What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk

Five years ago, I began putting a book together—a collection of my writings themed around punk music/punk subculture. They were all written between ‘99 and 2014, and had previously appeared in my own zines that had since gone out of print, or other zines or online magazines that had gone out of print/gone dark; style-wise, they ran the gamut from CNF to lyric essay to music criticism. I decided to crowdfund and self-publish the book, but at that point I didn’t really know what I was doing in regards to either crowdfunding or publishing full books. The book was almost ready to go but the artist I’d commissioned never finished the cover art, and my crowdfunding campaign hadn’t been entirely successful, and I wound up not having enough money to publish it.

About a year after I realized I couldn’t do it the way I’d initially planned, the book was picked up by a small press. My plan was to buy enough author copies to fulfill the initial crowdfunded preorders, and hopefully sell even more than that. With the help of an editor, I partially rewrote some older pieces and wrote some new ones to flesh it out a bit more. They found someone to do the cover and interior art, and put up a preorder page; I got blurbs from some of my favorite writers. It was all basically ready to go. But shit happened, and the press folded, and the book was once again dead in the water. (I’m not naming the press here, because my intention here is not to call anyone out. The people involved in all that are friends of mine, and as a small press owner myself I understand that shit happens. The saddest part about that whole thing is that I don’t get to use the cover and interior art we had, because it was amazing.)

I’ve recently realized that I need to get the book out in some way, because I need to put it behind me. For one thing, I feel badly that the people who crowdfunded or preordered never received anything. For another, I just need to move on, and I can’t fully move on until I get it out into the world. So I’ve decided to self-release it. For right now, I’m only making a digital version. I know, I know, print is way better, but I don’t have the funds to print it right now, and I’m certainly not going to ask people to pre-pay for it a third time. I’ve redone it somewhat—took out some of the weaker pieces, added in some others I’ve written in the past three years—and I’ve used my own artwork for the interior and done the cover in a zine-y/Xerox art style. I’ve uploaded it to Payhip, for a sliding-scale, pay-what-you-want price. This way, people who already paid for it (or just can’t afford it otherwise) can download it for free, and other people who can/want to throw a few $$ my way can do that. Most importantly: finally, finally, five years later, What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk will be released unto the world.

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Here’s what some rad people had to say about WWTAWWTAP in its original incarnation:

Love letters to way-too-late whiskey-drunk nights, stolen hearts and stolen kisses, small- town parking lots and bad decisions and even badder girls, WWTAWWTAP is a gritty and gorgeous series of riffs on living and loving punk. Like your very first show all over again, it'll set your blood on fire.
—Sarah McCarry, author of the Metamorphoses trilogy and editor/publisher of the Guillotine series

What We Talk About When We Talk about Punk distills wild nights of loud music, cheap whisky, and fugitive romance into a pure tonic. Jessie Lynn McMains’s voice is as indelible as a stick-and-poke tattoo and her autobiographical stories vividly capture the highs and lows of punk-rock youth. Pull on your leather jacket, grab a bottle of something, climb up onto the roof, and read this book.
—Jeff Miller, author of Ghost Pine: All Stories True

Wearing music like a jacket, that’s one of the things Jessie says about herself in these pages. I find that very admirable and inspiring. It gives a wonderful perspective to not only observe oneself in the moment, and in the past, but to feel the effect of that topic of study and passion on you, pressed against your skin. Jessie’s very subjective approach succeeds, and doesn’t fall into, impenetrable in-crowd self absorption, because she is smart enough to allow an adequate amount of objectivity and analysis to let her audience vibrantly see and feel her own experiences as if we are there with her. Music is a good reference point because lyrics, rhythm, and melody hit deep beyond the intellect into the emotions. You can always put on a CD, or vinyl record, or cassette and be transported to other places and times. These personal essays did this very thing to me, like listening to music. She becomes the jacket that we put on as we hear the lyricism of her stories.

We are always with Jessie in her writings. The hyper-awareness that she uses to capture her memories to be pondered again and again, as we read on, immersing ourselves in her writing, is crucial. We are reading something that is alive and learning it’s own lessons. We can picture her being transformed by her own documenting of her experiences, becoming a complex being, a well informed member of humankind. She is infused with the playfulness and philosophy found in music and she demonstrates the frightening willingness to view oneself through a microscope. I find this fascinating. Therefore, because of this heart-on-her-sleeve writing style, when we allow ourselves to engage with her words on the page, to be as vulnerable as she has allowed herself to be, we too are transformed. Her words have gone from jacket to skin. We are there feeling her sexually charged reaction to Rock and Roll. We experience the sensual allure of the human body. With her we dive head first into decadence, decay, nostalgia, and hope. Her bouts of loneliness and need for community are palpable. We are bruised by the violence, the drugs, the suffering. We are stifled and also warmed by the dying and the regenerating of a constantly changing musical style. We witness the passing of friends and idols. We share in her understanding of what it means to be an outcast, and more specifically, how it feels to be a female outcast, to be a mother and a rebel. Through the willingness to wear this book like a jacket, like a skin, we not only see who Jessie is but we learn about the daily life behind the music, of people, inspired by their own creativity and the creativity of others, trying to simply be, to live a life worth living. This isn’t just a collection of diary entries, a memoir, it is an opportunity to look at oneself. Why are you a punk? Or perhaps even more importantly, why aren’t you a punk?
—John “Jughead” Pierson, podcaster (“Jughead’s Basement”), musician (Even in Blackouts, founding member of Screeching Weasel), author

Jessie Lynn McMains weaves the threads of her own life with a typewriter ribbon on a loom fashioned from melted records and empty 40's. The end result is fascinating, an ultrapersonal look at a life shaped by punk, forged by punk, fired by punk. What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk has music at its core and surrounding it on all sides, but its main muscle is the reaction to that, the response. Thoughts thought while listening to a perfect mixtape that takes you far away from the blah street you've found yourself living on (and a secret peek at the science behind that perfect tape), the thrill when a cute girl comes into your crappy job and gets why the 1" button on your jacket is so important. Notes scrawled on diner napkins and on the back of show flyers, now compiled into book form!
—Ocean Capewell, author of The Most Beautiful Rot and High On Burning Photographs zine

At 16 I cut my hair with a razor and dyed it black, looking at my reflection in the mirror that night I was convinced I was the spit of Richard Hell. When I think back through my own punk history, the bands, the friendships and the crushes; the obsessions that took over my life, led me to zines and the community I was desperately searching for, I can see with perfect clarity how I arrived at this point. As an adult woman these things are intrinsic parts of me. And that’s what Jessie’s writing does, it kicks you in the gut then hands you a cold beer. She knows. Jessie is the real deal; she is the girl Cometbus, one of the great zinesters of our time. If you want me, I’ll be in my room listening to my tapes.
—Cherry Styles, writer, editor/publisher of The Chapess

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You can download it here. Then listen to the official soundtrack here. (Pretend it’s on a tape, okay?)

xoxo,
the writer formerly known as Jessica Disobedience