Post-punk film festival in San Francisco this weekend

If you're in San Francisco this weekend, there's a doozy of a mini-film festival at the Roxie Theater. "This Must Be The Place: Post-Punk Tribes 1978-1982" is a series of short films documenting the regional post-punk scenes in the UK, France, Los Angeles/Orange County, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New York City, and elsewhere. SFMOMA's Gina Basso and Roxie programmer Mike Keegan have curated the most provocative and rarely scene visual documents of that profoundly important period in the history of DIY and underground culture. Check out the full schedule over at the Roxie Theater site. Worth noting is that the killer song in the trailer above is Liquid Liquid's "Cavern" (1983), with the bassline that became the basis for Grandmaster Melle Mel's "White Lines (Don't Do It)."

• [Boundegar]

  I think Grandmaster Flash and  Melle are two different people. 

  • [David Pescovitz]

    Yes, Grandmaster Flash and Grandmaster Melle Mel are two different people. So?  Grandmaster Flash was not involved in the recording of “White Lines (Don’t Do It).”

    • [Boundegar]

       Really?  All these years I thought it was his song.  Also, I thought that was a typo in the last line.

    • [penguinchris]

      According to Wikipedia they were intentionally misleading to make people think Grandmaster Flash was involved with the song. Amazing that all these years later, we’re all still misled! I thought it was Grandmaster Flash too.

• [niktemadur]

  There’s always been a lot of noise as to what “Post Punk” is, a music that I’ve always associated with the span between 1978-82 and the terms experimental, aggressive and bordering on bleak, with a heavy Krautrock influence, congealed into something that just plain fucking worked and still does, it’s still compelling and relevant to my ears.

  In the Wikipedia article, Public Image Ltd (nail on the head) is bunched together with OMD (false, that’s “synth pop”, or “Synth Britannia” as a BBC documentary called it).
  The Fall (true) and Husker Du (false, that’s good ol’ American Hardcore).  Au Pairs (true) and Talk Talk (false, Dance Pop morphing into Post Rock).  Joy Division (true) and Television (false, they predated Punk, might as well throw Patti Smith in the list).

  Here’s a perfect example of what I consider Post Punk, Section 25′s “Knew Noise”.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9wB2AMZb_8

  Now compare Section 25 to anything by the absolutely splendid Prefab Sprout (also on the Wikipedia list), and you see the problem, these 2 bands inhabit completely different musical planets, and “Post Punk” as a blanket term becomes meaningless.

  • [niktemadur]

    OK, now Prefab Sprout, “Cue Fanfare” from their earliest record, “Swoon”.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTdssoO6I_s

    No aggression or Krautrock here, just perfectly crafted pop music.