Night Comes Down by Bob Short
If nothing is true and Gods and Morality are banished, is everything permitted?
For some, Punk was about a handful of big-name bands who built careers fighting about their supreme importance in the general scheme of things. For most of us spikey haired critters, punk was a lifestyle, a place where all the weird kids got together to play; all those outsiders who could never go home anymore. Sure, most of us formed bands or wrote fanzines or did something. The most important thing was he had a world of own. However, whilst raising two fingers to the establishment may have been fun, it did not come without an equal and opposite reaction. The sun may rise but night comes down.
Bob Short writes about his involvement in the punk scene on two continents, not so much as a hero but as a witness of the good, the bad and the downright ugly. It is a story about the deaths of people, dreams and ideals.
But don't worry. Some of it is pretty funny. Some of it may even be true.
Foreword by Tony Drayton.
326 pages b/w
198 x 129mm
"At its best, Night Comes Down contains some of the most compelling writing about punk anywhere. Eschewing tepid tales about boring bands, Bob accurately describes how life was really lived - and death really died - in extreme conditions of debauch and poverty underpinned by a sense of overwhelming stare-at-the-wall-drooling boredom, punctuated only by outbursts of violence and furore, as well as creativity of course, usually fuelled by whatever substances came to hand. It's an underworld of alienation, loneliness, hopelessness and anger. Well, it was either that or get a job..."
Richard Cabut - Author of Looking For a Kiss and Disorderly Magic and Other Disturbances
Bob Short hasn't tackled life in half measures. He's been neck deep the entire time, well outside the flags and a day's walk from the splash zone. Short tour guides that trek with commanding, unflinching prose and zero toilet breaks.
Murray Engleheart - Author of Radio Birdman: Retaliate First, AC/DC: Maximum Rock and Roll and Blood, Sweat and Beers: Oz Rock from the Aztecs to Rose Tattoo.
