Suburban punks rule.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Briefly Noted - Kids of the Black Hole - Brief article - Book review

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In Kids of the Black Hole (University of Oklahoma), William Paterson University historian Dewar MacLeod provides a nearly day-by-day account of the rise of punk style, attitude, and music in Southern California from 1977 through the early '80s, charting the degradation/ purification of the original punk sound into the brutal and violent music known as "hardcore," driven mainly by bored suburban kids, not arty urbanites.

Despite some stale rehashed riffs from Theodor Adorno and Mike Davis, the book is fascinating when it talks directly about what punks said and did. MacLeod drifts far in his...