Has anybody seen this? Kinda punk rock. Mostly hijack.
http://www.boortz.com/oswald.htm
Note the Dead Kennedys logo in the background
I started making a list and realized I really don’t know what punk rock is. Maybe some of these don’t belong here:
Clash
Sex Pistols
Iggy Pop
TSOL (and is that True Sons Of Liberty or Songs?)
Dead Milkmen
Ramones
Black Flag/Henry Rollins
Joy Division (I don’t think I could rationalize New Order as Punk, but maybe Joy Division)
Bauhaus/Love & Rockets/Peter Murphy
Social Distortion
Sublime
T Rex
Violent Femmes
Stranglers
Buzzcocks
Cramps! (gotta love the Cramps)
Did anybody else ever used to like The Godfathers?
Punk, or something else?
Anyway, I listened to ‘Hit By Hit’ and ‘Birth, School, Work, Death’ until I wore them both out.
I don’t have anything to add, but it’s fun to say all of the names again and feel the frission of rebellion that I don’t ever experience any more.
Like drinking Rumpleminz in the parking lot before Dead Milkmen, in Rochester, in the dead of winter, at the age of 17, circa 1988. Not doing my homework.
I am such a big, fat loser. I suppose the plausibility of rage as lifestyle choice is greatly diminished when you turn out to be an evening MDiv student with a big boy job and a fancy car and a flush 401k plan.
I guess it’s already been said here. Maybe punk just grew up. Now all that’s left is…Fred Durst (?!)
And thanks, all, for the clarifier on “chien Andalou”.
To me, punk wasn’t about the music, it was a lifestyle, a philosophy. The music was about punk. I liked the Dead Kennedys, the ramones, the pistols, the exploited, and Bad Brains, but when I think of punk, I think of people I knew. I think of waking up in the morning and finding 20 people(litteraly) asleep on living room floor(and only knowing about half of them). I think of sleeping in burned out houses, and violent confrontations with the skins, or the rednecks, or the yuppie larve that had to come down to the Rocky show and beat up on those fags with the funny looking hair. Getting harassed by the redneck police, and being called racist and satan worshipers by black people at whataburger in two in the morning(people who had apparently seen one two many talk shows, and just didnt know any better). I think of the comfort of knowing that any time, day or night, that I could find someone who was willing to do something incredably stupid and dangerous with me, just for a laugh. I think of a bunch of kids, many throw aways, and runaways, who felt that they had absolutely nothing to lose, and just didn’t give a fuck, so they were game for anything we could come up with. I think of going to funerals for friends, and having the family glare at us, just like the scene in the original suburbia.
Punk to me was a lot of bad times, and a lot of great times. Most of all it a lot of insanity. I wouldnt trade that part of my life for anything. I have storys to tell my grand children that they will never believe in a million years(There gonna look at me like grandpa on the simpsons).
The music was an excuse to get togeather sometimes. It was the soundtrack to the scene, but was rarely, if ever, the center of attention. I knew punks who never listened to punk music. I remeber one of the punk clubs in fort worth, that was built in a condemed house belonging to some heroin addict that someone knew. Every one would gather there, on the weekeds, and there would be a band, of some sort. IF not punk, often it was a metal band, no body cared because the band was just window dressing, evey one threw a buck or two into a donation can to pay off the band and the junkie who owned the place, but a lot of people never even went inside. Hell, most of the punk clubs there were more people out in the parking lot than inside. One day, the junkie let a skinhead band play there, and that was the end of that. The place was tainted, and no punk would set foot there, no matter who played.
I don’t mean to hijack this thread, I know the op was talking about punk music in particular, just there have been a lot of talk around here of late about punk bands, like that was what it was all about. It wasnt. At least not where I was.
Mr. Billy wrote
Yeah, in fact I met them. They had opened for (was it?) Oingo Boingo. I still have the lead singers autograph somewhere. Very cool guys.
How about the Dwarves, New Bomb Turks, the Nomads and Turbonegro?
(And I liked the Godfathers too. The intro to “I Want Everything” is unholy stompin’ good!)
There were so many good bands out there. I saw literally hundreds of shows and did lots and lots of interviews.
DOA, Big Boys and the Dicks were among my favorites, and all of the band members were pretty righteous folk.
A post on punk almost a page long, and no one mentions Fugazi!? What’s this world coming to!?
Other than that, I’d just like to further push Dead Kennedys, The Clash, and Buzzcocks.
I was just going to say this! Thank God someone else noticed. I like Fugazi. Alot.
A few people mentioned Minor Threat. IMHO Ian didn’t have much to say after that.
My personal faves are:
**the Dickies
Agent Orange
SNFU
Bad Religion
Face to Face
Screaching Weasel
Lagwagon
the Cramps
All
**
I’m not going to bother entering the ‘what is punk rock?’ discussion, because to me it’s about as interesting as the discussions I used to have ten years ago over whether Annihilator’s first record is thrash metal or power metal.
Here are ten records that, whether they’re punk or not, lots of punks seem to like, so you might too.
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The Electric Eels - GSFU (I’m not typing the full name). From 1975, one thing this band were definitely not was pre-punk. They were over the top, insane, obnoxious punk rock at its best. Sample song titles “Agitated” and “You’re Full of Shit”. Actually, pick up anything you find with them.
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Black Flag - First Four Years. Even though only the first four songs are great, they are as good as it gets. Beats the pants off the later Rollins line up.
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Urinals - Negative Capability. The best band of the punk era - 3 perfect singles on this compilation, with some extra live stuff (missing their cover of ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ unfortunately). As covered by Yo La Tengo (twice!).
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V.A. - Killed By Death vol 1. OK, it’s less than legal, but it still shows how wide ranging original punk could be. There’s dozens of volumes of this, but only a few worthwhile ones. Check out This Fine Page for details.
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Iggy and The Stooges - Raw Power. Either the Bowie or the Iggy mix - who cares. Still stands as the best heavy metal record of all time, and the only HM record which can appear so high on punk lists!
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The Birthday Party - BBC Sessions. If you don’t own any BP, or if you have everything except this, rush out right now and buy it. Nick Cave proves he was once one of the scariest punk singers ever, rather than one of the scariest crooners ever, as he is now.
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The Saints - Wild About You. The first three records plus b sides and outtakes from Australia’s finest. Their first single was reviewed as “Single of this and every week”, and it still sounds great today. Buy one for every room in the house.
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The Sick Things - My Life’s A Mess. Another Australian band, this one never released a record (like the Electric Eels) until years after they split. Killer killer killer raw raw raw. Features Mick Turner from the Dirty 3, too.
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Suicide - Suicide. Synth duo from New York. Nightmare music, and they have a similar connection to the Velvets than the Birthday Party do to the Stooges. Pity ‘Synth duo’ became a dirty word.
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Pere Ubu - Modern Dance. Art punk from Cleveland, and along with Dub Housing, all you really need to know about them. Captain Beefheart meets Joy Division (and breaks the window).
I don’t know if you were intentionally flamebaiting, but calling The Stooges heavy metal is utterly ridiculous. Iggy himself called the Stooges the first punk band. You are a heretic!
I haven’t been punched by a redneck for having blue hair since 1987.
I don’t think punk was about music either. I still shop at thrift stores and pull stuff out of trash cans even if I own a home in a nice middle-class neighborhood. I don’t miss the 20 teenagers on the living-room floor, sending the betties out to panhandle while I jammed blues with 3 other guys on the street corner to scrape together enough money to see a gig at the speedway cafe, or coming to dopesick and broke (with 20 teenage strangers passed out on the living-room floor), And I’m not saddened by the loss of the conditions that brought punk about.
Some of the bands I really loved in the 80’s were the Butthole Surfers, the Dead Milkmen (I like you, Stuart!..do you know what the Queers are doing to our soil?), The Cramps, X, The Vandals, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, The Misfits.
I’ve been out of the scene for a long time and I don’t listen to much radio music anymore. I really liked NoFX a few years ago, when half the radio songs were starting to sound like the Ramones.
Fugazi are some of the nicest poeple I’ve ever met, none of that “Fuck me, I’m a rock-star” attitude.
I know everyone considers Iggy Pop the godfather of punk, but what about the Velvet Underground?
Whoever mentioned Trex and punk in the same thread needs to get out and watch a few bands methinks.
Haven’t seen any mention of a few leading edge punk bands in their day such as
The Stranglers
Stiff Little Fingers
Angelic Upstarts
Vibrators
Sham 69
Rezillos
X-ray spex
The Pratts
This is why I keep telling people to read “Please Kill Me.” the first part of the book is the story of the godmother of punk, Nico, as she goes through various lovers from Jim Morrison to Iggy Pop, spreading destruction and syphilis. Legs McNeil somehow attributes the early trail of punk as going through Jim Morrison and the Doors, but they’re about as hippie as it gets, and that’s exactly what the punks rejected.
Ya know, my older sister in NYC works in the music scene, I told her about this book and she said funny I should mention it, she just bought an option on the book and was departing the next day to shop it around hollywood, she wanted to make it into a movie, focusing mostly on the early days of MC5 and Iggy. I talked to her a few weeks later and asked how it went. She said that once they heard the subject matter, every door in hollywood was slammed in her face. I think this was a good thing, some things are just not intended for a mass audience.
Regarding my supposedly heretical statements about Iggy Pop, I was using ‘Heavy Metal’ in the sense it was used at the time. If you look at contemporary reviews, it was considered HM, rather than punk (seeing as ‘Punk’ didn’t really exist). I was only being a slight smart-arse, but more towards heavy metal fans (of which I used to be one). And Iggy says lots of things about the Stooges, lots of them not being quite true (like about him writing every note and every word, and the others being a bunch of idiots).
In the early seventies, the line between heavy metal and what we might now call proto-punk was non-existent. Magazines like Back Door Man covered both, and used the terms interchangably.
I think that the Velvet Underground were influential on punk, without actually being punk themselves. For every ‘Heroin’ there was a ‘Femme Fatale’, and for every ‘Sister Ray’, there was an ‘I Found a Reason’. They also happen to be my favourite band of all time. I think they’re still musically underrated, considered mostly for their influence and image rather than incredible music.
I still laugh everytime I hear “pop-punk”. That’s like calling R&B “pop-rap”. I wrote an article about this a while ago but, I’m too damned lazy to dig it up. Long story short, poppy sounds just makes you a rock band. If you have no message you’re not punk. Therefore, Blink = Rock. NOFX = Punk. It’s quite simple really.
Basically, not too long ago I sat back with my friend, Tim Gallegos, from Wasted Youth and Bad Religion fame, and we talked about the scene when it was up and running. Back when epitaph was a sticker and a P.O. Box and teens were becoming socially conscious and taking to the streets and living it through their music. People from Bad Religion, Wasted Youth, Red Kross, Circle Jerks and Black Flag went to my high school. Reagan was hated, PMRC was censoring. Nowadays the conditions are growing to the same. A hated president is in office, people are mad as hell and not sitting on their hands anymore as shown at Seattle with the WTO and Quebec with the FTAA. The corporations are basically selling “Punk-in-a-box” and the uprising against them has started growing. Punk, to me, has always been a lifestyle, way of, questioning what has always been and being politically aware as a youth so not to be fucked as an adult. I protest for my rights, I make myself heard when I feel that my rights are being stepped on. You don’t have to dress a certain way or listen to certain people to live a punk lifestyle.
As for the bands…
Dead Kennedys, Millions of Dead Cops (Why hasn’t anyone mentioned them, yet?) Fear, Bad Religion, Minor Threat, 7 seconds, Black Flag, SubHumAns, Crass, Conflict, Lard, Misfits
VU is one of my faves, but are they really punk? I think of “Lisa Says” and “I’m sticking with you” and “Stephanie Says”: most of the songs I think of aren’t really that raw punk edge. Like I say, I’m not even sure what punk is.
I remember seeing TSOL, and when they played “Code Blue” the singer walked off the stage and handed the mike to some random guy in the audience who sang it. The singer just sat on the side. It was very cool. I met them before the gig and they were great guys.
Well said. I had friend we called Scotty the prep. This was absolutely punk, yet he drove an audi, dressed like a preppie, complete with the izod shirts, and the hair style etc. We were talking one time and he explained. His parents, who were rather affluent, told him that if he would dress like that, they would buy him a nice car, and pay his tuition, etc. He, being the rather twisted individual he was, thought this was the funniest thing he had ever heard. SO he did it, got this really nice audi, which he proceded to trash the inside of it completely, and would go hang out poolside at the country club with a portable radio playing the DK’s and killing joke as loud as he could…Generally making life miserable for his yuppie parents. He was accepted as one of our own, all though most people considered him an asshole(and he was). I never had wierd hair, and didnt dress that strange either. It was about who you were, not what you dressed like or listned to.