Group D Blog Post, Please Kill Me Reading
April 19, 2018, by Christiana
In Please Kill Me; the Uncensored Oral History of Punk, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain recount detailed and personal insights into the emergence of the downtown punk scene in the 1980s. I found their accounts of the grungy, drug-induced punk lifestyle to be incredibly fascinating. The work includes Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Terry Ork, The Ramones, among many other resourceful people that thrived within the community. In Chapter 18, Richard Lloyd recounts his experience in a mental institution and the inhumane treatment he received. He says, “And after whatever they had done to me – shock therapy – would wear off, I would look around and see that I had my life back again, and then there be this certain fear, like, ‘Is it going to happen again?’” (190). The development in society as times have changed has allowed modern practices and procedures in the treatment of mental illness. It was appalling to imagine the thousands of patients that had to endure torturous “therapies” which likely made their illnesses more severe. Lloyd recounts, “The thinking was that after you got a tolerance to the sleeping drug, when it no longer kept you asleep for the four hours, they took you off that medication and put you on the opposite medication – like a high-powered speed – and let it wring you out like a sponge.” (191).
One of my favorite part of the reading was in Penny Arcade’s anecdote about visiting her childhood friend, Patti Smith, at one of her performances. In the chapter, she describes a pushy fandom devoting their obsession to Patti Smith. This is not unlike the reactions of many crazed fans at their favorite NYC venues today. Arcade recalls as the fans approached her, “They kept saying, ‘Who are you? You were talking to Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee. Like, who are you? You’re somebody, we know you’re somebody.’ I just said, ‘No, man, I’m nobody. Really, you should go talk to somebody else ‘cause I’m nobody.’ And they actually went.” (209). This explicit exploitive action is not unimaginable to occur backstage at any concert to the friend of the performing artist. While the Patti Smith fans were unfavorably depicted, I found the most telling aspect of Patti Smith’s authenticity to be in her interaction with Penny Arcade. She provided a faded, superficial interaction with a childhood friend to further solidify the changes that fame produces. As described by Arcade, “I realized that Patti had sixteen people around her telling her that she was the best thing since sliced bread, and for her to see someone like me, who knew her, she just couldn’t see me. And I felt really bad for her. But I still didn’t wanna be there.” (210).