All Ages: Reflections on Straight Edge

Great book, love the style it was written in. I love the "history of" books like this, lots of great quotes and stories.

My husband bought this to learn more about the straight edge lifestyle to impress his mistress. It worked like a charm! 10/10 highly recommend.

well what can you say - straight edge folk don't do the drugs or the drinkin' and they like the clean livin'. it's a great book. gives you a comprehensive look at people who have used a sharpie to make X's on their hands for no real reason. just kidding - solid read. 10/10

It's exactly as you think it is, a book about Straight Edge culture, from the beginning to end... if you're edge, or interested in sXe culture, you should pick this up

Having been heavily into the straight-edge scene from 1987-91 or so, and having more or lest kept abreast of it since (while remaining SE), it was with some trepidation that I started reading this compilation of interviews with former band members and scenesters of that era. While I wasn't surprised at all to find a lot of revisionist history about what so-and-so "really" believed at the time, there was actually quite a bit more honesty and self-awareness than I expected. Even though most of the interviewees aren't SE any more, there was a general consensus that it had played a positive role in their lives, despite the wretched excesses that some in the scene were--and are--prone to. There are a few females (friends of the compiler) who have some semi-interesting things to say about how straight-edge is fairly exclusionary of women, but the best interview in the book is with Ian Mackaye. Far from dissing SE, he lauds its passability as a positive influence and force while recognizing its limitations and unexpected mutations. For people who were there, this book is an interesting look back, but as a work of anthropology it's kind of useless. One wishes Lahickey had pursued some of the obvious contradictions and obfuscations in some of her interviewees statements. The book is chock-a-block with live pictures and reproductions of flyers, which make up somewhat for the crappy typography and typos.

😊👍

I thought that this was an excellent book. The people chosen for interviews were good choices. As stated in some of the other reviews, the questions asked may not be hardball, but that's not the point. The point is opinions and history, not a hard-hitting interview. The pictures are great too. There are a lot of great live shots and a ton of fliers and artwork. Good stuff. The book is interesting too. I'm not heavily into this era of hardcore like some people are, but there was a time when I was, so I have the knowledge neccesary to make this book a good read. This book might not be the best for people with little or no knowledge of the scene that it talks about, but if you know a little about it you will probably enjoy it. Don't listen to that review that complains about who was interviewed. I don't see how guitar players and drummers are any less important than vocalists. They believed in what the songs were about too and were just as much part of the scene as anyone else. Your review sounds like a sad litte jealous rant because you and your friends didn't get included in the book, because, hey, you're so much more "core," than the people interviewed because you bought records first. You sound like a 12 year old.

Sociologists and anthropologists might find this book a useful peek into the minds of socially dysfunctional, middle/upper middle class white kids prone to gang/crowd-mentality and testosterone charged music. Straight Edge is definitely one of the more bizarre underground cultures to emerge in America over the last 20 years. It has little or no political agenda; a bizarre lifestyle code and its followers seem to operate in cultural vacuum. It's circular philosophy places emphasis on all the things you would expect from bored teens desperately seeking an identity. Straight Edge hoists all the familiar flags: alienation, persecution, unity, etc. The strange part is that the participants in this scene insist on championing values and ethics that are already espoused by the economic-bracket and social class they come from. This book does a good job examining the straight edge/anti-drug hardcore scene.

Great collection of interviews and really informative about the american hardcore scene in the 80s/90s and what part straight edge played in that.

メタリックなＨＣしか聞かないKIDZ達に是非見てほしい一冊だ。 ＨＣの原点ともいえるバンドをもっと知るべきだ。 オールドスクールの素晴らしさを知るがよい。 当時の写真やフライヤーが盛りだくさん。 英語能力があれば楽しさ倍増でしょう。

a must have. people from the US straight edge scene talking about their past experiences and how the straightedge philosophy affected their lives. a little outdated, though (most interviews date from the mid nineties)