A new history of punk in South Florida makes a perfect gift for those on the 'naughty' list

Extensive. Exhaustive. Thorough. Comprehensive. A clear labor of love and an earnest effort to document what seems like every single band who emerged from the Miami underground rock & roll scene from roughly the mid-'70s to the mid-'90s ... and when we say "every single band," it's no exaggeration.

Punk Under the Sun: '80s Punk and New Wave in South Florida is the perfect gift for the musical anthropologist in your life looking to learn about what was going on before during and after the first waves of punk and New Wave in Miami, just as the city was experiencing profound transformation and growth, or your old punk friend/uncle who might have been around for some of it and now spends his days lurking on the various Florida-centric punk nostalgia groups on Facebook.

In terms of the punk and new wave sections of the book, ample space is given to bands who deserve wider recognition, even with 21st-century reissues of many of the bands' albums: The Eat, Charlie Pickett and the Eggs, F, The Essentials. While this reviewer hoped there would be more insight into the weirdest of the Weird Florida bands — Teddy and the Fratgirls (aka Sheer Smegma, aka the Tony Cliftons of "the scene") — their inclusion in an excellent "Selected Discography" chapter near the end is just going to have to be enough.

There's also ample space given to the criminally ignored (a recurring theme for many of these bands) The Chichlids, whose 1980 release Be True to Your School is more new wave than new wave itself, and it boggles the mind that these witty, hyper-energetic songs weren't turned into white room videos on constant rotation on MTV and/or gracing many a teen movie soundtrack of the era.

Blame geography. That's another recurring theme of this book. And as all of us living in Florida who listen to or try to play "the good stuff" know, it can be a pain in the ass to live here, as so many of the "bigger names" don't tour any closer than Atlanta and so many of the locals seem to be increasingly preferring cover bands to original music.

For a book about homegrown punk-and-all-its-subgenres bands that emerged in Miami, what's interesting is how so many bands tended to leave Hollywood, Florida, for Hollywood, California. There's the obligatory reference to Johnny Depp, who played in bands in South Florida before, well, you know ...

The blessing and the curse of Punk Under the Sun is how exhaustive it is. It's understandable and admirable to want to include everyone who took part to make an original music scene, to do what so many of us Floridians tend to do — make something out of nothing — but the sheer volume of bands, musicians, artists, club owners, people is overwhelming. At times it all becomes a kind of word (band) salad that starts to feel meaningless if you weren't a part of it.

Also, as with most "punk/new wave" history books, they tend to get less interesting as the 1980s go on, and really run out of steam by the '90s. The hair metal chapter especially seems superfluous when taking the title of the book into consideration.

It's a lot a lot a lot, and that's for sure. But if it helps to get anyone hip to songs like "Communist Radio" by The Eat, "Immigration Report" by The Front, "Clubnite" by Teddy and the Frat Girls, "Roddy Piper's Rowdy Hearts Club Band" by F, "With My Girl" by The Cichlids, then it was all worth it.

Punk Under the Sun: '80s Punk and New Wave in South Florida, by Joey Seeman and Chris Potash (Hozac Books, 2023)