The pictures, which include some posed portraits but are mostly concert shots, are the chief attraction. They freeze moments of adolescent release, vein-bulging intensity and sweaty communion that fuses performer and audience...Vivid and evocative.
--Washington Post Scott Crawford, the man behind the acclaimed documentary Salad Days, has given us another taste of the best-kept secret of 80s in his new book Spoke: Washington DC's hardcore punk scene.
--Dazed With music by Minor Threat, Void, Rites of Spring, Government Issue, and many others propelling the story of hardscrabble, Reagan-era D.C. as the hotbed for a new artistic outlet in Salad Days, Crawford saw the book as a way to scoop up important narrative from the cutting-room floor and find a new home for it.
--Fast Company Pockmarked with burned-out buildings and boarded-over storefronts, Northwest DC was once home to a vibrant and sometimes violent punk movement beginning in the early 1980s. For geeky 12-year-old Scott Crawford, that changed everything: He chucked comic books for punk rock and self-published a music zine from his mother's kitchen table in Silver Spring. This month, Crawford releases a book about those days, Spoke--a companion to his 2014 documentary, Salad Days--featuring stories from local players such as Dave Grohl, Henry Rollins, and Ian MacKaye.
--Washingtonian Magazine Spoke...adroitly uses both photographs and oral histories to capture the importance of what can best be described as a cultural revolution within the nation's capital.
--Shepherd Express This coffee table version of the documentary [Salad Days] follows the D.C. scene's often politically-charged brand of punk rock, from Bad Brains to Jawbox, and of course the legendary Fugazi. And there's even the near-forgotten SOA, whose frontman Henry Rollins took his D.C. energy to L.A. where he stepped in as the singer for Black Flag.
--Yellow Scene Magazine A must-have for any rock historian or pop-culture buff...The perfect punk coffee table book.
--Shockwave Magazine Highly recommended...A must read for punk fans.
--Chorus.fm/HiFiNoise A worthy addition to the growing amount of literature on the American hardcore/punk scene, Spoke will look great on any aging punks' coffee table as a document to a vital, electric time.
--Ink19.com A forthright testament to a kaleidoscopic community. This is a rounded collection, with surprises on every page...It's collection that rocks.
--Shelf Awareness f