punk - 2016 - Disco's Out... Murder's In!: The True Story of Frank the Shank and LA's Deadliest Punk Rock Gang

Disco's Out... Murder's In!: The True Story of Frank the Shank and LA's Deadliest Punk Rock Gang
Heath Mattioli & David Spacone
Feral House
2016
224 pages

I know from Penelopee Spheris' Decline of Western Civilization and Stephen Blush's book American Hardcore that in Los Angeles at least, punks became part of the street gang mix. Disco's Out... Murder's In! is, as far as I know, the first and currently only memoir of an LA punk gang member, recalling the life of Frank the Shank, underboss of LMP, La Mirada Punks. The overall narrative paints a picture of a group of people who weren't great punks, as they didn't contribte anything creative and their constant and extreme violence pretty much drove good people out of the scene, and weren't great gangsters, as they didn't seem to make any money. They mostly seemed to get into fights with the other punk gangs and when they weren't doing that they were killing people for not being punk.

The book is mostly a repetitive story of casual yet extreme violence, with a failed love story twisted into it. The LMP do it all up to murder, and usually they don't have much reason for it except that they thought it was fun, or maybe just because it alleviated boredom. The coldest story in a book of pointless cruelty describes an LMP member named Pineapple Head killing a B-Boy with a homemade bludegeon. Before the final blow, the B-Boy asked, "Why are you doing this?" Anthony Burgess' Alex and the Droogs would have had some poetic response in their nadsat speak, but Pineapple Head's reply was, "because." While participating in such youthful hi-jinks as mindless killing, Frank also fell in love with someone who broke up with him when he confronted her about her maybe cheating... what a surprise. Even in a narrative of his construction he doesn't have proof that she cheated on him but he still goes off on a quick rant about how after 30+ years he hates her and how much he hopes she gets raped. I wonder how she might tell the story of a love so pure with a punk gang bully.

At the end of the story Frank reports that people will tell him that him and his friends ruined the scene, which was probably true, and probably why so often these gangs are a minor detail in narratives about LA Punk if they're mentioned at all. As I was reading this I wondered if any of the killings they discuss were cold cases. When we now look back and see punk as this flare of independent creative energy, who wants to put the spotlight on the participants that cut it all to pieces, literally, with their cheap switchblades? There's some good pictures of LMP and the book cover features a Raymond Pettibon drawing.

street gangs - 2010 - Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain

Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur
Ryan Blair
2010
Portfolio
222 pages

Before now, I've never ever even opened the cover of one of the mass-market books by some business guru investment whiz. My economic worldview is anticapitalist and I have pretty much zero interest in entrepreneurship but I also haven't read any of them because they generally look like trash published to exploit the gullibles who live in the fantasy of making millions by following a few trite adages. I highly doubt that any of these investment guru/success advice books are required readings in any MBA programs and I also doubt you can mention you've read these books on your resume. I've always assumed that these books have nothing other than the cliches they're drenched in to offer their readers.

As of today I've read one such business guru book, Nothing To Lose, Everything to Gain by Ryan Blair. God, speaking of cliches... just look at that title. I read this one because Ryan Blair says he was a gang member. I don't really believe that claim but whatever, his gang past is a small part of the book. It's his street gang background he draws upon when he mixes Jay-Z quotes in with the Sun Tzu quotes that I'm sure appear in every other book in the genre. I am convinced that every other book of this kind is exactly like this with some surface details altered and its basic elements rearranged from item to item and books like this have no value other than capitalist mythmaking.

street gangs - book - 1995 - The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence, and Control

The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence, and Control
Malcolm L. Klein
Oxford University Press
1995
270 pages

Malcolm Klein is probably one of the leading experts on twentieth century street gangs, their activities and social formations.  His first books on the subject were published in the early 1970s, when modern street gangs were in their nascent stages (The Crips, for example, now the largest of the Los Angeles street gangs, and prone to internal fracture and conflict, was only a few years old at that time, and still operating with the Black Panthers as their model).  Klein currently holds emeritus status at the University of Southern California with their department of sociology, and he is also a popular media expert on gangs.

Klein analyzes the gangs as social units and largely discerns them from other units which may look similar (like motorcycle clubs, for example) according to a number of different social factors.  Many of which are personal factors wherein the gang is an appropriate social forum in which to express them, such as the need for respect, recognition, and achievement, while other factors are more broadly social, such as poverty. Klein is, however, sure to note that no single factor, including poverty, is sufficient in describing what directs young people to a gang life.

Klein also discusses the criminal activities of gangs, noting that while police exaggerate the crimes of gangs and reduce them to purely fighting units, often the gang members exaggerate their own criminal antics as well.  Furthermore, according to Klein, while gang members gain respect for their demonstrated willingness to do violence or transgress against norms, gang leaders are not necessarily the most violent members, according to Klein, and may not be violent at all.  

Much of Klein's analysis comes from speaking through his experiences in conducting past research and in working directly with law enforcement and with gang members in affected areas.The determination of a city as a 'gang city' circa 1995 had a politics surrounding it with both benefits and detriments to the urban centre that gained such a distinction so he acknowledges that some of his data might be questionable. This book was published during a peak period of gang popularity and hysteria, when music by Death Row Records hip-hop artists, and films like Menace II Society and Boyz In Da Hood were pushing very specific symbols and images of LA gang culture into the mainstream and it serves as a strong academic voice to counter the effects of such cultural forms.

beats, 1960s - book - 1960 - Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society
Paul Goodman
Vintage Books
1960
296 pages

Just before the start of the 1960s, and into the first couple years of the decade, a number of books were published that took a critical eye to American society during one of its most prosperous periods.  Such books included The Organization Man (1956) by American sociologist William H Whyte, that critically analyzed the behavior of American corporate executives, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) by freelance writer and urban critic Jane Jacobs, that critiqued the contemporary design of urban centres and their effect on quality of life, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1960), a book that inspired the environmental movement with its descriptions of the harmful ecological effects of certain industrial practices.  Growing Up Absurd (1956), Paul Goodman’s 300 page discussion of contemporary life and its effects on burgeoning masculinity in mid-century America may be added to this list, especially as it played a role in inspiring the radical 1960s.

Paul Goodman (1911-1972) was a radical leftist intellectual polymath who left behind a large body of literature when he died.  He was a prolific writer who had produced a number of works of fiction, drama and poetry.  Most of his work, however, was critical commentary and cultural analysis, on a myriad of subjects, delivered from a far-left perspective.  Goodman has been mentioned in Andrew Cornell’s article A New Anarchism Emerges as one of the writers who kept American anarchism vital during the mid-century period when far-left politics were at a low ebb in the United States.   Goodman wrote for a number of leftist magazines, publishing articles in which he discusses the mass media, sexuality, politics, social behavior, and the arts.  Out of Goodman’s large bibliography, Growing Up Absurd is probably his best known work, and the text that gave the author his reputation as a first-rate social critic.

In this book, Goodman identified a decline in the possibilities for young men in the United States during the 1950s.  Much of his analysis is focused upon what he considered to be the poor quality of employment positions that were available to young men at that time.  Goodman argued that, while a young man (the author operated under the presumption that masculinity was at stake, young women, according to the author, may still find life satisfaction in motherhood) may have opportunities open to them, the capacity for these opportunities to offer life satisfaction to them is nonexistent.  Many work occupations were/are unskilled or driven by business principles that empty them of their apparent usefulness because they become isolated from   Goodman's thesis for the text is that there were few avenues for an adult male to realize their masculinity in 1950s American society.

Goodman also argues that society has (essentially) become a machine of interactive mechanisms oriented towards production, and this has resulted in a withering of the aspects of life that once gave it meaning including community, education, and democracy.  Because Goodman was primarily focused on the effects of this society upon the quality of life for young men, he determined that delinquency, gang life (cf. Street Corner Society by William H Whyte for more concrete analysis of this social phenomena), and the arts (as represented by the Beats) became the major realms in which young men may find community and self-satisfaction.  That young men would turn to such outlets in order to feel useful is problematic to Goodman, however, who explains his sympathy to the need of youth to feel useful as they become adults, but also argues that such outlets in fact interrupt development and maintain the subject’s adolescent state.  

Goodman’s text basically predicted the youth culture of the 1960s.  Growing Up Absurd analyzed the socio-cultural conditions that gave rise to the Hippies, and what’s more Goodman’s political writings contributed to a body of far-left literature that influenced the New Left.  Goodman calls for a restructuring society oriented away from the technocratic strictures of isolated production towards the building of communities that enhance the experience of living.  It appears that many of the conditions Goodman described have continued, possibly even accelerated, where a division from work and community has lead into crises like the currently ongoing financial meltdown and a Graduate student bubble.  Numerous other crises of youth have emerged with the acceleration of the consumer society as individuals try to construct their identities based on brand associations and through image manipulations via social media.  All of this suggests that Growing Up Absurd can be read as a text that divined the cultural ground for the new social forms of the 1960s, but also that aspects of the text are still relevant as cultural analysis.