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Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles.

I'm Jesse Thorn, and this is the Sound of Young America

from MaximumFum.org.

It's the Sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn America's radio sweetheart, my guest on the program, Roger Bennett, he's the co-author of Camp Camp, as well as the

best-selling bar mitzvah disco camp camp is where fantasy island meets Lord of the Flies.

It's a compendium of notes, photographs, and reminiscences about summer camp in the 1970s, 80s, and even a little tiny bit of the 1990s, Roger, welcome to the Sound of Young America.

Thanks for having me, Jesse.

Oh, it is a pleasure to have you, sir.

It is a pleasure to be here.

What led you into the topic of summer camps?

It's the logical next step.

Yeah, from bar mitzvah to summer camps.

It's spending two years exploring in depth the bar mitzvah subculture of the 1980s.

You said that as though the bar mitzvah subculture of the 1980s was like the industrial music subculture of the 1980s or something.

They were very, very similar, and actually overlap greatly.

You know, historians have ever been willing to acknowledge.

When you're looking at the 1980s, you're looking at the new Romantics, you're looking at Post Punk,

...