Punks, Poets, & Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys, 1977-1982

Startling and addictive, from its front cover shot of John Belushi to its back photo of Mick Jagger, photographer Marcia Resnick's Punks, Poets, & Provocateurs is a terrific overview of the underbelly of New York's arts scene, as the rowdy 1970s gave way to the Reagan '80s. With text by prolific '70s biographer Victor Bockris (e.g., Warhol, Richards, Reed, Burroughs, etc.), it captures, up close and all tricked out, the players who made those years a renaissance of the underground. Resnick (Re-visions) snaps both the old guard, like Burroughs, Ginsberg, Warhol, even Chuck Berry, and the new--including "bad boys" with last names like Hell, Pop, Rotten, Gunn and Thunders. As sax player for the Lounge Lizards John Lurie says: "We were so sure of ourselves, we never doubted anything. We were powerful, smart, energetic, confident, egocentric and astonishingly naïve. Nothing outside of our fourteen block radius mattered." Resnick and Bockris have created a true masterwork. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

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