August 27, 2019 • 52 mins
Punk rock really needs about 10 episodes to do it justice, but we'll try and tackle anyway. Learn all about this movement right now.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Maine and Greater New England. We're coming to see
you guys in Portland and we can't wait. We would
love to see you there. Yep, we'll be at the
State Theater on August. If you're interested, you can get
tickets and information at s y s K live dot com.
There's some lobster at us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:28):
you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Thrash core By I'm already regretting this. There's Chuck Bryan
over there, Charles W. Chuck Bryan, There's Jerry Droome Roland
and uh, like I said, I'm Josh should know. Hey, ho,
let's go exactly. I want to issue a c I
(00:51):
A off the top here, Okay, to fans of punk music,
get ready to be mad at us. Yeah, please don't
beat us up though. Yeah. Here's the thing. Punk it's
sort of like the hip hop episode. It's not just music,
it's a culture. It's a movement and it is so
(01:11):
there are so many tentacles, alternative tentacles, so many subgenres,
so many Like the more I started getting into it,
I was like, why are we even doing this in
a single episode. I had the same feeling because it
can only disappoint. But we're doing anything now. There's a
lot of people out there who don't know squad about punk.
We're gonna be like, cool, I'm punk now, I get it,
(01:34):
and the people who are punked now we're gonna love
us for it. Well, I mean, you know, there are
certainly podcast I'm sure that are dedicated to the history
of punk right now. I know. And the thing is
is with a big distinction here between the hip hop
episode and this episode is that the hip hop episode
doesn't beat you up if you show up to it.
(01:55):
There shows and you're not wearing the right thing. That's true.
Punk's kind of protective of punk, which makes sense because
that's pretty punk, right, like you kinda you can't allow
for commercialization of punk or else it stops being punk.
So by definition it has to be vigilantly defended and protected.
(02:17):
But the irony of the whole thing is when you
do that, you actually strangle it from becoming anything ever,
and you kind of killed punk strangling in the cradle
the end. Yeah, And I listened to a lot of
music while researching this, and there's just so many things
that could possibly fall under the banner of punk, and
(02:38):
probably so many real punk fans that will fight you
on any of them if you say, like, you know,
the Talking Heads were punk, our television was punk, not really,
but were a new wave I don't know. Yeah, the
New York Dolls, I was listening to them proto punk.
When you listen to them, though, they sound like sort
(02:59):
of like dressed up rock and roll, like rocky horror
picture show style, right, But make no bones about it,
the New York Dolls were a direct predecessor of punk. Yeah.
But then I started listening to things I never listened
to growing up at all. Like I wasn't a punk kid,
but I saw all the Jackets with Minor Threat and
Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedy's on them, and I started
(03:20):
listening to that stuff today and I liked a lot
of it. It's good music, and some of it I
didn't quite love, Okay, which one I think. You know.
My deal is I like vocals and vocalists and punk
is not known for that. But stuff like that had
a really unique bent and it wasn't just screaming. I
liked a lot more so you like the Misfits a lot.
I like the Misfits, I like the Damned, I like
(03:42):
the Circle Jerks. Did not like the Germs. I was
never into the Germans. What about the Cramps? Uh, I
didn't listen to the Cramps yet, they're like rockabilly punk.
I'll probably like it. But stuff that had a little
more melody, little more vocal styling I liked much more
than the Germs, which you know, dar we crashed, just
it's just screaming things that you can hardly understand. Didn't
(04:04):
love Black Flag, What Little Icel listen to? Like the
Henry Rawlins black Flag. I listened to a little bit
of both. But um, it's all very interesting to me,
and I dig the music for sure. Yeah, it's hard
not to in some way, shape or form like punk
when you hear it like it's it's it's just too
(04:24):
it just gets under your skin just too easily, really quickly,
and you might not even realize, like you're like your
head's like kind of nodding in your knees like shaking
or whatever. But like, no matter who you are, punk
and get to you like that now, whether you're like
I'm gonna start buying punk records and like get a
mohawk or something like that. That's that's maybe a couple
(04:45):
of steps down the road. Most people probably wouldn't, but
I think everybody can appreciate punk on some level. Especially
to me. The greatest punk band of all time, and
what I would argue would be the first punk band
is the Remotes. If you like melody and you like singing,
but you also like punk, they've got everything you need. Yeah,
And if you like songs that are seconds long, sure
(05:07):
well that was a big thing. Like punk grew out
of this idea that led Zeppelin had like eleven minutes
songs they were playing on the radio, and guys like
the Ramones were like shut up. So they purposefully and
deliberately went the opposite way and they started making songs
or sometimes less than a minute, like one of the
greatest punk songs of all time in my opinion, Circle
(05:29):
Jerk's Wasted is like fifty fifty two seconds long, Get
and get out. It's all you need. He gets the
point across. He talks about all the drugs he's on.
She talks about all the stuff he does when he's
on drugs. All unless than a minute. Yeah, but I
think you bring up an important point is punk was
a reaction. It was a reaction to the bloated money
(05:50):
and the bloated song links and the arena rock, Cucumber
in the pants, hard rock, Mackeismo getting the eighties. Like
this great quote from one of the Ramones, these were
kids on the outside and he said, Uh, Johnny Ramon
in ninety six and Rolling Stones said, you know, they
(06:11):
got together because none of them could get girls, so
they all found solace in each other. And he said
girls always wanted to go with guys who had corvettes,
so we had nothing to do but climb on rooftops
and sniff glue. The Rams in a nutshell. But if
you look at nineteen seventy seven, like the albums that
came out in nineteen seventy seven, Um, you know you've
got the sex Pistols and the Ramons and stuff like that,
(06:32):
but you've got Eric Clapton, Slowhand, Fleetwood, Max Rumors, Point
of No Return from Kansas, Uh The Stranger from Billy Joel,
which one was that it was one of the great ones,
but they all work great. Uh Asia from Uh Steely
Dan and like these are like the big chart toppers,
(06:56):
and so punk came along and was just like, no,
screw through all that to heck with you guys, That's
what it says. So it was an ethos and a
spirit even as much as it was music. Yeah, And
I think, um one of the other things that commonly
ran across and researching this was that, um, it was
not just kind of like rock sucks because it's getting
(07:18):
so you know, eleven minutes long per song and there's
lots of guitar solos and stuff like that, but also
that it was hopelessly commercialized, and so punk was like,
there's nothing inherently wrong with rock, it's just gone on
this path that it's been on for so long that
it's it's just become I think, like you said, bloated, Um,
let's take rock back and scrape away all the all
(07:42):
the blow and just get back to like the core
and the point of it originally, which was rebellion, which
is that was what punk was built on in the
in the late seventies and the Ramons again, I will
go to my grave saying they were officially the first
punk band that ever existed, But there were there was
music that's that led up to that immediately before it,
(08:05):
and even a decade or so before it, that really
laid the foundation in the groundwork for for bands like
the Ramona and this the punk that that um, the
punk music that took off right afterwards. Yeah, and you
also got to remember that coming into the early seventies
where some of these proto punk bands started, this was
coming off of the late sixties and the hippie movement
(08:27):
and Nixon and Vietnam, which so all that had proved
a failure. Yeah, and and flower power and the peace
and love and all that stuff. Uh. There there's still
Crisy Stills and Nash and stuff hanging around, but there's
also a younger generation that thumb their nose or more
specifically their middle finger at that whole generation, and that's
(08:48):
what sort of birth the punk movement, in the proto
punk movement at least. So I saw the earliest proto
punk band I could find, um that you could trace
his line too, is actually from Peru, Okay. They were
around in nineteen starting in ur Los Sakos s A
I c O. S. And if you go listen to
(09:09):
a Los Sakos song, you will it's quite clear that
this was proto punk. Did it have the speed a
little bit? Yau, I think that's a bit of the distinction,
Like there was that whole uh Nuggets era garage rock
of the sixties. You can hear a little bit of that,
but it still didn't have that chugga chugga chugg a
speed that punk rock would be known for. You know
(09:32):
it did. Yeah, no, um, like another proto punk band
that's more garage rock, but kind of some of the
sentiments they came up with the Chocolate Watch band at
this anthem called like I'm not like everybody else and
it's like real kind of um, it's groovy, but if
you listen to the words, it's like those guys talking
(09:52):
about being a punk but it's long before punk. But
there musically they were not punk at all. Los Sachos
was punk, Like there's their sound is definitely punk and
they were around the same time. Yeah, And the and
the specifics of what you're doing musically on a guitar
with punkt is the down stroke. So you know, it's
(10:13):
hard to talk about it without showing you but if
you're playing like a an Eric Clapton rhythm part, it's
like you know, you're stroking down and up ching ching,
ching ching. If you're playing punk, you're just going down
that ching ching ching ching ching ching ching. Uh. And
that's really And the Ramons made a career out of
(10:33):
two or three chords played fast, playing that same rhythm
and down stroke over and over and over and over,
like I'm convinced you just did two seconds snippet of
a misfit song. I could hear it like playing his Day.
It's great. Though I was listening to stuff that I
was like, man, I really like a lot of this
and I missed out. So I see myself diving into
(10:53):
it again or diving in for the first time. Rather
I mean, I know about the Clash and the Ramons
and stuff like that, for but oh there's like I mean,
as you know, a whole world world. And then the
thing about punk is the more like you find, oh
I like this band, and then oh that it turns
out this guy was used to be in this other band.
There from the same scene as this other band. It
(11:14):
just keeps going and going and going, because one of
the through lines of punk is that anybody could be
in a punk band. It was super democratized in the
d I Y ethos um was was basically the foundation
of punk music. All right, well, let's take a break.
We'll go back in time a little bit and talk
(11:36):
about New York and London, and then we'll get to that.
What I think is kind of the coolest part of
this whole thing is that d I Y aesthetic. Okay,
al right, so I mentioned London in New York. I
(11:58):
sourced this from a bunch of articles. I can't remember
if this was the Pitchfork win or not, but the
headline of this part is the tale of two cities,
New York in l A. And I'm sorry New York
in London, but l A would come along a bit
later with its own scene. And also London gets mentioned
here at the expense of Manchester, which I would say
is like, that's ground zero next to New York. Right.
(12:21):
Also ground zero, which doesn't get nearly enough press is Australia. Yeah,
these things were going on in parallel all over the world.
That's really interesting to think, like this stuff is happening
like almost independently. It was, because it's not like someone
in Australia heard someone on the internet in nine But
there are a couple of bands, one called Cheap Nasties
(12:43):
on the Western I think in Perth, and then The Saints,
probably the biggest punk band to come out of Australia.
This is at the same time that cb gbs uh
and the Studges were like getting big. It's crazy. Yeah,
so the Studges would technically qualify as proto punk too,
but they came from Michigan along with m C five
and Death Death is an even earlier proto punk band
(13:05):
than The Stages. That documentary is great. I actually I
haven't seen that one. Yeah, there's one on death it's
just called like a band called death Right. Yeah. Yeah,
it's very like they're amazing and they were, um I
think three three African American brothers from Detroit just killing it.
Who in like a punk band? Yeah yeah, and this
is before the Stages. I think this is before MC
(13:26):
five Bad Brains for sure, for sure. Um, So all
of these bands are starting to kind of lay the
groundwork and then it's almost like it just kind of ignites,
like we're saying in different parts of the world virtually
at the same time, which I just find endlessly fascinating. Yeah,
and I think that's what really lends a lot of
credence to the fact that it was a movement. It
(13:47):
was a feeling people were rebelling against more than anything
which can happen parallel in different parts of the country
in world. You know, if there's anything that can bring
the whole world together, it's disdained for hippies, you know,
they really bring that out. And everybody, did you see
the Tarantino movie Yet Once upon a Time. Yes, there's
a lot of the anti hippies suffing. It was pretty funny, Yeah,
(14:09):
a little some of them are beaten to death. Literally. Well,
I just mean all the DiCaprio stuff was really funny.
Hated the hippies. But but Tarantino really like pointed out,
like you know, the Manson family has been celebrated in
romanticized at least in some weird ways. Um, and they
(14:30):
should not be. And this is why I think he
did a really good job of doing that. Uh so sorry,
we're talking about the Stooges in MC five in Michigan.
Uh In New York City is where things really crystallized
with the club CBGB owned by Hilly Crystal. Crystal Crystal
is it Crystal? I think so? Like Billy Crystal right,
but hilly uh. And originally you know that stands for
(14:52):
a country, blue, blue grass, and blues, and that was
what it was supposed to be when I opened in nineteen.
But then in about two years the Ramones started playing there,
talking Heads started playing their nineteen seventy five Blondie um Television,
I think Television. I'm okay with them, Like I don't
love them, they don't, I don't hate them, but um,
(15:15):
they were they were essential to that scene happening, sure,
um and a lot of people kind of overlook them.
I think is like one of the the foundation bands
for punk. Yeah, which is interesting, like I mentioned earlier,
like it's such different kinds of music, Like I love
Talking Heads and Television and Blondie and the Go Goes,
(15:35):
and they were all on that early scene. But I
don't think it's that's anything like the Misfits or the
Damned or the Ramons. No, but the Misfits uh and
the Ramons both started their careers at cbgby So it
was like the place where punk began in the United States. Yeah,
but also at Max's Kanzie Kansas City and New York
Legendary Club. This is where like Patti Smith is hanging out,
(15:58):
the Velbot Underground is hanging out again. They're not punk
at all, but they were in that scene, right. And
one thing that we're kind of not really mentioning that
is a common thread to all these bands, not necessarily music,
but heroin was a huge thread. They shared their deep, deep,
deep love of heroin UM in common and that definitely
(16:19):
bound them together at CBGB for sure. And that was
a huge factor on the early punk scene was heroin,
which I mean this is you know, if you remember
back just a few years ago, for oxycotton turned everybody
into junkies in the world, UM, heroin was not a
big drug at all, and back then especially it was
(16:42):
like you were a total burnout if you were doing heroin,
like it was not done. So the fact that these
people were like shooting heroin like in the clubs, that
was a that was a another kind of badge that
they took on UM that separated them from every buddy else. Yeah,
you know, even their preference of drugs was super hardcore. Yeah,
(17:04):
for sure. Another interesting thing happened early on in nineteen
seventy seven when these two scenes sort of exported one
of their UM early UM big bands to play in
the other city. Uh In nineteen seventy seven, the Damned
played in the United States and less than a year
(17:25):
before that, the Ramons had gone to the UK to
play shows in London, and that was a big deal
because all of a sudden you had these two different
scenes swapping bands. Of course, it wasn't anything they planned,
but they got a taste of New York City in
London with the Ramons in a big, big way, and
the same can be said in New York City with
The Damned very British. And then a month before the
(17:45):
Ramons played in London, in Manchester on June six, the
sex Pistols had their first show. And a lot of
people point to this is this is when UK punk happened.
It was this one show at the um Lesser Free
Trade Hall, which is like a hall might as well
(18:06):
be a VFW basically, and that's where the sex Pistols
are there first show. But some of the people who
were there were so influential, including a seventeen year old
Morrissey who went to cover the thing for New Music
Express um that that it just spread out like a
germ like It was the single point that that UK
punk spread out from and this was UH June of
(18:31):
and within six months, the major record labels were lining
up to sign any and every punk act they could
get their hands on. Six months Like That's so not
only did it spread and grow in parallel around the
world at the same time when it hit the scene.
It's hard to overstate how quickly it just blew up,
(18:55):
like just from nothing to it in six months. Yeah.
I mean, if there's one thing I mean, I don't
I don't know about the music industry today, but previous
to you know, digital content, the music industry was always
there waiting to commodify the next big thing. Yeah, and
they did it to punk big time. Yeah. So let's
talk about this d I Y thing for a little bit.
(19:16):
It was really cool this article about these um, these
d I Y origins in punk music. What happened was
when punk started coming around in the mid nineteen seventies.
This coincided with a big shift in UH equipment and
recording gear and modernizing recording gear among the big labels.
(19:37):
Yeah sure, um, And so all of a sudden there
was all of this these rooms in this gear that
you could either rent cheap or buy cheap. Yeah, they're
old stuff that they didn't need anymore. Yeah, and so
the punks came along and UH started using it, and
the very first punk labels were self started, Miles Copeland
started Step Forward, Bob Last started Fast Product, and of
(19:59):
course very Miss Lee Tony Wilson started Factory Records. Yes dude, which,
by the way, see Party of People if you never
have Everybody. It's amazing to see that again. I saw
it once when it came out. Yeah, it's a good movie. Um,
but it follows this progression of punk into new wave,
UH into the eighties. Um. It just does it in
(20:21):
a spectacularly great way because it's Steve Coogan who's created
so good. But people trace the um punk on record
or on recorded tape rather to the very first single
they claim very first punk single November seventy six, The
Damns New Rows, which I thought that was weird because
(20:43):
the Ramons released their album before them. But maybe because
the Ramons were on the label when they release their album,
they're saying like this is the first d I y,
maybe when was the Ramons first? Off? I think like
the full year before. I'm pretty sure, if not at
least seventy six, then but I'm pretty sure. Well, the
buzz Cox put out an EP and I listened to
(21:03):
a lot of that today. I enjoyed that UM Spiral
Scratch was this EP was apparently the first British homemade
record and that was a really big deal. Uh, this
is a seven. They sold out a thousand copies that
they printed, then they went on to sell another sixteen
thousand and UM. The influence on Spiral Scratch really spread
(21:25):
out and told everyone because they printed it was very cool.
They printed on the little record jacket like how much
it cost, how they produced it, and what the money
was all about for a hundred and fifty three pounds,
basically saying go do this right, like and here's how
to do it. Yeah. Um they all all like. That
kind of set the tone for other records, like other
(21:46):
punk bands released their own records, also included instructions on
their sleeve that the record came in UM and the
whole d I Y record released thing that the buzz
Cox kicked off. UM. Other people started to find other
ways to to kind of make it so punk could
(22:06):
exist outside of the influence of the record companies, Like
people would release records in zip block baggies Like that
was the record sleeve that your record came in and
people loved it like you didn't You didn't need like
this expensive sleeve for the thing to come in, Like
you could just pop it in for in a zip
block bag and sell it. It's super punk. And then also, um,
(22:30):
if you can form a band that it was put
like this, like the sex Pistol showed that anybody could
be in a punk band. You didn't even need be
very talented, right, you didn't even need to know how
to play an instrument. Um, and you could be in
a punk band. And the buzz Cocks came along and
showed that anybody could press a record. But there's still
one very essential ingredient missing, and that was distribution. And
(22:53):
like you said, mail order made up for a lot
of the Buzzcocks ep UM sales. But they they realized
that there were more people out there who wanted this
stuff but didn't have a way to get to it.
So a what was called the Cartel was formed, which
was a group of independent record stores around the UK
that would basically serve as a distribution network for these
(23:18):
d I Y punk records. So cool um. Not only
that but zines were very important early on and the
punk and really kind of a lot of music genres.
Zines were really big. Which are these, you know, fan
made magazines? Yeah, maybe with like photocopy, you don't even
photo copy like mimiographs stuff, yep, And you would just
pronount your zine. And some of these zanes got to
(23:39):
be pretty big and they would attach distribution to the
zines sometimes and sneak forty five not sneaking, but a
pack of forty five in the zine, and that's how
you could release your stuff. And it was just this
uh again. It sounds so trite to say, very punk
rock attitude, but that's exactly what it was. The way
they were doing things was all under the radar, all
on their own, uh. And that changed pretty quickly. It
(24:03):
did is because the the big, the big players came in.
They smelled money, they smelled something new, the next big thing,
and they started signing everybody they could left and right.
And these punks were going like, nah, bollocks, I don't
want your money. They're like, what if we pay you
in heroin? They said, okay, yeah, I like it that
you could buy drugs with money, right, So um again
(24:27):
within six months of what most people point to as
the source of UK punk, that one specific show by
the sex Pistols. The sex Pistons were so new. Sid
Vicious wasn't even in the band. He was still Susie
and the Banshee's drummer. So this is how young this
stuff was. Within six months they were signed on to
(24:48):
a major record label. The Clash was signed onto a
major record label, The Fall, the Jam, the Stranglers, everybody
got signed in this feeding frenzy where everyone who had
punk band could get a record deal with a major label.
Six months after The sex Epistols had their first show, Yeah,
Generation X with a young Billy idol, Uh, which I
(25:10):
did ever do? That? Danceing with Myself was originally a
Generation X song. They released it, then he re released
it as a solo artist like a year later and
it became a much bigger hit. Sure, they were like
thanks a lot, but yeah, sex Pistols went with E
M I UM, the Stranglers at you A. The Clash
signed to CBS, The Jam went to Polydor, Generation X
(25:30):
and Stiff Little Fingers went to Chrysalis and even the
Buzz Cox. They were very quick to hop on that
train too with United Artists, which actually that's not too bad.
You could have signed with worse because United Artists was
started by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, um, Charlie Chaplin in
d W. Griffith so that artists could have more control
(25:52):
and ownership over their work. Yeah. I mean it was
a movie company, and I guess they dabbled in records.
So one of three things happened basedically to the little
d I Y small label movement. Um you either got Pilford.
They use one example in Belfast, the Good Vibrations label.
Four of its first six bands were stolen away or
(26:13):
signed away. I guess so either got Pilford and then
just shut down and gave up. Um Or you grew
and got bigger to where you were, you know, like
Rough Trade and Factory Records, those all became like bigger
independent labels. Yeah, rough Trades still around. They have state
of the art, cutting edge bands. It's great. Um Or
they stayed small and just kept going right, they went
(26:38):
punk and went back underground. Yeah, like so they didn't
all go away. They didn't all say, you know, we're
all getting Pilford, so we're just gonna shut down. They
would just find more underground bands and go deeper and
deeper and deeper. But then, um, something happened in nineteen
seventy nine February of nineteen seventy nine that a lot
of people point to, Just as they point to that
first sex Pistols show as the beginning of punk in
(26:59):
the u K. They point to the death of Sid
Vicious as the end of punk, at least the first
wave of punk. His death from a heroin overdose um
is widely pointed to as as the death of punk,
which is a really dumb thing to say, because Punk
very clearly went on. But what I think people are saying, sorry,
(27:21):
I guess it's not entirely dumb now that I say
it out loud, But what people are saying is is
that punk transformed into something else and that punk really
as as it originally existed, was only around for about
to three years, maybe four or five. Some people at
a bar right now that are just saying that over
and over again, punk only the last said three years. Okay, well,
(27:43):
I agree with you, drunk person in this sense, but
it's not like punk went away. It transformed and became
something else, And so what had transitioned into is commonly
called hardcore hardcore punk, where stuff just got faster, louder,
a little angrier. Yeah. Um, and it just went in
(28:04):
in a different direction, predominantly in the United States. Yeah,
and there were there were a couple of scenes. Um,
the l A scene had already sort of been born
by the late seventies. Uh, if you haven't seen it.
The great documentary from Penelope spheris The Decline of Western Civilization,
released in eighty one but filmed over I think eight
(28:27):
maybe covered the l A scene. And that's the Germs
and uh like I think Blondie and the Go Goes
and stuff like that. Alright, York the best sets ever
in the Decline of Western Civilization. Yes, it's very good.
And the Germs too, That's where I was. I was
watching some of that today and that's when I knew
I didn't like the germs. Right. But Pat Smir of
(28:50):
course the food Fighters, he was in the Germs. You know,
he'd liked money. And also if you're like, who's Penelope Spheres,
you may be familiar with their work. If you've seen
the movie Waynes World, that's right, or the movie Black Sheet,
The Chris Farley David Spade movie or the Decline of
Western Civilization. I think she'd ended up doing like three
or four of those, right, at least three, because I
know she didnt want to metal. The second one was metal,
(29:12):
which is good too. Yeah, that's the only two I saw.
Did you ever see that documentary about um heavy metal
Parking Lot? Yes, yeah, where everybody's smoking PCP at did
Judas Priest concert. Yeah, it's pretty great. Did you know
early eighties metal head smoked PCP. No, I didn't until
the documentary because it was quite a surprise. No, I
was scared of all those people. Well, they're kind of
(29:33):
scary because they were all on PCP, especially when you're
like eight or ten. So American. Uh. We were talking
about the you know punk bands releasing their own albums.
This started having on the West coast. Um. They started
forming their own labels even to release their albums and
sign other like bands like SST. Very famous punk label
(29:57):
was started from the guy, the original guy for Black
Flag right, Yes, Uh, what's his name? Greg? G? I
n n either again or Jin. I'm sorry punkers, I
know you're mad at me right now that I don't
know this. Yeah, I think he was like the founder
of Black Flag. Okay, uh Jello Biafro of course, um
(30:19):
Dead Kennedy's they formed or he formed Alternative Tentacles. Yeah,
in ninety nine and seventy nine was a big year
because that's the same year that a band called Bad
Brains came out in Washington, d C. Which I didn't love.
Did you see the Dave Gold documentary series? So I
(30:41):
can't remember what it was called, but he did this
like ten part documentary series where he would do the
music of a different city and it was really really good,
except for the last like fifteen minutes of it. He
would get the Food Fighters together in a studio and
they would play like some of those songs and if
you're really into the food Fighters, imagine you loved it all.
Not into the Food Fighters, So I would just stop
(31:02):
it there. But he does Seattle. But what got me
on this was one of the most interesting episodes was
the Washington, DC episode because I didn't know it was
such a hardcore scene. Like that's where when people talk
about hardcore, yeah, they're like, well, DC is kind of
the cradle of it. And Bad Brains, which my friend
Jason Jenkins in college introduced me to and that's when
(31:24):
it was like really fast, had a little metal edge,
but Bad Brains was also started out as like jazz
fusion and had reggae roots. Also African American guys, four
of them, Yeah, and um, really really good stuff. Yeah.
So you've got at the same time l A and
d C as the new like seats of punk music
(31:46):
in the US punk slash hardcore, and it's going it's
going like way more hardcore, way more masculine, way more
macho than the UK went. The UK went a different route.
They went way more political, way more like class struggle. Um.
And there's there's definitely lots of political threads that um,
American punk music went through, but I think the UK
(32:09):
went to it earlier. Like Crass is a great, great
punk band from the UK. Um, they're kind of like, uh,
they're just great, check them out. Um. But they were
doing like anarchy stuff in the seventies. Yeah. The Clash
certainly is notable for their political statement, very political. Um.
And then you've got like the Six Sex Pistols talking
(32:29):
about anarchy in the UK. They didn't really mean it,
they were just saying something right, Um, But there were
a lot of like politically motivated bands in the UK
in the early seventies that didn't pick up till later
in the eighties in the US certainly were not politically
they were not political. But the other thing, the other
differentiation I saw between UK and US punk was that
(32:51):
UK punk didn't take itself quite as seriously as the
US started to in the late seventies early eighties, and
that this guy I read to I think a Guardian
article trace that back to a love of glam rock.
That glam rock really led to punk, especially in the UK,
and if you're into glam rock, you just can't quite
take anything fully seriously, including punk music and the the US.
(33:15):
Even though punk came out of the New York Dolls
in part um, which was definitely glam rock, Um, it
just didn't have that that through thread. So it did
get taken way more seriously. And that was a big
part of hardcore and what differentiated it from the earlier
punk taking things really really seriously and it being a
(33:35):
little more political than ever before, and um angsty against
things like the boredom of suburban life. Yeah, I mean,
I think punk is just as important for things that
it uh inspired that happened afterward as it was the
actual movement itself, because you can point to stuff in
Minneapolis like Whosker Do or bands like the Minutemen, who
(33:57):
I loved and they had a very sound to them,
and maybe you're even considered punk, probably post punk post
I think MENI Men are considered punk, but Hoosker Do
would definitely be post post punk, and stuff like Sonic Youth,
which I would call them post punk to post punk,
straddling into the early grunge though too. Well yeah, I
(34:19):
mean it's like it's hard to it's easy sometimes to
trace that through line and sometimes it's really difficult. But
we want to. We want to be able to say, like,
you know, it went from Um from Bad Brains to
Hoosker Do to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, you know, four
Degrees of Nirvana and they're going, what about us, right exactly? UM,
(34:40):
But you just you can't. But at the same time,
you also can't discount the effects that these later bands
UM got from the earth listening to the earlier bands
that came before him, Like, there's undoubtedly an influence, it's
just not quite as crisp and clean as as we
like to make it. Yeah, And it's even argued in
(35:00):
one of these articles that the the birth of hardcore
came about because, like you kind of teased earlier on,
because punk, you know, flouts the rules and norms of
rock and roll. Then they formed their own rules and
norms and we're really pretty serious about it, and so
hardcore came along because they didn't quite fit in with that,
(35:22):
the true punk aesthetic. They took punk even further because
punk was being commodified and commercialized otherwise, that's right, which
would make it kind of easier to break from, especially
if you just go slightly angrier and faster and louder. Right,
But you also can look at the stuff like you
talk about tracing the through line. Um, if you want
(35:43):
to think about early Manchester and stuff like Joy Division
that goes to New Order that goes to Orchestral Maneuvers
in the Dark and Simple Minds and all of a
sudden it's John Hughes soundtrack and it's hard. It's then
it's like what is punk about anything? And that like
sort of after new Wave. But at the same time
you can also say, well, New Order was just straight
(36:04):
up new wave, but then new Wave caught on and
got commercialized and commodified, and then you end up having
a John Hughes soundtrack because the record labels got ahold
of the new wave band. Right. So that's kind of
like the story with music is somebody comes up with
something raw and organic and rebellious, everybody loves it. The
(36:25):
big guys come along, get their hands on it, co opted,
commodify it, commercialize it, ruin it, and then some thread
kind of jumps off of that and it starts something else,
and the whole thing always it just continues on and
continues on, except until the mid two thousands when music
died forever and ever and ever. Alright, well, let's take
(36:46):
another break here and we'll talk a little bit about
the end of punk. And before that, maybe we'll hit
on the fashion of punk. Oh boy, okay, chuck um,
(37:10):
we're talking fashion of punk. Yeah, so every every genre
has its own look. Well, I cannot remember what it
had to have been the safety pin short stuff where
we talked about Richard Hell being considered the guy who
started the safety pin as a fashion statement, pretty shirt.
(37:32):
But it was Richard Hell. He was the guitarist for
television and he was like the first guy with the mohawk,
like the Elmer's glue kind of mohawk and safety pins
holding his shirt together, which is I mean, that's quintessential punk.
But at the same time, dressing like a Ramon as
quintessential punk too, with like the jeans with the knees
in it, back jeans Doc Martin's or Converse low tops
(37:55):
or Converse high tops. Uh. Black biker jacket. Yeah. The
New York Dolls were very famous for wearing the Jeane jackets,
super super small. That jokes in this article that they
could barely fit in them. Right. They also wore super
tight lycra shiny pants and stuff too. Yeah, but they
were glam but that it was really those black ripped jeans. Uh.
(38:19):
And this was a time where that wasn't like the
cool thing to wear if you you didn't walk around
with holes. And you know, now it's become a recurring
thing in fashion to have holes in your jeans being cool.
At the time, it was not cool. Admit that you
were poor exactly. Man. This was like somebody in this
article I think from Pitchfork said, you know, Dee de
(38:39):
Ramon had uhum holes in the knees of his jeans.
Not because it was cool, but because he didn't have
any money for some new genes and those his jeans
has had holes in them, so that's what he wore.
Now you pay like a hundred or two hundred bucks
for jeanes that have pre ripped holes that are just right. Yeah,
that's a of ag example of the commodity commoditization of punk. Yeah,
(39:03):
for sure. Uh other you know, in l A they
have their own fashion scene going on because it's l
A and they don't have harsh winters in cold, rainy weather,
so they went to the thrift stores and bought things
and cut them up. And that's where you you never
saw a shirt on a punk in the l A
scene that didn't have like the net cut out or
(39:24):
the sleeves cut off, or in the case of the
Go Goes in their earlier punk days, wearing like literal
trash bags as fashion. Very funny and blondie too. They
all had a very like specific aesthetic in Los Angeles.
It's interesting that the Go go started out on the
punk scene when they were I think to the casual
(39:47):
UH music fan known very much for just sort of
a bubblegum sing along pop hits that they had just
lovable as all get out as all get out great
songs and blend Carlisle too, like her soul of stuff
is yeah, just kiss everybody. You couldn't see that, but
that's what I get. But it's that whole pop punk thing,
which is kind of where it started to go bad.
(40:11):
You could make the case that starting in the beginning
of nine seven, when all those first record labels came
in and started to go bad. Then, but hardcore here's
this is where I This is my reading of this, okay,
and I'm not a punk or even music historian by
any stretch of the imagination, but from what I gathered
from this research is that early punk got co opted
(40:37):
and commodified by the record labels immediately hardcore grew out
of that. Hardcore is way harder to commodify because it's
much more raw, there's much less melodic, it's much more
in your face and angry than the original was. And
it's also jealously guarded and defended by the fans, where
(40:59):
at the getting of the show we're saying, please don't
beat us up. Like if you go to a hardcore
show and they think your opposer like you may get
beaten up if this is the eighties or the nineties,
I don't know if they still do it today. I
remember feeling that threat. Oh yeah, it was the punks
at the school, Like you didn't want to cross them.
That was part of being a punk, was like you
(41:21):
beat somebody up to basically defend punk, don't to keep
it from getting commodified. Like like seeing kids like wear
Thrasher T shirts today and they have no idea what
Thrasher is. Like it's like, if you did that with
punk in the eighties and nineties, you would get beaten up,
maybe even at school, definitely at a punk show. And
so in doing so, they were able to defend hardcore
(41:44):
from commoditization because they kept it their own violently. But
at the same time, they also it's kind of like
how a language evolves the more people speak it and
the more free and easy the rules on it are.
By by doing these very tight restrictions on what's punk
and what's not punking, he's allowed to come to a
(42:04):
punk show, which is super ironic for punks to do.
To come up with all these rules and regulations, they
kept it from evolving, and they definitely kept it underground,
and it's still around today. But it's the same thing
over and over again because it wasn't allowed to grow
and evolved, because the fans have kept it, at least
in America, have kept it underground, uh, purposely, deliberately, invioluently.
(42:28):
So punks killed punk kind of, they would argue, No
punks still around. I go see punk shows all the
time and don't come to it because your opposer and
will beat you up. So they're still punk. But as
far as like you and I walking around are concerned,
punk is dead as a doornail for now, Yeah, for now? Well,
I mean I remember when we did our UK tour,
remember seeing a group of punks in Manchester that looked
(42:50):
like they stepped right out of one with the full
spiked mohawks and the leather studded leather collars. And I
was scared of him a little bit. You're like, those
are bad kids. Are going to try to get me
to smooth down to do a podcast? Right? Well, what's
funny is is that fashion that you're talking about, that
quintessential punk fashion that was a commodification immediately to the
(43:14):
sex Pistols manager used to be the manager of the
New York Dolls, Malcolm McLaren and he owned a shop
Gonna b D S m Um fashion shop with Vivian
Westwood in London, and he basically used the sex Pistols
to promote the fashion he was selling at his shop,
to make it fashionable so we could sell more clothes.
(43:34):
This is the manager of the first UK punk band
ever well, and he had put them together, right. It's
not like essentially the sex Pistols all got together because
they were mates. Like they were formed by a manager. Yes,
by this guy Malcolm. They were the monkeys kind of.
They were the monkeys of punk. They were the punkies.
So many people are mad at us right now, for sure,
but it's true. I mean, go look up your history
if your punks are gonna beat us up next time.
(43:55):
We got some some thirteen year old just looked done
at their sher and win. That's what the sex Pistols are.
I had no idea. Well, it's funny though you talk
about the the pins and the it was all homemade stuff,
like I remember it being a very I mean I
was certainly way too square, but I remember seeing the
punks in my school doing stuff to their clothes during
(44:19):
class and at lunch and thinking it was the coolest thing,
whether it was black magic black Sharpie doing the Dead
Kennedy's or the anarchy symbol. Well, the Dead Kennedys did
have the coolest symbol round, it was pretty cool. Or
just fraying their fraying their jackets or adding safety pins,
it was all. It was all created out of that
homemade aesthetic sort of like the music and it and
(44:42):
it appealed to me, but I was afraid of it.
And now that's why I'm just now starting to listen
to some of this music. Are you gonna turn all
punk now? Maybe? Okay, that would be one of the
bigger surprises you've ever laid on me, man. But pop
punk we should talk a little bit about. Um they
call it bitter sweet in this article. Um sweet in
(45:03):
the sense that you could get tons of money and
be super famous, but bitter because you know, it's spawned
a genre that I think a lot of true punk's
really loathe. Like I think true punks like a square
more than they like Blink Indubita, you know, uh, and
that you know that whole scene, the Van's Warped Tour
and the Rancid and the Offspring and Green Day and
(45:26):
all these groups was a part of a big second
wave of these kids who grew up definitely listening to
that stuff, and I guess feeling like they were a
part of it. I mean, I'm sure Green Day really
feels like they're a punk band and part of a
punk movement. Whereas I remember the first time I heard
Green Day thinking these are guys pretending to be a
punk band, which is a really cruddy thing to say,
(45:48):
but I mean it is. It's like, it's totally understandable
how you would think that, but they they are. It
is punk in some way, shape or form. It's punk.
The stuff they're talking about is pretty punk. Um, but
punk bands don't release acoustic songs. Definitely not the first
the first album Dukie, right, that is what we're talking about.
(46:10):
I guess was that the first one? I think so.
I just remember hearing it and going like, why is
that guy trying to sound British? Well that's pretty punk,
first big hit. It's very punk, yeah, for sure, an
American kid trying to sound British. So um, but yeah,
I don't. I would guess you're right though, there on
Broadway that punks for God's sake, Well, Yeah, there was
a brief, shining moment where you could have conceivably called
(46:31):
them a punk band. Here's the thing, though, man, people
like money. Yeah, but that's been a through not just
in the punk scene, but but it's just a music
in general. Although hats off to the punk culture for
keeping it at bay better than anybody ever has any
other genre I would like to hear. I'm sure there
(46:52):
are people listening that Noah punk bands that did stick
their middle finger up to the money and say nope,
I can tell you one. Fugazi. Uh, well, I loved
Pughassi DC or I guess hardcore um and they I
think they formed Discord Records. If not, they're a big
act on Discord Records. And they have done this whole
(47:14):
d I Y thing, like from the get go, they've
they've issued the major labels as far as I know
their whole career, and they were extremely successful despite that. Yeah,
I saw them in Athens once. Oh yeah, what do
you think that was great? This is you know, I
think they got together in the like seven ishi and
this was more like okay, well, they were still huge
(47:37):
and probably bigger. That was when they were at their height.
I would guess. I mean technically they had a I
don't know about how it performed on the literal charts,
but they had that one song that had a big
MTV hit, Waiting Room. Yeah, it's a good song. It's
a really good song. Um So I just want to
give some shouts out anybody who's like, this is really interesting.
(47:57):
I want to know more. Go listen to the Cramps.
I would recommend the Cramps, listen to Crass, Go watch
the Decline of Western Civilization. Definitely check out the Circle Jerks,
um who else? Chuck, I'm gonna say that for my picks,
Bad Brains, and the Damned. Okay, for sure, I'm gonna
(48:18):
toss g. G Allen out there, although he kind of
transcends everything just punk and you were sending me some um.
I didn't catch any of the names, but she said
there's a big punk scene in Japan still. And that
was another thing too. Somebody said punk's not dying, it's
just coming up in other places, like um, in Islamic countries,
there's a big punk movement. I saw Mexico has got
(48:38):
a big one right now. Apparently Japan has it. And
then there's a whole riot girl feminist punk that is. Man,
If that's not punk, I don't know like Eastern block punk, right, girls,
So punk is still alive. Punk not dead? Punk? No dead,
Punk's not dead. Okay. If you want to know more
(48:59):
about punk music, go listen to that stuff we just
told you to go listen to. And since I said
that's time for listener mail. If you want to learn
more about punk music, you can probably go to literally
any other place other than this episode and learn more
about If you want to know more about punk music,
go to your local library and read up. It's fundamental.
(49:19):
All right, guys, I'm gonna call this uh poop no
no poop. On that short stuff about the guy who
didn't eat for a year. Uh, we talked about the
fact that he didn't poop that much, and she said
this is the norm for people with a colostomy or iliostomy.
I had a temporary iliostomy and ostomy connected to the
ilium instead of the colon due to Crone's complications. My
(49:43):
colon was completely severed from the rest of my digestive
system during this time and basically sat dormant while food
exited into an ostomy pouch. No food means no poop,
but the body still produces a normal gut stuff like
mucus and cells and needs to evacuate on a Asian
which I think, Well, that's what we talked about for
people with years about issues such as pain and running
(50:06):
to the bathroom every thirty minutes. This can be a
literal lifesaver. Anyway, my colon is currently now reattached to
the rest of my intestine and my crones is in remission.
I had no idea. So this person had a colostomy
and it was reversed. Yes, that's I had no idea
they could do that. Yeah, we should do something on
crones and just tie all the stuff together. I just
(50:29):
wanted to give you a little perspective on the topic. Um, actually,
ostomes would be an interesting topic for you to tackle.
Thanks for doing the best podcast around. According to my
podcast app, I've listened to over four hundred episodes. Yikes, Well,
Sonia in Canada, you have another what seven fifty, eight hundred?
What are we up to? Now? What number of episodes?
(50:50):
Eight fifty we're up to? Like, well, she's listened to
four hundred. Okay, so just do a little math. Okay,
hold on, So another like eight hundred or so. Yeah,
I would say something all right, well, you're a third
of the way there, keep at it. Yeah, roughly, yeah,
you got a third. Guys shouldn't just seemed chuck like
look up into the air from the side of his eye.
(51:12):
She said, Uh, we'd love to see you to the
come out to the Prairie provinces. So I know in
Canada we do Toronto and Vancouver, but there's a lot
of country in the middle there that we should probably
go to at some point. In the US would call
them flyover states Canada, they call it Prairie country. Right. Well,
if you want to get in touch with this, like
did Sonia, thanks again, Sonia UM, you can go on
(51:35):
to stuff you Should Know dot com and check out
our social links, and you can also send us an
email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How
stuff works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio is
at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, Maine and Greater New England. We're coming to see
you guys in Portland and we can't wait. We would
love to see you there. Yep, we'll be at the
State Theater on August. If you're interested, you can get
tickets and information at s y s K live dot com.
There's some lobster at us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:28):
you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Thrash core By I'm already regretting this. There's Chuck Bryan
over there, Charles W. Chuck Bryan, There's Jerry Droome Roland
and uh, like I said, I'm Josh should know. Hey, ho,
let's go exactly. I want to issue a c I
(00:51):
A off the top here, Okay, to fans of punk music,
get ready to be mad at us. Yeah, please don't
beat us up though. Yeah. Here's the thing. Punk it's
sort of like the hip hop episode. It's not just music,
it's a culture. It's a movement and it is so
(01:11):
there are so many tentacles, alternative tentacles, so many subgenres,
so many Like the more I started getting into it,
I was like, why are we even doing this in
a single episode. I had the same feeling because it
can only disappoint. But we're doing anything now. There's a
lot of people out there who don't know squad about punk.
We're gonna be like, cool, I'm punk now, I get it,
(01:34):
and the people who are punked now we're gonna love
us for it. Well, I mean, you know, there are
certainly podcast I'm sure that are dedicated to the history
of punk right now. I know. And the thing is
is with a big distinction here between the hip hop
episode and this episode is that the hip hop episode
doesn't beat you up if you show up to it.
(01:55):
There shows and you're not wearing the right thing. That's true.
Punk's kind of protective of punk, which makes sense because
that's pretty punk, right, like you kinda you can't allow
for commercialization of punk or else it stops being punk.
So by definition it has to be vigilantly defended and protected.
(02:17):
But the irony of the whole thing is when you
do that, you actually strangle it from becoming anything ever,
and you kind of killed punk strangling in the cradle
the end. Yeah, And I listened to a lot of
music while researching this, and there's just so many things
that could possibly fall under the banner of punk, and
(02:38):
probably so many real punk fans that will fight you
on any of them if you say, like, you know,
the Talking Heads were punk, our television was punk, not really,
but were a new wave I don't know. Yeah, the
New York Dolls, I was listening to them proto punk.
When you listen to them, though, they sound like sort
(02:59):
of like dressed up rock and roll, like rocky horror
picture show style, right, But make no bones about it,
the New York Dolls were a direct predecessor of punk. Yeah.
But then I started listening to things I never listened
to growing up at all. Like I wasn't a punk kid,
but I saw all the Jackets with Minor Threat and
Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedy's on them, and I started
(03:20):
listening to that stuff today and I liked a lot
of it. It's good music, and some of it I
didn't quite love, Okay, which one I think. You know.
My deal is I like vocals and vocalists and punk
is not known for that. But stuff like that had
a really unique bent and it wasn't just screaming. I
liked a lot more so you like the Misfits a lot.
I like the Misfits, I like the Damned, I like
(03:42):
the Circle Jerks. Did not like the Germs. I was
never into the Germans. What about the Cramps? Uh, I
didn't listen to the Cramps yet, they're like rockabilly punk.
I'll probably like it. But stuff that had a little
more melody, little more vocal styling I liked much more
than the Germs, which you know, dar we crashed, just
it's just screaming things that you can hardly understand. Didn't
(04:04):
love Black Flag, What Little Icel listen to? Like the
Henry Rawlins black Flag. I listened to a little bit
of both. But um, it's all very interesting to me,
and I dig the music for sure. Yeah, it's hard
not to in some way, shape or form like punk
when you hear it like it's it's it's just too
(04:24):
it just gets under your skin just too easily, really quickly,
and you might not even realize, like you're like your
head's like kind of nodding in your knees like shaking
or whatever. But like, no matter who you are, punk
and get to you like that now, whether you're like
I'm gonna start buying punk records and like get a
mohawk or something like that. That's that's maybe a couple
(04:45):
of steps down the road. Most people probably wouldn't, but
I think everybody can appreciate punk on some level. Especially
to me. The greatest punk band of all time, and
what I would argue would be the first punk band
is the Remotes. If you like melody and you like singing,
but you also like punk, they've got everything you need. Yeah,
And if you like songs that are seconds long, sure
(05:07):
well that was a big thing. Like punk grew out
of this idea that led Zeppelin had like eleven minutes
songs they were playing on the radio, and guys like
the Ramones were like shut up. So they purposefully and
deliberately went the opposite way and they started making songs
or sometimes less than a minute, like one of the
greatest punk songs of all time in my opinion, Circle
(05:29):
Jerk's Wasted is like fifty fifty two seconds long, Get
and get out. It's all you need. He gets the
point across. He talks about all the drugs he's on.
She talks about all the stuff he does when he's
on drugs. All unless than a minute. Yeah, but I
think you bring up an important point is punk was
a reaction. It was a reaction to the bloated money
(05:50):
and the bloated song links and the arena rock, Cucumber
in the pants, hard rock, Mackeismo getting the eighties. Like
this great quote from one of the Ramones, these were
kids on the outside and he said, Uh, Johnny Ramon
in ninety six and Rolling Stones said, you know, they
(06:11):
got together because none of them could get girls, so
they all found solace in each other. And he said
girls always wanted to go with guys who had corvettes,
so we had nothing to do but climb on rooftops
and sniff glue. The Rams in a nutshell. But if
you look at nineteen seventy seven, like the albums that
came out in nineteen seventy seven, Um, you know you've
got the sex Pistols and the Ramons and stuff like that,
(06:32):
but you've got Eric Clapton, Slowhand, Fleetwood, Max Rumors, Point
of No Return from Kansas, Uh The Stranger from Billy Joel,
which one was that it was one of the great ones,
but they all work great. Uh Asia from Uh Steely
Dan and like these are like the big chart toppers,
(06:56):
and so punk came along and was just like, no,
screw through all that to heck with you guys, That's
what it says. So it was an ethos and a
spirit even as much as it was music. Yeah, And
I think, um one of the other things that commonly
ran across and researching this was that, um, it was
not just kind of like rock sucks because it's getting
(07:18):
so you know, eleven minutes long per song and there's
lots of guitar solos and stuff like that, but also
that it was hopelessly commercialized, and so punk was like,
there's nothing inherently wrong with rock, it's just gone on
this path that it's been on for so long that
it's it's just become I think, like you said, bloated, Um,
let's take rock back and scrape away all the all
(07:42):
the blow and just get back to like the core
and the point of it originally, which was rebellion, which
is that was what punk was built on in the
in the late seventies and the Ramons again, I will
go to my grave saying they were officially the first
punk band that ever existed, But there were there was
music that's that led up to that immediately before it,
(08:05):
and even a decade or so before it, that really
laid the foundation in the groundwork for for bands like
the Ramona and this the punk that that um, the
punk music that took off right afterwards. Yeah, and you
also got to remember that coming into the early seventies
where some of these proto punk bands started, this was
coming off of the late sixties and the hippie movement
(08:27):
and Nixon and Vietnam, which so all that had proved
a failure. Yeah, and and flower power and the peace
and love and all that stuff. Uh. There there's still
Crisy Stills and Nash and stuff hanging around, but there's
also a younger generation that thumb their nose or more
specifically their middle finger at that whole generation, and that's
(08:48):
what sort of birth the punk movement, in the proto
punk movement at least. So I saw the earliest proto
punk band I could find, um that you could trace
his line too, is actually from Peru, Okay. They were
around in nineteen starting in ur Los Sakos s A
I c O. S. And if you go listen to
(09:09):
a Los Sakos song, you will it's quite clear that
this was proto punk. Did it have the speed a
little bit? Yau, I think that's a bit of the distinction,
Like there was that whole uh Nuggets era garage rock
of the sixties. You can hear a little bit of that,
but it still didn't have that chugga chugga chugg a
speed that punk rock would be known for. You know
(09:32):
it did. Yeah, no, um, like another proto punk band
that's more garage rock, but kind of some of the
sentiments they came up with the Chocolate Watch band at
this anthem called like I'm not like everybody else and
it's like real kind of um, it's groovy, but if
you listen to the words, it's like those guys talking
(09:52):
about being a punk but it's long before punk. But
there musically they were not punk at all. Los Sachos
was punk, Like there's their sound is definitely punk and
they were around the same time. Yeah, And the and
the specifics of what you're doing musically on a guitar
with punkt is the down stroke. So you know, it's
(10:13):
hard to talk about it without showing you but if
you're playing like a an Eric Clapton rhythm part, it's
like you know, you're stroking down and up ching ching,
ching ching. If you're playing punk, you're just going down
that ching ching ching ching ching ching ching. Uh. And
that's really And the Ramons made a career out of
(10:33):
two or three chords played fast, playing that same rhythm
and down stroke over and over and over and over,
like I'm convinced you just did two seconds snippet of
a misfit song. I could hear it like playing his Day.
It's great. Though I was listening to stuff that I
was like, man, I really like a lot of this
and I missed out. So I see myself diving into
(10:53):
it again or diving in for the first time. Rather
I mean, I know about the Clash and the Ramons
and stuff like that, for but oh there's like I mean,
as you know, a whole world world. And then the
thing about punk is the more like you find, oh
I like this band, and then oh that it turns
out this guy was used to be in this other band.
There from the same scene as this other band. It
(11:14):
just keeps going and going and going, because one of
the through lines of punk is that anybody could be
in a punk band. It was super democratized in the
d I Y ethos um was was basically the foundation
of punk music. All right, well, let's take a break.
We'll go back in time a little bit and talk
(11:36):
about New York and London, and then we'll get to that.
What I think is kind of the coolest part of
this whole thing is that d I Y aesthetic. Okay,
al right, so I mentioned London in New York. I
(11:58):
sourced this from a bunch of articles. I can't remember
if this was the Pitchfork win or not, but the
headline of this part is the tale of two cities,
New York in l A. And I'm sorry New York
in London, but l A would come along a bit
later with its own scene. And also London gets mentioned
here at the expense of Manchester, which I would say
is like, that's ground zero next to New York. Right.
(12:21):
Also ground zero, which doesn't get nearly enough press is Australia. Yeah,
these things were going on in parallel all over the world.
That's really interesting to think, like this stuff is happening
like almost independently. It was, because it's not like someone
in Australia heard someone on the internet in nine But
there are a couple of bands, one called Cheap Nasties
(12:43):
on the Western I think in Perth, and then The Saints,
probably the biggest punk band to come out of Australia.
This is at the same time that cb gbs uh
and the Studges were like getting big. It's crazy. Yeah,
so the Studges would technically qualify as proto punk too,
but they came from Michigan along with m C five
and Death Death is an even earlier proto punk band
(13:05):
than The Stages. That documentary is great. I actually I
haven't seen that one. Yeah, there's one on death it's
just called like a band called death Right. Yeah. Yeah,
it's very like they're amazing and they were, um I
think three three African American brothers from Detroit just killing it.
Who in like a punk band? Yeah yeah, and this
is before the Stages. I think this is before MC
(13:26):
five Bad Brains for sure, for sure. Um, So all
of these bands are starting to kind of lay the
groundwork and then it's almost like it just kind of ignites,
like we're saying in different parts of the world virtually
at the same time, which I just find endlessly fascinating. Yeah,
and I think that's what really lends a lot of
credence to the fact that it was a movement. It
(13:47):
was a feeling people were rebelling against more than anything
which can happen parallel in different parts of the country
in world. You know, if there's anything that can bring
the whole world together, it's disdained for hippies, you know,
they really bring that out. And everybody, did you see
the Tarantino movie Yet Once upon a Time. Yes, there's
a lot of the anti hippies suffing. It was pretty funny, Yeah,
(14:09):
a little some of them are beaten to death. Literally. Well,
I just mean all the DiCaprio stuff was really funny.
Hated the hippies. But but Tarantino really like pointed out,
like you know, the Manson family has been celebrated in
romanticized at least in some weird ways. Um, and they
(14:30):
should not be. And this is why I think he
did a really good job of doing that. Uh so sorry,
we're talking about the Stooges in MC five in Michigan.
Uh In New York City is where things really crystallized
with the club CBGB owned by Hilly Crystal. Crystal Crystal
is it Crystal? I think so? Like Billy Crystal right,
but hilly uh. And originally you know that stands for
(14:52):
a country, blue, blue grass, and blues, and that was
what it was supposed to be when I opened in nineteen.
But then in about two years the Ramones started playing there,
talking Heads started playing their nineteen seventy five Blondie um Television,
I think Television. I'm okay with them, Like I don't
love them, they don't, I don't hate them, but um,
(15:15):
they were they were essential to that scene happening, sure,
um and a lot of people kind of overlook them.
I think is like one of the the foundation bands
for punk. Yeah, which is interesting, like I mentioned earlier,
like it's such different kinds of music, Like I love
Talking Heads and Television and Blondie and the Go Goes,
(15:35):
and they were all on that early scene. But I
don't think it's that's anything like the Misfits or the
Damned or the Ramons. No, but the Misfits uh and
the Ramons both started their careers at cbgby So it
was like the place where punk began in the United States. Yeah,
but also at Max's Kanzie Kansas City and New York
Legendary Club. This is where like Patti Smith is hanging out,
(15:58):
the Velbot Underground is hanging out again. They're not punk
at all, but they were in that scene, right. And
one thing that we're kind of not really mentioning that
is a common thread to all these bands, not necessarily music,
but heroin was a huge thread. They shared their deep, deep,
deep love of heroin UM in common and that definitely
(16:19):
bound them together at CBGB for sure. And that was
a huge factor on the early punk scene was heroin,
which I mean this is you know, if you remember
back just a few years ago, for oxycotton turned everybody
into junkies in the world, UM, heroin was not a
big drug at all, and back then especially it was
(16:42):
like you were a total burnout if you were doing heroin,
like it was not done. So the fact that these
people were like shooting heroin like in the clubs, that
was a that was a another kind of badge that
they took on UM that separated them from every buddy else. Yeah,
you know, even their preference of drugs was super hardcore. Yeah,
(17:04):
for sure. Another interesting thing happened early on in nineteen
seventy seven when these two scenes sort of exported one
of their UM early UM big bands to play in
the other city. Uh In nineteen seventy seven, the Damned
played in the United States and less than a year
(17:25):
before that, the Ramons had gone to the UK to
play shows in London, and that was a big deal
because all of a sudden you had these two different
scenes swapping bands. Of course, it wasn't anything they planned,
but they got a taste of New York City in
London with the Ramons in a big, big way, and
the same can be said in New York City with
The Damned very British. And then a month before the
(17:45):
Ramons played in London, in Manchester on June six, the
sex Pistols had their first show. And a lot of
people point to this is this is when UK punk happened.
It was this one show at the um Lesser Free
Trade Hall, which is like a hall might as well
(18:06):
be a VFW basically, and that's where the sex Pistols
are there first show. But some of the people who
were there were so influential, including a seventeen year old
Morrissey who went to cover the thing for New Music
Express um that that it just spread out like a
germ like It was the single point that that UK
punk spread out from and this was UH June of
(18:31):
and within six months, the major record labels were lining
up to sign any and every punk act they could
get their hands on. Six months Like That's so not
only did it spread and grow in parallel around the
world at the same time when it hit the scene.
It's hard to overstate how quickly it just blew up,
(18:55):
like just from nothing to it in six months. Yeah.
I mean, if there's one thing I mean, I don't
I don't know about the music industry today, but previous
to you know, digital content, the music industry was always
there waiting to commodify the next big thing. Yeah, and
they did it to punk big time. Yeah. So let's
talk about this d I Y thing for a little bit.
(19:16):
It was really cool this article about these um, these
d I Y origins in punk music. What happened was
when punk started coming around in the mid nineteen seventies.
This coincided with a big shift in UH equipment and
recording gear and modernizing recording gear among the big labels.
(19:37):
Yeah sure, um, And so all of a sudden there
was all of this these rooms in this gear that
you could either rent cheap or buy cheap. Yeah, they're
old stuff that they didn't need anymore. Yeah, and so
the punks came along and UH started using it, and
the very first punk labels were self started, Miles Copeland
started Step Forward, Bob Last started Fast Product, and of
(19:59):
course very Miss Lee Tony Wilson started Factory Records. Yes dude, which,
by the way, see Party of People if you never
have Everybody. It's amazing to see that again. I saw
it once when it came out. Yeah, it's a good movie. Um,
but it follows this progression of punk into new wave,
UH into the eighties. Um. It just does it in
(20:21):
a spectacularly great way because it's Steve Coogan who's created
so good. But people trace the um punk on record
or on recorded tape rather to the very first single
they claim very first punk single November seventy six, The
Damns New Rows, which I thought that was weird because
(20:43):
the Ramons released their album before them. But maybe because
the Ramons were on the label when they release their album,
they're saying like this is the first d I y,
maybe when was the Ramons first? Off? I think like
the full year before. I'm pretty sure, if not at
least seventy six, then but I'm pretty sure. Well, the
buzz Cox put out an EP and I listened to
(21:03):
a lot of that today. I enjoyed that UM Spiral
Scratch was this EP was apparently the first British homemade
record and that was a really big deal. Uh, this
is a seven. They sold out a thousand copies that
they printed, then they went on to sell another sixteen
thousand and UM. The influence on Spiral Scratch really spread
(21:25):
out and told everyone because they printed it was very cool.
They printed on the little record jacket like how much
it cost, how they produced it, and what the money
was all about for a hundred and fifty three pounds,
basically saying go do this right, like and here's how
to do it. Yeah. Um they all all like. That
kind of set the tone for other records, like other
(21:46):
punk bands released their own records, also included instructions on
their sleeve that the record came in UM and the
whole d I Y record released thing that the buzz
Cox kicked off. UM. Other people started to find other
ways to to kind of make it so punk could
(22:06):
exist outside of the influence of the record companies, Like
people would release records in zip block baggies Like that
was the record sleeve that your record came in and
people loved it like you didn't You didn't need like
this expensive sleeve for the thing to come in, Like
you could just pop it in for in a zip
block bag and sell it. It's super punk. And then also, um,
(22:30):
if you can form a band that it was put
like this, like the sex Pistol showed that anybody could
be in a punk band. You didn't even need be
very talented, right, you didn't even need to know how
to play an instrument. Um, and you could be in
a punk band. And the buzz Cocks came along and
showed that anybody could press a record. But there's still
one very essential ingredient missing, and that was distribution. And
(22:53):
like you said, mail order made up for a lot
of the Buzzcocks ep UM sales. But they they realized
that there were more people out there who wanted this
stuff but didn't have a way to get to it.
So a what was called the Cartel was formed, which
was a group of independent record stores around the UK
that would basically serve as a distribution network for these
(23:18):
d I Y punk records. So cool um. Not only
that but zines were very important early on and the
punk and really kind of a lot of music genres.
Zines were really big. Which are these, you know, fan
made magazines? Yeah, maybe with like photocopy, you don't even
photo copy like mimiographs stuff, yep, And you would just
pronount your zine. And some of these zanes got to
(23:39):
be pretty big and they would attach distribution to the
zines sometimes and sneak forty five not sneaking, but a
pack of forty five in the zine, and that's how
you could release your stuff. And it was just this
uh again. It sounds so trite to say, very punk
rock attitude, but that's exactly what it was. The way
they were doing things was all under the radar, all
on their own, uh. And that changed pretty quickly. It
(24:03):
did is because the the big, the big players came in.
They smelled money, they smelled something new, the next big thing,
and they started signing everybody they could left and right.
And these punks were going like, nah, bollocks, I don't
want your money. They're like, what if we pay you
in heroin? They said, okay, yeah, I like it that
you could buy drugs with money, right, So um again
(24:27):
within six months of what most people point to as
the source of UK punk, that one specific show by
the sex Pistols. The sex Pistons were so new. Sid
Vicious wasn't even in the band. He was still Susie
and the Banshee's drummer. So this is how young this
stuff was. Within six months they were signed on to
(24:48):
a major record label. The Clash was signed onto a
major record label, The Fall, the Jam, the Stranglers, everybody
got signed in this feeding frenzy where everyone who had
punk band could get a record deal with a major label.
Six months after The sex Epistols had their first show, Yeah,
Generation X with a young Billy idol, Uh, which I
(25:10):
did ever do? That? Danceing with Myself was originally a
Generation X song. They released it, then he re released
it as a solo artist like a year later and
it became a much bigger hit. Sure, they were like
thanks a lot, but yeah, sex Pistols went with E
M I UM, the Stranglers at you A. The Clash
signed to CBS, The Jam went to Polydor, Generation X
(25:30):
and Stiff Little Fingers went to Chrysalis and even the
Buzz Cox. They were very quick to hop on that
train too with United Artists, which actually that's not too bad.
You could have signed with worse because United Artists was
started by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, um, Charlie Chaplin in
d W. Griffith so that artists could have more control
(25:52):
and ownership over their work. Yeah. I mean it was
a movie company, and I guess they dabbled in records.
So one of three things happened basedically to the little
d I Y small label movement. Um you either got Pilford.
They use one example in Belfast, the Good Vibrations label.
Four of its first six bands were stolen away or
(26:13):
signed away. I guess so either got Pilford and then
just shut down and gave up. Um Or you grew
and got bigger to where you were, you know, like
Rough Trade and Factory Records, those all became like bigger
independent labels. Yeah, rough Trades still around. They have state
of the art, cutting edge bands. It's great. Um Or
they stayed small and just kept going right, they went
(26:38):
punk and went back underground. Yeah, like so they didn't
all go away. They didn't all say, you know, we're
all getting Pilford, so we're just gonna shut down. They
would just find more underground bands and go deeper and
deeper and deeper. But then, um, something happened in nineteen
seventy nine February of nineteen seventy nine that a lot
of people point to, Just as they point to that
first sex Pistols show as the beginning of punk in
(26:59):
the u K. They point to the death of Sid
Vicious as the end of punk, at least the first
wave of punk. His death from a heroin overdose um
is widely pointed to as as the death of punk,
which is a really dumb thing to say, because Punk
very clearly went on. But what I think people are saying, sorry,
(27:21):
I guess it's not entirely dumb now that I say
it out loud, But what people are saying is is
that punk transformed into something else and that punk really
as as it originally existed, was only around for about
to three years, maybe four or five. Some people at
a bar right now that are just saying that over
and over again, punk only the last said three years. Okay, well,
(27:43):
I agree with you, drunk person in this sense, but
it's not like punk went away. It transformed and became
something else, And so what had transitioned into is commonly
called hardcore hardcore punk, where stuff just got faster, louder,
a little angrier. Yeah. Um, and it just went in
(28:04):
in a different direction, predominantly in the United States. Yeah,
and there were there were a couple of scenes. Um,
the l A scene had already sort of been born
by the late seventies. Uh, if you haven't seen it.
The great documentary from Penelope spheris The Decline of Western Civilization,
released in eighty one but filmed over I think eight
(28:27):
maybe covered the l A scene. And that's the Germs
and uh like I think Blondie and the Go Goes
and stuff like that. Alright, York the best sets ever
in the Decline of Western Civilization. Yes, it's very good.
And the Germs too, That's where I was. I was
watching some of that today and that's when I knew
I didn't like the germs. Right. But Pat Smir of
(28:50):
course the food Fighters, he was in the Germs. You know,
he'd liked money. And also if you're like, who's Penelope Spheres,
you may be familiar with their work. If you've seen
the movie Waynes World, that's right, or the movie Black Sheet,
The Chris Farley David Spade movie or the Decline of
Western Civilization. I think she'd ended up doing like three
or four of those, right, at least three, because I
know she didnt want to metal. The second one was metal,
(29:12):
which is good too. Yeah, that's the only two I saw.
Did you ever see that documentary about um heavy metal
Parking Lot? Yes, yeah, where everybody's smoking PCP at did
Judas Priest concert. Yeah, it's pretty great. Did you know
early eighties metal head smoked PCP. No, I didn't until
the documentary because it was quite a surprise. No, I
was scared of all those people. Well, they're kind of
(29:33):
scary because they were all on PCP, especially when you're
like eight or ten. So American. Uh. We were talking
about the you know punk bands releasing their own albums.
This started having on the West coast. Um. They started
forming their own labels even to release their albums and
sign other like bands like SST. Very famous punk label
(29:57):
was started from the guy, the original guy for Black
Flag right, Yes, Uh, what's his name? Greg? G? I
n n either again or Jin. I'm sorry punkers, I
know you're mad at me right now that I don't
know this. Yeah, I think he was like the founder
of Black Flag. Okay, uh Jello Biafro of course, um
(30:19):
Dead Kennedy's they formed or he formed Alternative Tentacles. Yeah,
in ninety nine and seventy nine was a big year
because that's the same year that a band called Bad
Brains came out in Washington, d C. Which I didn't love.
Did you see the Dave Gold documentary series? So I
(30:41):
can't remember what it was called, but he did this
like ten part documentary series where he would do the
music of a different city and it was really really good,
except for the last like fifteen minutes of it. He
would get the Food Fighters together in a studio and
they would play like some of those songs and if
you're really into the food Fighters, imagine you loved it all.
Not into the Food Fighters, So I would just stop
(31:02):
it there. But he does Seattle. But what got me
on this was one of the most interesting episodes was
the Washington, DC episode because I didn't know it was
such a hardcore scene. Like that's where when people talk
about hardcore, yeah, they're like, well, DC is kind of
the cradle of it. And Bad Brains, which my friend
Jason Jenkins in college introduced me to and that's when
(31:24):
it was like really fast, had a little metal edge,
but Bad Brains was also started out as like jazz
fusion and had reggae roots. Also African American guys, four
of them, Yeah, and um, really really good stuff. Yeah.
So you've got at the same time l A and
d C as the new like seats of punk music
(31:46):
in the US punk slash hardcore, and it's going it's
going like way more hardcore, way more masculine, way more
macho than the UK went. The UK went a different route.
They went way more political, way more like class struggle. Um.
And there's there's definitely lots of political threads that um,
American punk music went through, but I think the UK
(32:09):
went to it earlier. Like Crass is a great, great
punk band from the UK. Um, they're kind of like, uh,
they're just great, check them out. Um. But they were
doing like anarchy stuff in the seventies. Yeah. The Clash
certainly is notable for their political statement, very political. Um.
And then you've got like the Six Sex Pistols talking
(32:29):
about anarchy in the UK. They didn't really mean it,
they were just saying something right, Um, But there were
a lot of like politically motivated bands in the UK
in the early seventies that didn't pick up till later
in the eighties in the US certainly were not politically
they were not political. But the other thing, the other
differentiation I saw between UK and US punk was that
(32:51):
UK punk didn't take itself quite as seriously as the
US started to in the late seventies early eighties, and
that this guy I read to I think a Guardian
article trace that back to a love of glam rock.
That glam rock really led to punk, especially in the UK,
and if you're into glam rock, you just can't quite
take anything fully seriously, including punk music and the the US.
(33:15):
Even though punk came out of the New York Dolls
in part um, which was definitely glam rock, Um, it
just didn't have that that through thread. So it did
get taken way more seriously. And that was a big
part of hardcore and what differentiated it from the earlier
punk taking things really really seriously and it being a
(33:35):
little more political than ever before, and um angsty against
things like the boredom of suburban life. Yeah, I mean,
I think punk is just as important for things that
it uh inspired that happened afterward as it was the
actual movement itself, because you can point to stuff in
Minneapolis like Whosker Do or bands like the Minutemen, who
(33:57):
I loved and they had a very sound to them,
and maybe you're even considered punk, probably post punk post
I think MENI Men are considered punk, but Hoosker Do
would definitely be post post punk, and stuff like Sonic Youth,
which I would call them post punk to post punk,
straddling into the early grunge though too. Well yeah, I
(34:19):
mean it's like it's hard to it's easy sometimes to
trace that through line and sometimes it's really difficult. But
we want to. We want to be able to say, like,
you know, it went from Um from Bad Brains to
Hoosker Do to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, you know, four
Degrees of Nirvana and they're going, what about us, right exactly? UM,
(34:40):
But you just you can't. But at the same time,
you also can't discount the effects that these later bands
UM got from the earth listening to the earlier bands
that came before him, Like, there's undoubtedly an influence, it's
just not quite as crisp and clean as as we
like to make it. Yeah, And it's even argued in
(35:00):
one of these articles that the the birth of hardcore
came about because, like you kind of teased earlier on,
because punk, you know, flouts the rules and norms of
rock and roll. Then they formed their own rules and
norms and we're really pretty serious about it, and so
hardcore came along because they didn't quite fit in with that,
(35:22):
the true punk aesthetic. They took punk even further because
punk was being commodified and commercialized otherwise, that's right, which
would make it kind of easier to break from, especially
if you just go slightly angrier and faster and louder. Right,
But you also can look at the stuff like you
talk about tracing the through line. Um, if you want
(35:43):
to think about early Manchester and stuff like Joy Division
that goes to New Order that goes to Orchestral Maneuvers
in the Dark and Simple Minds and all of a
sudden it's John Hughes soundtrack and it's hard. It's then
it's like what is punk about anything? And that like
sort of after new Wave. But at the same time
you can also say, well, New Order was just straight
(36:04):
up new wave, but then new Wave caught on and
got commercialized and commodified, and then you end up having
a John Hughes soundtrack because the record labels got ahold
of the new wave band. Right. So that's kind of
like the story with music is somebody comes up with
something raw and organic and rebellious, everybody loves it. The
(36:25):
big guys come along, get their hands on it, co opted,
commodify it, commercialize it, ruin it, and then some thread
kind of jumps off of that and it starts something else,
and the whole thing always it just continues on and
continues on, except until the mid two thousands when music
died forever and ever and ever. Alright, well, let's take
(36:46):
another break here and we'll talk a little bit about
the end of punk. And before that, maybe we'll hit
on the fashion of punk. Oh boy, okay, chuck um,
(37:10):
we're talking fashion of punk. Yeah, so every every genre
has its own look. Well, I cannot remember what it
had to have been the safety pin short stuff where
we talked about Richard Hell being considered the guy who
started the safety pin as a fashion statement, pretty shirt.
(37:32):
But it was Richard Hell. He was the guitarist for
television and he was like the first guy with the mohawk,
like the Elmer's glue kind of mohawk and safety pins
holding his shirt together, which is I mean, that's quintessential punk.
But at the same time, dressing like a Ramon as
quintessential punk too, with like the jeans with the knees
in it, back jeans Doc Martin's or Converse low tops
(37:55):
or Converse high tops. Uh. Black biker jacket. Yeah. The
New York Dolls were very famous for wearing the Jeane jackets,
super super small. That jokes in this article that they
could barely fit in them. Right. They also wore super
tight lycra shiny pants and stuff too. Yeah, but they
were glam but that it was really those black ripped jeans. Uh.
(38:19):
And this was a time where that wasn't like the
cool thing to wear if you you didn't walk around
with holes. And you know, now it's become a recurring
thing in fashion to have holes in your jeans being cool.
At the time, it was not cool. Admit that you
were poor exactly. Man. This was like somebody in this
article I think from Pitchfork said, you know, Dee de
(38:39):
Ramon had uhum holes in the knees of his jeans.
Not because it was cool, but because he didn't have
any money for some new genes and those his jeans
has had holes in them, so that's what he wore.
Now you pay like a hundred or two hundred bucks
for jeanes that have pre ripped holes that are just right. Yeah,
that's a of ag example of the commodity commoditization of punk. Yeah,
(39:03):
for sure. Uh other you know, in l A they
have their own fashion scene going on because it's l
A and they don't have harsh winters in cold, rainy weather,
so they went to the thrift stores and bought things
and cut them up. And that's where you you never
saw a shirt on a punk in the l A
scene that didn't have like the net cut out or
(39:24):
the sleeves cut off, or in the case of the
Go Goes in their earlier punk days, wearing like literal
trash bags as fashion. Very funny and blondie too. They
all had a very like specific aesthetic in Los Angeles.
It's interesting that the Go go started out on the
punk scene when they were I think to the casual
(39:47):
UH music fan known very much for just sort of
a bubblegum sing along pop hits that they had just
lovable as all get out as all get out great
songs and blend Carlisle too, like her soul of stuff
is yeah, just kiss everybody. You couldn't see that, but
that's what I get. But it's that whole pop punk thing,
which is kind of where it started to go bad.
(40:11):
You could make the case that starting in the beginning
of nine seven, when all those first record labels came
in and started to go bad. Then, but hardcore here's
this is where I This is my reading of this, okay,
and I'm not a punk or even music historian by
any stretch of the imagination, but from what I gathered
from this research is that early punk got co opted
(40:37):
and commodified by the record labels immediately hardcore grew out
of that. Hardcore is way harder to commodify because it's
much more raw, there's much less melodic, it's much more
in your face and angry than the original was. And
it's also jealously guarded and defended by the fans, where
(40:59):
at the getting of the show we're saying, please don't
beat us up. Like if you go to a hardcore
show and they think your opposer like you may get
beaten up if this is the eighties or the nineties,
I don't know if they still do it today. I
remember feeling that threat. Oh yeah, it was the punks
at the school, Like you didn't want to cross them.
That was part of being a punk, was like you
(41:21):
beat somebody up to basically defend punk, don't to keep
it from getting commodified. Like like seeing kids like wear
Thrasher T shirts today and they have no idea what
Thrasher is. Like it's like, if you did that with
punk in the eighties and nineties, you would get beaten up,
maybe even at school, definitely at a punk show. And
so in doing so, they were able to defend hardcore
(41:44):
from commoditization because they kept it their own violently. But
at the same time, they also it's kind of like
how a language evolves the more people speak it and
the more free and easy the rules on it are.
By by doing these very tight restrictions on what's punk
and what's not punking, he's allowed to come to a
(42:04):
punk show, which is super ironic for punks to do.
To come up with all these rules and regulations, they
kept it from evolving, and they definitely kept it underground,
and it's still around today. But it's the same thing
over and over again because it wasn't allowed to grow
and evolved, because the fans have kept it, at least
in America, have kept it underground, uh, purposely, deliberately, invioluently.
(42:28):
So punks killed punk kind of, they would argue, No
punks still around. I go see punk shows all the
time and don't come to it because your opposer and
will beat you up. So they're still punk. But as
far as like you and I walking around are concerned,
punk is dead as a doornail for now, Yeah, for now? Well,
I mean I remember when we did our UK tour,
remember seeing a group of punks in Manchester that looked
(42:50):
like they stepped right out of one with the full
spiked mohawks and the leather studded leather collars. And I
was scared of him a little bit. You're like, those
are bad kids. Are going to try to get me
to smooth down to do a podcast? Right? Well, what's
funny is is that fashion that you're talking about, that
quintessential punk fashion that was a commodification immediately to the
(43:14):
sex Pistols manager used to be the manager of the
New York Dolls, Malcolm McLaren and he owned a shop
Gonna b D S m Um fashion shop with Vivian
Westwood in London, and he basically used the sex Pistols
to promote the fashion he was selling at his shop,
to make it fashionable so we could sell more clothes.
(43:34):
This is the manager of the first UK punk band
ever well, and he had put them together, right. It's
not like essentially the sex Pistols all got together because
they were mates. Like they were formed by a manager. Yes,
by this guy Malcolm. They were the monkeys kind of.
They were the monkeys of punk. They were the punkies.
So many people are mad at us right now, for sure,
but it's true. I mean, go look up your history
if your punks are gonna beat us up next time.
(43:55):
We got some some thirteen year old just looked done
at their sher and win. That's what the sex Pistols are.
I had no idea. Well, it's funny though you talk
about the the pins and the it was all homemade stuff,
like I remember it being a very I mean I
was certainly way too square, but I remember seeing the
punks in my school doing stuff to their clothes during
(44:19):
class and at lunch and thinking it was the coolest thing,
whether it was black magic black Sharpie doing the Dead
Kennedy's or the anarchy symbol. Well, the Dead Kennedys did
have the coolest symbol round, it was pretty cool. Or
just fraying their fraying their jackets or adding safety pins,
it was all. It was all created out of that
homemade aesthetic sort of like the music and it and
(44:42):
it appealed to me, but I was afraid of it.
And now that's why I'm just now starting to listen
to some of this music. Are you gonna turn all
punk now? Maybe? Okay, that would be one of the
bigger surprises you've ever laid on me, man. But pop
punk we should talk a little bit about. Um they
call it bitter sweet in this article. Um sweet in
(45:03):
the sense that you could get tons of money and
be super famous, but bitter because you know, it's spawned
a genre that I think a lot of true punk's
really loathe. Like I think true punks like a square
more than they like Blink Indubita, you know, uh, and
that you know that whole scene, the Van's Warped Tour
and the Rancid and the Offspring and Green Day and
(45:26):
all these groups was a part of a big second
wave of these kids who grew up definitely listening to
that stuff, and I guess feeling like they were a
part of it. I mean, I'm sure Green Day really
feels like they're a punk band and part of a
punk movement. Whereas I remember the first time I heard
Green Day thinking these are guys pretending to be a
punk band, which is a really cruddy thing to say,
(45:48):
but I mean it is. It's like, it's totally understandable
how you would think that, but they they are. It
is punk in some way, shape or form. It's punk.
The stuff they're talking about is pretty punk. Um, but
punk bands don't release acoustic songs. Definitely not the first
the first album Dukie, right, that is what we're talking about.
(46:10):
I guess was that the first one? I think so.
I just remember hearing it and going like, why is
that guy trying to sound British? Well that's pretty punk,
first big hit. It's very punk, yeah, for sure, an
American kid trying to sound British. So um, but yeah,
I don't. I would guess you're right though, there on
Broadway that punks for God's sake, Well, Yeah, there was
a brief, shining moment where you could have conceivably called
(46:31):
them a punk band. Here's the thing, though, man, people
like money. Yeah, but that's been a through not just
in the punk scene, but but it's just a music
in general. Although hats off to the punk culture for
keeping it at bay better than anybody ever has any
other genre I would like to hear. I'm sure there
(46:52):
are people listening that Noah punk bands that did stick
their middle finger up to the money and say nope,
I can tell you one. Fugazi. Uh, well, I loved
Pughassi DC or I guess hardcore um and they I
think they formed Discord Records. If not, they're a big
act on Discord Records. And they have done this whole
(47:14):
d I Y thing, like from the get go, they've
they've issued the major labels as far as I know
their whole career, and they were extremely successful despite that. Yeah,
I saw them in Athens once. Oh yeah, what do
you think that was great? This is you know, I
think they got together in the like seven ishi and
this was more like okay, well, they were still huge
(47:37):
and probably bigger. That was when they were at their height.
I would guess. I mean technically they had a I
don't know about how it performed on the literal charts,
but they had that one song that had a big
MTV hit, Waiting Room. Yeah, it's a good song. It's
a really good song. Um So I just want to
give some shouts out anybody who's like, this is really interesting.
(47:57):
I want to know more. Go listen to the Cramps.
I would recommend the Cramps, listen to Crass, Go watch
the Decline of Western Civilization. Definitely check out the Circle Jerks,
um who else? Chuck, I'm gonna say that for my picks,
Bad Brains, and the Damned. Okay, for sure, I'm gonna
(48:18):
toss g. G Allen out there, although he kind of
transcends everything just punk and you were sending me some um.
I didn't catch any of the names, but she said
there's a big punk scene in Japan still. And that
was another thing too. Somebody said punk's not dying, it's
just coming up in other places, like um, in Islamic countries,
there's a big punk movement. I saw Mexico has got
(48:38):
a big one right now. Apparently Japan has it. And
then there's a whole riot girl feminist punk that is. Man,
If that's not punk, I don't know like Eastern block punk, right, girls,
So punk is still alive. Punk not dead? Punk? No dead,
Punk's not dead. Okay. If you want to know more
(48:59):
about punk music, go listen to that stuff we just
told you to go listen to. And since I said
that's time for listener mail. If you want to learn
more about punk music, you can probably go to literally
any other place other than this episode and learn more
about If you want to know more about punk music,
go to your local library and read up. It's fundamental.
(49:19):
All right, guys, I'm gonna call this uh poop no
no poop. On that short stuff about the guy who
didn't eat for a year. Uh, we talked about the
fact that he didn't poop that much, and she said
this is the norm for people with a colostomy or iliostomy.
I had a temporary iliostomy and ostomy connected to the
ilium instead of the colon due to Crone's complications. My
(49:43):
colon was completely severed from the rest of my digestive
system during this time and basically sat dormant while food
exited into an ostomy pouch. No food means no poop,
but the body still produces a normal gut stuff like
mucus and cells and needs to evacuate on a Asian
which I think, Well, that's what we talked about for
people with years about issues such as pain and running
(50:06):
to the bathroom every thirty minutes. This can be a
literal lifesaver. Anyway, my colon is currently now reattached to
the rest of my intestine and my crones is in remission.
I had no idea. So this person had a colostomy
and it was reversed. Yes, that's I had no idea
they could do that. Yeah, we should do something on
crones and just tie all the stuff together. I just
(50:29):
wanted to give you a little perspective on the topic. Um, actually,
ostomes would be an interesting topic for you to tackle.
Thanks for doing the best podcast around. According to my
podcast app, I've listened to over four hundred episodes. Yikes, Well,
Sonia in Canada, you have another what seven fifty, eight hundred?
What are we up to? Now? What number of episodes?
(50:50):
Eight fifty we're up to? Like, well, she's listened to
four hundred. Okay, so just do a little math. Okay,
hold on, So another like eight hundred or so. Yeah,
I would say something all right, well, you're a third
of the way there, keep at it. Yeah, roughly, yeah,
you got a third. Guys shouldn't just seemed chuck like
look up into the air from the side of his eye.
(51:12):
She said, Uh, we'd love to see you to the
come out to the Prairie provinces. So I know in
Canada we do Toronto and Vancouver, but there's a lot
of country in the middle there that we should probably
go to at some point. In the US would call
them flyover states Canada, they call it Prairie country. Right. Well,
if you want to get in touch with this, like
did Sonia, thanks again, Sonia UM, you can go on
(51:35):
to stuff you Should Know dot com and check out
our social links, and you can also send us an
email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How
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