Chris Barrows started out with a family camera taking photos at gigs and ended up snapping photos of bands in many different places and under a lot of very different circumstances. His snaps cover mostly hardcore punk but there are a few others genres represented here for good measure.

From Florida to Los Angeles, Chris shot bands. Part of the charm of this selection is that there are photos of the bands in different situations. Starting out just taking photos from the crowd at gigs, Chris went from a fan in the crowd to playing gigs with some of these legends when he was in bands like Pink Lincolns and the Spears. He also tried his hand at promoting gigs including Screeching Weasel and Jawbreaker. He captures the bands on stage, and in many of the more interesting shots, offstage.  We see Bill Stevenson of Descendents in his long underwear. We see GG Allin backstage looking over a stab wound from the night before. We see Greg Ginn of Black Flag enjoying a slice of watermelon on a hot day. We see Rikk Agnew of Christian Death goofing on Rozz and Eva in bed. We see many bands, including a rare shot of early Danzig, hanging out in their vans. It’s a good way to see the bands we usually think of as being badass on stage letting their guard down.

This is a hardcover book with the pictures in black and white. There is very little text aside from the introductory quotes by some of the photographic subjects and photo descriptions and this keeps things simple. Included is a fun shot of a band playing the US for the first time in front of only a handful of people. They would go on to achieve worldwide fame as the band everyone would later discover as U2.