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Selects: A Brief Overview of Punk Rock · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's your old pal Josh. For this
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: week's s Y s K Selects. I've chosen our two
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: thousand nineteen episode a brief overview of punk rock. And
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: it's just that. And I'd say we did a pretty
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: good job for a couple of squares, a couple of
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: uptight weirdos, you know what I mean. So I hope
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you enjoy this brief overview of punk rock because we
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: did Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Thrash Core back. I'm already
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: regretting this. There's Chuck Bryan over there, Charles W. Chuck Bryan,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: There's Jerry drewome Roland and uh, like I said, I'm Josh.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: This is stuff you should know. Hey, ho, let's go exactly.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I want to issue a c A off the top
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: here too. Fans of punk music, get ready to be
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: mad at us. Yeah, please don't beat this up though. Yeah,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. Punk It's sort of like the hip
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Hop episode. It's not just music, it's a culture. It's
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a movement, and it is so there are so many tentacles,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: alternative tentacles, so many subgenres, so many like the more
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I started getting into it, I was like, why are
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: we even doing this in a single episode? I had
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the same feeling because it can only disappoint. But we're
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: doing anything. There's a lot of people out there who
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: don't know squad about punk. We're gonna be like, cool,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I'm punk now, I get it, and the people who
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: are punked now we're gonna love us for it. Well,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there are certainly podcast I'm sure
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: that are dedicated to the history of punk right now,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I know. And the thing is is with a big
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: distinction here between the hip hop episode in this episode
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: is that the hip hop episode doesn't beat you up
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: if you show up to which there shows and you're
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: not wearing the right thing. That's true. Punk's kind of
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: protective of punk, which makes sense because that's pretty punk,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: right like you kinda you can't allow for commercialization of
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: punk or else it stops being punk. So by definition
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: it has to be vigilantly defended and protected. But the
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: irony of the whole thing is when you do that,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: you actually strangle it from becoming anything ever, and you
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: kind of killed punk, strangling in the cradle the End. Yeah,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And I listened to a lot of music while researching this,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: and there's just so many things that could possibly fall
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: under the banner of punk, and probably so many real
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: punk fans that will fight you on any of them
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: if you say, like, you know, the Talking Heads were punk,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Television was punk, not really, but were a new wave
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, the New York Dolls, I was
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: listening to them proto punk. When you listen to them, though,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: they sound like sort of like dressed up rock and roll,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: like rocky horror picture show style, right, But make no
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: bones about it, the New York Dolls were a direct
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: predecessor of punk. Yeah. But then I started listening to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: things I never listened to growing up at all. Like
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I wasn't a punk kid, but I saw all the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Jackets with Minor Threat and Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedy's
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: on them, and I started listening to that stuff today
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and I liked a lot of it. Oh, it's good music,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and some of it I didn't quite love, Okay, which
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: one I think? You know? My deal is I like
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: vocals and vocalists, and punk is not known for that.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: But stuff like that had a really unique bent and
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: it wasn't just screaming. I liked a lot more so
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: you like the Misfits a lot. I like the Misfits,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I like the dann I like the Circle Jerks. Did
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: not like the Germs. I was never into the Germans.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: What about the Cramps? Uh, didn't listen to the Cramps yet.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: They're like rockabilly punk. I'll probably like it. But stuff
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: that had a little more melody, a little more vocal styling,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: I liked much more than the Germs, which you know,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Darby Crash, just it's just screaming things that you can
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: hardly understand. Didn't love Black Flag, What Little Life to
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: listen to? Like the Henry Rawlins black Flag. I listened
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: to a little bit of both. But it's all very
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: interesting to me, and I dig the music for sure. Yeah,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: it's hard not to in some way, shape or form
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: like punk when you hear it, like it's it's it's
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: just too it just gets under your skin just too easily,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: really quickly, and you might not even realize, like you're
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: like your head's like kind of nodding in your knees,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: like shaking or whatever. But like no matter who you are,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: punk and get to you like that. Now, whether you're
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: like I'm gonna start buying punk records and like get
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: a mohawk or something like that, that's that's maybe a
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: couple of steps down the road. Most people probably we wouldn't,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: but I think everybody can appreciate punk on some level.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Especially to me. The greatest punk band of all time,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and what I would argue would be the first punk
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: band is the Remotes. If you like melody and you
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: like singing, but you also like punk, they've got everything
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: you need. Yeah, And if you like songs that are
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: seconds long, sure, well that was a big thing. Like
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: punk grew out of this idea that led Zeppelin had
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: like eleven minutes songs you're playing on the radio, and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: guys like the Ramones were like shut up. So they
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: purposefully and deliberately went the opposite way and they started
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: making songs or sometimes less than a minute, like one
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of the greatest punk songs of all time in my opinion,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Circle Jerk's Wasted is like fifty fifty two seconds long,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: getting get out. It's all you need. He gets the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: point across. He talks about all the drugs he's on
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: she talks about all the stuff he does when he's
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: on drugs. Unless a minute. Yeah, but I think you
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: bring up an important point is punk was a reaction.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: It was a reaction to the bloated money and the
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: bloated song links and the arena rock, Cucumber in the pants,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: hard rock mckeismo getting the ladies. Like this great quote
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: from one of the Ramons, These were kids on the
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: outside and he said, uh, Johnny Ramon in V six
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and Rolling Stones said, you know, they got together because
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: none of them could get girls, so they all found
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: solace in each other. And he said girls always wanted
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to go with guys who had corvettes, so we had
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: nothing to do but climb on rooftops and sniff glue.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: The Rams in the nutshell. But if you look at
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, like the albums that came out in
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, Um, you know you've got the sex
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Pistols and the Ramons and stuff like that, but you've
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: got Eric Clapton, Slowhand, Fleetwood, Max Rumors, Point of No
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Return from Kansas, Uh, The Stranger from Billy Joel, which
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: one was that it was one of the great ones,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: but they all work right right, uh Asia from Uh
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Steely Dan and like these are like the big chart toppers.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: And so punk came along and was just like, no,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: screw all that to heck with you guys. Yeah, that's
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: what it says. So it was an ethos and a
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: spirit even as much as it was music. Yeah, And
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I think, um, one of the other things that commonly
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: ran across and researching this was that, um, it was
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: not just kind of like rock sucks because it's getting
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: so you know, eleven minutes long per song and there's
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: lots of guitar solos and stuff like that, but also
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: that it was hopelessly commercialized. And so punk was like,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: there's nothing inherently wrong with rock, it's just gone on
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: this path that it's been on for so long that
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: it's it's just become I think, like you said, bloated, Um,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: let's take rock back and scrape away all the all
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the blow and just get back to like the core
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and the point of it originally, which was rebellion, which
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: is that was what punk was built on in the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: in the late seventies and the Ramans again, I will
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: go to my grave saying they were officially the first
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: punk band that ever existed, but there were there was
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: music that's that led up to that, immediately before it,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and even a decade or so before it that really
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: laid the foundation in the groundwork for for bands like
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the Ramon and this the punk that that um, the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: punk music that took off right afterwards. Yeah, and uh,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: you also got to remember that coming into the early
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: seventies where some of these proto punk bands started, this
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: was coming off of the late sixties and the hippie
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: movement and Nixon and Vietnam, which so all that had
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: proved a failure. Yeah, and and flower power and the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: peace and love and all that stuff. Uh. There there's
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: still Crisy Stills and Nash and stuff hanging around, but
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: there's also a younger generation that thumb their nose or
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: more specifically their middle finger at that whole generation, right,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: and that's what sort of birth the punk movement, in
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the proto punk movement at least, so I saw the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: earliest proto punk band I could find, um that you
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: could trace a direct line too, is actually from Peru. Okay.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: They were around in nineteen starting in Los Sakos, s A. I. C. O.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: S and if you go listen to a Los Sakos song,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: you will it's quite clear that this was proto punk.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Did it have the speed a little bit? Because I
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: think that's a bit of the distinction, Like there was
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: that whole uh Nuggets era garage rock of the sixties.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: You can hear a little bit of that, but it
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: still didn't have that chugga chugga chugg a speed that
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: punk rock would be known for. You know it did. Yeah, no, um,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: like another proto punk band that's more garage rock, but
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: kind of some of the sentiments they came up with.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: The Chocolate Watch band had this anthem called like I'm
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: not like everybody else and it's like real kind of um,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: it's groovy, but if you listen to the words, it's
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: like those guy's talking about being a punk but it's
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: long before punk. But they're musically they were not punk
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: at all. Losakos was punk like their's Their sound is
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: definitely punk and they were around the same time. Yeah,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: and the and the specifics of what you're doing musically
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: on a guitar with punk is important, is the down stroke.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: So you know, it's hard to talk about it without
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: showing you. But if you're playing like a an Eric
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Clapton rhythm part, it's like, you know, you're stroking down
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: and up ching ching, ching ching. If you're playing punk,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: you're just going down that ching ching ching ching ching
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: ching ching. Uh. And that's a really, really great impression.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: And the Ramans made a career out of two or
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: three chords played fast, playing that same rhythm and down
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: stroke over and over and over and over. Like I'm
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: convinced you just did two seconds snippet of a misfit song.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I could hear it like playing his day. It's great. Though,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I was listening to the stuff that I was like, man,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: I really like a lot of this and I missed out.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So I see myself diving into it again, or diving
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: in for the first time rather. I mean, I know
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: about the Clash and the Ramones and stuff like that
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: for sure, but oh there's like I mean, as you know,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a whole world, the whole world. And then the thing
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: about punk is the more like you find, oh I
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: like this band, and then oh that it turns out
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: this guy was used to be in this other band
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: there from the same scene as this other band. It
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: just keeps going and going and going, because one of
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the through lines of punk is that anybody could be
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: in a punk band. It was super democratized, and the
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: d I Y ethos um was was basically the foundation
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: of punk music. All right, well, let's take a break.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: We'll go back in time a little bit and talk
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: about New York and London, and then we'll get to that.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: What I think is kind of the coolest part of
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: this whole thing is that d I Y aesthetic. Okay,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: all right, so I mentioned London in New York. H
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I sourced this from a bunch of articles. I can't
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: remember if this was the Pitchfork one or not, but
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the headline of this part is the Tale of two Cities,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: New York and l A. I'm sorry New York in London,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: but l A would come along a bit later with
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: its own scene. And also London gets mentioned here at
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: the expense of Manchester, which I would say is like,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: that's ground zero next to New York. Right. Also ground zero,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: which doesn't get nearly enough press is Australia. Oh yeah,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: these things were going on in parallel all over the world.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: That's really interesting to think, like this stuff is happening
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: like almost independently and it was because it's not like
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: someone in Australia heard someone on the internet in nine.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: But there are a couple of bands, one called Cheap
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Nasties on the Western I think in Perth, and then
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: The Saints, probably the biggest punk band to come out
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: of Australia. This is at the same time that CBGB's
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: uh and the Stooges were like getting big. It's crazy. Yeah,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: So the Stooges would technically qualify as proto punk too,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: but they came from Michigan along with m C five
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: and Death Death is an even earlier proto punk band
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: than the Stages. That documentary is great. I actually I
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: haven't seen that one. Yeah, there's one on death it's
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: just called like a band called death right. Yeah. Yeah,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it's very like they're amazing and they were, um I
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: think three three African American brothers from Detroit just killing it.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Who in like a punk band? Yeah yeah, and this
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: is before the Studges. I think this is before MC five,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: before Bad Brains for sure for sure. Um, So all
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: of these bands are starting to kind of lay the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: groundwork and then it's almost like it just kind of ignites,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: like we're saying in different parts of the world virtually
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: at the same time, which I just find endlessly fascinating. Yeah,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and I think that's what really lends a lot of
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: credence to the fact that it was a movement. It
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: was a feeling people were rebelling against more than anything
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: which can happen parallel in different parts of the country
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: in world. You know, if there's anything that can bring
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the whole world together, it's disdained for hippies, you know,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I think really bring that out. And everybody, did you
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: see the Tarantino movie Yet Once upon a Time, And yes,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of the anti hippies stuffing. It was
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: pretty funny. Yeah, a little some of them are beaten
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: to death literally. Well, I just mean all the DiCaprio
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: stuff was really funny. He did the hippies. But but
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Tarantino really like pointed out, like you know, the mans
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and family has been celebrated in romanticized at least in
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: some weird ways. Um, and they should not be. And
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: this is why I think he did a really good
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: job of doing that. Uh So sorry, we're talking about
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: the Stooges in MC five in Michigan. Uh in New
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: York Cities where things really crystallized with the club CBGB,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: owned by Hilly Crystal. Crystal Crystal, is it crystal? I
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: think so, like Billy Crystal right by Hilly Uh. And
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: originally you know that stands for a country, blue, blue
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: grass and blues, and that was what it was supposed
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: to be when it opened in nineteen seventy. Yeah. But
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: then in about two years the Ramones started playing their
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: talking Heads started playing their in nineteen seventy five, Blondie,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Um Television, I think television. I'm okay with them, Like
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I don't love them, they don't, I don't hate them,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: but um, they were they were essential to that scene
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: happening um and a lot of people kind of overlook them.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I think is like one of the the foundation bands
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: for punk. Yeah, which is interesting, like I mentioned earlier,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: like it's such different kinds of music, Like I love
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: talking Heads and television and Blondie and the Go Goes
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and they were all on that early scene. But I
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: don't think it's that's anything like the Misfits or the
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Damned or the Ramons. No, but the Misfits uh and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: the Ramones both started their careers at cbgby so it
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: was like the place where punk began in the United States. Yeah,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: but also at Max's Kanzie, Kansas City and New York
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Legendary Club. This is where like Patti Smith is hanging out,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the Velbot Underground is hanging out. Again, they're not punk
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: at all, but they were in that scene, right. And
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: one thing that we're kind of not really mentioning that
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: is a common thread to all these bands, not necessarily music,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: but heroin was a huge thread. They shared their deep,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: deep deep love of heroin um in common and that
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: definitely bound them together at CBGB for sure. And that
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: was a huge factor on the early punk scene was heroin,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: which I mean this is you know, if you remember
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: back just a few years ago, for oxy Cotton turned
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: everybody into junkies in the world. Um, heroin was not
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: a big drug at all, and back then especially it
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: was like you were a total burnout if you were
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: doing heroin, like it was not done. So the fact
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: that these people were like shooting heroin like in the clubs,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that was a that was a another kind of badge
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: that they took on. Um that separated them from everybody else. Yeah,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: you know, even their preference of drugs was super hardcore, Yeah,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: for sure. Another interesting thing happened early on in ninety
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: seven when these two scenes sort of exported one of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: their um early UM big bands to play in the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: other city. Uh. In venty seven, the Damned played in
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the United States, and less than a year before that,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the Ramons had gone to the UK to play shows
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: in London. And that was a big deal because all
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: of a sudden you had these two different scenes swapping bands.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Of course, it wasn't anything they planned, but they got
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: a taste of New York City in London with the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Ramons in a big, big way, and the same can
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: be said in New York City with the Damned very British.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: And then a month before the Ramons played in London,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: in Manchester on June, the sex Pistols had their first show.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people point to this is this
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: is when UK punk happened. It was this one show
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, which is like a
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: hall might as well be a VFW basically, and that's
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: where the sex Pistols are there first show. But some
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: of the people who were there were so influential, including
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: a seventeen year old Morrissey who went to cover the
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: thing for New Music Express um that that it just
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: spread out like a germ, Like it was the single
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: point that that UK punk spread out from. And this
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: was uh June of ninety and within six months, the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: major record labels were lining up to sign any and
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: every punk act they could get their hands on. Six
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: months Like That's so not only did it spread and
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: grow in parallel around the world at the same time
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: when it hit the scene, It's hard to overstate how
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: quickly it just blew up, like just from nothing to
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: it in six months. Yeah. I mean, if there's one
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: thing I mean, I don't I don't know about the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: music industry today, but previous to you know, digital content,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the music industry was always there waiting to commodify the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: next big thing. Yeah, and they did it to punk
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: big time. Yeah. So let's talk about this d I
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Y thing for a little bit. It was really cool
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: this article about these um, these d I Y origins
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: in punk music. What happened was when punk started coming
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: around in the mid nineties seventies. This coincided with a
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: big shift in UH equipment and recording gear and modernizing
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: recording gear among the big labels. Yeah sure, um, and
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: so all of a sudden there was all of this,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: these rooms and this gear that you could either rent
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: cheap or buy cheap. Yeah, they're old stuff that they
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: didn't need anymore. Yeah, and so punks came along and
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: uh started using it, and the very first punk labels
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: were self started. Miles Copeland started Step Forward, Bob Last
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: started Fast Product, and of course, very famously, Tony Wilson
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: started Factory Records. Yes, dude, which, by the way, see
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: twenty four Party of People. If you never have everybody.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: It's amazing to see that again. I saw it once
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: when it came out. Yeah, it's a good movie. Um.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: But it follows this progression of punk into new wave,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: uh into the eighties. Um. It just does it in
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: a spectacularly great way because it's Steve Coogan who's created
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: so good. But people trace the um punk on record
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: or on recorded tape rather to the very first single
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: they claim very first punk single November seventy six, The
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Damns New Rows, which I thought that was weird because
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the Ramones released their album before them, but maybe because
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: they're among were on the label when they released their album.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: They're saying like this is the first d I Y
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe when was the Ramons first? Off? I think like
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the full year before. I'm pretty sure, if not at
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: least seventy six then, but I'm pretty sure seventy five. Well,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the Buzz Cox put out an EP and I listened
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: to a lot of that today. I enjoyed that. UM
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Spiral Scratch was this EP was apparently the first British
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: homemade record and that was a really big deal. Uh,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: this is a seven. They sold out a thousand copies
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: that they printed, then they went on to sell another
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: sixteen thousand and UM. The influence on Spiral Scratch really
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: spread out and told everyone because they printed it was
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: very cool. They printed on the little record jacket like
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: how much it cost, how they produced it, and what
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the money was all about for a hundred and fifty
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: three pounds, basically saying go do this right, like and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: here's how to do it. Yeah. Um they all all
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: like that kind of set the tone for other records,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: like other punk bands released their own record. Words also
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: included instructions on the sleeve that the record came in
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: UM and the whole d I Y record released thing
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: that the Buzz Cocks kicked off UM. Other people started
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: to find other ways to to kind of make it
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: so punk could exist outside of the influence of the
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: record companies. Like people would release records in zip block baggies,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Like that was the record sleeve that your record came in,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: and people loved it, Like you didn't. You didn't need
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: like this expensive sleeve for the thing to come in,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Like you could just pop it in for in a
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: zip block bag and sell it. It's super punk. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: then also, um, if you can form a band that
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: it was put like this, like the sex Pistols showed
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: that anybody could be in a punk band. You didn't
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: even need be very talented, right, you didn't even need
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: to know how to play an instrument, um, and you
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: could be in a punk band. And the buzz Cocks
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: came along and showed that anybody could us our record.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: But there's still one very essential ingredient missing, and that
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: was distribution. And like you said, mail order made up
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: for a lot of the Buzzcocks ep UM sales, but
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: they they realized that there were more people out there
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: who wanted this stuff but didn't have a way to
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: get to it. So a what was called the Cartel
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: was formed, which was a group of independent record stores
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: around the UK that would basically serve as a distribution
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: network for these d I Y punk records. So cool um.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Not only that, but zines were very important early on
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: in the punk and really kind of a lot of
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: music genres. Zines were really big. Which are these, you know,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: fan made magazines. Yeah, maybe with like photocopy, not even photocopy,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: like mimiograph stuff. Ye, And you would just pronount your
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: zine and some of these zanes got to be pretty
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: big and they would attach distribution to the zines sometimes
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and sneak forty not sneaking, but a pack of forty
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: five in the zine. And that's how you could release
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: your stuff. And it was just this uh. Again, it
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: sounds so trite to say, very punk rock attitude, but
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what it was. The way they were doing
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: things was all under the radar, all on their own, uh.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And that changed pretty quickly. It did is because the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: big the big players came in. They smelled money, they
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: smelled something new, the next big thing, and they started
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: signing everybody they could left and right. And these punks
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: were going like nah, bollocks. I don't want your money.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: They're like, what if we pay you in heroin? He's
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: like okay, yeah, I like you put it that way.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: You could buy drugs with money, right, So um again.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Within six months of what most people point to as
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: the source of UK punk, that one specific show by
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: the sex Pistols, The sex Pistons were so new. Sid
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Vicious wasn't even in the band. He was still Susie
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: and the Banshee's drummer. He so this is how young
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: this stuff was. Within six months, they were signed on
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to a major record label. The Clash was signed on
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: to a major record label. The Fall, the Jam, the Stranglers,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: everybody got signed in this feeding frenzy where everyone who
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: had a punk band could get a record deal with
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: a major label. Six months after, the sex Epistols had
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: their first show, Yeah, Generation X with a young Billy idol, Uh,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: which I did ever do? That? Dancing with Myself was
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: originally a Generation X song. They released it, then he
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: re released it as a solo artist like a year
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: later and it became a much bigger hit. Sure, they
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: were like thanks a lot, but yeah, sex Pistols went
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: with E M I. Um, the Stranglers at you A,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: The Clash signed to CBS, the Jam went to Polydor
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Generation X, and Stiff Little Fingers went to Chrysalis and
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: even the Buzz Cox. They were very quick to hop
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: on that train too, with United Artists, which actually that's
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: not too bad. You could have signed with worse because
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: United Artists was started by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, um,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, indeed W Griffith so that artists could have
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: more control and ownership over their work. Yeah, I mean
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: it was a movie company, and I guess they dabbled
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: in records. So one of three things happened basically to
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the little d I Y small label movement. Um you
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: either got Pilford, they'd use one example in Belfast the
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Good Vibrations label. Four of its first six bands were
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: stolen away or signed away. I guess. So either got
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Pilford and then just shut down and gave up um
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: or you grew and got bigger to where you were,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: you know, like Rough Trade and Factory Records. Those all
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: became like bigger independent labels. Yeah, Rough Trade still around.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Sure they have state of the art, cutting edge bands.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: It's great. Um Or they stayed small and just kept
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: going right. They went punk and went back underground. Yeah, Like,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: so they didn't all go away. They didn't all say,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: you know, we're all getting Pilford, so we're just gonna
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: shut down. They would just find more underground bands and
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: go deeper and deeper and deeper. But then, um, something
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: happened in nineteen seventy nine, In February of nineteen seventy
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: nine that a lot of people point to. Just as
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: they point to that first Sex Pistols show as the
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: beginning of punk in the UK, they point to the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: death of Sid Vicious as the end of punk, at
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: least the first wave of punk. His death from a
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: heroin overdose um is widely pointed to as as the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: death of punk, which is a really dumb thing to say,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: because punk very clearly went on. But what I think
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: people are saying, sorry, I guess it's not entirely dumb
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: now that I say it out loud, But what people
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: are saying is is that punk transformed into something else,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: and that punk really as as it originally existed, was
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: only around for about two three years, maybe four or five.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Some people at a bar right now that are just
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: saying that over and over again. Punk only the last
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: said three years. Okay, well, I agree with you, drunk
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: person in this sense, but it's not like punk went away.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: It transformed and became something else. And so what it
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: transitioned into is commonly called hardcore hardcore punk, where stuff
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: just got faster, louder, a little angrier. Yeah. Um, and
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: it just went in in a different direction, predominantly in
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the United States. Yeah, and there were there were a
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: couple of scenes. Um, the l A scene had already
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: sort of been born by the late seventies. Uh, if
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, The great documentary from Penelope spheris
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: The Decline of Western Civilization releasing eighty one, but filmed
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: over I think maybe covered the l A scene. And
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: that's the germs and uh like I think Blondie and
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the Go Goes and stuff like that, all right, and
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Jerks York the best sets ever in the Decline of
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Western Civilization. Yes, it's very good. And the germs too,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: That's where I was. I was watching some of that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: today and that's when I knew I didn't like the germs, right.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: But Pat Smir of course, the food Fighters, he was
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: in the germs. You know he likes money. And also
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: if you're like, who's Penelope Spies? You may be familiar
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: with their work if you've seen the movie Wayne's World,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: that's right, or the movie Black Sheet, the Chris Farley
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: David Spade movie, or The Decline of Western Civilization. I
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: think she'd ended up doing like three or four of those, right,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: at least three, because I know she didn't want to metal.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: The second one was metal, which is good too. Yeah,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: that's the only two I saw. Did you ever see
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: that documentary about um heavy Metal Parking Lot? Yes, yeah,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: where everybody's smoking PCP at did Judas Priest concert. Ye,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: it's pretty great. Did you know early eighties metal head
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: smoked PCP? No, I didn't until a documentary because it
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: was quite a surprise. I was scared of all those people. Well,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: they're kind of scary because they were all on PCP,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: especially when you're like eight or ten. Scary. So American. Uh,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: we were talking about the you know, punk bands releasing
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: their own albums. This started happening on the West coast. Um.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: They started forming their own labels even to release their
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: albums and sign other like bands like SST very famous
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: punk label was started from the guy, the original guy
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: from Black Flag, right, yes, uh, what's his name? Greg
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: g I N n either again or Jin I'm sorry punkers,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I know you're mad at me right now that I
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: don't know this. Yeah, I think he was like the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: founder of Black Flag Okay, Jello Biafro of course, um
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Dead Kennedy's they formed or he formed Alternative Tentacles. Yeah,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: in nine nine and seventy nine was a big year
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: because that's the same year that a band called Bad
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Brains came out and Washington d C. Which I didn't love.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Did you see the Dave Gold documentary series? So I
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: can't remember what it was called, but he did this
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: like ten part documentary series where he would do the
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: music of a different city and it was really really good,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: except for the last like fifteen minutes of it. He
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: would get the food Fighters together in a studio and
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: they would play like some of those songs, and if
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: you're really into the Food Fighters, I imagine you loved
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: it all. Not into the Food Fighters, so I would
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: just stop it there. But he does Seattle. But what
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: got me on this was one of the most interesting
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: episodes was the Washington DC episode because I didn't know
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: it was such a hardcore scene. Like that's where when
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: people talk about hardcore, yeah, they're like, well d C
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: is kind of the cradle of it and Bad Brains,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: which my friend Jason Jenkins in college introduced me to,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and that's when it was like really fast, had a
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: little metal edge, but Bad Brains was also started out
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: as like jazz fusion and had reggae roots, also African
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: American guys. Yeah, and um, really really good stuff. Yeah.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: So you've got at the same time, l A and
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: d C as the new like seats of punk music
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: in the USA, punk slash, hardcore, and it's going it's
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: going like way more hardcore, way more masculine, way more
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: macho than the UK went. The UK went a different route.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: They went way more political, way more like class struggle. Um,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: and there's there's definitely lots of political threads that um,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: American punk music went through, but I think the UK
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: went to it earlier. Like Crass is a great great
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: punk band from the UK. Um, they're kind of like, uh,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: they're just great, check them out. Um, but they were
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: doing like anarchy stuff in the seventies. Yeah, the clash
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: certainly is notable for their political statement, very political um.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: And then you've got like the Six Sex Pistols talking
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: about anarchy in the UK. They didn't really mean it,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: they were just saying something right, um. But there were
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of like politically motivated bands in the UK
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: in the early seventies that didn't pick up till later
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: in the eighties in the US because certainly were not political.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: They were not political. But the other thing, the other
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: differentiation I saw between UK and US punk was that
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: UK punk didn't take itself quite as seriously as the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: US started to in the late seventies early eighties, and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: that this guy I read I think a Guardian article
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: trace that back to a love of glam rock. That
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: glam rock really led to punk, especially in the UK,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: and if you're into glam rock, you just can't quite
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: take anything fully seriously, including punk music and the the US,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: even though punk came out of the New York Dolls
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: in part um, which was definitely glam rock, um, it
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: just didn't have that that through thread. So it did
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: get taken way more seriously and that was a big
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: part of hardcore and what differentiated it from the earlier
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: punk taking things really really seriously and it being a
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: little more political than ever before and um angsty against
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: things like the boredom of suburban life. Yeah, I mean,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I think punk is just as important for things that
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: it uh inspired that happened afterward as it was the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: actual movement itself, because you can point to stuff in
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Minneapolis like Whosker Do or bands like the Minutemen, who
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I loved and they had a very punk sound to them,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and maybe you're even considered punk, probably post punk post
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: I think Mini Men are considered punk, but Whosker Do
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: would definitely be post post punk, and stuff like Sonic Youth,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: which I would call them post punk to post punk,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: straddling into the early grunge though too. Well. Yeah, I
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: mean it's like it's hard to it's easy sometimes to
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: trace that through line, and sometimes it's really difficult. But
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: we want to we want to be able to say, like,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: you know, it went from um from Bad Brains to
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Hoosker Do to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, you know, four
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Degrees of Nirvana three days and they're going, what about us,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: right exactly? Um, but you just you can't. But at
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the same time, you also can't discount the effects that
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: these later bands um got from the earth listening to
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the earlier bands that came before him. There's undoubtedly an influence.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: It's just not quite as crisp and clean as as
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: we like to make it. Yeah, And it's even argued
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: in one of these articles that the the birth of
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: hardcore came about because, like you kind of teased earlier on,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: because punk, you know, flouts the rules and norms of
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: rock and roll. Then they formed their own rules and norms,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: and we're really pretty serious about it, and so hardcore
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: came along because they didn't quite fit in with that,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: the true punk aesthetic. They took punk even further because
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: punk was being commodified and commercialized otherwise, that's right, which
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: would make it kind of easier to break from, especially
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: if you just go slightly angrier and faster and louder. Right,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: But you also can look at the stuff like you
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: talk about tracing the through line, UM, if you want
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to think about early Manchester and stuff like Joy Division
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: that goes to New Order that goes to Orchestral Maneuvers
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: in the Dark and Simple Minds and all of a sudden,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: it's a John Hughes soundtrack and it's hard. It's then
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: it's like, what is punk about anything? And that like
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: sort of softer new wave. But at the same time
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: you can also say, well, New Order was just straight
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: up new wave, but then new wave caught on and
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: got commercialized and commodified, and then you end up having
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: a John Hughes soundtrack because the record labels got ahold
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: of the new wave band. Right. So that's kind of
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: like the story with music is somebody comes up with
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: something raw and organic and rebellious, everybody loves it, The
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: big guys come along, get their hands on it, co opted,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: commodify it, commercialize it, ruin it, and then some thread
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: kind of jumps off of that and it starts something else,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: and the whole thing always it just continues on and
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: continues on, except until the mid two thousands when music
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: died forever and ever and ever. Alright, well, let's take
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: another break here and we'll talk a little bit about
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the end of punk, and before that, maybe we'll hit
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: on the fashion of punk. Oh boy, okay, chuck um,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: we're talking fashion of punk. Yeah, so, every every genre
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: has its own look, well, I cannot remember what it
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: had to have been. The safety pin short stuff, where
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: we talked about Richard Hell being considered the guy who
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: started the safety pin as a fashion statement. Pretty shut,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: but it was Richard Hell. He was the guitarist for
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: television and he was like the first guy with the mohawk,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: like the Elmer's glue kind of mohawk and safety pins
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: holding his shirt together, which is I mean, that's quintessential punk.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, dressing like a Ramon as
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: in essential punk too, with like the jeans with the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: knees in it, black jeans Doc Martin's, or Converse low
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: tops or Converse high tops. Uh, black biker jacket. Yeah.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: The New York Dolls were very famous for wearing the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: jean jackets super super small. That jokes in this article
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: that they could barely fit in them, right. They also
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: wore super tight lycra shiny pants and stuff too, Yeah,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: but they were glam but that it was really those
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: black ripped jeans, and this was a time where that
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't like the cool thing to wear if you you
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: didn't walk around with holes. And you know, now it's
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: become a recurring thing in fashion to have holes in
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: your jeans being cool. At the time, it was not cool.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: To admit that you were poor exactly. Man. This was
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: like somebody in this article I think from Pitchfork said,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: you know, Dee de Ramon had uh um holes in
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the knees of his jeans, not because it was cool,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: but because he didn't have any money for some new
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: genes and those his jeans ha had holes in them.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: So that's what he wore. Now you pay like a
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: hundred or two hundred bucks for genes that have pre
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: ripped holes that are just right. Yeah, that's a perfect
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: example of the commodity commoditization of punk. Yeah, for sure.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Uh other you know, in l A, they have their
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: own fashion scene going on because it's l A and
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: they don't have harsh winters and cold, rainy weather, so
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: they went to the thrift stores and bought things and
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: cut them up. And that's where you you never saw
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: a shirt on a punk in the l A scene
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: that didn't have like the net cut out or the
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: sleeves cut off, or in the case of the Go
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Goes in their earlier punk days, wearing like literal trash
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: bags as fashion, very funny and blondie too. They all
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: had a very like specific aesthetic. In Los Angeles. It's
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: interesting that the Go Go started out on the punk
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: scene and when they were I think to the casual
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: music fan, known very much for just sort of a
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: bubblegum sing along pop hits, that they had just lovable
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: as all get out as all get out great songs.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: And Bolen and Carlisle too, like her solo stuff is yeah,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: just kiss everybody. You couldn't see that, but that's what
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I gave. But it's that whole pop punk thing, which
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: is kind of where it started to go bad. You
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: could make the case that starting in the beginning of seven,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: when all those first record labels came in, it started
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: to go bad then. But hardcore here's this is where
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I This is my reading of this, okay, And I'm
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: not a punk or even music historian by any stretch
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: of the imagination, but from what I gathered from this
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: research is that early punk got co opted and commodified
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: by the record labels immediately hardcore grew out of that.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Hardcore is way harder to co modify because it's much
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: more raw than it's much less melodic. It's much more
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: in your face and angry than the original punk was.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: And it's also jealously guarded and defended by the fans,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: where at the beginning of the show we're saying, please
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: don't beat us up, Like if you go to a
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: hardcore show and they think your opposer, like, you may
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: get beaten up. If this is the eighties or the nineties,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they still do it today. I
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: remember feeling that threat. Oh yeah, it was, but the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: punks at the school, like you didn't want to cross him.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: It was part of being a punk, was like you
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: beat somebody up to basically defend punk them to keep
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: it from getting commodified, Like like seeing kids like wear
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Thrasher T shirts today and they have no idea what
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Thrasher is. Like it's like if you did that with
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: punk in the eighties and nineties, you would get beaten up,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: maybe even at school, definitely at a punk show. And
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: so in doing so, they were able to defend hardcore
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: from commoditization because they kept it their own violently. But
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: at the same time they also it's kind of like
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: how a language evolves the more people speak it and
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: the more free and easy the rules on it are.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: By by putting these very tight restrictions on what's punk
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: and what's not punking? Who's allowed to come to a
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: punk show, which is super ironic for punks to do.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: To come up with all these rules and regulations, they
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: kept it from evolving, and they definitely kept it underground.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: And it's still around today, but it's the same thing
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: over and over again because it wasn't allowed to grow
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and evolved because the fans have kept it, at least
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: in America, have kept it underground, uh, purposefully, deliberately, invioluently.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: So punk's killed punk kind of, they would argue, No
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: punks still around. I go see punk shows all the
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: time and don't come to it because your opposer and
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: will beat you up. So they're still punk. But as
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: far as like you and I walking around are concerned,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: punk is dead as a doornail for now. For now, well,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I remember when we did our UK tour.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: I remember we're seeing a group of punks in Manchester
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: that looked like they stepped right out of nine with
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: the full spiked mohawks and the leather studded leather collars.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And I was scared of him then a little bit.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: You're like, those are bad kids, are going to try
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: to get me in town to do a podcast. Right, Well,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: what's funny is is that fashion that you're talking about,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: that quintessential punk fashion that was a commodification immediately to
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: the sex Pistols. Manager used to be the manager of
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: the New York Dolls, Malcolm McLaren, and he owned a
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: shop Gonna b d S m Um fashion shop with
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Vivian Westwood in London, and he basically used the sex
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Pistols to promote the fashion he was selling at his shop,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: to make it fashionable so we could sell more clothes.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: This is the manager of the first UK punk band
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: ever well, and he had put them together, right. It's
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: not like essentially the sex Pistols all got together because
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: they were mates. Like they were formed by a manager. Yes,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: by this guy Malcolm. They were the monkeys kind of
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: were the monkeys of the punk They were the punkies.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: So many people are mad at us right now, for sure,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: but it's true. I mean, go look up your history.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: If your punks are gonna beat us up next time
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: we go ontoor. Some some thirteen year old just looked
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: down at the Sherwin. That's what the sex Pistols are.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: I had no idea. Well, it's funny though you talk
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: about the the pins and the it was all homemade stuff,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Like I remember it being a very I mean, I
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: was certainly way too square, but I remember seeing the
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: punks in my school doing stuff to their clothes during
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: class and at lunch and thinking it was the coolest thing.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Whether it was black magic, black sharpie doing the Dead
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Kennedy's or the anarchy symbol. Well, the Dead Kennedys did
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: have the coolest symbol, right, it was pretty cool. Or
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: just fraying their fraying their jackets or adding safety pins.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: It was all It was all created out of that
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: homemade aesthetic sort of like the music and it and
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: it appealed to me, but I was afraid of it.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: And now that's why I'm just now starting to listen
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: to some of this music. Are you going to turn
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: all punk now? Maybe? Okay, that would be one of
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: the bigger surprises you've ever laid on me, man. But
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: pop punk we should talk a little bit about. Um
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: they call it bitter sweet in this article. Um sweet
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: in the sense that you could get tons of money
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: and be super famous, but bitter because you know, it's
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: spawned a genre that I think a lot of true
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: punks really loathe like I think true punks like a
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: square more than they like blink On indubitably, you know, uh,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: and that you know, that whole scene, the Van's Warped
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Tour and Ransid and Offspring and Green Day and all
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: these groups was a part of a big second wave
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: of these kids who grew up definitely listening to that
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: stuff and I guess feeling like they were a part
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: of it. I mean, I'm sure green Day really feels
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: like they're a punk band and part of a punk movement,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Whereas I remember the first time I heard Green Day
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: thinking these are guys pretending to be a punk band,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: which is a really creuddy thing to say, but I
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: mean it is. It's like, it's totally understandable how you
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: would think that, but they they are. It is punk
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: in some way, shape or form. It's punk. The stuff
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: they're talking about is pretty punk. Um, but punk bands
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: don't release acoustic songs. Definitely not the first The first
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: album Dookie, right, is what we're talking about. I guess
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: was that the first one? I think so. I just
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: remember hearing it and going like, why is that guy
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: trying to sound British? Well, that's pretty punk. It's very punk, yeah,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: for sure, an American kid trying to sound British so um,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't. I would guess you're right though
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: there on Broadway punks for God's sake. Well, yeah, there
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: was a brief shining moment where you could have conceivably
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: called them a punk band. Here's the thing though, man,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: people like money. Yeah, but that's been a through not
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: just in the punk scene, but but it's just a
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: music in general. Although hats off to the punk culture
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: for keeping it at bay better than anybody ever has
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: any other genre I would like to hear. I'm sure
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: there are people listening that Noah, punk bands that did
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: stick their middle finger up to the money and say nope,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I can tell you one. Fugazi H Well, I love
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Fugazi DC or I guess hardcore. Um, and they I
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: think they formed Discord Records. If not, they're a big
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: act on Discord Records. And they have done this whole
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: d I Y thing, like from the get go. They've
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: they've issued the major labels as far as I know
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: their whole career, and they were extremely successful despite that. Yeah,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I saw them in Athens once. Oh yeah, what do
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: you think that was great? This is you know, I
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: think they got together in the like seven ish and
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: this was more like Okay, well, they were still huge
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and probably bigger. That was when they were at their height,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I would guess. I mean, technically they had a I
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: don't know about how it performed on the literal charts,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: but they had that one song that had a big
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: MTV hit, Waiting Room. Yeah, it's a good song. It's
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: a really good song. Um. So I just want to
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: give some shouts out to anybody who's like, this is
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: really interesting. I want to know more. Go listen to
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the Cramps. I would recommend the Cramps, listen to Crass,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Go watch the Decline of Western Civilization. Definitely check out
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: the Circle Jerks, Um who else, Chuck, I'm gonna say
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: that for my picks, Bad Brains, and the Damned. Okay,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna toss g g Allen out there, although he
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: kind of transcends everything. Just punk and you. We were
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: sending me some um. I didn't catch any of the names,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: but she said there's a big punk scene in Japan still.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: And that was another thing too, is somebody said Punk's
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: not dying, It's just coming up in other places like
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: um in Islamic countries, there's a big punk movement. I
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: saw Mexico has got a big one right now. Apparently
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Japan has it. And then there's a whole riot girl
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: feminist punk that is. Man. If that's not punk out
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: like Eastern block punk riot girls, I love it. So
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: punk is still alive. Punk not dead. Punk no dead,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Punk's not dead. Okay, if you want to know more
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: about punk music, go listen to that stuff we just
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: told you to go listen to. And since I said
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: that's time for listener, man, if you want to learn
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: more about punk music, you can probably go to literally
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: any other place other than this episode and learn more
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: about punk music. If you want to know more about
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: punk music, go to your local library and read up.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: It's fundamental. Al Right, guys, I'm gonna call this poop. Nope,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: no poop. On that short stuff about the guy who
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: didn't eat for a year. Uh, we talked about the
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: fact that he didn't poop that much, and she said
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: this is the norm for people with a colostomy or iliostomy.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I had a temporary iliostomy and ostomy connected to the
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: ilium instead of the colon. Due to crone's complications. My
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: colon was completely severed from the rest of my digestive
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: system during this time and basically sat dormant while food
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: exited into an ostomy pouch. No food means no poop,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: but the body still produces the normal gut stuff like
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: mucus and cells and needs to evacuate on occasion, which
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: I think that's what we talked about. For people with
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: years about issues such as pain and running to the
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: bathroom every thirty minutes. This can be a literal lifesaver. Anyway,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: my colon is currently now reattached to the rest of
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: my intestine and my crones is in remission. I had
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: no idea. So this person had a colostomy and had
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: it was reversed. Yes, that's I had no idea they
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: could do that. Yeah, we should do something on crones
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: and just tie all the stuff together. I just wanted
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: to give you a little perspective on the topic. Um. Actually,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: ostomy's would be an interesting topic for you to tackle.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Thanks for doing the best podcast around. According to my
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: podcast app, I've listened to over four hundred episodes. Yikes, Well,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: Sonia in Canada, you have another what seven fifty, eight hundred?
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: What are we up to? Now? What a number of episodes?
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Eight fifty we're up to? Like, well, she's listening to
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: four hundred. Okay, so just do a little math. Oh okay,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: hold on, I can do so another like eight hundred
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: or so. Yeah, I would say something, all right, Well,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: you're a third of the way there, keep at it. Yeah, roughly, yeah,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: you got a third. And you guys should have just
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: seen Chuck like look up in the air from the
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: side of his eye. She said, we'd love to see
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: you to the come out to the Prairie provinces. So
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: I know in Canada we do Toronto and Vancouver, but
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of country in the middle there that
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: we should probably go to at some point. In the US,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: we'd call them flyover states. In Canada they call it
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: prairie country. Right. Well, if you want to get in
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: touch with this, like did Sonia, thanks again, sonja Um,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: com and check out our social links, and you can
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: also send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my Heart Radio
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
• 52:06
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