Resident Punk: LEGS McNEIL in conversation. Legs will be livestreamed from NYC, Crispin Kott will be in the room. Host: John Robb.

Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank, and Stumbled My Way Through the '70s Punk Scene (and Beyond)

Legs McNeil in conversation

Join Legs McNeil (via livestream) and co-author Crispin Kott (in person) in conversation with John Robb as they discuss Legs' new memoir. Centered around the crucial CBGB punk scene, Resident Punk also candidly covers Legs' wild childhood, the juvenile delinquency that led to the founding of PUNK magazine, his time at SPIN magazine, a behind-the-scenes look at Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, his friendships and encounters with musicians and writers, and so much more.

BOOK INFO:

Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank, and Stumbled My Way Through the '70s Punk Scene (and Beyond) by Legs McNeil, with Crispin Kott. Foreword by Chris Stein of Blondie.

Time-travel to the punk scene of 1970s New York and beyond—as seen through the eyes of its chief reporter known as “the original punk” who gave the movement its name.

Part memoir and part cultural history, Resident Punk offers a no-holds-barred expose chronicling the iconic and unforgettable music scene that would become defined by bands like the Ramones, Blondie, Television, the Heartbreakers, and Talking Heads.

In 1975 at just 19 years old, Legs McNeil—alongside John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn—cofounded PUNK magazine. In doing so, they inadvertently chronicled the start of a movement. McNeil’s role in the whole thing? To be their resident punk, embodying the zeitgeist the magazine was looking to capture, often by getting f*cked up with musicians, artists, writers, and hangers-on . . . and sleeping with a different girl every day of the week.

Now, just in time for the 50th anniversary of PUNK magazine, Legs tells the stories behind the stories in a sleazy, star-studded adventure. The coauthor of Please Kill Me, Legs invites readers along for the ride as he tussles with musicians and artists, groupies and writers, Golden Age Hollywood film stars and legendary figures of ‘70s New York. Featuring untold stories about Joey Ramone, William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, the Dictators, the Dead Boys, Sinéad O'Connor, Ozzy Osbourne, Tom Waits, and many more, Resident Punk is an immersive look at the punk music scene as only a true insider can tell it.

What’s more, Legs shares the raw meat of his life, starting with his gritty suburban childhood, and the teenage wasteland years that put him on a path to punk. Join him as he steals David Bowie’s hubcaps, wrestles with Norman Mailer, lives life on the edge, and confronts his own demons—eventually setting in a small Pennsylvania town, where he’s very much still the Resident Punk.

Crispin will join us armed with signed bookplates from Legs and copies of his book will be available at the Festival.

About the Authors:

Legs McNeil, the original punk, is the co-author of 2.5-million-copy global bestseller Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (Grove Atlantic, 1997), a book widely hailed as the punk “Bible.”

One of the co-founders of the seminal PUNK magazine, which gave the movement its name and where he was known as “Legs McNeil: Resident Punk,” Legs is a former editor at SPIN and editor-in-chief of Nerve. He is also the co-author of The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry (Regan Books, 2005), co-wrote I Slept with Joey Ramone: A Family Memoir with Mickey Leigh (Touchstone, 2010), and co-edited Dear Nobody: The True Story of Mary Rose (Sourcebooks, 2014).

One of the foremost chroniclers of the punk movement, Legs’ writing has long been the go-to for on-the-ground accounts of those heady years of New York and London in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

He has appeared in innumerable documentaries exploring the punk years, on networks as diverse as the History Channel, Epix, and VH1. His journalism has appeared in the likes of Rolling Stone, SPIN, New York Magazine, VICE, Details, High Times, AirMail, The Atavist, Cultured Mag, The Daily Beast, and many, many more.

Crispin Kott is the co-author of Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to New York City, Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area (both Taylor Trade), and The Little Book of Rock and Roll Wisdom (Lyons Press).

A longtime journalist covering music and beyond, Crispin has been published in PopMatters, Please Kill Me, Nerve, Legsville, Chronogram, Roll, and many other online and print media outlets.

Description supplied by the event organiser.