Birth of the brash is caught on film

Another generation’s question to its elders might have been, “So, what did you do in the war, Daddy?” The relevant question now might very well be, “So, Dad, what did you wear to the clubs?”

No better a sensory time-capsule than music or fashion. Together, they provide a resonant blast of the past in a collection of books over the last few months. Their pages cast long, fond looks back at ‘70s and ‘80s street style -- from punk to hip-hop to early gangsta rap. Collectively, they offer a record of just how B-boys and punkettes and new wavers and beyond all got their groove on.

PowerHouse Books has released two volumes that document vibrant, zeitgeist-transforming music scenes. The surprise bestseller “Back in the Days,” with photos by Jamel Shabazz and an introduction by one of hip-hop’s architects, Fab 5 Freddy, revisits those crowded Brooklyn street jams -- a wild style mix of Kangol hats, Adidas shell-top sneaks, gold chains and screaming primary colors.

Also from PowerHouse, “We’re Desperate: The Punk Rock Photography of Jim Jocoy,” takes an unguided tour through the two-flights-down punk scene in L.A. and San Francisco. With text by Thurston Moore, Exene Cervenka and Marc Jacobs, the bulk of the book offers page after page of posed portraits of the famous, near famous and struggling to never be famous, with subjects shot with a hot flash against iron grates, graffiti and a variety of other do-it-yourself backdrops.

“We did not like poseurs, but we liked to pose for pictures,” recalls Cervenka in her back-of-the-book remembrance. “Because we knew that there was something about that night that would be remembered even if we couldn’t remember it. We were young and naive in a way that seems to be a lost art.”

“Who Shot Ya? Three Decades of Hiphop Photography” (Amistad Press), edited by journalist Kevin Powell with photos by Ernie Paniccioli, rounds up three decades of hip-hop from B-boy antics to Conscious hip-hop and its message music. The collection is more coffee table fare, particularly if your coffee table and the room it sits in was featured on the latest segment of “MTV Cribs.” Paniccioli’s portraits focus on the high-power faces behind the voices.

Rounding them out is Jim Fricke and filmmaker Charlie Ahearn’s “Yes Yes Y’all: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade” (DaCapo Press), a multidisciplinary collage of first-person voices, photos and advertisements that pieces together personal accounts of hip-hop’s origins.

What becomes clear, as we trace our steps back, is that the visual elements were as important as the musical and verbal declarations. They signaled what camp you dug yourself into. They were the battle that announced the war that ultimately shook awake the ‘80s.

Journalist Nelson George writes in his “Yes Yes Y’all” intro: “The lack of employment for minority youth made gang culture and later hip-hop posses [where kids could be MCs, DJs, dancers, graffiti artists or security guards] quite attractive. What you’ll find in the personal observations, photos and posters of hip-hop’s early days that make up this book is what Hemingway termed ‘grace under pressure,’ a will to survive through strength, self-expression and plain old fun.”

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‘Yes Yes Y’all’:

What: Exhibit of photos from the book “Yes Yes Y’all”

Where: Sandroni Rey, 1224 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice

When: Today through Friday and Jan. 3-4, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Closed Dec. 21-Jan. 2.

Ends: Jan. 4

Price: Free

Contact: Kristin Rey at (310) 392-3404