Punk Rock Docs

One of my pet peeves is how punks are often portrayed in popular culture. Too often they’re the lunkhead with the ridiculous clothes and hair who is treated like a running punchline. The image of the idiot punk is so ingrained that they’re almost automatically assumed to be falling down drunks who are little more than comic relief devoid of personality or prospects whenever they pop up. In my experience, it’s the direct opposite. Punks are the musical smart asses: the intelligent kid in the back of the room who can do the work but just doesn’t take it seriously. It takes a keen mind to zero in on society’s myriad failures in a way that’s hilarious, excoriating and trenchant all at once.
But some punks have taken that a step further by putting their diplomas where their mouths are, earning some serious academic accolades outside of the mosh pit.

High Priests of the Death Church: A Rudimentary Peni Retrospective

Nat informed me that “punk is not fashion, it’s an attitude.” I have heard this somewhere before. I must say I am relieved that both he and Greg take this view and will not be resorting to war-zone dress sense of many punks. Nat gleefully described the “corpse of punk” as having no life in it whatsoever, and it was this decayed grandeur of a fallen subculture which had so attracted him.

Nick Blinko
The Primal Screamer
1995

Rudimentary Peni did not revolutionize punk rock. At least not in the sense that the band boasts a wave of imitators intent on stealing any hint of the English band’s psychologically unstable glamour and passing it off as their own. The trio of guitarist/vocalist/visionary Nick Blinko, bassist Grant Matthews and drummer Jon Greville is just too idiosyncratic and hermetic for such easy imitation and commoditization.
But what the band has accomplished over its 30 year run is unrivaled in the annals of punk. When too many other punks celebrate their semi-centennial birthdays with sad trips around the nostalgic circuit (is there anything more pitifully un-punk than the very existence of such a nostalgia circuit?) or filing lawsuits against former friends, Rudimentary Peni unexpectedly pop back up a couple times a decade to drop yet another immaculate EP’s worth of new material that builds on the morbid visions they first laid out in 1981 without recourse to rehashing their (wilted) salad days.
Unique among the restless waves of politically-minded crust punks that roamed England in the early 1980s, Rudimentary Peni, while certainly political, filtered their diatribes through Blinko’s nightmarish insights and intricate artwork to set themselves well outside the circle of their peers. Rudimentary Peni songs, practically from the very outset, were psychologically rich meditations on death, decay, social oppression and mental upheaval that resonated far beyond the glut of bands who just tried to provoke and shock with cheap frights.

Coffee Break

Punk and grind are hyped up music and it takes a lot to keep the adrenaline flowing to blast a beat and keep a mosh pit turning. It's something of an open secret that many of your favorite bands lean on the chemical crutch to keep them amped album after album and show after show. Despite Nancy Reagan's best efforts, drugs are just a part of the lifestyle. I'm referring, of course, to that black bitch, coffee.

I Take it Black, Like My Men



Is it really any surprise that Hank Rollins would extol the virtues of the caffeinated life, especially when you realize that excessive coffee consumption is linked to aggression and irritability? Nobody was more aggressive or more irritable than Black Flag and they delivered many of their finest tirades with coffee cup in hand. And they take it black. None of that sugar or cream bullshit. Come to think of it, that's pretty much how they delivered their screeds: no sweeteners.

The Young and the Restless



It's never too early to start a lifelong addiction and the smart ass punks Descendants were the '80s' best ambassadors of the caffeinated lifestyle. They advocate kids taking up the cause early and often. The Descendants' motto was "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll minus the sex and drugs." Fortunately for us, caffeine slipped past their definition of drugs somehow because they have multiple excellent songs singing the joys of coffee. Thanks to modern chemistry, sleep is now optional. Kickass punk rock is mandatory.




Friends Without Benefits



Mocking coffee house culture during the mid-90s peak of Friends' inexplicable popularity is not exactly stretching your satiric muscles, but Operation: Cliff Clavin, who piggybacked on Propagandhi's wave of political skatecore, would like to express their displeasure with the ubiquity of pretentious assholes lounging around their favorite espresso bar with poetry in hand while trying to out-cool each other. Operation: Cliff Clavin were hating on hipsters before it was popular.

Playing Favorites




Sete Star Sept want you to know that this is how we sound when we don't get our vital caffeine. So fill the fucking cup, shut the fuck up, and the back the fuck away slowly.

G&P Review: The Riot Peddlers

The Riot Peddlers
Sarkasm
Bandcamp
I think it's kind of amusing that India, a country that nonviolently overturned British colonialism, celebrates its Independence Day, Aug. 15, with a 21 gun salute.  The Riot Peddlers decided to stir up the party last Independence Day last year by dropping a six pack of punk ragers.
The snotty, sarcastic punk doesn't wander too far off the trail that NOFX and their more straight-faced  '80s hardcore contemporaries have already blazed (except for the near-hip hop cadence to some vocals that I could do without), so the hook here is the trio is speaking to their unique experiences in India, [wow, I completely misinterpreted like half of these songs; ignore me and see the comment below for more.] taking swipes at Bollywood musicals ("Bollywood Songs"), police brutality ("United We Stand") and corruption ("Chai Paani"). Those songs show a verve that makes The Riot Peddlers' more conventional punk fare ("Platform  No. 3's" ode to getting hammered) sound tame and derivative.  It just can't stand against "Sau Rupiya's" nearly d-beat stomp as they rave India's border disputes with Pakistan.
If you've ever heard a punk album at any point in the last 30 years, don't expect to  bowled over by The Riot Peddler's originality. This is strictly by the numbers punk that hits it and quits it in 11 minutes, but it stakes a claim for largely unheard corner of the musical world. And The Riot Peddlers are at their best when they speak from their unique subcontinental perspective. If they'd ditch the punk playbook and bring something new to the table they could probably go far.

 [Full disclosure: the band sent me a download.]

Seasons in the Abyss

So I guess it's time to acknowledge that the universe is still here and my next mortgage payment and credit card bill are due. Thanks a fucking lot, Mayans. Way to let everyone down. So since we're still here (at least until Harold Camping carries a one in his calculations and gives doomsday another whirl), it's time to flip over another calendar and circle the important dates. Fortunately for you, I've annotated every every punk and grind moment of horological significance in 2013 for your convenience.

There's a Hole in May Heart That Can Only Be Filled By... Me



Valentine's Day is coming. Operation: Cliff Clavin let you off the hook.

The Last Call of Cthulhu



In a more just universe, March 15th would be an interdimensional holiday of squamous, tentacled celebration. Rudimentary Peni represent.

Juneteenth



Just a summertime jam from the Minutemen.

Summer Vacation!



And now a quick word from your travel agent, the Sex Pistols. Pass the cocoa butter and mankini.

Season of the Witch



I just had a lame pirate costume as a kid. The Dead Kennedys make me feel bad for even trying.

Dawn of the Dead (The Original, Not the Remake)



Mmmm. Sugar skulls. Nashgul remind us that Americans don't own all the holidays.

Jive Turkey



Agoraphobic Nosebleed
carveflip the bird.

Guess Who's Creeping Up Your Chimney



Twas the night before Grindmas, courtesy of Agoraphobic Nosebleed. Enough with Christmas, guys, I'm waiting for your epic Yom Kippur themed album.

Presents!



If you're lucky, coal is the only thing The Locust will leave in your stocking.

G&P Review: Teething

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
1 Corinthians 13:11

Teething
Teething
Bandcamp
High school fucking sucked. We can all agree about that, right? Being surrounded by hordes of the hormonally unbalanced, the insipid jock-o-rama culture and good teachers forced to dumb down their classes to accommodate the stupidest of students was pretty much my very definition of hell. There was not a single redeeming thing to be said of the entire miserable four year experience. So it was a bit disconcerting to hear Teething wax nostalgic about high school on the song “1996,” which has got to be the least punk thing a punk band could do. Sure they say it sucked, but the song also romanticizes things like smoking in school bathrooms and getting good and underaged wasted. I remember 1996; I was in high school in 1996; 1996 can kiss my ass.
Not to pick on that one ill-conceived song, but I think “1996” underscores the broader problem I had with the Spanish punks’ rough-throated hardcore. For all the spit and pissing, I just don’t get the feeling Teething really mean any of their generic punk sloganeering. Some of the songs sound almost like a middle aged scriptwriter’s fantasy of what teen punk rebellion feels like for some lame-ass weepy teen flick. Case in point, sour-note starting point “Hell Song” is all “I’m a worthless piece of shit” and chants of “666,” which to Teething’s ears are probably meant to sound bad ass. I just don’t get the feeling they really mean any of it. It’s more punk pose than something heartfelt. It borders on parody. Teen self-loathing is certainly a punk-worthy topic that would be instantly relatable, but “Fuck This Face,” which leaps out with blastbeats and then fizzles to mediocrity, doesn’t convey any real human connection as the singer talks about how much he hates his features and his parents.
My problem is Teething seem to be mouthing the words without delivering the emotional substance. They very well could be deadly serious about this stuff, but their approach just doesn’t convey sincerity. I get the feeling Teething very much want to their songs to be meaningful, but that’s the area where their music needs the most work.

[Full disclosure: Teething sent me a download.]

How Low Can a Punk Get?

Have you ever had this experience? You're rocking out to a killer punk song and then you start to catch the lyrics and you shudder because they're full of the most ignorant garbage imaginable. Suddenly, what was once a great musical moment becomes tainted.
My first experience with punk was finding a group of open minded people who were inclusive and cool. That's colored my expectation of what punk should be my whole life. So it disturbs me when otherwise intelligent bands writing songs that seem primed to insult large chunks of their audience. I've mentioned before I'm the kind of person who has a hard time separating my music and my politics, especially when the lyrics are insulting large chunks of your audience. I have a really hard time getting back into a song once the ignorant lyrics come to light. Here's what happens when three respected bands lose their fucking minds for a minute.

Slip Up



What makes this doubly frustrating is, from a musical standpoint, "Slip it In" is a fucking great song. Black Flag never sounded better than they did on the album Slip it In and the title track is one of the best of an overwhelmingly strong lot of songs (minus "Rat's Eyes" ewww). The band was tight and taking stolid, stale punk into new and incredibly exciting places. However, it starts with one of the most ignorant songs ever penned by a revered punk band with "Slip it In." Black Flag is better than this.
The sexual politics of this one are particularly noxious. Just because she says she "don't want it," that doesn't mean you can't fuck her any way, amirite guys? Even though the young lady in question tells us she "kinda [has] a boyfriend" and Hank opines she's "had too much to drink," he still fucks her. Ladies and gentlemen, that's called rape. And even though our narrator is whining and cajoling the girl to have sex with him, he still accuses her of being "loose" and a "whore." The rancid cherry on top of the shit sundae is the pathetically sexualized video that trades in just about every obnoxious jailbait stereotype you can name. If it's meant to be satire, it's failing spectacularly.
And I can already here the excuses: blah blah blah Kira Roessler played bass (and she kicked ass) blah blah blah a woman helped sing the song blah blah blah they tackled the obnoxiousness of the aggressive male libido next album with "Loose Nut." Doesn't change anything for me. It still comes off as obnoxious slut shaming and Black Flag should be better than that.
Mount up? More like fuck off.

White Whine





As far as I'm concerned, those preachy, self righteous fucks in Minor Threat have exactly one good song and that's "Filler." Maybe they would have had more if they hadn't spent the otherwise rocking "Guilty of Being White" spewing self-pitying whiny garbage. Oh noes! A minority was unjustifiably mean to me. My hurt feelings are just as bad as 500 years of slavery and systematic cultural oppression. Oh wait, no they're not.
I got news for you, cupcake, some members of minority groups can be assholes. That's not because they're minorities. It's because they're assholes. That doesn't excuse them being a dick, but, dude, let it fucking go. So even if some random black person tried to make you feel bad for being white and unfairly accused you of being complicit in slavery, their assholism doesn't mean to you doesn't mean you get to run around shouting "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" Because, at the end of the day, you're still going through life on the lowest difficulty setting.
To be honest, I've never been quite fucking sure what exactly Black Flag was trying to get at with "White Minority," even after hours staring at the lyric sheet. If it's satire, it's not coming through and let's all agree that any song that screams "white pride" during the chorus without any palpable sense of sarcasm or irony is open to bad interpretations.

Blow Me Down

Speaking of minorities who stand convicted of assholism:
Bad Brains seemed to have scrubbed all the videos of the infamous "Don't Blow No Bubbles" from the internet, so take a moment, if you will, to peruse frontman H.R.'s less than enlightened thoughts on the '80s AIDS crisis and homosexuality. Let's just say he briefly lost his PMA.

Don't blow no bubbles
Don't blow no troubles

In time before there was no cure
Now through his will it's healed for sure
(TRASH PITS, TRASH PITS, TRASH PITS) Away!
It's not the weather, we've got P.M.A.

We know you can do anything
And no thought withheld from thee
So here I beseech thee
To always request and declare

Don't blow no bubbles
Don't blow no troubles
There's got to be a better way
Don't blow no spikes
Ask Jah and he'll make the change

We know you can do anything
And no thought withheld from thee
So here I beseech thee
To always request and declare

We know you can do anything
And no thought withheld from thee
So here I beseech thee
To always request and declare

Don't blow no bubbles (and we can stop the AIDS)
Don't blow no spikes
Don't blow no fudge buns
Ask Jah and he'll make the change

We know you can do anything
And no thought withheld from thee
So here I and I said to thee
To always request and declare

As you can imagine, that didn't go over so well with gay-positive contemporaries like MDC, the Big Boys and the Dicks and caused a huge rift between those bands. It's a real shame because, like "Slip It In," it's, musically, a very interesting song. With the album Quickness the Bad Brains were getting more metallic and experimental. They were taking their hardcore into new and more adept directions. Basically, everything Living Colour got praised for the Bad Brains did better. It's just a shame they wedded that open minded musicality to some of the most bigoted ignorance spewed this side of a Nazi skins show.
However, the band has grown since then and bassist Darryl Jennifer copped to his bigotry and apologized in a recent interview [thanks, Bill, for the heads up on this one]:
" You’ve got to understand that I’m a young man growing, getting into something. Now I’m 46 years old and I’ve learned that that’s ignorant. I’ve learned through the years that we’re all God’s children, regardless of your race, creed, color, sexuality, any of that."

Weekend Punk Pick: MC5

Brothers and sisters, it's time to testify. Testify for the punk forefathers who paved the way (with younger siblings the Stooges) for every garage band with three chords and a vision. Brothers and sisters, this is the sound of revolution, leaving Motor City burning in its wake in the course of the single greatest live album ever set to tape. Brother Wayne Kramer's guitar was pyrotechnic. Reverend Rob Tyner led the masses in holy reverie. Can you dig it? Can you get down with it? Can you KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKER!

Weekend Punk Pick: NoMeansNo

As though inventing puck rock as the Hanson Brothers weren't enough to win my everlasting affections, the Wright brothers' day job is the awesomely weird NoMeansNo. The most punk thing about NoMeansNo is how they just never gave a fuck about punk conventions. Instead, these Canadian freakzoids explored whatever weird-ass whimsy that crossed their fancy. The result is a series of jazzy, spaced out, free form bits of musical insanity that dance around the edges of the modern world, pointing, laughing and flinging poop like a champ. And one of my personal NoMeansNo favorites, "Approaching Zero" is the kind of song that had all the splicers jitterbugging in Rapture right before things went to shit.

Weekend Punk Pick: Wire

In my head, I've scripted and shot the world's greatest zombie flick. The opening montage detailing the birth of the undead outbreak would slowly crawl along to the sound of Wire's "Reuters." It would be endless shots of screaming people, panic in the streets, societal collapse and femur-gnawing zombies doing what they do. There's something about these British post-punkers that managed to perfectly nail that sense of looming catastrophe and civil unease. Remember kiddies, stay glued to your TV sets.

Weekend Punk Pick: Circle Jerks

Thirty years on and it's depressing how relevant "Paid Vacation" remains. Yep, still mired in Afghanistan for reasons nobody can quite explain. The Circle Jerks must have been prescient. And it turns out there was more to the SoCal slacker punks than their reputation for snotty suburban angst.

The Namesake Series: "Iron Lung"

The negative pressure ventilator, aka the iron lung, was a technological marvel that kept thousands of polio patients alive during the 1930s and '40s. The technology has been superseded and the gadget is little more than a historic curiosity since vaccines have essentially eliminated polio. However, the image of the iron lung still has enough resonance to inspire a trifecta of excellent noise.



First up is Brutal Truth whose anomalously conjoined "Ironlung" was a mid-album noise pastiche to break up all the grinding on breakout album Need to Control.




The breathing apparatus also inspired British psycho punks Rudimentary Peni to get all noise collagey, closing out the (allegedly) semi-autobiographical freakazoid album Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatic. Turn on, tune in, freak the fuck out.





Obviously the band Iron Lung took their name from the, duh, iron lung, but it also inspired their song "Iron Lung," another power violent tiptoe through the band's back catalog.

Weekend Punk Pick: Rudimentary Peni

This is easily my favorite punk band of all time. We're talking desert island music here. Give me nothing more than Rudimentary Peni's discography and I could probably survive contented for a decade or two. No band I've ever heard is as consistently compelling through their 30 year existence as Rudimentary Peni, from their anarcho punk roots straight through their most recent EPs of psychologically damaged death rock. If Death Church weren't enough to stake their claim to punk rock royalty, Nick Blinko et al had to follow up one of the finest punk records ever made with the one-two psychonaut detours of the staggering Cacophony (I guarantee you've never heard another record like it; "punk" and even "rock" are far too limiting terms to do it justice) and the underappreciated Pope Adrian 37th Pyschristiatic. While far from prolific, everything Rudimentary Peni has ever done has been compelling, emotionally rich and clearly made from a place of intense personal honesty. There are very few bands that can stake such a claim. Hell, I just found out Blinko's semi-biographic/semi-Lovecraftian novel The Primal Screamer is back in print. I'm now camped out by my mailbox waiting for my copy to arrive.

Weekend Punk Pick: Sex Pistols

I wore out my cassette copy of Never Mind the Bollocks eons ago and for whatever retarded reason, I never bothered to get a replacement. Somehow in the intervening years I became something of a Sex Pistols denialist, largely because I hate everything about Sid Vicious. However, I am a fucking idiot. I recently watched a documentary about the recording of Bollocks, and while I still fucking hate what Sid Vicious did to punk, yes, it's a fucking classic record. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go order another copy of the album.

Weekend Punk Pick: Dead Kennedys

Many, many moons ago, I set out for college with a different Dead Kennedys shirt for every day of the week. So yeah, this band is kinda important to me. The DKs were a crucial link in my musical growth, my quest to find music that hit hard and had some intelligence behind it. And while Jello's lyrics are very pinpoint and hit on a host of '80s villains by name, the overarching themes of questioning authority, fear of governmental overreach and trying to keep the punk scene honest and relevant are just as applicable 30 years later.

The Banger's Embrace

Consider this the spiritual flipside to my Punk'd post. While it's hardly remarkable for grind and metal bands to cover punk songs, there's not much traffic the other direction. However, it has been known to happen. And punk bands really have a fondness for Judas Priest for some reason. Here's four examples of punks who harbor secret feelings for the heshers.


A Venom Well Designed



Anyone surprised by Propagandhi's increasingly metallic bent since John K. Samson split for the Weakerthans either wasn't paying close enough attention to Chris Hannah's double picked riffing on the first two albums or is unfamiliar with Todd "the Rod" Kowalski's history in short lived grind band Swallowing Shit and seminal (heh) Manitoba punkers I Spy. The band telegraphed their love of '80s metal on the early efforts collection Where Quantity is Job #1 with a straight faced version of Venom's "Stand Up and Be Counted."




Sabbat, Weird Ass Sabbat



And just for good measure Propagandhi snuck a cover of Black Widow's 1969 psych-metal oddball "Come to the Sabbat" on to the end of Supporting Caste as a secret bonus track. That's just plain fuckin' weird.



Leatherface



I barely blinked when New Jersey punks Buzzkill covered Adrenaline Overdose's "Rock 'n' Roll Gas Station" on 1996 debut Up. I mean, sure why not? But I wasn't really prepared for an is-it-serious-or-is-it-ironic cover of Judas Priest's "Hell Bent for Leather." Not quite the same without the twin guitars, but an admirable effort nonetheless.



Breaking the ... Terms of Copyright Law



Finally, Meet the Virus, which formed out of the rubble of Naked Aggression, hid a cover of Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" as a bonus track on their self-titled debut album. Jump to the 4:20 mark for Priestly goodness. It's an unexpected outing from a band whose members exemplified mid-90s gutter punk aesthetic.

Also, I need to say a quick public thanks to Albert from Know Records. That's the label that put out the Meet the Virus album. SoundCloud had originally blocked my attempt to upload the song because it said I was violating his copyright. I contacted Albert and with his kind permission I was able to get the song uploaded. Thanks to him for being very cool.



And Another Thing



Hopefully you're not totally Propagandhi-ed out at this point. "With Friends Like These Who the Fuck Needs Cointelpro?" isn't a true metal cover, but pay close attention to the 1:36 mark where Chris Hannah screams "You've got another thing coming." With all the metal influences Propgandhi's already shown, try and tell me that's not a deliberate Judas Priest reference.

Weekend Punk Pick: The Stooges

Punk rock pretty much begins with the Stooges (them and the Sonics). And while Iggy may have become something of a geriatric joke in the last several decades, what he created with the Stooges was something powerful and enduring. Bits of everything that would become punk can be found here -- and more, like weird jazz interludes. But the Stooges never lost sight of the importance of a simple, powerful song structure. With their big brother band the MC5, the Stooges proved Detroit rock was way more than lame Bob Seger and Ted Nugent.

Weekend Punk Pick: I Spy

Classic Canadian punk from the frigid wastes of Manitoba, I Spy kicked ass in every way imaginable, but they're probably most famous for Todd "the Rod" Kowalski. He later went on to short lived grind band Swallowing Shit before taking John K. Samson's bass slot in Propagandhi on the last three albums. Seriously, damn near every song this band recorded, available on their pope-pooping discography Perversity is Spreading...It's About Time! is a fucking punk classic: "Remain" "Appliances and Cars," "Just Between Friends," "Sixty Billion Served". You need to get down with this shit.

Weekend Punk Pick: MDC

MDC always seemed to me to be Dead Kennedys without the irony. Pissed off at the same stuff, MDC weren't ones to mince words. They also larded their politics with a heavy layer of humor, but it was bitter, black, biting humor rather than Jello Biafra's reductio ad absurdum. While subsequent albums unfortunately slid further down the meh scale, MDC dropped an undeniable punk gem with Millions of Dead Cops, producing a handful of certifiable punk gems like "John Wayne Was a Nazi" and "Corporate Deathburger."

Weekend Punk Pick: Bad Religion

Bad Religion (along with Dead Kennedys) is a big reason why I latched on to punk rock as a teen. I probably would have dropped punk if I hadn't discovered these wordy Californians. While I enjoyed the bratty attitude of most punk bands, too much of it was juvenile and pointlessly dumb. Bad Religion were one of the first bands of real substance I found, a band that respected its audience enough to drop an OED's-worth of sesquipedalian words (name another band that's casually dropped "pusillanimous" in a song) while still banging out some of the finest SoCal hardcore you will ever hear. After i ran out of Carcass Word of the Day material I thought about doing the same for Bad Religion. May be worth reconsidering that idea.