Weekend Punk Pick: Social Distortion

Picking up the trailer park vibe from X last week, it's helpful to remember that Social Distortion didn't always suck. Their retro '50s white trash punk shtick, at least early on, was more rooted more in Some Like it Hot glamor and camp than it was in brooding The Wild One angst. First album, Mommy's Little Monster, was actually a rockin' punk valentine to Jerry Lee Lewis and that whole first wave of Southern white rock. If Social Distortion had one overarching flaw, it's that they were born in the wrong era. Songs like "Moral Threat" pined for the stultifying conformity of the Eisenhower era because it would have presented a much brighter line to rebel against. Reagan was just a poor man's substitute.