Crispin Kott was born in Chicago, raised in New York, and has called everywhere from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Atlanta home. A music historian and failed drummer, he’s written for numerous print and online publications, and has shared with his kids a love of reading, writing and record collecting. As a longtime Brooklyn resident and recent returnee to the Bay Area, Crispin has been able to indulge in his love of Rock & Roll of the past, present, and future.
Crispin is the co-author of Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to New York City (Globe Pequot Press, June 2018), Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area (Globe Pequot Press, Spring 2021), and The Little Book of Rock and Roll Wisdom (Lyons Press, October 2018).
Alongside Legs McNeil, Crispin is co-author of the forthcoming book Resident Punk — the story of the New York City punk scene and beyond, as seen through the eyes of its chief reporter and most irascible scoundrel.
Resident Punk: An Uncensored Adventure Story for Boys and Girls
From the co-author of the legendary multi-million copy international bestseller Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk comes Resident Punk: An Uncensored Adventure Story for Boys and Girls, by Legs McNeil and Crispin Kott – the story of the New York City punk scene and beyond, as seen through the eyes of its chief reporter and most irascible scoundrel.
Part memoir, part historical account, Resident Punk tells a different story than any you’ve heard before: the stories within the stories, oozing with sex, drugs and rock & roll. Along the way, Legs tussles with musicians and artists, groupies and writers, Golden Age Hollywood film stars and legendary figures of 70s New York. But most of all, Legs wrestles with his own demons, as they threaten to overwhelm him – as they would so many others.
In 1975, at just 19 years old, Legs McNeil – alongside John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn – co-founded PUNK magazine, and in doing so inadvertently chronicled the start of a movement. Often credited with popularizing the phrase “punk,” PUNK was like a Ramones song in semi-monthly form, with squirts of Creem and Mad magazines for good measure.
McNeil’s role in the whole thing? To be their Resident Punk – embodying the zeitgeist the magazine was looking to capture, however he thought appropriate that night: most of the time getting fucked up with musicians, artists, writers and hangers on; and sleeping with a different girl every day of the week. Legs leapt off the pages in both print and – thanks to Holmstrom’s iconic illustrations – cartoon form.
In Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, McNeil was seen as a cross between embedded reporter and enigmatic Zelig-like character along for the ride, putting other major players in the spotlight. Resident Punk puts McNeil right where he belongs: at the heart of the action, every bit a co-conspirator in the rise and fall of the New York City punk scene.
A sleazy, star-studded travelogue, and a unique cultural history – See Legs steal David Bowie’s hubcaps, wrestle Norman Mailer, and dance with 12-year-old Brooke Shields (but not date her until she was 21)! Resident Punk makes use of McNeil’s own scintillating memories and vast archives to provide a Legs’-eye view of many of the most eternally compelling moments in musical and cultural history. Legs’ position as something of an everyman – talented journalist, yes, and later to be found as the chronicler-in-chief of those heady days, but not fronting a band or cultivating a public persona beyond the inner circles in which he roamed – make him the perfect cypher for the reader. Whether they pogoed to I Wanna Be Sedated in a dingy basement bar in their teens, or experience punk for the first time through Spotify, Legs’ story creates a nostalgia for a world they may never have directly encountered – and gives the reader the ability to imagine that they, too, were there.