High on Rebellion - Inside the Underground at Max's Kansas City - Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin

Mickey Ruskin was already a lawyer and a seasoned restaurant/bar owner by the time he opened Max's Kansas City in the early 1960's. Due to his fondness for artists - and his willingness to accept pieces of artwork for tabs at the restaurant - Max's became a hangout for some of the biggest names in the art world in the 60's. Thus, the club started out as a fairly macho, hard-drinking/fighting bar.

By the mid-to-late 60's, Warhol and his Superstars discovered Max's (due to its proximity to the Factory) and this brought in a new clientele to add to the now-old-school artists. Drag queens, leather freaks, druggies and, with Warhol's new discovery, the Velvet Underground, rock'n'rollers took over portions of Max's and made it legendary. When it started having live music, the likes of the Velvets, Iggy & the Stooges, folkies like Tom Waits and Jackson Browne and avant garde types like Phillip Glass started performing there, raising the establishment to fame in the r'n'r circles.

Mickey eventually decided to move on and the club re-opened with the same name and a new owner and once again evolved, this time becoming a haven - along with CBGB's - for the new punk and new wave scene.

Eventually, everything simply petered out, the space was sold, became a deli and the debauchery ended for good. But to this day people still go to the deli just in the hopes of capturing some of the old Max's vibe.

Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin was a waitress at Max's who married Mickey and had two children with him before separating. The couple remained friends, though, and Yvonne was seminal in the life of the bar. She tells the story through interviews with participants in the craziness in a similar style to Please Kill Me though with more personal remembrances from Yvonne.

Another super tome for experiencing the NYC art and rock scene through the eyes of the people who lived it and through one of its most famous watering holes.