From the inbox:

Punk/Pop legends the DESCENDENTS are the subject of a new and long overdue book called READAGE. Compiling three decades of essential articles, essays, interviews and quotes on what many consider the most influential American punk band ever, READAGE is the debut title from the newly established PUNK TRUNK Books.

Assembled by longtime fan Schmidlapp for other fans to, um, Enjoy! The new book is available for immediate purchase here and through Amazon.com’s Kindle site. Traditional distribution details are forthcoming.

[Book details after the jump]

Formed in 1978, drummer Bill Stevenson, guitarist Frank Navetta and bassist Tony Lombardo recruited singer Milo Aukerman by 1980. The band’s 1981 debut EP ‘Fat’ and live shows made them favorites in the L.A. punk community by 1981. With the seminal ‘Milo Goes To College’, DESCENDENTS stood in stark contrast to the posturing of most hardcore bands in 1982. Collecting urgency, melody, nerdiness and juvenile humor in a way never heard before, songs like “I’m Not A Loser” and “Catalina” essentially forged the punk/pop genre as we now know it.

Reformed in ’85, the band kept plugging away despite a number of line-up changes, making three more albums in just three years. Accumulating an arsenal of classics (“Silly Girl”, “Cheer”, “Sour Grapes,” “Clean Sheets”, “Coolidge”), they called it a day in 1987 after three years spent criss-crossing North America in a white Dodge van. While Stevenson, bassist Karl Alvarez and guitarist Stephen Egerton went on to form ALL with the first of three singers, the musical axis of the group reunited with Milo again in 1996 to rock Warped!, plug ‘Everything Sucks’ and score an actual hit (“I’m The One”). Seven years later, Aukerman again came out of the lab to record and tour for ‘Cool to Be You’.

READAGE was compiled in homage to DESCENDENTS: from a fan for the fans. Although the project was not sanctioned by the group, few can argue that a celebration of the group’s many accomplishments in the world of chainsaw pop paved the way for deserves to be formally chronicled.