More punk, complete with my sad little Canadian music crush. (Punk history #3)
*waves at new people*
Welcome! Feel free to jump in and introduce yourselves, correct me, point out things that I left out. (This goes for the rest of you, too. But I figure only the new folks won’t have already figured that out.)
I have a ton of things to say about Josh Ritter, but I’m going to wait to say them until the concert high settles down some.
While you wait (impatiently, I’m sure), let’s talk some more about punk rock.
So. First there was not-punk, and then there was punk. And then there was British punk, at which point people noticed it. And so we have a host of punk retrospectives this month (SPIN, and there’s a playlist up, and a couple of other articles that I’ve read or been pointed to; see the comments in earlier posts for details) and that’s just lovely, as far as I’m concerned. I was tempted to quit my posts, and point you to those, until I scanned through the tracks and realized that I didn’t quite agree with everything in them.
And so here I am again, this time with the first wave of California punk, mixed in with some early and second wave Australian punk and the first appearance in this list of the punk music of Canada.
This was originally going to be all about second wave punk, but the funny thing about punk is that there aren’t clear divisions. I tend to assume any punk bands formed after the 1977 UK releases are second wave, but this is a bit of a grab bag post that’s going to bridge between early punk and the genre-splitting that started in about 1979.
LINKS
Another temporary upload of songs. As always, if you like this stuff, feel free to support the artists in some way. I’m partial to buying concert tickets and then screaming loudly in ways that are apparently easy to record and webcast on NPR, but that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Concert merch and CDs are just as good.
(xx to tt and unzip; please ask for a new upload if it expires)
Part One: hxxp://www.sendspace.com/file/2k8fgc
Part Two: hxxp://www.sendspace.com/file/qt8o75
OR: box.net (unzipped mp3 files; password = punk)
Introductory stuff:
1. The only sort of response to these posts that’s likely to piss me off is one that centers on the popularity of a band as the reason for disliking it. As you’ll see, I choose music based on whether I like it, whether it has something interesting, whether the people making it love what they do, whether the band or the song or the album went on to inspire other things I love.
I tend to put up with a lot of crap from my f-list that would earn an irritated response in real life, but the longer I spend listening to music the less patient I am about that. It’s one thing not to like the sound of something, or the message. It’s another to be a music snob without actually hearing it, acting as though the fans are somehow a determinant when it comes to whether the music is worthy of your time.
It’s the second attitude that’ll make me roll my eyes and ignore your opinions about music. Do it often enough and I’ll quietly and politely stop paying attention to you about other things, too.
For the record, this would make me a lousy punk rocker, because if there’s one thing punk does well, it’s make snap judgments and draw unnecessary lines.
Bandom =/= the music, and I’m assuming you all know the difference. The same goes for punk rock.
This is as nicely as I can put it. I don’t care if people don’t like music (and one of these days I’m going to post about something else again. I promise). But I do care when people claim to be music lovers and then make their choices entirely based on who they think listens to certain things. It’s that sort of decision-making that I can’t understand. And I used to tolerate it, but these days I hear the claim often enough that I’m no longer particularly willing to let it slide.
I feel like I need to be upfront about this, especially with people I might otherwise like. I don’t find it funny, and I don’t agree with it, and if that’s all you’ve got, if your reasons have nothing to do with the music or people you love or your actual experiences, that’s not enough.
Those of you who have been around for a while already know this. You’re not the ones I’m talking to. This is meant for anybody who wanders in from elsewhere and decides to start spouting off about a band sucking because their fans are all ______ or they heard that the band does ______ onstage.
That is not okay, and like gossiping club girls at a Josh Ritter show, I’d prefer that people who make that claim stand in the back and keep quiet. The rest of us are trying to listen.
2. Any band formed after 1985 is NOT part of the second wave of punk. Partly because very few of these bands are pure punk in a way that makes sense musically. And partly because the second wave of punk started in the late seventies and lasted until the early eighties.
Billie Joe Armstrong was in grade school. Please stop calling Green Day a second wave punk band. It makes people who know what that phrase means twitch unattractively and wish they had something to throw.
If you need to call these bands something but are disturbed by genre modifiers, feel free to call them punk revival. It’s not terribly accurate, but at least it doesn’t further confuse the question.
3. It is okay to call yourself a fan of punk rock and to also like bands that are pop punk, or emo, or goth, or skacore, or indie, or grunge. Hardcore was not, in fact, magically endowed with the crown of punk invulnerability in 1981. It is no more “real” punk than any other genre that came out of the punk movement.
(I tend to believe that hardcore bands are just better at being bitchy and scaring people and that they therefore won by default, but we’ll talk about that later.)
4. The first two posts were the easy bits. From here out, the chronology goes to hell and stuff starts interacting in very strange ways; I’ve got a chart started, but it probably won’t be ready until the end of the series. Suffice it to say that training in complex systems theory? Surprisingly helpful for this set of posts.
5. This is also the point at which I have to start leaving out all kinds of important stuff that I love. This pains me, but I’ll try to keep the whining to a minimum and include the stuff I think is absolutely essential. Or that I like enough to make up a reason for it to be included. Whichever works.
6. Outside of the UK in the late 70s, punk rock has always been a loose collection of local scenes. There was some interaction between bands and clubs in different cities, but until the mid-1990s, punk rock was confusing at best and seriously fucked up by rivalries and fragmented politics at worst. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing-it meant that the music coming out of different places had flavors and influences that might have been overlooked in a unified movement. But it also had some drawbacks, and for all that punk started out as something meant to bring people excluded from popular music and culture in, it rapidly became the sort of thing that was as much about who was left out. Something to keep in mind.
Ready? Great. Let’s talk about the rest of early punk rock.
PART ONE
“Television Addict” The Victims (1978)
Australia. Home of some of my favorite second wave punk bands that no one has ever heard about. Like The Victims, a band out of Perth who ran the scene for a bit. They relied on a harsher sound, with fairly standard guitar hooks and a focus on social critique. “Television Addict” was their first single and combines a solid bass line with lyrics that influenced a lot of the later Australian punk scene.
Those of you who are fans of Dayglo Abortions or My Chemical Romance may recognize the intent here. I’d suggest listening to “Teenagers” along with this, and see what it gets you.
“Disco Junkies” The Victims (1978)
The Victims again, partly because they turned out to be so important to Australian music, and partly because this track has a guitar break that isn’t really my favorite thing ever, although it’s close. It’s a good example of the sort of thing that you can hear in the second wave of punk-pushing atonal riffs to their logical conclusion, and then using that to create something that’s basically guaranteed to piss off the neighbors. Once again, there’s real ability in the playing here-it’s just demonstrated in a way that’s a little hard to follow for a lot of people.
This is what happens when jazz and punk meet in a sort of gorgeous car accident of a song. YMMV.
“Revolution” X (Aus) (1979)
There are two major punk rock bands named X. This is the one you haven’t heard of, out of Sydney. The lyrics are fairly standard “my music is so cool that it’s going to change the world” stuff, but the thing to listen for is the way the bass line and the guitar interact-much more melodic than The Victims, and there are some fantastic moments in this track from their first LP.
Australian punk tended to be fairly isolated, reinventing the wheel and with a huge impact on the later indie movement there. And it sounds very different from the second wave of American punk and the West Coast scene. Which is where we’re headed next.
“Hot Wire My Heart” Crime (1976)
Crime aren’t a second wave punk band. This track might be the first punk single released in the US (it depends on who you ask) and it’s certainly the first single to come out of the California punk scene. It’s early days, and that shows.
They’re here because much of the second wave of California punk came out of the UK scene, and somewhat from the better-known acts in the New York scene. But by the time the Sex Pistols released their first single, there was already something that could be classed as California punk. This is what it sounded like, and it was there in the background of everything that came later on the West Coast.
“We Got The Neutron Bomb” The Weirdos (1978)
Hardcore punk came out of California and the bands in the punk scene there. Already in the early tracks from The Weirdos the music is faster and harder than stuff produced by The Clash.
Plus, this is a fun song. It’s got a beat, you can dance to it. Or, you know. Throw yourself at the walls while screaming to it. Whatever.
“Adult Books” X (US) (1978)
The other punk band named X, this time out of Los Angeles. X featured a few things. First, they had a female singer, which was rare in the early years of punk rock.
They also had a male singer, because…well, I’m not sure why. But they did.
Second, X was fairly successful locally. Unlike a lot of the second wave punk in California, their music was accessible and followed the same patterns as The Clash, pulling influences from a variety of genres and places. It’s good stuff, and well worth seeking out.
“Give It Back” The Dickies (1979)
The Dickies got a deal with a major record label. They were on television. And they were entertaining, influenced by the Ramones and Southern California surf culture and musical history. The Dickies are the band I think of when it comes time to talk about how hardcore was different from early punk. They’re clearly coming straight out of the bouncier, more “traditional” punk scene. This track is their last before they hit the top ten with “Banana Splits.”
They were still recording in 2001, and I haven’t heard that they’ve broken up. But as I’ve admitted before, California punk isn’t a genre I follow terribly carefully, so I may have missed something.
“Blow Up” The Dils (1982)
The Dils were The Dickies of the San Francisco scene. Or maybe it was the other way around.
Either way, The Dils were together for three years, eventually moved to LA, and were covered by D.O.A. The frontmen went on to be important for cowpunk, which…we might get to later. If I remember.
This song is one of my favorites out of their early releases, and is off a compilation that is made of awesome.
“Cheap Tragedies” The Avengers (1982)
Another track from the same compilation, this time by The Avengers. Penelope Houston is fantastic, the track is fast and melodic and catchy, and as punk moved closer to New Wave, the differences between bands like The Avengers and The Weirdos became more important. The cool thing about this, though, is that 25 years after it was released, it could play on the radio and sound like a new release.
If you’re interested, Houston has some of their older out-of-print stuff available as CDR reprints on her website. Start with the pink album.
“Sex Bomb” Flipper (1988)
Flipper. I…oh, hell. There’s no good way to talk about them. Basically, the band operated on the assumption that any publicity was good publicity, and a lot of their songs come out sounding like a brilliant experiment gone horribly wrong.
But the second wave of punk was all about branching out, and this? Is a pretty big branch. Rumor has it that the band used to drag members of the audience onstage to sing along to this track, although I’m not quite sure how that would work.
In addition, the song cuts out abruptly. I honestly don’t know if that’s intentional or not; if I had to guess, I’d say it is.
Supposedly the remaining members of the band (the singer overdosed in the late 1980s) are working on an album, but I haven’t seen anything on it recently.
PART TWO
“The Legend Of Pat Brown” The Vandals (1982)
The Vandals were on the edge of punk and hardcore for a while, never quite landing in either camp. They consistently kept their lyrics lighter and less political than most punk bands, although the faster rhythms and stronger bass line show up more consistently as a feature of their early music than the humor.
The Vandals went through more line changes than an NHL playoff game, and are still randomly touring. They were also a big part of the revival in punk music popularity that birthed Offspring and Green Day and any number of Southern California bands.
They deserve their own post, but this should get you started.
“Night of The Living Dead” The Misfits (1982)
The Misfits pretty much invented horror punk in the US. Scary costumes and makeup, creepy lyrics, disturbing stage shows, and getting arrested for grave robbery. They influenced goth music, psychobilly, heavy metal, hardcore, and a scary number of otherwise unrelated bands, including MCR and Metalllica and all sorts of bands in between.
Whether their post-1983 incarnation is still The Misfits is debatable. As in, there have been actual debates. Internet debates, court cases, confused fans, the whole nine yards.
“Hell's Getting Hotter” Overkill (1983)
This is not the New York thrash metal band that you may be thinking of. This Overkill was a punk metal band, released very little, and rapidly moved on to hard rock before disbanding. But for a while, they were one of the bridges between second wave punk and hardcore.
I like this song, which was their first 7” release.
So that’s the pre-hardcore, non-NYC punk scene in the US. Well, almost. I’ve got a couple more things in mind for a Chicago hardcore post, but this is probably enough to start.
Let’s move on (briefly) to Canada.
“Shape of Things to Come” The Diodes (1978)
I have a ridiculous and completely un-ironic love of The Diodes that long predates my involvement in dS or my enjoyment of Hard Core Logo or even my participation in fandom itself. They are the punk rock band of my heart, the band I come back to when I want to scream or laugh or stick pins in stupid people. I seriously considered driving to Toronto for one night in order to have a chance to see them play live.
Unfortunately, I'm an adult and therefore not supposed to drop everything for a concert these days. So I try to confine that behavior to concerts taking place this side of the border. When you cross through customs and tell them that you traveled eight hours, through three states, for a concert? They look at you funny and sometimes search your car. Even The Diodes aren't worth that.
But enough about me. In 1977, Toronto didn’t have a punk scene. So The Diodes opened a club, which closed in August 1977 because they pissed off the neighbors. Who were the Liberal Party of Ontario.
They toured with everyone they could find, were the subject of an early punk documentary (which I would absolutely KILL to find a copy of, in any format at all-I saw it a decade ago, and have been looking ever since. It’s the key to my long-promised HCL meta post), and were one of the founding bands of the Toronto punk scene. They played a reunion show last summer, and “Tired of Waking Up Tired” still sounds every bit as fantastic as the first EP. If youtube is to be believed, at least.
They were on the leading edge of New Wave (more about that later) and didn’t release nearly enough when they were together. But what they did release is utterly fabulous and I adore all of it.
My love for this band is a little sad. I don’t usually share it, because I should be able to come up with something cooler than this to explain my personal history with music. But as a snotty high school kid in the early 90s, listening to CIMX, I imprinted on them. For a long time, The Diodes were punk for me, and I’m not sure I ever really got over it.
“Bonerack” Teenage Head (1996)
This is not classic Teenage Head. As far as I can tell, most Teenage Head sounds similar enough that people don’t really notice. It’s good, consistent, and not really my favorite music ever. But they’re still playing shows, and I admire that in a band. Plus it’s not really fair to take my word on it, because look who they’re competing with.
They were another of the early Toronto punk bands (although unlike The Diodes, Teenage Head was already a band when the Ramones started making an impact on the music scene), and their stuff is also well worth a listen.
There’s a certain sound to early Toronto punk rock that isn’t so very far from the garage band origins of the movement, and the influence of the Ramones is much clearer than in the second wave punk in California and the UK.
“Oh Canaduh” Subhumans (1978)
Not to be confused with the UK band, Subhumans were out of Vancouver and the impact of the California punk scene on their sound is pretty clear. I’ve seen them described as a first wave band, but that’s not really accurate; there’s a whole range of punk bands that came before them, and the Vancouver scene has always been pretty closely tied to the rest of the West Coast punk acts that toured the area.
This is the B-side to their first 7” and features the original lineup for the band. It also has one of my very favorite renditions of the opening notes to “O Canada” and a great little guitar riff at the end.
“Firing Squad” Subhumans (1980)
With a different drummer, and two more years of practice behind them, the second 7” by Subhumans has a very different tone-sharper and closer to early hardcore, but with a melodic guitar line that’s a feature of a lot of Canadian punk, from the Viletones to D.O.A. (Yes, that D.O.A)
This is one of my favorite tracks, and (in case my other remarks haven’t made it clear) that’s at least in part because I’ve got a weakness for pretty melodies and outrage over religion.
Unfortunately, the year after this release the bassist quit (he eventually ended up in prison for his participation in an activist group that bombed an electronics plant) and the band fell apart. They reunited a few years ago, but I haven’t heard any of their new stuff.
“1967” Dayglo Abortions (1986)
Last track of this set. Still Canadian, but solidly in the hardcore era. Dayglo Abortions are here for two reasons: a) as a bridge to the next set, which is all-hardcore, all the time, right up until it isn’t, and b) because they were the focus of a major obscenity trial in 1989.
They won.
Next time: Hardcore punk. And maybe some other stuff.
Welcome! Feel free to jump in and introduce yourselves, correct me, point out things that I left out. (This goes for the rest of you, too. But I figure only the new folks won’t have already figured that out.)
I have a ton of things to say about Josh Ritter, but I’m going to wait to say them until the concert high settles down some.
While you wait (impatiently, I’m sure), let’s talk some more about punk rock.
So. First there was not-punk, and then there was punk. And then there was British punk, at which point people noticed it. And so we have a host of punk retrospectives this month (SPIN, and there’s a playlist up, and a couple of other articles that I’ve read or been pointed to; see the comments in earlier posts for details) and that’s just lovely, as far as I’m concerned. I was tempted to quit my posts, and point you to those, until I scanned through the tracks and realized that I didn’t quite agree with everything in them.
And so here I am again, this time with the first wave of California punk, mixed in with some early and second wave Australian punk and the first appearance in this list of the punk music of Canada.
This was originally going to be all about second wave punk, but the funny thing about punk is that there aren’t clear divisions. I tend to assume any punk bands formed after the 1977 UK releases are second wave, but this is a bit of a grab bag post that’s going to bridge between early punk and the genre-splitting that started in about 1979.
LINKS
Another temporary upload of songs. As always, if you like this stuff, feel free to support the artists in some way. I’m partial to buying concert tickets and then screaming loudly in ways that are apparently easy to record and webcast on NPR, but that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Concert merch and CDs are just as good.
(xx to tt and unzip; please ask for a new upload if it expires)
Part One: hxxp://www.sendspace.com/file/2k8fgc
Part Two: hxxp://www.sendspace.com/file/qt8o75
OR: box.net (unzipped mp3 files; password = punk)
Introductory stuff:
1. The only sort of response to these posts that’s likely to piss me off is one that centers on the popularity of a band as the reason for disliking it. As you’ll see, I choose music based on whether I like it, whether it has something interesting, whether the people making it love what they do, whether the band or the song or the album went on to inspire other things I love.
I tend to put up with a lot of crap from my f-list that would earn an irritated response in real life, but the longer I spend listening to music the less patient I am about that. It’s one thing not to like the sound of something, or the message. It’s another to be a music snob without actually hearing it, acting as though the fans are somehow a determinant when it comes to whether the music is worthy of your time.
It’s the second attitude that’ll make me roll my eyes and ignore your opinions about music. Do it often enough and I’ll quietly and politely stop paying attention to you about other things, too.
For the record, this would make me a lousy punk rocker, because if there’s one thing punk does well, it’s make snap judgments and draw unnecessary lines.
Bandom =/= the music, and I’m assuming you all know the difference. The same goes for punk rock.
This is as nicely as I can put it. I don’t care if people don’t like music (and one of these days I’m going to post about something else again. I promise). But I do care when people claim to be music lovers and then make their choices entirely based on who they think listens to certain things. It’s that sort of decision-making that I can’t understand. And I used to tolerate it, but these days I hear the claim often enough that I’m no longer particularly willing to let it slide.
I feel like I need to be upfront about this, especially with people I might otherwise like. I don’t find it funny, and I don’t agree with it, and if that’s all you’ve got, if your reasons have nothing to do with the music or people you love or your actual experiences, that’s not enough.
Those of you who have been around for a while already know this. You’re not the ones I’m talking to. This is meant for anybody who wanders in from elsewhere and decides to start spouting off about a band sucking because their fans are all ______ or they heard that the band does ______ onstage.
That is not okay, and like gossiping club girls at a Josh Ritter show, I’d prefer that people who make that claim stand in the back and keep quiet. The rest of us are trying to listen.
2. Any band formed after 1985 is NOT part of the second wave of punk. Partly because very few of these bands are pure punk in a way that makes sense musically. And partly because the second wave of punk started in the late seventies and lasted until the early eighties.
Billie Joe Armstrong was in grade school. Please stop calling Green Day a second wave punk band. It makes people who know what that phrase means twitch unattractively and wish they had something to throw.
If you need to call these bands something but are disturbed by genre modifiers, feel free to call them punk revival. It’s not terribly accurate, but at least it doesn’t further confuse the question.
3. It is okay to call yourself a fan of punk rock and to also like bands that are pop punk, or emo, or goth, or skacore, or indie, or grunge. Hardcore was not, in fact, magically endowed with the crown of punk invulnerability in 1981. It is no more “real” punk than any other genre that came out of the punk movement.
(I tend to believe that hardcore bands are just better at being bitchy and scaring people and that they therefore won by default, but we’ll talk about that later.)
4. The first two posts were the easy bits. From here out, the chronology goes to hell and stuff starts interacting in very strange ways; I’ve got a chart started, but it probably won’t be ready until the end of the series. Suffice it to say that training in complex systems theory? Surprisingly helpful for this set of posts.
5. This is also the point at which I have to start leaving out all kinds of important stuff that I love. This pains me, but I’ll try to keep the whining to a minimum and include the stuff I think is absolutely essential. Or that I like enough to make up a reason for it to be included. Whichever works.
6. Outside of the UK in the late 70s, punk rock has always been a loose collection of local scenes. There was some interaction between bands and clubs in different cities, but until the mid-1990s, punk rock was confusing at best and seriously fucked up by rivalries and fragmented politics at worst. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing-it meant that the music coming out of different places had flavors and influences that might have been overlooked in a unified movement. But it also had some drawbacks, and for all that punk started out as something meant to bring people excluded from popular music and culture in, it rapidly became the sort of thing that was as much about who was left out. Something to keep in mind.
Ready? Great. Let’s talk about the rest of early punk rock.
PART ONE
“Television Addict” The Victims (1978)
Australia. Home of some of my favorite second wave punk bands that no one has ever heard about. Like The Victims, a band out of Perth who ran the scene for a bit. They relied on a harsher sound, with fairly standard guitar hooks and a focus on social critique. “Television Addict” was their first single and combines a solid bass line with lyrics that influenced a lot of the later Australian punk scene.
Those of you who are fans of Dayglo Abortions or My Chemical Romance may recognize the intent here. I’d suggest listening to “Teenagers” along with this, and see what it gets you.
“Disco Junkies” The Victims (1978)
The Victims again, partly because they turned out to be so important to Australian music, and partly because this track has a guitar break that isn’t really my favorite thing ever, although it’s close. It’s a good example of the sort of thing that you can hear in the second wave of punk-pushing atonal riffs to their logical conclusion, and then using that to create something that’s basically guaranteed to piss off the neighbors. Once again, there’s real ability in the playing here-it’s just demonstrated in a way that’s a little hard to follow for a lot of people.
This is what happens when jazz and punk meet in a sort of gorgeous car accident of a song. YMMV.
“Revolution” X (Aus) (1979)
There are two major punk rock bands named X. This is the one you haven’t heard of, out of Sydney. The lyrics are fairly standard “my music is so cool that it’s going to change the world” stuff, but the thing to listen for is the way the bass line and the guitar interact-much more melodic than The Victims, and there are some fantastic moments in this track from their first LP.
Australian punk tended to be fairly isolated, reinventing the wheel and with a huge impact on the later indie movement there. And it sounds very different from the second wave of American punk and the West Coast scene. Which is where we’re headed next.
“Hot Wire My Heart” Crime (1976)
Crime aren’t a second wave punk band. This track might be the first punk single released in the US (it depends on who you ask) and it’s certainly the first single to come out of the California punk scene. It’s early days, and that shows.
They’re here because much of the second wave of California punk came out of the UK scene, and somewhat from the better-known acts in the New York scene. But by the time the Sex Pistols released their first single, there was already something that could be classed as California punk. This is what it sounded like, and it was there in the background of everything that came later on the West Coast.
“We Got The Neutron Bomb” The Weirdos (1978)
Hardcore punk came out of California and the bands in the punk scene there. Already in the early tracks from The Weirdos the music is faster and harder than stuff produced by The Clash.
Plus, this is a fun song. It’s got a beat, you can dance to it. Or, you know. Throw yourself at the walls while screaming to it. Whatever.
“Adult Books” X (US) (1978)
The other punk band named X, this time out of Los Angeles. X featured a few things. First, they had a female singer, which was rare in the early years of punk rock.
They also had a male singer, because…well, I’m not sure why. But they did.
Second, X was fairly successful locally. Unlike a lot of the second wave punk in California, their music was accessible and followed the same patterns as The Clash, pulling influences from a variety of genres and places. It’s good stuff, and well worth seeking out.
“Give It Back” The Dickies (1979)
The Dickies got a deal with a major record label. They were on television. And they were entertaining, influenced by the Ramones and Southern California surf culture and musical history. The Dickies are the band I think of when it comes time to talk about how hardcore was different from early punk. They’re clearly coming straight out of the bouncier, more “traditional” punk scene. This track is their last before they hit the top ten with “Banana Splits.”
They were still recording in 2001, and I haven’t heard that they’ve broken up. But as I’ve admitted before, California punk isn’t a genre I follow terribly carefully, so I may have missed something.
“Blow Up” The Dils (1982)
The Dils were The Dickies of the San Francisco scene. Or maybe it was the other way around.
Either way, The Dils were together for three years, eventually moved to LA, and were covered by D.O.A. The frontmen went on to be important for cowpunk, which…we might get to later. If I remember.
This song is one of my favorites out of their early releases, and is off a compilation that is made of awesome.
“Cheap Tragedies” The Avengers (1982)
Another track from the same compilation, this time by The Avengers. Penelope Houston is fantastic, the track is fast and melodic and catchy, and as punk moved closer to New Wave, the differences between bands like The Avengers and The Weirdos became more important. The cool thing about this, though, is that 25 years after it was released, it could play on the radio and sound like a new release.
If you’re interested, Houston has some of their older out-of-print stuff available as CDR reprints on her website. Start with the pink album.
“Sex Bomb” Flipper (1988)
Flipper. I…oh, hell. There’s no good way to talk about them. Basically, the band operated on the assumption that any publicity was good publicity, and a lot of their songs come out sounding like a brilliant experiment gone horribly wrong.
But the second wave of punk was all about branching out, and this? Is a pretty big branch. Rumor has it that the band used to drag members of the audience onstage to sing along to this track, although I’m not quite sure how that would work.
In addition, the song cuts out abruptly. I honestly don’t know if that’s intentional or not; if I had to guess, I’d say it is.
Supposedly the remaining members of the band (the singer overdosed in the late 1980s) are working on an album, but I haven’t seen anything on it recently.
PART TWO
“The Legend Of Pat Brown” The Vandals (1982)
The Vandals were on the edge of punk and hardcore for a while, never quite landing in either camp. They consistently kept their lyrics lighter and less political than most punk bands, although the faster rhythms and stronger bass line show up more consistently as a feature of their early music than the humor.
The Vandals went through more line changes than an NHL playoff game, and are still randomly touring. They were also a big part of the revival in punk music popularity that birthed Offspring and Green Day and any number of Southern California bands.
They deserve their own post, but this should get you started.
“Night of The Living Dead” The Misfits (1982)
The Misfits pretty much invented horror punk in the US. Scary costumes and makeup, creepy lyrics, disturbing stage shows, and getting arrested for grave robbery. They influenced goth music, psychobilly, heavy metal, hardcore, and a scary number of otherwise unrelated bands, including MCR and Metalllica and all sorts of bands in between.
Whether their post-1983 incarnation is still The Misfits is debatable. As in, there have been actual debates. Internet debates, court cases, confused fans, the whole nine yards.
“Hell's Getting Hotter” Overkill (1983)
This is not the New York thrash metal band that you may be thinking of. This Overkill was a punk metal band, released very little, and rapidly moved on to hard rock before disbanding. But for a while, they were one of the bridges between second wave punk and hardcore.
I like this song, which was their first 7” release.
So that’s the pre-hardcore, non-NYC punk scene in the US. Well, almost. I’ve got a couple more things in mind for a Chicago hardcore post, but this is probably enough to start.
Let’s move on (briefly) to Canada.
“Shape of Things to Come” The Diodes (1978)
I have a ridiculous and completely un-ironic love of The Diodes that long predates my involvement in dS or my enjoyment of Hard Core Logo or even my participation in fandom itself. They are the punk rock band of my heart, the band I come back to when I want to scream or laugh or stick pins in stupid people. I seriously considered driving to Toronto for one night in order to have a chance to see them play live.
Unfortunately, I'm an adult and therefore not supposed to drop everything for a concert these days. So I try to confine that behavior to concerts taking place this side of the border. When you cross through customs and tell them that you traveled eight hours, through three states, for a concert? They look at you funny and sometimes search your car. Even The Diodes aren't worth that.
But enough about me. In 1977, Toronto didn’t have a punk scene. So The Diodes opened a club, which closed in August 1977 because they pissed off the neighbors. Who were the Liberal Party of Ontario.
They toured with everyone they could find, were the subject of an early punk documentary (which I would absolutely KILL to find a copy of, in any format at all-I saw it a decade ago, and have been looking ever since. It’s the key to my long-promised HCL meta post), and were one of the founding bands of the Toronto punk scene. They played a reunion show last summer, and “Tired of Waking Up Tired” still sounds every bit as fantastic as the first EP. If youtube is to be believed, at least.
They were on the leading edge of New Wave (more about that later) and didn’t release nearly enough when they were together. But what they did release is utterly fabulous and I adore all of it.
My love for this band is a little sad. I don’t usually share it, because I should be able to come up with something cooler than this to explain my personal history with music. But as a snotty high school kid in the early 90s, listening to CIMX, I imprinted on them. For a long time, The Diodes were punk for me, and I’m not sure I ever really got over it.
“Bonerack” Teenage Head (1996)
This is not classic Teenage Head. As far as I can tell, most Teenage Head sounds similar enough that people don’t really notice. It’s good, consistent, and not really my favorite music ever. But they’re still playing shows, and I admire that in a band. Plus it’s not really fair to take my word on it, because look who they’re competing with.
They were another of the early Toronto punk bands (although unlike The Diodes, Teenage Head was already a band when the Ramones started making an impact on the music scene), and their stuff is also well worth a listen.
There’s a certain sound to early Toronto punk rock that isn’t so very far from the garage band origins of the movement, and the influence of the Ramones is much clearer than in the second wave punk in California and the UK.
“Oh Canaduh” Subhumans (1978)
Not to be confused with the UK band, Subhumans were out of Vancouver and the impact of the California punk scene on their sound is pretty clear. I’ve seen them described as a first wave band, but that’s not really accurate; there’s a whole range of punk bands that came before them, and the Vancouver scene has always been pretty closely tied to the rest of the West Coast punk acts that toured the area.
This is the B-side to their first 7” and features the original lineup for the band. It also has one of my very favorite renditions of the opening notes to “O Canada” and a great little guitar riff at the end.
“Firing Squad” Subhumans (1980)
With a different drummer, and two more years of practice behind them, the second 7” by Subhumans has a very different tone-sharper and closer to early hardcore, but with a melodic guitar line that’s a feature of a lot of Canadian punk, from the Viletones to D.O.A. (Yes, that D.O.A)
This is one of my favorite tracks, and (in case my other remarks haven’t made it clear) that’s at least in part because I’ve got a weakness for pretty melodies and outrage over religion.
Unfortunately, the year after this release the bassist quit (he eventually ended up in prison for his participation in an activist group that bombed an electronics plant) and the band fell apart. They reunited a few years ago, but I haven’t heard any of their new stuff.
“1967” Dayglo Abortions (1986)
Last track of this set. Still Canadian, but solidly in the hardcore era. Dayglo Abortions are here for two reasons: a) as a bridge to the next set, which is all-hardcore, all the time, right up until it isn’t, and b) because they were the focus of a major obscenity trial in 1989.
They won.
Next time: Hardcore punk. And maybe some other stuff.