Nine Inch Nail's Head Like A Hole no longer feels all that.
Static-X's Push It also has lost a lot of its edge. The video cracks me up.
On the other hand... Punk still has it. The Sex Pistols God Save the Queen still hangs in there for me.
Lorna Doom, badass bassist of influential Los Angeles punk band the Germs, died yesterday. Formed in 1976, the Germs -- Doom, Darby Crash, Pat Smear, and Don Bolles in the classic line-up -- were at the center of the early Hollywood punk scene that spawned Black Flag, X, Fear, the Go-Go's, and so many seminal acts. From the Los Angeles Times:
Born Teresa Ryan, Doom became an icon of the U.S. punk explosion despite having to learn her instrument after already joining the band. Along with her high school friend Belinda Carlisle, who would become lead singer of the Go-Go’s, the bassist was part of the posse of Hollywood punks who sparked a West Coast music movement.
Doom’s death at age 61 was confirmed by her longtime friend and former Germs bandmate Don Bolles. A cause of death was not immediately available...
Germs' primal first album, “G.I.,” set the tone for the U.S. hardcore punk movement. The debut release by the fledgling indie label Slash, which was founded by the punk fanzine of the same name, the 1978 album felt zapped onto turntables from a way messier, more uncontrolled galaxy...
Slash Records also released the soundtrack to the Penelope Spheeris documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization,” which documented the Germs and other bands in performance. When the film became an unlikely indie hit, Doom’s work served as inspiration to countless female punks itching to break through the genre’s male-dominated glass ceiling.
Read the restyesterday i lost a part of me, my best friend in high school and partner in crime in the early punk scene, #LornaDoom or Teresa passed away....
Maximum Rocknroll, the seminal punk print 'zine launched in 1982, is ceasing publication of its paper edition. This truly marks the end of an era in punk culture and underground media. According to today's announcement, MRR will continue its weekly radio show, post record reviews online, continue its archiving effort, and launch other new projects that will keep the unbreakable Maximum Rocknroll spirit alive. From MRR:
Read the restMaximum Rocknroll began as a radio show in 1977. For the founders of Maximum Rocknroll, the driving impulse behind the radio show was simple: an unabashed, uncompromising love of punk rock. In 1982, buoyed by burgeoning DIY punk and hardcore scenes all over the world, the founders of the show — Tim Yohannan & the gang — launched Maximum Rocknroll as a print fanzine. That first issue drew a line in the sand between the so-called punks who mimicked society’s worst attributes — the “apolitical, anti-historical, and anti-intellectual,” the ignorant, racist, and violent — and MRR’s principled dedication to promoting a true alternative to the doldrums of the mainstream. That dedication included anti-corporate ideals, avowedly leftist politics, and relentless enthusiasm for DIY punk and hardcore bands and scenes from every inhabited continent of the globe. Over the next several decades, what started as a do-it-yourself labor of love among a handful of friends and fellow travelers has extended to include literally thousands of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of readers. Today, forty-two years after that first radio show, there have been well over 1600 episodes of MRR radio and 400 issues of Maximum Rocknroll fanzine — not to mention some show spaces, record stores, and distros started along the way — all capturing the mood and sound of international DIY punk rock: wild, ebullient, irreverent, and oppositional.
Dischord is to punk and indie rock what Def Jam and Death Row Records are to rap. Read the rest
I'm delighted to report that Boing Boing pal Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü) has a new rock and roll platter on its way February 8! Above is the title track from the punk pioneer's new album, Sunshine Rock. If this catchy psychedelic number is any indication, expect the album to be a burning light of gritty punk optimism in these dark times.
“To go from [2011 autobiography] See a Little Light to the last three albums, two of which were informed by loss of each parent, respectively, at some point I had to put a Post-It note on my work station and say, ‘Try to think about good things,'" Bob says. "Otherwise I could really go down a long, dark hole. I’m trying to keep things brighter these days as a way to stay alive.”
Bob Mould plays the history Fillmore in San Francisco on March 2 as part of the Noise Pop Festival 2019. More tour dates here.
Below, Bob Mould on Boing Boing Video, an interview and performance from 2014 produced by the talented team at Remedy Editorial:
photo: Alicia J Rose Read the rest
Punk historian and music journalist Jon Savage has assembled an oral history of Joy Division to be published in March 2019. "This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division" features interviews with all the surviving members of the pioneering band -- Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris -- along with Deborah Curtis, Peter Saville, Tony Wilson, Anik Honore, and others. It sounds to be a compelling companion to the 2007 documentary Joy Division, written by Savage and directed by Grant Gee.
The Ramones' fourth studio album Road To Ruins turns 40 tomorrow. To celebrate, Rhino Records released the Road To Ruin: 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition with three CDs and one LP containing two mixes of the album, additional unreleased studio and live recordings, and a hardcover book. They've also unearthed this previously unreleased video for their classic punk ditty "She's the One."
The Pogues were my entry point into punk. They caused a massive shift in my understanding of music: they made my growing up to play the mandolin, tenor banjo and bodhran feel cool. The music I played needn't be something from the past. As much as I loved and continue to adore traditional Irish tunes, The Pogues showed 15-year-old me that there was new life in the tunes I knew; new themes to explore. Discovering A Pair of Brown Eyes, Thousands are Sailing and The Broad Majestic Shannon kicked open other musical doors for me. It wasn't too long until my Discman was pushing The Waterboys, The Levellers, Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span into my skull.
I've got fond memories of The Pogues Live at the Town and Country. When I was 18, I skipped my high school prom in favor of shipping off to Halifax. I'd fallen in love with a girl there, the summer previous. She was waiting for me. The relationship smouldered itself out, as flames that burn too hot, too fast, often do. Before we parted ways, she bought Live at the Town and Country on VHS for me as a birthday gift.
I watch it and listened to it until there was nothing left of that tape. Read the rest
High priestess of punk poetry Patti Smith assaults us with her epic 1975 jam "Land" in this trailer for her new concert documentary "Horses: Patti Smith and her Band," celebrating 40 years of her seminal album. The documentary screens tonight as part of the Tribeca Film Festival and the band performs following the movie. Wow.
The Cramps got together in the same year I was born. I didn't discover them until I was 15 years old: the kindly middle-aged punk who ran a record shop in my hometown told me to check them out or he'd lay a whooping on me. I've never been so happy to have been afraid for my life: their love of trashy 1950's pulp culture, pinups and catchy surf guitar licks never fails to make me happy. Also, the band's guitarist, Poison Ivy, had some of the best damn hair in the history of music. I'll fight you on that.
The Cramps played, in one form or another, until the band's lead singer, Lux Interior, died of heart failure in 2009.
From the New York Times:
In 1979 the Cramps were guest D.J.’s on WPIX-FM in New York, spinning records by Wanda Jackson, the Electric Prunes, Herbie Duncan and other vintage rockabilly and garage acts. Lux Interior was asked by one of the station personalities about the music.
Taken aback by the question, he replied: “Rock ’n’ roll has absolutely nothing to do with music. It’s much more than music. Rock ’n’ roll is who you are. You can’t call the Cramps music. It’s noise, rockin’ noise.”
Naked Girl Falling Down the Stairs is from their self-produced album, Flamejob, released in 1994. It was the first record of theirs I bought. I had the chorus from the song stuck in my head for weeks. At school, in bed at night. Read the rest
The Damned are responsible for a number of ear worms that routinely refuse to leave me alone. Formed the same year as I was born, they were raw, angry and too much fun. New Rose has been on constant rotation in my head, both as part of my internal soundtrack and while playing on my headphones for close to three decades. So, you can imagine my delight to find that The Guardian recently took a deep dive into how The Damned got together, wrote and recorded New Rose.
It's a longer read, but a good one. Read the rest
Mark E. Smith, the inscrutable and inimitable poet frontman of UK post-punk band The Fall has died. He was 60. Read the rest
At the MTV Movie Awards in 1995, The Ramones played a medley of the five nominees for "Best Song from a Movie."
Read the rest"Big Empty" by Stone Temple Pilots — The Crow
"Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" by Elton John — The Lion King
"Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" by Urge Overkill — Pulp Fiction
"I'll Remember" by Madonna — With Honors "Regulate" by Warren G — Above the Rim
In 1977, the Sex Pistols did a charity gig to raise money for the families of striking miners and firefighters in Huddersfield; the show started at lunchtime with an all-kid audience, and went on into the night, with adult punks showing up later in the day. Read the rest
Last year, when 45 was elected to office, Amanda Palmer told The Guardian that "frightening political climates make for really good, real, authentic art," and that "Donald Trump is going to make punk rock great again."
Well, she was right.
Blondie's new music video for its song "Doom or Destiny" is a great example. It features Debbie Harry and Joan Jett as cunt mug-carrying anchors for news of the "impending apocalypse:"
Described by Debbie Harry as, “The most openly political video Blondie has ever done,” the cut and paste punk tribute was directed by friend of the band Rob Roth and inspired by the current state of the world. “In trying times we try harder,” adds Blondie co-founder Chris Stein, “politics have become the new pop culture phenomena."...
As well as endless feminist slogans and an appearance from a familiar-looking sock puppet President, a delightful weather report for the rest of December includes soaring temperatures coinciding with an asteroid impact on the 29th, seven plagues on the 30th and thermonuclear war in time for NYE, before things spiral into total nuclear winter with lows of -27 before we steadily move into a state of post history. Oh well. Nasty women unite!
The song is from Blondie's most recent album, Pollinator.
Thanks, Simon! Read the rest
Oh, William Shatner, you have brought us much joy over the years with all your awkward spoken-word interpretations of popular songs. Now, you're covering The Cramps' "Garbageman" and, well, we're still amused.
Well if you can't dig me, you can't dig nothin'
Do you want the real thing, or are you just talkin'?
Do you understand?
I'm your garbageman
Bill's Cramps' cover was recorded for the forthcoming Covered in Punk box set by novelty song radio personality, the one and only Dr. Demento.
Over two-full hours, a total of 64 tracks—all created specifically for “Dr. Demento Covered in Punk”!
Both the two-disc CD, or three-disc vinyl LP come with an equally entertaining full-color booklet jam-packed with extensive liner notes and quotes personally written by the artists, a foreword by producer John Cafiero (Misfits, Ramones, Osaka Popstar), an Afterword by Dr. Demento, as well as facts, photos, and an array of dynamic paintings and illustrations created specifically for the project by a team of visual artists spanning the world of comic books, classic punk-rock album covers, Topps Trading card series, Mad Magazine and more.
Joined by everyone from the Misfits, Joan Jett, Fred Schneider of the B52s, to “Weird Al” Yankovic, the late Adam “Batman” West (in one of his final performances), and Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner—(to name just a few), the Doctor is in…and he’s ‘Covered in Punk’!!
Pre-order it now (release date is January 2018).
Side note: The vinyl looks a bit like spin art:
"Dü You Remember?" is a new five-part podcast telling the story of Hüsker Dü, the Minneapolis punk band that paved the way for Nirvana, The Pixies, Foo Fighters, and really the entire realm of alternative rock. The podcast features interviews with Bob Mould, Greg Norton, and, yes, Grant Hart, who died last month, and other punk peers like Henry Rollins and Babes in Toyland's Lori Barbero. The podcast is pegged on the Numero Group label's release of Savage Young Dü, a lavish box set documenting the band's early years.
"We were huge music fans. We were students. We took everything in. We made it our own unique voice, and I think it changed the world for a select group of people. It certainly did not change the entire world of pop music, but I think for people who were affected by it, there was nothing before and after. It was that band."--Bob Mould
Listen to the rest of the series: "Dü You Remember? A podcast about Hüsker Dü" Read the rest
