Coloring Outside the Lines: A Punk Rock Memoir

Book Reviews | Nov 12th, 2006

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Author: Aimee Cooper
Publisher: Rowdy’s Press
Genre: Autobiography/Music
Pages: 132
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com link

This autobio covers the usual punk rocker journey: alienated high school kid discovers the utopia that is punk rock (“I finally belong!”), enthusiastically joins the scene, becomes a scenester for awhile, becomes disenchanted with the “utopia” and eventually leaves the nest (“I am my own person!”).

Aimee Cooper is one such average punk. Her stories are surprisingly banal for someone who spent time in the early 80s LA punk scene. The only interesting things that happen in her life as a punk, that piqued my interest and made me think of something other than “so what?” are unfortunately given only short passages: getting arrested, hanging out with Black Flag, and being the recipient of a lesbian crush.

While her punk experiences aren’t worth writing about, her writing itself is very well done. She stays away from clichs, name-dropping, and exercises in punker-than-thou self-indulgence, and writes in a personal way that’s easy to relate to. There is also a surprising, and seemingly unintentional, honesty in her writing. You can tell she’s a bit dorky – she was of graduate school age and her best friends were in their early teens – and that, deep down, she was still an outsider even when she belonged in the group. As a reader, you get the feeling that the punk rock scene didn’t really suit her, that she outgrew it before she really tried it on, and it’s no shock when you discover on the last page that she bowed out of the scene within a year and a half of entering it. While not a good book to reflect the early hardcore/punk scene, it is a good reflection of one girl’s inner journey to maturity and self-esteem.

Bottom Line: Who cares?
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