Punk Rock Legacy

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why We Do what we Do. Welcome
to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
Anarchist host Abraham and I.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Am your Troublemaker host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
We are a psychology podcasts. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and sometimes we
explore passions near and dear to our hearts. That is
the history of social movements, which is what we're doing today.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah, and so today we're talking about punk rock, something
that both of us have been steeped in for the
majority of our lives at this point in time.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, and you know, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
A lot of folks probably saw this really come to
the mainstream in the early nineties, but I think it's
just it's something that's a little bit older than that
and a little bit richer than that. So what you
might think of is punk rock has come from some
pretty unique places, and some of the things that you
you think are not punk rock also have some pretty
unique roots in the punk rock world. So you'll see

(01:06):
that kind of is like ever present in your world.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Indeed, this is going to be an episode in which
we unpack the history of punk, where it came from,
where it ended up. Where it's going, if anywhere, and
share some you know, our own experiences with us a
little bit, and just unpack the timeline and help get
some sort of understanding around this, because this was not

(01:29):
just a musical thing. This also was there was a
lot of politics and sort of social activism wrapped up
inside of this, this sort of movement of punk and
punk rock. But before we talk about all of those things,
I would like to just say, if you are joining
us for the first time, welcome. We hope that you
enjoy what you hear in this episode today. But even

(01:50):
if punk is not really a thing you care to
listen to, we're not playing any punk music in this
We're talking about sort of where it came from and
how it got there and all of that. Yeah, and
then I think is interesting no matter what side of
the musical spectrum you find yourself on. Anyway, if you're
a returning listener, then welcome back. We hope that you
continue to find joy and the stuff that we're making
for you in our diy do it in our back

(02:13):
room with our own equipment and self produced type thing. Yeah, yep,
that's all great. If you like to support us, one
thing you can do is go join us on Patreon
and I'll talk more about the benefits you get from
doing that. You can also like subscribe, leave a rating
and review, go tell some friends, go rave about it
standing on a soapbox in the middle of the street,
and we'll talk more about the ways that you can

(02:34):
help us at the end of this discussion. But before
we do that, I would like to wish everybody in
International Left Handers Day, South Pod Celebration.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Happy Day. Ethan my son is left handed. Oh cool.
It's National Prosecco Day for.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Left handed people. It is your World Calligraphy Day for
left handed people.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Also for left hand people, it is Feeding Pets of
the Homeless Week.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Oh very nice. I feel like we've actually talked about that.
I mean, we have been doing the calendar things for
over a year now, so it's going to come up. Yeah,
National Chef's Appreciation Week. Go the Bear, Go the Bear.
It's also National resurrect Romance Week. Mm hmmm, National Scrabble Week. Okay,
I'm on board.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Sure. National Smile Week.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
That's nice and safe and Sound week, which I wish
everybody could feel safe and sound.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, agreed, agreed, But we do more.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Than just talk about various holidays upon which our episodes
happen to land. We actually talk about psychology things. As
I was talking about before, at the end of this discussion,
we're going to give some recommendations, and to be fair
like in a way, a lot of this episode is recommendations, Yeah,
because we're going to be talking about so much music
that we have liked, some of which that we didn't

(03:50):
always like. But like there's a lot that we'll talk
about that we did like if you're joining us for
the first time. As I said, one thing we do
that's unique is at the end of each discussion we'll
just share some things that or we're recommending to the world,
usually unrelated to our topic, which will be the case
I think this time, but a lot of what we
will be discussing will more or less sound like recommendations. Anyway. Yes,

(04:12):
I feel like I'm missing some frills to begin or
what should we jump in or do you have more
thanm I forgetting.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
I think we can just jump in. I feel good.
I feel good all right.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Punk was as much a social political movement as it
was a musical movement, if not more, And it's worth
asking sort of how this came about what exactly is
it and where is it now? And do our best
to sort of unpack the history and the context that
gave rise to the social movement and the music that

(04:40):
came along with it.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yes, so per usually we'd like to define our terms.
So let's start with what the word punk means and
where it came from. So, according to the Oxford English Dictionary,
the earliest record of the word punk spelled p u
n ckee was in a ballad called Simon the Old King,
composed sometime before before fifteen seventy five. And here's the

(05:02):
line where it yeah, it's very old. The line goes, quote,
so fellows, if you be drunk of frailty, it is
a sin as it is to keep a punk. And
that's the line from a song.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
That's essentially yeah, that's the line from the song. And
although that sounds like sort of nonsensical gibberish, essentially what
they were trying to do in this is warn men,
specifically men, that drinking is a sin on par with
hiring a female prostitute, which is to say, where it
says keep a punk. A punk in this case was

(05:33):
used for or maybe slang for a female prostitute. And
so drinking was a sin on par with keeping a prostitute,
was what was being said in that ballad. But yeah,
that's what that word punk meant at this point.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, And Shakespeare went on to use the word punk
to describe female sex workers and prostitutes. And it's sixteen
oh four play Measure for Measure, in which the character
Lucio attempts to explain another character, Rihanna's ambiguous denial that
she is quote neither made widow nor wife by declaring
she may be a punk end quote. And he also

(06:08):
used it in Allswell That Ends Well to describe a
trellop as a quote taffety punk.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
So it is an old word that has gone through
some iterations. By the late seventeenth century, it was being
used more to describe a young man kept for sex
by an older man, and it continued to develop, and
it was largely being used as derogatory slang. Every new
sort of shift in its meaning kind of kept that element.

(06:39):
It was slang at some point to mean someone who
was simply homosexual. It sometimes meant petty criminal. It might
be used to call someone worthless, a coward, weakling, amateur, contemptible.
I saw somewhere a belligerent torp and an experienced youths
as other ways that punk may have been used as
sort of a slang term, and some of those are

(07:01):
very funny, funny, y yeah, silly words, I think.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
So, I think at this point in time, it is
used as a slur derogatory like it's designed to, like basically,
you know, create a power differential between people, like it's
meant to it's meant to be confrontational. And I think
that's important because I think that at least that has stayed,
that part of it has stayed, but it's kind of
been shifted a little bit. And you'll see what we
mean here. Yeah, So, rock journalist Dave Marsh and journalist

(07:27):
Lester Bangs described some nineteen sixties garage bands as quote punks,
and magazines and articles about these self starter, simple groups
with few members, cheap clothing and cheap musical gear playing
street rock. So supposedly this comes from a magazine reference
for this magazine Freaks as well. But like what we
find is that like a lot of the bands that

(07:49):
they were talking about would go and they would pick
up an instrument from like a local pawn shop, or
they would like, you know, they would like do some
yard work to get like a really cheap bass guitar,
and they would just start playing in their garage and
start making music. Like the nineteen sixties was really big
for garage rock, right, And that's kind of where you
start to see this emerge a little bit so a
style of music.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
And even before the term punk was applied to a
style of music, that music had been evolving over decades. Yeah,
the earliest progenitors of music that would eventually become punk
can actually be traced all the way back to black
slaves working on American plantations in the eighteen hundreds and
sort of their the singing traditions they brought with them

(08:32):
and developed.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, I mean, for those of you who don't know
and have never heard of punk song in your life,
it comes from rock and roll, which comes from blues.
And we'll kind of unpack that a little bit. So
slaves sing songs and developed staple melodies and in lyrics
that would eventually be used by black musicians who started
playing blues. Initially extremely unpopular, black musicians developed their own
unique style in blues and jazz, often playing second hand,

(08:56):
cheap instruments, stuff that sounded like it kind of had
like I think it sounds like it's got a little
bit of like character and like, I don't know, there's
something really cool about like old rundown, like you know,
cheap instruments that just have a really cool, interesting sound.
And so you kind of have this like unique style
emerging from this space.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, And I mean you can think of there are
several elements here. One is like the traditions that they
brought with them, the traditions that they developed, the circumstances
that they found themselves, and the way that they could
connect with one another and help bring some joy to
their own lives by playing music. There's also a huge
institutional i think gait being kept by oppressive entities that

(09:37):
would prevent them from necessarily learning music, and so they
kind of just had to do their own thing.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, they didn't have.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
People sort of guiding and telling them like what was
supposed to be developed. They just made music. They kind
of invented a whole cloth. I mean, obviously music existed
before then, but like they weren't really able to train
in it, so they kind of just did their own
stuff and they made, they forged their own path really impressive.
I mean, the fact that they basically innovated new genres

(10:04):
just based on what was available to them was pretty impressive.
You know, they wrote their own melodies, they developed their
own styles, essentially innovated their own rules. And these are
people who they were very poor. They had no financial support.
There weren't like record executives helping them out, and they
had little ways of spreading their music. So early on
they would simply set up and play a gig wherever
they could. They might be invited to play at a

(10:26):
place like a bar or speak easy later on, or
to play on a farm, or they would just you know,
gather in little groups and they'd play music. And you
got people who were really good at what they did
in that space. But like they were not becoming like
rock stars or anything. They were not becoming famous. They
were just getting by playing music and making a few
bucks here and there so they could keep getting by

(10:48):
playing music.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
And they were going on and like you know, influencing
all sorts of people. And then like you know, people
would steal their music. Like that's how Elvis got popular.
So everybody is aware like Elvis Elvis really got famous
on the backs of black music. And I don't say
that lightly. He was literally taking songs from local black
musicians and covering their songs and then getting famous on
those songs. Jailhouse rock is not an Elvis original, you know,

(11:11):
So everybody remembers that. So so you could say that
Elvis is kind of a poser and only posers make ads.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
All right, we're back shots fired.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, Elvis, man, he's a piece of shit. Okay. So
I have lots of stuff to say about this.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
This is this is a very just so everybody's aware,
this is a very I'm very passionate about this particular topic.
So I get I'm gonna get.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Real in the weeds about stuff.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
So just the head's up, well, you know, and it's
on brand for an episode about punk I think too, yeah,
to sort of fight back against what might be considered
generally accepted. And I do think, like, yeah, right, I
think there is an element of this that has been
whitewashed enormously over history.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, So at this point in time, we're
talking about a lot of black musicians that are kind
of like the emergence of blues and like the emergence
of rock and roll and what you're starting.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
To find at this time.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
This is well before the sixties, is before rock and
roll starts to get really popular.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
We're like in like the early nineteen hundreds here, maybe
nineteen ten.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, twenties, thirties, forties, Like we're in a
space where like we're starting to electrify guitars. Like it's
just like at this time, right, so we started, you know,
folks start incorporating electric guitars and experimenting with different sounds,
different distortions, different amps, and eventually start to gain some
notoriety which allowed them to start recording and selling their
music for much more money. So you started getting musicians

(12:38):
into studios and creating music that people could hear in
a widespread way.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, And it was actually very common to have music
simply transposed into sheet music in some sort so that
people would take home and like play it themselves.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, those like proto record.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Companies essentially is they would release sheet music before those
recorded music. But at this point you do have like
money as being made, and once the dollar dollar bills
get involved, should the sharks come a run in. So
that's when producers and other composers and executives started developing
more templated versions of these songs, and that set the

(13:12):
groundwork for what would sort of become rock music. And
as you said, essentially what had been created, innovated, and
developed by black musicians, now that's starting to make money.
You have white musicians who are sort of picking up
what they did and doing their own thing with it.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, So the roots of blues and jazz can be
seen in many subsequent rock bands that show up, and
you know, the sixties and seventies, and and really I
think it's important to talk about this because the sixties
and seventies is really a focal point for kind of
the emergence of punk rock. You get like early blues
songs in like in bands, rock and roll, bands that
get really popular, like the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Buddy Guy,

(13:50):
Eric Clapton, Howl and Wolf Cream, the Birds. You get
all this stuff that starts to emerge, right, And in particular,
the song Crossroads was frequently covered by artists and Crossroads
Roads was not written by a white artist, right, So
you have this kind of like start to start, it
starts to emerge, and then rock and roll gets really
popular and then it starts getting a little bit how
do we say, glamy, and that's when you start seeing

(14:14):
people become disenfranchised with that. But there's other things that
are happening at the time too.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, I meant to put you know, Robert Johnson was
a very independent black artist who wrote Crossroads is a Blue.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Incredible, incredible artist, and like was widely cited as influential
in the development of a lot of these bands.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Anyway, we have this development of like blues and jazz
that sort of set the stage for the creation of
rock and what would become things like glam rock and
stadium rock and all of that. But you have broadly speaking,
this genre of rock music that eventually you get from
that this sort of subgenre of punk. And although punk

(14:55):
is often thought of as more sort of white culture music,
one source I saw even went so far as to
call it, quote unquote predominantly Anglo American punk likely never
would have existed without the music innovations of black culture
and black musicians. Like that's where rock music and punk
music came from.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Yeah, And I think it's also important too to point
out that, like, as punk began to emerge, so did
hip hop, and so you had like I would say,
similar movements in different kind of like pockets of different
cities where you started to see this kind of like
cultural movement exist the same way, take the same trajectory.
So like hip hop and punk kind of emerge at
the same time, and you just kind of found that,

(15:35):
I don't want to say that it was like segregated,
but like you did find that like punk found mostly
white folks, hip hop found mostly black folks in communities,
and then you start to kind of like emerge and mix,
and you actually found that like punk and hip hip
hop were they often collaborated, so like punks and hip
hop artists would actually play similar shows and share music
and stuff at the time, So there was kind of
this cool merging that kind of like parallel development of

(15:58):
these these two genres.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
So rock music became increasingly commercialized by the nineteen fifties
and the sixties and after the rebellious culture and anti
war sentiments developing in response to conflicts such as the
Vietnam War and the seventies and all that, as well
as increased mobility of previously oppressed culture such as liberation
of black people with civil rights laws. You just found
like it was kind of like a general malaise and

(16:23):
unease and discontent in the world, and so you started
seeing like it was like really primed for like rebellion
at this point in time. I mean, you had protest movements,
You had the Hippie movement, which was a failed movement
for folks. People were like love and peace is cool,
and then they found out that it didn't work, and
then people were disenfranchised. Like the seventies were really gnarly

(16:43):
time for folks, and so it makes sense that like
this type of music would start to emerge.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Then a lot happened in the space of a couple decades.
You had World War Two, Like coming out of the
Depression era, you got into World War Two. There was
the Hippie movements, Vietnam, Korean War, the War McCarthyism, the
Cold War. There was some very jingoistic anti communist sort
of rhetoric growing on in the United States, and this

(17:11):
I think growing leaning toward fascism, particularly because there was
a lot of anti fascism during the World War Two,
but then during the Cold War there's anti communism, which
you know is conceptually the opposite direction politically, then you
get a lot of high level conservativism, and in addition,
you had had this big cultural movement with these big

(17:34):
rock artists coming out, and sort of in addition, you
now also have people who have access to some electric
guitars and some cheap equipment, and so there's a lot
of confluence of events all coming together here, but a
lot of people pushing back against the status quo, against
sort of traditional expectations of music and even behavior. And

(17:59):
also like there was a bit of a reaction to
the hippie movement and people sort of saying, like, we
are not on board with those people either, and so
a lot of splintering off into these sort of smaller
and different directions that people were going, Yeah, I think it's.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Really important too. Like there was pushback against what seemed
like commercialized music, right like, and like you were finding
that specifically bands were going, ugh, like why is everybody
like like what is it?

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Like? This is meaningless music?

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Like, so you had folks that were like, you've got
the Vietnam conflict going on right now and everything is terrible,
and then you're singing about like, as an example, let's
talk about Aerosmith, like Aerosmith going out there and singing
about their the one song big ten inch.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Right like it's like I get my big ten inch.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
And so everybody's like, what what the what the hell
are we doing right now? Like there's so much going on,
and there were protest movements and protest songs going out,
like you had Woody Guthrie, which we'll talk about later.
You had you know, you have Bob Dylan who was
doing some protest songs, like you had that emerging, but
those were not the popular songs. Like what you were
hearing on the radio was kiss and Sticks, and everybody

(19:06):
was like, what are we what is this?

Speaker 2 (19:08):
What is happening? So what started to happen?

Speaker 3 (19:11):
You know, as people were kind of pushing against this,
several groups formed their own independent bands. They would form
practice spaces out of garages and all those spaces that
we talked about, and these scenes started to develop in
underground music scenes in Chicago, New York, London and art
scenes well, you know you had.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
Trade Warhol Detroit.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
Yeah, you had La specifically too, Like you had these
spaces that were like starting to emerge, and they were
happening a lot in art scenes, like so specifically New York.
We're gonna talk about tvgb's and Maxis, Kansas City and
stuff like that, but you had these spaces. Andy Warhol's
factory was producing artists that were kind of pushing the
boundaries too.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Andy Warhol was actually I think the manager or producer
or something for one of the early compaigns.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yes, he created he created the Velvet Underground. He helped
create the Velvet Underground. By the way, we're writing songs.
In the sixties, they were writing jingles like they were
a bunch of musicians who were writing jingles for commercials
and like studio musicians, and they got sick of doing
it and then became one of the most influential bands ever.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, So I think that helps it sort of illustrate
sort of the culture and the development, like the history
of music as it began to lead up to this
reactive twist that happened, if you will. So it's like
music was going in a particular way. Cultural was in
a big upheaval, and it was you know, people were

(20:32):
figuring out things that they cared about and didn't care
about and pushing back against what was assumed to be
the case. In a lot of spaces. I think, as
we said, there was a lot more upward mobility of
people across the spectrum, such as people with disabilities, people
of other races, black people in particular, and other groups
as well. You also had just people who were very

(20:54):
poor who were like finding the ability to sort of
have their voices be heard, and people who were in
the sort of spectrum also like having a bit more
opportunity to be more open, more safe. Not totally, obviously,
there was still a huge amount of oppression and laws
that held these people down in these spaces that would
prevent them from having access to even basic safety. Yeah,

(21:17):
and so it wasn't ubiquitous, but like the movement was growing.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yeah, And just for like additional context here, I think
it's important, Like New York in the seventies was not
a safe city. There was lots of heroin, There were
lots of muggings, Like the Sex District was Times Square, like,
not that there was any problem with that, but like,
ultimately New York was a pretty unsafe city at the time.
So people were struggling and and people were discontent, and
people were unhappy, and you had these emerging art scenes

(21:43):
there La was a particularly dangerous city in the sixties
and seventies as well, between like the high rates of
police violence and a lot of the other things that
were going on in the civil unrest that was happening
in these places. So these were like spaces where you
had people that were just angry and there was no
outlet for it. And that's not to say that punks
are always angry, but it was one of those things

(22:05):
where it's like more cathartic music was necessary.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
At this time.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, just an opportunity to have your voice, like be
able to speak out and and say, like, these are
things that we feel like are not fair, These are
things that we would like to have happened differently, these
are complaints that we have. And also, by the way
you yeah, yeah, it's like a sort of general sentiment
that was growing, which is kind of how we sometimes

(22:29):
feel about ads. All right, well we're back after what
was an ad break, although who knows whether any advertisers
wanted to put anything there after a reverence of them.
So let's start getting into sort of the characteristics of
the sort of punk scene. What you might think of

(22:52):
is like the punk attitude yea is or I'm thinking
of here, and it is intertwined with the music in
a way. But it's worth I think understanding what were
the sort of driving forces here, what were the motivations.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
For this discussion.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
I think it's important to point out there's like maybe
two different aspects of this, right there is the like
general like almost like a theology of punk, and then
there's like a style of punk, right like, so like
there's like a mindset, I think, in a value set
versus like a sound. So when it comes to the
sound itself, like generally speaking, and you'll see that there
are variations of this and exceptions to the rule, but

(23:25):
like generally speaking, punk rock is usually considered fast, usually
pretty simple, three to four chords, very short, usually two
minutes or less, usually using distortion, and deliberately not very melodic,
except for like you'll kind of find some examples of
that too. The vocals are often yelling or screaming or
maybe shouting, performances that most contemporary audiences are like, you know,

(23:47):
maybe like kind of people who listen to the radio
are not going to be particularly fond of yeah, and
they may have they may have a hard time calling
it singing, and but following from its blues roots. The
lyrics were often lamenting grievances or calling for political action
against established norms. The Reagan era was like really great
for punk rock music, Like like some of the best

(24:08):
political records came out during the Reagan era. And one
source actually described the music of punk as using guitar
as white noise, drums as texture, and vocals as hostile slogans,
which is like not too not too far off. When
you hear some of the bands, you're like, oh yeah, yeah.
If you listen to the Black Flag, You're like, yeah,
that's that nails it.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, white noise, texture, hostile slogans. It's like, yeah, I
can see that, Yeah, for sure. A lot of these spaces. So,
as we said, the sort of nature and development of
this this DIY music scene, it developed in tandem with
the behavior that sort of characterized it. So it was
making music that bucked traditional norms. You were not necessarily

(24:50):
going for catchy melodies, hooks or ballads. You were like short, fast,
not intended to sound particularly easy. And these were doing
so without the oversight of producers and executives that were
dictating whether song should sound like and then their displaying
are It's a way to sort of display are as
flagrantly as possible, but the freedom available to do so,

(25:12):
meaning that like, these were people who with this expanding
of freedoms that were happening under civil rights laws and afterward,
and like coming out of the Cold War and the
fact that the United States always boasted being in a
free country for whatever that means for some people, they
were using that to sort of continue to push back
for essentially arguing even more freedom was mostly what they wanted.

(25:33):
And this meant the attitude in punk was extreme independence,
like extreme independence and being ostentatiously iconoclast. So we have
wearing clothing that stood out or torn very tight or
very loose fitting garments, wearing black or deliberately clashing colors,
wearing chains, sporting tattoos and piercings, sometimes wearing garish, high

(25:55):
contrasting makeup, wearing spiked jewelry, styling hair to stand out,
such as either shaved heads or mohawks, or shaving part
of their heads or various styles. Long hair was very common,
but also like just putting a lot of gel in
there and making it look very spiky or making it
look very outlandish. I mean, you can see how it
all sort of goes together and it is like, whatever

(26:17):
is the thing that people normally do, We're going to
do not that thing.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
I had a mohawk one time and my hair, my
hair was like longer, so my mohawk was like an
foot and a half tall, which was like already I
was already six feet six foot tall, so like it
was like it looked really crazy. Yeah, it was good
time I had. You know, I've I've had piercings and
stuff like that too. I'm covered in tattoos for those
of you who can't see me, I'm covered in tattoos
as well.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
But Abraham, I've got a question for you. What does
iconoclass mean.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
It's benominat since we had vocabulary in here.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, good stuff.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, So iconoclassed essentially is I want to always use
it as an adjective, but it's technically a noun as
someone who essentially challenges or even like attacks traditions and
does so often in a way that's meant to sort
of speak out against those things or have some sort
of agenda that is anti I always think of iconoclass

(27:14):
as being mostly anti tradition. Sure, it is chewing things
that are sort of generally assumed and practice just for
the sake of doing them, and an iconoclast will often say, like,
we don't, like there should be a reason we don't
just do these things. Yeah, and also like just if
that's the thing we do, just because that's the way
we've always done it, Like, that's not a reason to

(27:34):
do it that way. Yeah, that's how I think of iconoclasts.
So I hope I decided to.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Don't like it. Okay, Yeah, that feels good. That feels good.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
So so I mentioned at the top of this section
that there was like almost like a theology of or
like a value set, and that is the attitude that
comes along with punk rock.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Again.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
It's it's fiercely independent and values bucking traditional social values.
It's fighting back against systems of oppression. It is welcoming
and including people from all walks of life. You'll hear
a lot of times punks will when they're interviewed, like
especially older punks will interview and they'll talk about how
the punk rock scene and like in different cities was
to welcome the weirdos, the people that didn't fit in,

(28:10):
the people that were down and out, the people that
didn't have a.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Place to go that was safe.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
The people that society didn't understand, right, you know, the
attitude was swearing openly in public spaces, which I catch
myself doing this a lot, and I'm like, well, that's
that's me.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Like I do.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
I catch myself doing it often being deliberately rude or sarcastic.
I try not to be rude, but I definitely try
to be sarcastic, espousing anarchistic or atheist views, and in
many cases doing drugs or drinking publicly. Like this is
actually something that you find a lot in like early
punk rock, lots of drugs, lots of drinking, and lots
of discussion around how it was a real problem. So

(28:45):
like it wasn't like something that I think everybody widely
accepted as like a standard or norm of punk rock,
but like everybody just kind of went like do what
you want. You'll hear like Greg Graffin from Bad Religion
talk about this and how he never really did all
this stuff, but it happened around them so much that
it was like you could see it becoming a problem,
and yeah, that's why you got people burn out really quickly.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, absolutely, And so yeah, It wasn't that you had
to do that to be punk, but that was something
that you might find in sort of the punk scene.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, and as you said, like there was a huge
amount of just accepting and allowing people to do whatever
they wanted to do again within reason. Yeah, and because
it was such a sort of welcoming sort of community.
And actually to that point, many people in the sort
of the punk crowds formed these sort of fairly tight
knit communities, not always but like they did happen and

(29:35):
had almost a familial and in some cases gang like
protection of one another. Accurate, although they did protect one another,
they also were not above fighting each other. They fought constantly.
Often there were fist fights going on. But that being said,
like this is a group if you're thinking of sort
of groups that are have a very specific well not
very specific, but they do have an agenda. They are

(29:58):
deliberately organ around some set of principles I think, and
you're thinking of gangs, and gangs notoriously are extremely violent.
These groups of punks were mostly not violent. You might
get some shoplifting, there was some things that they would
do that was like gorilla radio zines, bootlegging things, knockoff
versions of brands and entertainment and that sort of thing.

(30:20):
But they really were not particularly violent groups. They didn't
usually try to control territory. They weren't trying to run
any kind of syndicated criminal enterprises. They just wanted to
live independently from traditional societal expectations, and that meant sort
of getting by your own muster, if you will, which
often meant that, as we said, like they were very
poor a lot of the time, and it meant that

(30:42):
they sort of were living off of scraps and kind
of okay with doing that. But like I said, like,
although there were some aspects of this that were more violent,
particularly in Los Angeles, so we'll probably talk more about that,
most people in the punk scene were not particularly violent principle.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, So I think a really good way to look
at this is that most punks were never violent, but
they were confrontational, so like they were trying to like
get a rise out of like you know, sometimes you'll
hear punks call like people who are not punks, like
Normis or citizens or civilians like you know, you're like
kind of ridiculous things like that, But they were never

(31:22):
like a lot of times what you found were that
punks were violent in response to violence. So in lat Yeah,
so violence happened to them a lot. So as a result,
they had to oftentimes protect themselves. So you would find
like early punks would carry switch blades and brass knuckles
because they were often the the victims of attacks from
you know, lots of different people, and so you find that.

(31:44):
I think it's really really really important because especially in
the eighties, and we were kind of talking about this
before the show. In the eighties, a lot of times
in movies when you see punks, they were the violent ones, yeah,
And that was not the case. What was often happening
was a group of punks we've targeted by another group,
and then they would have to defend themselves. And it's
unfortunate because there were people. People died, and people were hurt,

(32:05):
and people were injured pretty severely, but it was never
most often it was a response to either a systemic
issue like police violence, landlords kicking them out of homes,
like lots of different things like that that were like
really systemic issues, not necessarily like for the jollys of
hurting people.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, And I'd say, like there were a lot of
times that they were deliberately targeted by the police and
they fought back. I mean not unlike the Black Panthers actually, yeah,
to go back a couple of decades, but like they
fought back, and so you had that, you had the punks,
and like the neo Nazis would fight a lot of times.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
They still do and they still do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
So like, yeah, there's the punks would would be targeted
by violence, and they would not just a lot. They
weren't the piece nick hippies of the generation before. You know,
these were people who, like they saw it as a survival,
needed them to fight back, and they were willing to
do that. So they were not often the instigators, but

(33:04):
they would rally around one another and around certain causes
and did have to defend themselves against violence from outside groups,
particularly well organized groups who could call them the perpetrators,
like the police, particularly in LA but in other places
as well.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, it happened all the time. Like I mean, you
would find that, you know, like a group of punks
would be hanging out, they'd be sharing stories, they'd be
in a squat somewhere, and then some marketer would show
up with ads and they would have to fight them
out of their homes, all.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Right, kick those ads out of here. Yeah, I guess
we'd fighted them in, but then we're kicking them out.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
That's true. We did'vite them in and kick them out.
I guess that's a problem.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
All right, let's start to get into sort of the
timeline of the bands that came along that sort of
gave rise to punk here. So the timeline is a
little difficult to pin down because there were so many
home brew bands that were starting and maybe even playing
a shit or two, but then leaving little or no
trace of what they were doing, no permanent records. But
like in the meantime they have They may have like

(34:07):
been this random group of three high school kids who
got a hold of some cheap pond music equipment, threw
together a couple of crazy songs, played a couple of shows,
and then one kid at that show went on to
go form like an actual rock band. Yeah, Like those
kind of things happened, and so you had a lot
of these flash in the pan groups that well, no
one will ever remember that they existed, but they may

(34:30):
have had some kind of impact, and they may have
been around long enough to have made a contribution, but
without any like lasting record of what they did. But
that being said, we'll do our best to unpack the
ones that we do have record of the ones that
did leave an imprint where we can sort of speak
to how punk grew and developed.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, I want to go back real quick to you
brought up zines and like some of the stuff like that.
I think there's something that's interesting that people don't realize
it's and it's that punks, especially in certain cities, are
some of the best historians for like underground music. So
like there are a lot of records out there if
you know who to ask and what to look for.
Zines are one of the most valuable types of like

(35:11):
historical records that punks have. And there's a really great
collection of zines that you can get called Copy and Paste.
It comes in a hardcover copy and it like shows
you all the different zines that existed in punk and hardcore,
or at least.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Quite a few of them.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, And it's a really cool collection.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
And there's also the Punk Rock Museum too that does
that now in Vegas. But there's like I think it's
really important to though that like punks are really fascinated
with their history, especially their local history, and they're pretty
decent historians when it comes to that if you're looking
for like the local stuff.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, I mean they had to. They had little ways
of sort of communicating with each other, so they had
their own just like everything else gorilla DIY marketing, Yeah,
that they did, and zines were one way to do that,
and that meant that that was where history was getting
documented because there was an element of like participation as
being a very important activity a lot of punks and

(36:05):
so yeah, like being aware of the music that was
on the scene and what was going on with those
bands and the people who were in the scene, and
like who was doing what and holding each other accountable
a lot of times, like people who would sell out
or do something else like that would then the community
need to know about that and would shun that person,
Yeah when if that happens.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
So yeah, and I think zines are also too, Like
you might be familiar with that term. They're used a
lot in activism spaces, so like you'll find that like
punk and activism also hold hands quite a bit. So
it makes sense that like some of the underground DIY
gorilla stuff is coming from activism spaces and organizer spaces.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
All right, so let's talk about these bands.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
So James Newell Osterberg Junior, the most punk name that
I've ever heard in my life, right, was the front
man for what is arguably the first modern punk band,
Initially billed as the Psychedelic Stooges when they debuted in
Detroit in nineteen sixty seven. They were a response to
all the rock bands that were out there that were
glam rock, and they weren't really doing anything that felt

(37:02):
like like a lot of the prog rock bands too.
They were kind of over that. They wanted to do
something a little bit more raw, and so James Newell
Osterberg Jr. Started using the stage name Iggy Pop and
then later changed the band name to Iggy and the Stooges.
That band specifically was made famous in part by Iggy's
somewhat contorted stage appearance due to him having one leg
shorter than the other, scoliosis, him not wearing a shirt, yeah,

(37:25):
and a bad hip as well, and he didn't wear
a shirt on stage. He also would shave his eyebrows
every now and again, and then didn't realize that was
a bad idea because eyebrows keep fluids out of your eyes.
So there's a couple of pictures of him without eyebrows.
That's kind of unsettling. But not only did he have
an arresting appearance, but he had a wildly over the
top stage antic like he would like stick his microphone
in a blender and call it the oster, the oscter

(37:48):
Sizer or.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Something like that.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Like he had like he wanted to invent him like
a musical instrument and just put his microphone in a blender.
He would also smear random foods on his bear chest,
like I think they went on live TV one time
and he smeared himself with peanut and then would stage dive.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
He would expose as genitals.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
He would even cut himself open so he's bleeding on stage,
would break bottles and like slice up his chest really bad,
just because he was like he would say he's into
the music, and it was for the show, but it
was a lot of shock and awe.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
But they got them a lot of notoriety, it did.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, So if you've ever heard the Stooges, that is
that is them.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yep, so earlier when in.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
The nineteen sixties, Now, another candidate for possibly the first
punk band was the Motor City Five, also just called
MC five. They emerged right out of the garage rock scene,
playing shows as far back as nineteen sixty three in
Lincoln Park, Michigan, and they had a sound closer to
what you might think of as punk relative to like
as you might compare them to Iggying theo Stooges, The

(38:43):
MC five sounded more like punk in my mind, at
least like I went through and listened to some of
these in preparation for this, and I definitely heard what
sounded more like punk from MC five than I did
from the Stooges, at least musically, and you can really
hear the blues influence in the MC five music. Their
album Back in the USA reached one point thirty seven
in US charts, which does seem very low, but also

(39:05):
to me seems really high from what you might expect from.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
A garage band at the time.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah, and definitely, at this time at least portended a
growing movement. So for my money, I think more of
MC five as being probably the first to sort of
really kick off punk both. I think every titleine and
the style yeah, very proto punk, but I could also
like see and I understand the case being made for

(39:30):
the Stooges as well.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
Yeah, so while this is all going on in New York,
you've got this emerging art scene that's kind of turning
into a cool thing. And then there is a club
called the Country Bluegrass and Blues Music Club or CBGB's,
and this is where actually many of these independent proto
punk bands and a lot of the bands that we're
going to talk about as we go, and full on
punk groups that started playing they started gaining success there.

(39:52):
This was like the prestigious This was the place you
wanted to play. Yeah, they weren't trying to introduce new
styles of music to the world. This place was a
dingy whole. It was disgusting, but it was a place
where bands could get their break, and bands such as
the Ramones did that and actually, like when they started
playing at CBGB's, they really broke. And you'll see a
bunch of other bands that we're gonna mention too that

(40:12):
started playing at CBGB's because it was it was a
big deal. It was like a launch pad for so
many punk bands that really were quite influential.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, and I think you know CBGB wasn't out to
try and do this, but they happened to be sort
of the spot that just turned into that. Yeah, for
better or for worse, but you know that is what happened,
at least.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Probably for worse because that place was disgusting. It was
so gross.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Fair and some might further argue that the New York
City four piece the Ramones. So if you hadn't heard
of the Stooges or CBGB or MC five, you've likely
heard of the Ramones, and understandably.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Gabba Gabba Hey, they were the first punk band.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Many argue that they're the first punk band because they
embodied all of the most critical features of style, sound,
and attitude of punk at the time. The Stooges you
had more of the attitude. MC five you had more
of the sound. Ramones you get it all, and they
kind of taught would be rockers and like future punk
musicians and people in the scene of punk that one,

(41:13):
you don't need to be attractive, which fair shots at
the remotes. Two, you can play very simple music and
be successful there. You only need two or three chords
and aggressive and endurance downward strokes that you can do
for a show. And that you can be successful writing
very simple music that way. And three, you kind of
don't have to play the part of a rock star

(41:35):
to b one.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Like they just kind of did their own thing.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
They were loud, opinionated, free spirited performers who spent little
time thinking or worrying about the music.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Part of the music.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
That's that's actually very accurate. Johnny Ramon and the guitar
player treated it like a job. He was like, like
you would talk about his guitar. He's like, it's like
kind of like how a carpenter uses a hammer. He
doesn't train, he just does it, and that's how you play.
He's like you talked about here, he never practiced and
when you hear it, you're like, okay, yeah, I could
see that.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Oh and then yeah, as you said, they everyone in
the band adopted Ramone as the sort of a pseudonym
last name, So all the members of the band had
Ramone as the last name. That wasn't actually their last name,
but that was what they took on for their yeah
of being on stage personas if you will.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, yeah they are. Their history is very interesting.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
I recommend everybody spend a little bit of time reading
about them because they've got a tumultuous history over the years.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Which makes a lot of sense. Again, attitude of punk,
it was all there, So you could certainly make the
case that they were the first ones if you like,
you need all those criteria to be considered punk. But yeah,
we're tracing the history here, so.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
I would make the argument that the Ramones were the
first true punk band. Okay, like they really kind of
kicked it off. And and like you'll hear too that
people will talk about the Ramones being like the Johnny
Apple seeds of punk rock, like whatever. They would tour,
a bunch of like a burst of punk bands would
start showing up in those cities because they showed every
hey you can actually just like you can go literally
steal a guitar and learn how to play five songs

(43:05):
in a day if you really, if you really wanted to. Yeah,
it's kind of a wild, kind of a wild thing.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
And I forgot to say they started in nineteen seventy four,
as we're at in the timeline for this.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, all right, So in the UK, because we mentioned
London during the sixties and seventies, there's a lot of unemployment.
Many people were frustrated with the state of the world.
I mean, you're talking about reconstruction era in England, because
you're talking about right after World War Two. Most of
England was bombed to oblivion, so there's a lot of
things happening there. But one of the earliest and first
punk bands to really embrace the punk idealism specifically there

(43:35):
that what they did was they borrowed money from friends
and family to start their own record label to self
record and publish their own record, which is very diy.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Very a very punk rock way to go about this.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
It was a lesser known band at the time but
became really influential was the Buzzcocks out of Manchester in
the UK. They could only afford a limited run of
a thousand copies of their four track EP, Spiral Scratch, which,
true to punk form, also included a set of instructions
for how to make your own independent album.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Which rules.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
Yeah, and punks loved democratizing previously elite guarded activities.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
So like there used.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
To be a book and a manual and lazine and
a website called Book your Own Life, and it was
like instructions on how to book your tour around the
United States and other places. So like punks love to
do this. They're like, hey, you want to know how
to do this, Here you go, here's here's the instructions.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Go do it yourself. I promise you it's this easy.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, it was a lot of like steel information then
give it away for free is a very punk thing
to do. Very Robin Hood, Yeah, very Robinhood. Sort of
feeling absolutely you know a Robinhood was not a big
fan of ads though, No, he was not, all right,

(44:49):
coming back, probably I should have said the Buzzcocks were
not a fan of ads, which is almost certainly true.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Another really important band in punk history is London's The Clash, argue.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Probably the most important punk band. If the Ramones were
the first punk band, the Clash were the most important.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Very fair so. They formed in nineteen seventy six. They
were enormously popular or eventually got there, particularly for like
a straight up punk band like this is just a
punk band. Their album Combat Rock reached all the way
to number two on UK music charts and went double
platinum in the United States, which again for a punk band,

(45:28):
is completely unheard of. Yeah, even though like there was
some really successful punk going on at the time. They
really did this, and their most famous song, Rock the Kasba,
became a globally listened to song, earning them and during
fame and legacy. I'm on punks and non punk listeners alike.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
Yeah, I would say, Rock the Kasba, you got should
I stay or should I go? I fought the law,
but the law one train in Vain. Like, They're all
songs that you have for sure heard. Same thing with
the Ramones, Right, You've heard Blitz Creek Bop, You've heard
I Want to Be Sedated. You've probably heard Pets Seminary.
Like you've heard these and like not even realize these
were like punk bands on the radio, right, Yeah, yeah,
so it's pretty cool, all right. So with all that

(46:07):
being said, there are far too many to list.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
We were.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
Actually that's part of the reason why I took us
so long to start recording today is because we kept
going over bands that we just love. So we're gonna
give you a list of bands to check out and
just a little bit of insight about these other bands
that were also incredibly influential. Earlier, you heard me mention
Woody Guthrie and the reason that we bring up Wody
Guthrie is because he was a folk artist. He was
like a country folk artist, like kind of known for
outlaw country. Yeah, and some people consider him to be

(46:33):
the first punk as a Depression era of folk singer
who wrote many protest songs and anti fascist songs. He's
the guy that if you ever see the picture of
somebody with a guitar that says this machine kills fascists,
that's Woody Guthrie. He had it like like taped on
his guitar, so whenever he flipped his acoustic guitar over,
his acoustic guitar said, this machine kills fascist that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah, yeah, he was.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
He was basically writing protest songs, but he I mean,
because he was so early on in doing folk music.
They were very melodic and very catchy, and I think,
like many other protest songs that have been written, or
songs that are like almost overtly about sex or drugs,
a lot of people I think didn't necessarily always notice
that's what he was doing. But he was doing a

(47:14):
really good job essentially just writing using music to protest
and do his own form of activism, which was awesome.
So definitely you appreciate that from him for sure. You
have The Velvet Underground, who started in New York in
nineteen sixty four famously with Lou Reed as the lead.
They were considered one of the most important contributions to
rock music because they were doing a lot of weird,

(47:35):
experimental stuff. They had very confrontational lyrics, and they were
definitively described as having influenced development of indie rock and
punk music that was later.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
To come yep. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
There's also Suicide, which was a simple rock duo from
nineteen seventy. It was basically the two guys. There's a
keyboard and drum machine, and they use simple electronic instruments,
which was kind of like a new emerging thing at
a time, and they use these kind of proto drum
machines and also sometimes referenced they are references. Is one
of the earlies punk bands because they were doing something
extremely different than some of the other like kind of
like guitar and drum music at the time.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, the New York Dolls, this is a nineteen seventy
one New York punk band. They only lasted about five years,
but they kind of went the opposite direction to some
of these others, and they really embraced glam rock, and
they specifically sported these very androgynous appearances. They would wear
sometimes effeminate clothes or wear makeup, lots of makeup, lots

(48:27):
of makeup. They were really trying to blend and flagrantly
violate sort of gender norm appearances. And they were doing
this in like the early seventies here, so they were
pretty early on people who were taking that as their method.
But those are the New York Dolls.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
Absolutely, There's Television another New York City staple. They were
a band founded in nineteen seventy three. They were at
CBGB's a lot, and they were considered influential in the
development of alternative rock and punk music.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Like you could probably see them. You hear a lot of.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
Indie influences and like math rock influences from television. So
if you like bands like Minus the Bear or like
early emo, like you're this is, television is the thing
for that.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Blondie was a y New York rock band in nineteen
seventy four. They're one of the few to incorporate elements
of punk and also have like a female lead vocalist.
It was probably more common in like punk music to
have female members than in most contemporary rock otherwise, like
the big glam rock and stadium rock and all of that,
but even still, having female members of the band was

(49:29):
not super common, although it was more so in punk.
But this is one of the first ones and one
of the few to have a female not only a
band member, but the lead member of the band.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Absolutely, And although not particularly punk musically, they're definitely a
band that's punk in attitude. We got the Talking Heads.
They were a New York band that formed in nineteen
seventy five. They also had several female musicians and were
inspirational for many punk bands that followed. They were also
a CBGB's staple, just like Blondie was, so every band
that we've mentioned so far from New York often played
at CBG.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Very fair.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
We have this band called The Damned This is So Good,
a nineteen seventy six punk rock band and also described
as psychedelic rock and goth rock. This is kind of
a response to the glam rock trend that had been developing.
There was a lot of highly produced, structured melodic songs
of popular rock bands in the era, and they're sort
of saying we're going to do not that we're gonna

(50:24):
be sort of in your face loud, raw and yeah,
sort of their own style of things that was sort
of anti flashiness, if you will.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
They were goofballs to such a degree that's ridiculous. Their
drummer's name was Rat Scabies is Rat Scabies, and their
guitar players Captain Sensible. There was a story where they
the Clash were recording a song at a studio and
the damns were kind of hanging out and like really
messing them up, And there was a story where Captain
Sensible is outside playing the song that Joe drummer can't

(50:55):
play on guitar and like laughing while he's playing the
guitar that Joe drummer can't play through the guitar through
the window and just would like they were like perpetually
frustrating for people, a lot of fun and they're still
playing so you can still see them, which is cool.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Nice. Black Flag, probably.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
The first hardcore band and one of the most important
hardcore bands, started in nineteen seventy six in California and
started as a much heavier approach to punk and punk rock.
They were very confrontational, singing about depression, and they were
singing about some pretty dark things as well. They were
probably the foundation for what would become modern metal and hardcore. Besides,
like Black Sabbath, right, Black Sabbath is probably like, you know,
if it wasn't for Black Sabbath and Death, you wouldn't

(51:30):
have metal, Black Flag, you wouldn't have any hardcore bands.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Yeah, yeah, Black Flag, And there's a lot to say
about Black Flag. They were just a whirlwind of chaos
through out everything they ever did. Yeah, could really dig into.
But that's what we'll leave it there for now, because,
as I said, there's just too much to list here. Yeah,
people will want to include the sex Pistols, but most
I think that most real punks and fans of punk
don't really even consider the sex Pistols a punk band. Yeah,

(51:56):
Johnny Rotten is like the singer of the sex Pistols
or was. It's turned out to be a big douchey,
douchebag of Doucheville. Yeah, and then just seems like a
deep person that no one should like or talk to. Yeah,
so yeah, let's make fun of the sex Pistols for
like five seconds.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
Yeah, Yeah, they're the worst. They're they're the boy bands
of punk rock. They were put together by a clothing
store in England to have an image. They were not
at all a punk band, I mean, and it's really
clear with Johnny Rotten and where he's gone. Sid Vicious
was the bass player, and he went on to sing
a Nancy Siacht Sinatra song and record a cover and
it was really bad. He tried to break away and

(52:31):
do his own thing. He eventually passed away. But my
favorite story of Sid Vicious is Freddie Mercury calling him
Simon Ferocious, like refusing to call him Sid Vicious, calling
him Simon Ferocious and just like just upsetting him so much.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
That's very fun.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Yeah, yeah, again, people didn't like punks. That nobody was
nobody was a fan of the punks, so.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
Essentially, it seems like the sex Pistols were like a
marketing ploy more so than they were a punk band.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
A San Francisco punk band in nineteen seventy eight, The
Dead Kennedy's had a.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
Short great name for a punk band, by the way.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
They Yeah, they were a foundational contribution of punk music.
They really embraced a style of just satirizing public figures
and politics to make their points. Also kind of goofballs
but like really loved making fun of people they didn't like.
Was kind of what they did, honestly. Like this idea

(53:27):
of Freddie Mercury calling him Simon Ferocious is something I
would definitely expect the Dead Kennedys to do.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Oh no, no, no, it was no, no, no, it's Freddy Mercury
from Queen.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm just saying that, like I would
expect them to do something similar to that. Oh okay, yea, yeah,
the idea of like poking fun at people by almost
like embracing their name but like doing a twist on it. Yeah,
although I think they were more critical, more overtly critical
than that. But yeah, they were a bunch of goofballs
that really set the stage for a later punk as well.

(53:57):
And like I think if you hear them, you you're like, yep,
that is punk music for sure.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
For sure.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
And their singer Jello Biafra actually ran for an elected
position in San Francisco and almost won. Wow, Like yeah,
and he did it as a joke and like almost
one because that's like that's you know that sounds like
that's m yeah, all right. My favorite punk band, Bad Religion,
was formed in nineteen eighty in La California, and they
could have their own episode because they were such a

(54:24):
unique kind of like they were such a powerful band
and like a movement there. But while portraying a very
punk musical style, they sound like a punk band, they
also managed to include more complex and interesting musical writing
as well as complex three part vocal harmonies which is
like totally shaped up no effects as well. They spanned
record labels from the early low budget record label all

(54:44):
the way up to major label Atlantic Records in the
early nineties, and they are one of the more progressive
and thoughtful lyricists like lyrics, Like they put together a
lot of really cool philosophical and political lyrics. And that's
partly because Bret Gerrowitz, who is the guitar player and
co writer and owner of Epitaphrecks, is like more of
a philosopher, if you will. And then Greg Graffin is
a doctor. He the singer, and he's a songwriter as well,

(55:07):
and he's got his doctorate in I believe evolutionary biology. Wow,
So he's just somebody who's like just brilliant. They're both
brilliant and so like I actually thank doctor Greg Graffin
in my dissertation that's amazing for just being like a
huge influence for me. So because yeah, bad religion incredible.
So go listen to all the records because all of
them are good.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Yeah, I would love to talk more about them because
just there's so much to say, and they were so important,
and they were like so musically good, like compared to
like most other punk that was out there. Like most punk,
it wasn't really about necessarily like the musicianship. It was
about the message. It was about the attitude, it was
about the show. It was about the like participating in

(55:44):
the group. They were like good musicians, like yeah, that
kind of stood out, I think among the other things.
But they also were punk, like they were punks, yea,
they just happened to also be good at their instruments.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Yes, now the Professors, it's great.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
The Butthole Surfers if you haven't heard that name before, Yes,
that was a real band. They're out of San Antonio
in Texas. They were a punk band that formed in
nineteen eighty one and they became famous for performing these
chaotic live shows. They'd also bring a lot of comedy,
particularly dark and like black comedy to their live shows.

(56:18):
That was one of the things that sort of got
them a lot of notoriety, aside from the fact that
they were called the Butthole Surfers and were in Texas. Yeah,
but yeah, they're really interesting punk bands that sort of
developed along here in the early eighties.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
Yeah, most definitely. There's also Uniform Choice, which was an
Orange County hardcore band and they formed in nineteen eighty two,
and they were really like they were notable for being
one of the first bands to start making their own
merch like they would like it was very DIY like.
They would make their own merch, sell it out of
the trunk of their cars, and that's how they would
pay for their tours and stuff. So they were like

(56:51):
one of the first instant really bring that to the
world of like DIY punk basement shows, where bands weren't
really doing that at the time.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Yeah. And then and finally, we have no FX. For
people who listen to punk. That's a name that's going
to be very familiar for people outside of punk, probably not,
but it's spell Lega Sounds.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
No FX.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Those are the letters four letters, which a four letter
word is very much I think something that they did
on purpose.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
They're an iconic LA band.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
They formed in nineteen eighty three, helmed by frontman Michael Burkette,
more commonly known as Fat Mic. He started a record label,
Fat Records spelled wr e ck rec and then c
h o r DS Chords, and that allowed them to
essentially pay for press promote music of bands that they liked,

(57:39):
and they apparently Fat Records has sold over eight million
records spanning over three hundred different artists since their formation.
So they have been prolific and their activities getting all
kinds of music out there no effects, consistently and continuously
embraced irreverence to the point of like being offensive and

(58:01):
even somewhat hostile. Yeah, And the thank you notes on
one of their albums, which is called Punk and Drublic,
they specifically thank people quote for the free suckers, we
hawked it all for crack end quote yep.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
If that has no effects in a nutshell, I don't
know what is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
And this is a really good example of what I
would describe as like, guitar is white noise, drums are texture,
Vocals are hostile slogans. That is a very good description
of a lot of what they were doing. Super fun.
I actually loved No Effects. I listened to and had
a ton of their albums. They just recently, like I think,
played their last show in like the last couple of years.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
They were a band for like forty years, like a
long time.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
So anyway, definitely worth checking out. I think if you're
interested in checking out the history of punk, No Effects
should be on that list somewhere.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
Yeah, And just so so everybody's aware, I'm going to
make a playlist that's going to go with the show.
So it'll be in the show notes and it'll be
all these bands that we're talking about and then some
and that way you can get kind of a nice
taste of what we're talking about here.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
Well, while you ignore these capitalist ads, you can go
check out No Effects or some of these other punk
bands and we'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Please do.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
All right, there's so many more things that we could
talk about with these, but let's just like we're just
gonna list some bands.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Now.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
We're not gonna say anything about them, We're just gonna
list them. These kind of go and order from when
they came out to like oldest and most recent, not completely,
but they're sort of generally in that order. So here
are here's just a list of other sort of punk
bands we wanted to shout out that happened though we're
sort of along the way.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
So you got Susie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Nirvana,
Green Day, The Offspring, the Germs, an X.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
I've got Minor Threat, Fugazi, the Misfits, Circle Jerks, the
Dead Milkmen, Bad Brains Descendants, and the Adverts.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Mm hmm, you've got Pennywise, Suicide Machines, Alkaline Trio, Rise
Against Me.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
That was definitely where my listening was taking, isn't that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Yeah, that's yeah. I started in that yep.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Although I also had in mind the next one, No
use for a Name, Strung Out lag Wagon, Good Riddance, Rancid,
the Swing and Utters, Goo Goo Dolls and Chumba Bumba,
And yes that Chumbawamba actually started as a very like
anarchist punk band.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Goo Doll's first couple of records are also very punk records.
But my favorite thing about Chumbawamba, this is all I'll
say about them is that they wrote a song celebrating
the death of Margaret Thatcher and they waited for her
to die to release it, and the day that she
died they released it and it was like just a
few years ago, like they had recorded it well before,
and then like they were already you know, they'd already
put out.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
A good knocked out but I'll get up again.

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
So they were already like on that that money and
they still put out that song.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
So just so yeah, still very anarcho punk.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
Also for me, here's another list of bands that like
would also fit into my taste would be Bouncing Souls, MxPx,
Dancehall Crashers, Goldfinger, Propagandhi, Dropkick Murphy's and We're gonna say it,
Blink What eighty two because Blank Wat.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Two absolutely their early records are very.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
Like pop punky bands that wouldn't exist without the Ramones
in Green Day and back Religion.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Yeah, like early Green Day early Blinkwin eighty two had
a lot of overlap, I think, yeah, and their sounds
also going to shout out to our producer Justin was
in an early band started in nineteen ninety eight. I
think I have that date right. So when the late
nineties called Tip the Milkman, that was very much in
the vein of like no use for a name. Yeah,
another punk, sort of pop punk, if you will, at

(01:01:30):
the time, so but has a very sort of punk
feel but just more melodic most definitely. All right, well,
let's get again. We have a lot to cover here.
Let's try and get to just sort of where punk
has at now. So what has happened with punk? What
is going on with modern punk? Most of the past
old punk bands, not most many of the old past

(01:01:50):
punk bands, they have since reunited, they've released albums, where
they've played shows or gone tour. But the punk scene
really does not exist today the way that it did
a few decades ago. It's largely has diverged and gone
different directions.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
Yeah, and a lot of that is like what you'll
find is that punk is diversion into alternative rock, metal, hardcore, emo,
indie rock. SKA also developed alongside punk and had like
kind of a what you could describe as an overall
shorter window of time.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
And was generally less successful, but there were a bunch
of bands that came out of that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
What you find though, is like like the genres of
music have kind of like split up punk scenes. There
are still punk scenes and they are still existent. Yeah,
I think it's happening more hardcore metal now than it
is like in standard punk scenes. But SKA in particular
had a lot of great bands that came out of it,
like Less than Jake, Save Faris Real, Big Fish, the
Mighty Mighty Bostones, Mustard Plug, the Voodoo, Glow Skulls, m.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
U three three zero, Catch twenty two, street Light, Manifesto,
Are Expandits, Operation Ivy five, Iron Frenzy, Buco nine and
Big d in the Kids Table with some other SKA bands.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
The Toasters, Skankin Pickle, which is my favorite SKA band
name besides Mescoffelies, the Mad Caddies, Suburban Legends eighty, and
the Hippos. There were SKA had like from ninety four
to ninety seven had just like this big burst of
great bands that came out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Yeah, yeah, there was. Like Skat also is one that
has a really interesting history and like went through what
they call waves, Like you have different waves of SKA
that were like came all the way from reggae up
to what almost sounds more like hardcore music in some
of the ska how it developed is really interesting and
really fun, and that was actually I listened to more

(01:03:30):
ska than I did punk back in the day, but
I loved a lot of the punk as well. So anyway,
those are just some bands to list. Yeah, most definitely
many bands in these genres still reflect some of the
ideals that motivated punk musicians. You still see a DIY
approach to making music. There's still a chewing traditional musical styles, trends,
and norms. You'll often have these overtly political and satirical lyrics.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
That still is around.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
And like you said, there are still new punk bands
that are forming that are like playing punk music.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
It's just not quite that common.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
And as you said, it tends to look more like
sort of metal and hardcore anymore. There's i think generally
more musicianship to it. There's better equipment that is not
that expensive is available now that wasn't available back then.
So it's around and it has kind of gone different places.
It looks different now than it used to, but it's
still there.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Yeah, And although this isn't necessarily inherent to punk, there
were like some other like kind of DIY or like
some different cultural movements that developed alongside these, including straight edge,
which means that you've got folks that don't do drugs,
drink or papermiscuo, sex, no nicotine, stuff like that. Vegetarian
and veganism saw that happen. But I will say, and
I want to be really clear about this, because there's

(01:04:39):
going to be folks that listen to the history of
punk and they're going to be like, I'm a punk too.
Conservativism is not punk. Conservativism has never been punk. Yeah,
the Dead Kennedy's have a song called Nazi Punks Golf.
So when you see people that go out there and
they say things like, oh, being Republican is the new punk,
being conservative is the new punk, it is not. Those
people are are sorely misinformed because there is no punk

(01:05:02):
in the world that is wanting more authority, that wants
to exclude people except for Nazis. We want to exclude Nazis.
But when people say conservativism is punk, it is not.
It never has been. And I'm not the arbiter for
what punk rock is, but I know what it ain't
and it ain't voting for Trump and it ain't voting
for the GOP and it ain't standing behind those systems.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Yeah, like the movement of punk grew almost exclusively out
of an anti authority position.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Yes, Like.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
Very commonly a theme you will hear again and again
and again in the lyrics is against authority, anti authority.
That also was reflected in the overall style of like
doing things your own way and sort of and like conservativism,
Like the extreme side of conservativism is fascism, like.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Right, antithetical to punk rock.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Yeah, Like authoritarianism is antithetical to punk, and punk is
antithetical to authoritarianism. So you cannot be on the authoritarian
side of the spectrum and also be anti authoritarian, Like
those are incompatible things. So the Venn diagram has no overlap,
so there is not it does not. Yeah, it is
not punk. And actually, you know, in the recent super

(01:06:16):
Man movie that came out, there's a whole discussion they
have about being punk rock and Superman sort of responds
being kind is punk, which I loved, and I completely
agree with that overall sentiment. And I think James Gunn,
the director and writer of this is very much an
old school punk in in the way he has approached
his art and the things that he does and his

(01:06:37):
attitude and things.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Absolutely all right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Well, there's also like just some notable things to list,
some movies and books that will go through really quick.
This is an ad break not for those things. All right,
I'm gonna go through a few movies. There is SLC Punk.
This is featuring math Lillard. Is sort of about the

(01:07:03):
lives of a couple of punks and a punk scene.
And I spent a long time since I've watched it,
but I remember really enjoying it. It is a sad movie,
but it's an interesting view into the life of some
of that group of people. Another one is called bomb City.
This is almost like a dramatized reality, like true crime
sort of thing. So this this movie came out in

(01:07:24):
twenty seventeen. It is about I'm kind of spoiling it because,
like I said, it's sort of a dramatized telling of
a real event that happened in sort of American history.
There was this punk musician whose name was Brian Theodore Denicky.
He was killed in a deliberate hit and run attack
by Dustin Camp. So it was just a conflict between

(01:07:48):
these people. Brian Denekey was a punk he dressed like
a punk, he looked like a punk. He was largely
an artist, really sweet guy, and because there was this
conflict with some of the more traditional sort of I
think in this case they were sort of jocks. But yeah,
this kid got in a car and ran him down,
killed him by driving over him, and then he was
eventually like although he was found guilty of voluntary vehicular manslaughter,

(01:08:12):
he was and sentenced to probation and sentence a fine
like that was later dropped. He essentially got away with
murder like Dustin Camp is a murderer who was never
held accountable for it because his victim was a punk.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
That's what that movie is about. Anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
It's hard to watch, but it is very well done. Yeah,
it's very well shot. It's just really sad. So anyway,
then there's a movie called Green Room. This is essentially
about punks who accidentally find themselves in a den of
neo Nazis and then are trying to fight for their survival.
It's almost more like horror than anything, but it is
centered around a bunch of punks in a conflict with

(01:08:47):
neo Nazis, which makes sense because punks and Nazis hate
each other traditionally.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Yeah, yeah, most definitely and historically. So.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
But those are three movies that i'd sort of note
that are in the sort of punk space if you're
interested in checking those out.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
Yeah, I would also say The Decline of Western Civilization
is a good documentary. It's early early early punks. It
talks about slam dancing, it talks about like punk howses,
and it features live performances from certain bands. So it's
kind of a cool little like glimpse into a particular
time in punk rock. And it was filmed I believe,
in la so it gives you insight on like that
particular scene.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Yeah, I'm also going to give you eight books to
check out, so do what you want. By Bad Religion,
Great Book History, Bad Religion, Hepatitis, Bathtub by No Effects.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
That's such a good name.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
It's such a good name.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
It's probably my favorite like band documentary book because it
was like written by the band. It's it's harrowing, it's
a tough read, but it is. There's parts of it
that're really funny. There's parts of it they're very heartwarming,
Like you know, the drummer becomes sober during the story
and stuff like that, So there's lots of cool things
in it that are worth reading. Please Kill Me by
Legs McNeil is a really great look at early punks

(01:09:54):
that talking about you know, bands like Television, Blondie, all
those they interview all the folks from those bands. Get
in the Van by Henry Rollins is part of his journals,
like he's kind of known for like writing journals and
publishing them. Get in the Van is like a particularly
interesting one because it's Black Flag on the road and
talking about what it's like the tour and be as
confrontational as Black Flag is. Tranny by Laura Jane Grace,

(01:10:15):
singer of Against Me. It's her story about like coming out,
about like discovering herself.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
It's a really really great, really great read.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Straight Edge if you're interested at all in the oral
history of like the straight edge movement in hardcore. Called
straight Edge a clear headed hardcore punk History by Tony
Retman another great read, like kind of goes into like
the beginning histories of like punk in hardcore and hardcore
straight edge hardcore specifically. Dan Ozzy is a great author.
He wrote Sellout. He also helped write Blinkway two. Mark

(01:10:44):
Hoppus's recent book Fahrenheit one eighty two, and he also
helped write Tranny by Laura Jane Grace and then spray
Paint the Walls if you want the story of black Flag.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
It is a gnarly read. And that's from Stevie Chick
and that's that's a really great read, too nice.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Yeah, all right, So that's kind of the history of
you know, I've wanted to have some sort of suite
of episodes that we do, not like when we do
our big runs of like a topic where we spend
eight or nine or ten episodes, there's really digging in
each episode on a thing, like we did with Addiction,
like we did with Aba, like we're planning on doing
in an upcoming series that should come out this year.

(01:11:18):
But I was I had this idea of like doing
a history of different musics, if you will, as some episodes,
and I like the history of R and B and
the history of well Punk is the one that we
just did, and just like using these discussions to sort
of understand big cultural movements and how they relate to
and contribute to and participate in our social zeitgeist. Yeah,

(01:11:41):
so this was a fun one. I'm glad we got
a chance to really take on me too.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
I loved it. It was great.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Also more lighthearted than you know when we do the
I mean sort of lighthearted, but then when you do
like jonestown type episode the sad.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Ones, Yeah, it's a nice palete cleanser. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
So all right, I think that's what we have to
say about punk rock for now. We would love to
hear your stories, thoughts, musings, and other things that you
have to say, including compliments, and we're open to constructive criticism.
But you come in here guns of blazon and have
nothing nice to say, with no offer to make things
better than we're not going to listen. But if you
have meaningful contributions and we want to tell us your
thoughts about punk or anything that we've ever talked about

(01:12:17):
on this show, you can email us directly at info
at wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or reach us on the social
media platforms, and we definitely look forward to hearing from you.
In addition, if you'd like to support what we do,
you can head over to Patreon, and if you do
that then you'll get some ad free episodes, bonus contents,
early episodes, all kinds of benefits like that. And the

(01:12:38):
thing that many people I think really go there for
is that at the end of our full length discussions
such as this one, I list the name of the
wonderful people who have really helped us do our thing,
and that is Mike, m Meghan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley,
Kiara and Charlie. Thank you all for continuing to support
us and help us be a podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Yes, y'all are just the just the bees knees.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
The knees of the bees. Yes, indeed, of course. Thank
you to my team of people writing and fact checking
from Shane and myself. Thank you very much for her
help on this one today. Shane, Hey, no, this is great.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
This is a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
So yeah, this is the one of the more collaborative
episodes where because usually one of us does like pretty
much all of the sort of writing and research, but
having us both work a little bit more in this one.
Thank you so much for our social media coordinator Emma Wilson.
And as I mentioned before, the person who knows how
to make sounds and make them good is Justin Greenhouse.
Oh does all of our audio engineering and producing beautiful, yes, wonderful,

(01:13:36):
delightful person who's so so good at what he does,
and it has like some great history, like some of
his bands been so good tip the Milkman. He's also
in one called The Brotherhood of Dahon, which is like
available on streaming platforms and is super good, like like
legitimately super super good.

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
So definitely I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
But I think that's the things that I have to say.
But one of the things I build boarded to the
top is that we like to recommend so things. So
if you're here for the first time hearing this, stick
around because this is fun. It's a fun thing that
we do. Well, we'll just go right into it. Let's
cue the music and recommend some things.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
I love it. Recommendations.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Okay, I'm gonna recommend. I'm gonna go first because mine
is the least related to everything that we talked about here.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
I just finished a book.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
This is called The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England,
and despite the title, this is actually a lighthearted sci
fi book that has to do with traveling to other dimensions.
It's fun, yes, it is a really fun book. So
it's by author Brandon Sanderson. This was one of what
is called his secret projects. So in twenty twenties, during lockdown,

(01:14:49):
he decided, with his time being locked down, he was
going to write four books. So he wrote four complete
novels that are all around four hundred pages long that
came out that year. It's Wild, It is Wild. Yeah,
he was extremely prolific, and he launched on Kickstarter and
created one of the most if not the most successful
Kickstarter campaign of all time, raising I think over twenty
million dollars for this project, and this was one of them.

(01:15:11):
But it's available in all sort of retail spaces. He
started his own publishing company called Dragon Steel, so it's
available through them. But yeah, it's briefly, it is about
a guy who wakes up who's like from sort of
a futuristic current world, so US but in the future, sure,
and then he wakes up in an alternative At this

(01:15:33):
point in human technology, we've invented, we've discovered how you
can travel to other dimensions. In this book, and he
wakes up in this dimension and doesn't know who he
is or how he got there, and his memories sort
of slowly come back to him as he is navigating
this other dimension that also happens to be in medieval England.
And so that's the story. Really good. It's really silly,

(01:15:55):
I'll say that, like, it's a very silly story. But
it's a lot of fun. And although the title makes
it sound like you would be boring, it's actually a
super entertaining, really quick paced and just a fun book.
So you check out The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving
Medieval England. For those people who know Brandon Sanderson, this
is not related to his other works, so it's just
a standalone novel. You don't have to have read anything
else to understand and follow what's going on in the story.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
I like that. It's nice to have, like those isolated stories.
It's cool.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):
Yeah, all right, I'm gonna recommend an album. It's not related.
It's only related because it's music. But it is the
twentieth anniversary of this record, and that is from a
band called segar ROAs and it is their album talk
spelled ta kk. This is I believe that's Icelandic for
thank you, okay, if I remember correctly, And it is
just a beautiful, beautiful, big soundscape type of record. If

(01:16:45):
you've never heard segar ROAs it is like the kind
of music that, like, when you hear it on the stereo,
you just want to hug your stereo and tell your
stereo that it's okay, because you feel like your stereo
is probably upset and crying and like just emotional.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
It's just an incredible album.

Speaker 3 (01:16:56):
So I was floored by the fact that this was
twenty years old this point, but when I listened to it,
it just brings me back to a very particular time
and I just really just really really loved it. So
you should go listen to it and feel really good
about what you're hearing.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
This artist has been recommended to me many times over history,
and I have simply never made space for it. But
I am given to understand it is very good, so
I will check this out. I appreciate the recommendation.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
I feel like as a musician, you will love it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Okay, very good, Yeah, well awesome. So, as I said,
I think that's what we have to say about punk.
Those are our recommendations and our thoughts on all of that.
And I gave you ways to reach out to us.
I thank my team of people. So I guess my
last thank you is Thank you all for listening, and
if I didn't mention before, please like and subscribe. That
definitely helps us reach other people. If you leave us
a nice five star rating, that also helps a lot.

(01:17:45):
And if you're really feeling ambitious, we definitely appreciate a
nice positive review. Otherwise you can just go tell friend,
because I think the word of mouth is still one
of the ways that many podcasts make it out into
the world, particularly those of us that have a zero
dollar advertising budget such as US.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, So that's where we're at with things.

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):
But is there anything you would like to add or
anything that I forgot before we say goodbyes?

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Uh nope, not on my end.

Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
All right, go check out some punk. This is Abraham
and this is Shane.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
We're out. See Yep, you've been listening to Why We
Do What We Do.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening
and we hope you have an awesome day.

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