The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar

Franz Nicolay

Aug 2016 · New Press, The

About this ebook

In 2009, musician Franz Nicolay left his job in the Hold Steady, aka "the world's greatest bar band." Over the next five years, he crossed the world with a guitar in one hand, a banjo in the other, and an accordion on his back, playing the anarcho-leftist squats and DIY spaces of the punk rock diaspora. He meets Polish artists nostalgic for their revolutionary days, Mongolian neo-Nazis in full SS regalia, and a gay expat in Ulaanbaatar who needs an armed escort between his home and his job. The Russian punk scene is thrust onto the international stage with the furor surrounding the arrest of the group Pussy Riot, and Ukrainians find themselves in the midst of a revolution and then a full-blown war.>

While engaging with the works of literary predecessors from Rebecca West to Chekhov and the nineteenth-century French aristocrat the Marquis de Custine, Nicolay explores the past and future of punk rock culture in the postcommunist world in the kind of book a punk rock Paul Theroux might have written, with a humor reminiscent of Gary Shteyngart. An audacious debut from a vivid new voice, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control is an unforgettable, funny, and sharply drawn depiction of surprisingly robust hidden spaces tucked within faraway lands.

About the author

Franz Nicolay is a New York musician who has played with myriad acts including the Hold Steady, Against Me!, and the Dresden Dolls and was a founding member of the composer/performer collective Anti-Social Music. Dying Scene recently named him #1 of “Punk's 10 Best Accordion Players.” He teaches at Bard College and this is his first book.