Directions to the Outskirts of Town - Punk Rock Tour Diaries from Nineties North America Book (by Welly Artcore)

In the nineties, Welshman Welly Artcore published the punk magazine "Artcore" and was, among other things, the singer of the punk band Four Letter Word, which is still occasionally active today. With the release of "Directions To The Outskirts Of Town", he delved deep into his box of old memories and unearthed two tour diaries. Across 311 pages, it offers the amusing anecdotes from the 1994 North American tour of Welsh punks Chaos UK, whose singer Kaos also contributes a foreword. Additionally, it includes Welly's band Four Letter Word's 1998 tour across the United States and Canada. Everything is documented day by day and garnished with tons of photos, setlists, and concert flyers. The text is written in easy-to-read English with typical British punk rock humor. The whole thing is interesting, witty, and beautifully and authentically describes all the fun and madness of a punk rock tour from a time without internet, mobile phones, and navigation devices, where you often traveled from gig to gig with just a scribbled note.

Accordingly, some things are chaotic. With Chaos UK, from my own experience with the fun-loving drinkers, I can fully comprehend much of it and often burst into roaring laughter while reading. About many funny little things and marginal notes of tour life, as well as about the small stories about individual shows and bands with whom they shared the tour and the stage, such as Eyehategod, MDC, Neurosis, Turmoil, Toxic Narcotic, Swingin' Utters or Defiance. The same applies to the second part of the book with Four Letter Word's '98 tour. Same shit, different gravy. Even if much seems to repeat itself, it remains amusing to read. In many situations, you can only laughingly shake your head and claim that's punk rock, it has to be that way. With other things, you're left with a bewildered shrug, because, punk rock or not, Americans are just Americans.

This applies to local concert promoters, audiences, cops, and actually all circumstances in the land of unlimited impossibilities in the mid-to-late nineties. Here, too, there are mountains of photos from the tour and of the bands they were on the road with – 7 Seconds, Youth Brigade, Brand New Unit, Reto, Pinhead Circus and again Swingin' Utters, just to name a few. The book is a beautiful and worthwhile contemporary document from a rather wild era and can be almost one-to-one transferred to punk concerts and tours in Germany and Europe at that time.

The American factor makes hardly any difference there. I find "Directions To The Outskirts Of Town" excellent and absolutely recommendable, not just for old punks, but I fear that the book will unfortunately only lead an undeserved niche existence.