and Eat The Meek as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgMJFgsh9VA

and while i'm typing, i'm programmed to always mention that everyone should pre-order NOFX's new book, "The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories"!

www.amazon.com/NOFX-Hepatitis-Bathtub-Other-Stories/dp/0306824779

I enjoyed reading Noah Levine's Dharma Punx -the story of how he kicked drugs using meditation -- so much that I've been listening to his 'Against The Stream' dharma talks for years. He's stayed clean now for 20 years. Apparently people in his community have started an alt (or addition) to AA called RefugeRecovery that aims to help people deal with their addictions via buddhism/meditation. It's early days but there might be a group in your area.

You might gain some benefit from reading Dharma Punx by Noah Levine. It's not the be-all, end-all of Buddhism, not by a long shot, but I found it a really easy way to access an intro to Buddhism when I was in a really rough place in life.

Welcome! What sort of hardcore are you into? And looking at your WL, you're a fixed gear biker too?

Also, based on what you said above, you should check out a book called Dharma Punx.

There was three really great books that I found extremely helpful foodwise when I was a vegan. They're also chock full of easy to make great recipes.

http://www.amazon.com/Please-Dont-Feed-Bears-Cookbook/dp/097705571X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317867686&sr=8-1 Please don't feed the Bears is an excellent zine-esque cookbook that focuses on cheap and easy to make vegan meals while educating you about the health benefits.

http://www.amazon.com/Soy-Not-Oi-Joel-Olson/dp/1904859194/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317868985&sr=1-1
Product Description
An authorized reprint of the classic vegan cookbook. Over 100 recipes designed to destroy the government, complete with musical notes to accompany the chef. A sure-fire winner for every revolutionary palate

It's fairly anarchist slanted but it's chock full of great recipes.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Farm-Vegetarian-Cookbook/dp/0913990604/ref=pd_sim_b29
THIS RIGHT HERE IS ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS EVER.

Ignore the fact that it says vegetarian, as most of the book is chock full of vegan stuff. They also teach you how to keep a healthy diet and keep your vitamins up.

If you enjoyed BHN as much as I did, check out [Dharma Punx(http://www.amazon.ca/Dharma-Punx-Noah-Levine/dp/0060008954).

Street kid junkie becomes Buddhist teacher.

Have you read this? http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Feels-Good-Punk-Teenagers/dp/0312308639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422153197&sr=8-1

This is also a great book about it http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Feels-Good-Punk-Teenagers/dp/0312308639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382621157&sr=8-1&keywords=nothing+feels+good

I would reccomend Soy not Oi!

It costs $7.00, but tells you how to make everything vegan on the super cheap, plus what foods have those all too essential vitamins and protein you need. Personal favorite is the 'Bring Back Black Sabbath Black Bean Casserole'.

NOFX kicks ass. Have you read their new book?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0306815540

This one.