A year or so ago, I blogged about a legendary music club’s tooth-and-nail fight for its lease. Unfortunately, CBGBs has lost, and owner Hilly Kristal plans to relocate to, of all places, Las Vegas. This sad news arrived the same time as an upcoming book by the writers and editors of England’s MOJO magazine, Punk: The Whole Story (DK, review forthcoming). The idea: a celebration of punk’s 30th birthday by the people who were there and managed not to overdose. I didn’t have my nose an inch thick in its color-smeared pages when two reference, yes, reference books on the movement showed up: Al Spicer’s The Rough Guide to Punk (Rough Guides, review forthcoming) and Brian Cogan’s The Encyclopedia of Punk Music and Culture (Greenwood, review forthcoming). What’s it all mean? Now that the punk generation is graying, is another book boom coming? Beginning in the mid-1990s, punk literature revved up (see John Lydon’s autobiography). In the last three years, however, it’s slowed to a thin drool. This hardly makes sense in light of the recent inductions of the Ramones, Blondie, and the Sex Pistols into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Where, I wonder, are the definitive histories of those bands? Although it makes me feel a tad old at 30, I like the idea of somone documenting the soundtrack of my coming of age. Bring on The Oxford Companion to Sid Vicious’s Underpants; I’m ready.