Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Running Press, and author Chris Wrenn for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

Having read two books about The Cars recently, I have come to realize that Boston had an incredible music scene. At the time all of these books took place, I was ensconced just outside of New York City and didn’t pay attention to music coming from other areas of the country. After having read Fenway Punk, I’m all the more sorry that I never sought out the clubs that the straight-edge punk musicians were performing in.

Fenway Punk isn’t just about indie punk music, though. It’s also about seeing a niche that’s being missed and capitalizing on it. It’s Chris Wrenn’s memoir about his life after college, trying to start an indie record label, and using merchandising on a level Major League Baseball didn’t to finance this dream.

If you know anything about Boston, their sports rivalries rival no one else. Although most baseball fans right now seem to have a universal hatred of the Dodgers, that’s only a recent thing. Before interleague play, the National League only played National League teams and the American League only played American League teams. This meant that while teams like the Mets and Cubs had a pretty good rivalry in the mid-1980s, it wasn’t the same as being in close proximity to them and having fans that sometimes mixed together a bit. The only rivalry that seemed steeped in history and that was often boiling over was between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

Chris Wrenn details how he came up with the idea of his own record label and the obstacles he faced in starting it. This was the early 2000s, just as Napster and other file-sharing programs on the internet forced the record industry to change. No more would money be lavished on artists to sell records. Most of the big names weren’t taking too many chances any longer. If something wasn’t an instant hit by their standards, people would be dropped.

Wrenn knew the straight-edge punk artists in Boston and the surrounding area from his interaction with them. He would sign them to his label and then promote them. Although some of the names he tosses around ring a bell, most of them are fairly unfamiliar to me. I’d never heard of Wrenn or his Bridge 9 Records before picking up this book.

Wrenn gets the idea of selling Yankees Suck! merchandise outside of Fenway Park. Almost every home game, you’ll find Red Sox fans chanting Yankees Suck! I was once there to see the Mets play the Red Sox, and all of the fans united in chanting about how much they agree that Yankees Suck! n At first it was just stickers as his friends were selling shirts. Eventually, as Wrenn needed more money to finance what he was doing at Bridge 9, he moved into t-shirts. He also managed to pivot after 9/11 and sell t-shirts with a target on Osama bin Laden when hating New York wasn’t a thing for about a year.

The memoir is good. It was so interesting to see what Wrenn went through, from dodging the code enforcement officers (and eventually getting them on his side) to staking out the perfect spot to sell and keeping others away from it. He also had the occasional designs that didn’t go over well. All of this is building to the Red Sox breaking the curse of the Bambino in 2004 and winning a World Series for the first time in almost a century.

The music part was also interesting. I liked how so many of the groups Wrenn interacts with decide to call it quits on their own. Wrenn seems to get that for these bands, there just comes a point where they feel they have achieved what they set out to achieve, and now they’re moving on to the next phase of their lives.

There are many great characters around this scene as well. Not just the musicians, but a bouncer at one of the nearby clubs figures prominently, as does a code enforcement officer Wrenn calls Tiger.” It ends up being a colorful tale of navigating the problems of both of the businesses as one is used to finance the other. Many times there’s humor in the misfortunes he faces.

I struggled a little bit in the beginning with the tale. When Wrenn first starts trying to promote the record label, there are a number of unethical things he does. I get that it’s a punk and rebellious scene, but there are a couple of troubling moments early on. I wasn’t so sure how I was going to feel by the end of this. Fortunately, Wrenn works the system in a way that benefits him, rather than continuing on a path that saw his friends blow most of what they made on booze and drugs.

I did enjoy Fenway Punk quite a bit. It was a good memoir that worked within the legendary 2004 Boston Red Sox season to tell the story. Indie labels like Bridge 9 are the ones bringing out new music in this streaming world, and it’s fascinating how Wrenn found a way to accomplish all he did.