You'd better take drugs and learn to love plastic

Cuando una escena se define por los límites que cruza, es inevitable escribir sobre el libro Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk de Gillian McCain y Legs McNeil, que desafortunadamente a veces cae en el chisme y los rencores arraigados en la memoria, pero en ocasiones logra transmitir el sudor de una época, la formación y al mismo tiempo destrucción de estilos, asienta la niebla sobre la historia del punk (que algunos reducen a esos pocos años que duraron los Sex Pistols) y nos regala definiciones para instantes que parecen inefables.

Por regla profesional procuro darle poco interés a la persona que hay detrás del músico (a menos que la personalidad y las vivencias sean inseparables de la creación), por lo que pasaré por alto las anécdotas de vocalistas abusivos debido a sus adicciones, golpeadores de mujeres y demás adornos que convierten a este libro en un compendio de lo que no quieres saber del punk, sin embargo rescato algunas descripciones y escenas que logran definir los momentos de impulso y formación de los primeros punks a través de Lou Reed (The Velvet Underground), Ron Asheton (The Stooges) y Danny Fields (manager de MC5, The Stooges y Ramones).

Lou Reed: The old sound was alcoholic. The tradition was finally broken. The music is sex and drugs and happy. And happy is the joke the music understands best. Ultrasonic sounds on records to cause frontal lobotomies. Hey, don't be afraid. You'd better take drugs and learn to love plastic. All different kinds of plastic—pliable, rigid, colored, colorful, nonattached plastic...

Rock and roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back your beat so you could dream. A whole generation running with a Fender bass . . . The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?

(Van a ver a Beatles a The Cavern pero encuentran a The Who) Ron Asheton: The whole room turned really primitive—like a pack of starving animals that hadn't eaten in a week and somebody throws out a piece of meat. I was afraid. For me it wasn't fun, but it was mesmerizing. It was like, "The plane's burning, the ship's sinking, so let's crush each other." Never had I seen people driven so nuts—that music could drive people to such dangerous extremes. That's when I realized, This is definitely what I wanna do.

Danny Fields: It was a midwesternized version of anarchy. Tear down the walls, get the government out of our lives, smoke lots of dope, have lots of sex, and make lots of noise.