"A Playlist by Eric Puchner"

Wherein I'm not sure if I'd read his stories but I'd listen to his mixtape


Eric Puchner, talking music:

The book is full of references to bands of that era, X and Black Flag and the Circle Jerks — I decided to use their real names, perhaps because I couldn’t imagine my own youth (or anyone else’s) without them. As a teenager, I spent half my life in record stores. This was back before the Internet, before Pitchfork and Pandora, when there was actually something called an “Alternative Music” section. You couldn’t hear the music on the radio, so the only way to find out if you liked a band was to buy their album. In order not to squander your allowance, you had to know which labels to buy from: SST, Slash, Homestead, Twin/Tone. This is how I discovered all the music that came to define my youth — not just Los Angeles bands like X and the Dream Syndicate but many others that, to my surprise, have since become household names: the Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, the Replacements.