The darkly handsome, brilliantly iconoclastic Adam Parfrey passed away from a series of strokes in a medical facility in Seattle on May 10, 2018. Although you may not recognize his name, worldwide culture has been provoked, elevated, and challenged from the underground by books he published for decades from his ranch with his sister Jessica in Port Townshend, WA. The imprint was called Feral House, and Parfrey helmed several generations of authors who were “deep heads” about politics (radical on both Left and Right and right around the corner from each other), freak spiritual movements (cults), and obsessive about extreme forms of music — whether it be extreme in sound and viewpoint, such as Black Metal or skinhead rock — or just extremely cool: swinging, singing French women from hipper times.
Parfrey and Feral House published far more than five books about music, but here’s a sampling of what I feel is a quick, tip of the tongue greatest hits when publishing in that field (in other words, these are the first ones that come to mind when talking to other rock writers and music scribes). Click on my name in the review to see my other reccos.
Henry Rollins recommended the book Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, A Chicana Punk Story: "It's rare that someone at the real beginning of something so monumentally influential is around long enough to put it down in writing” he blurbs from LA Weekly.
Filled with sagas of racial-punk struggle and feminist triumph, musical transcendence and stark lifestyle sacrifice, Violence Girl shows how Alice Bag went from being part of Darby Crash’s naive, twisted scene, rocking at shows with GoGos (yes, including the Whiskey-a-Go-Go), from her homegirl beginnings as an ESL student who loved music from her first Mariachi. Her father was an inimical role model though, and his sense of brutality could be seen in her own musical activism as part of Castration Squad.
If you are one of those who enjoyed her ferocious performance in the first Decline of Western Civilization film, and always wanted to know more about her, this book will be good, fascinating, and shocking news.
