Penguin, 2009. Since December 2006 I’ve been working almost full-time on an oral history of punk rock in the Bay Area. My co-author is Silke Tudor, and we’ve interviewed nearly 200 people, from Green Day, Rancid and Operation Ivy, on back to Maximum Rock n Roll magazine, the Dead Kennedys, Flipper, The Avengers, Crime, and The Nuns. Check out our myspace page for a nice swath of Bay Area punk!

I haven’t written much about this era of my life, and I don’t know exactly why it feels time to post a few things about it. Probably because if something isn’t available online, it automatically doesn’t exist for a lot of people. And perhaps because enough time has passed. And maybe because I’m publishing a new book about punk rock history, and people aren’t sure if I was ever a punk. Anyway, here goes.
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An exclusive inside look at London’s legendary Abbey Road, recording studio for Sir Edward Elgar, Glenn Miller, Beyond the Fringe, Pink Floyd, and some group called The Beatles. A new music television show, Live From Abbey Road, was taped at the studio and premieres June 2007 on the Sundance Channel.
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Media star, cocktail creator, and Las Vegas bartender extraordinaire Tony Abou-Ganim, the world’s first monarch of the bar. And the snappiest dresser I’ve ever met.
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Big-wave surfer Zach Wormhoudt inherited his father’s love of skateboarding — and his company. Today he’s head of the industry’s top skatepark design firm.
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How did a 40-year-old woman fool the world into thinking she was teenage prostitute and wunderkind author JT LeRoy? As a punk rocker, porn writer and phone sex operator, Laura Albert had been inventing herself for years. This story first appeared in Salon, and was the basis for a screenplay commissioned by the Weinstein Brothers. Not that I got paid anything.
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Inside Vietnam’s remarkable economic renaissance. One reason — lots of catfish.
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Some are for singing, others for fighting. Some tell you the temperature. As a collective bunch, they indicate when it’s time to plow a field. Maybe that’s why the right cricket in China can fetch nearly $13,000.
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America may be the birthplace of jazz — and of such legends as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong — but it’s the Parisian radio station TSF that’s keeping the passion for it alive.
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Yes, another story about pirates. This is an overview of piracy on the high seas, as it pertains to what eventually became the coastal United States.
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