Salad Days

What a great coming of age story of young punks! Enjoyed it cover to cover. The author drew me in and kept me enveloped in a great visual of what that life is all about! I would recommend this book to anyone with a little bit, or a lot of a rebel spirit!

Let me tell you this book is the tops. It's not about salad. But yes - this dude is a good story teller and you root for him and you are super psyched when it all comes together.

I had a hard time believing in a character who stood steadfastly to his beliefs through his teenage-early twenty-something years. I also had a hard time in believing in a teacher who was so upfront with his dislike for a student. I was also bothered that there was so much talk about parents in the first half of the book, and yet the parents are NEVER in the scenes. Those are the problems I have with the book. Other than that, it's a surprisingly accurate glimpse at the lives of me and quite a few people I know, despite growing up on the east coast in the 80s. If you were in the sccene, or had a band... well, you'll probably feel similarly. Its not that bad a book, but it does have its weaker moments. Its a quick read and not an unenjoyable book.

Love this book, sadly I gave my signed well worn book to a great friend as a gift.

This is the memoir of a young man from Kansas who becomes a singer in a punk band. The author delves far beneath the shallow surface of hair and clothes, and presents a portrait of a guy searching for his place in the world. He learns a lot of lessons along the way, and his readers are the better for it. Salad Days is honest, poignant, romantic, and a fast read. I highly recommend it.

In the autobio-novel Salad Days, Charles Romalotti (a pen name) recounts his time growing up as a punk in rural Kansas during the late 80's. It begins with his traumatic high school days, continuing with a coming-of-age-while-on-tour theme in the latter half, all set in the backdrop of the fledgling hardcore scene. A lot of years, energy, and passion went into this book, but unfortunately, the book itself is a hard lesson in poor writing. Overly long descriptions and clichés galore, Charles Romalotti has a metaphor for everything, like a punk version of an unrestrained 40's pulp novel. (It's a 100-page story stretched into 300.) That's not so bad in itself, but the mechanics are clunky. The book is written in first person, but the descriptions have a third person perspective, making the intelligent reader wonder how the main character could be privy to some of the information. The dialogue is the same way; the characters seem to have the insight only made possible by the hindsight and wishful thinking of the author. The main character Frank doesn't seem real, but more of an idealized, perfect straightedge intellectual pacifist punk, unshaken in his beliefs and self-confidence, and always with the snappy, clichéd comebacks that no one ever actually says. For instance: "Why are you straightedge?" "Because I can be." Another problem is that, at times, Salad Days seems more like a collection of personal recounts and amusing memories, that are more there for the author's catharsis or reflection than to move the story along. This, along with the extremely long descriptions, really hurts the flow of the book. Another annoyance are the tons of punk references and in-jokes. Unnecessary statements like "The Descendents gave it their ALL" and "The Offspring? Never heard of them" pepper the narrative every chance it gets. It might give some punks a chuckle, but it's eye-rolling in its excessiveness. Salad Days is interesting in that it offers the perspective of a young Kansas punk and his participation in the younger hardcore scene. Unfortunately, the perspective tends to come out of the hindsight of the 30-something author instead of from the teenage characters.

This book is amazing

I really dig the music that would be the soundtrack to this tale, but the story itself seriously lacks substance. The main character, Frank, is wound up extremely tight and he and his buddies seem to take themselves so seriously that there is no room for humor in their lives. Isn't being young supposed to be fun? At least some of the time? Frank is straight edge (thankfully not militant) and has no interest in sex but we're not informed as to how his beliefs were formed. It's as if his rigorous self discipline was magically bestowed upon him. There are too many minor characters that drift in and out of his life without making much of an impact on Frank or the reader such that when some of them appear later in the story, one has difficulty recalling who they are. Not that it really matters anyway since they don't add anything to the story line. I also am not a fan of the overly descriptive writing style that beats minor plot points to death and completely overlooks themes that would make the story at least somewhat compelling. I do like the cover, but I wish I never bothered this one. It really is that bad.