"Howie could get along with anybody. He was friends with both Johnny and Joey Ramone. Hells Angels, skinheads, drag queens, comic-book nerds, art collectors, fashionistas-they all loved him."
"I always feel the most comfortable in the punk world because they want to be hated, which I find funny. Pink Flamingos was a punk movie. We even had the yellow, the color hair. You couldn't buy the color back then, you had to do it with India ink and magic marker. So we were always punk. In a way it was a great freedom when that came. And punks are my people still."
Brighton was rarely described as a scene, despite being home to Nick Cave and Paul McCartney and hothousing a surge of remarkable young talent that's still thriving more than 20 years later.
The beating heart of Sugar was always the sound of Bob Mould's guitar: a colossal, metallic, thunderous thing, like a sonic boom you could whistle. It was incredible, being engulfed by that wall of sound.
A special 50th anniversary Punk Rock history event at The New Farm featuring bands and musicians from the dawn of the punk rock revolution of San Francisco. NO ALTERNATIVE, SLEEPERS AD, SOCIETY DOG plus AVENGERS guitar player GREG INGRAHAM performing with JEAN CAFFEINE, THE DEAD SAILOR GIRLS & INSECT LOUNGE.
You could go anywhere in America and argue with some success for the cultural impact wrought by most of the once-subcultural stars of Lizzy Goodman's oral history of New York's post-9/11 rock scene, 'Meet Me In The Bathroom.' Or, for God's sake, Jeff Chang's history of hip-hop, 'Can't Stop Won't Stop.' But to explain this era to someone who hasn't devoted their psyche or youth to 'indie rock,' you'd need to spend a whole dinner, and maybe a few drinks afterwards, justifying why the tentpole events that 'Us v. Them' returns to multiple times in its 300-page run mean anything.
"At 2 a.m., sitting up and contemplating our loss during my child's wake, I found myself reflecting on all the major news events that had left their mark on me through the years and the helplessness I sometimes felt to change anything. Writing the last verse was the most difficult and personal thing I've done."
Swell Maps were a punk band, but only because that word meant something different when they started making records in 1977. It didn't mean bands called Knuckleheadz or Gimp Fist; it meant unfettered freedom, curiosity rather than rage. Theirs was a music that wandered off in unexpected directions, where songs barely hung together before falling apart, punctuated by peculiar sounds made by whatever happened to be around.
The new album Everything Must Go arrives on April 24 via Bad Time Records and Community Records, and first single 'Free Dom' is out now. It finds Bad Operation doing what they do best, fusing 2 Tone's influence with fresh, urgent new ideas and coming out with something danceable, catchy, and powerful.
It's impossible to quantify the emotional landscape of a song-there's no judgment more subjective-but to my ear, "Ceremony" captures the drama of an unforgettable moment that feels like it's going to change your life forever, one where everything that's been is about to meet the future, and you can feel the unnamable tension of possibility swelling until it's about to burst.
"When I read the fine print, it was 'an experience with REO Speedwagon's music.' It's none of the original members," Fletcher recalls. "I don't want to promote the show unless it's the real thing. I don't know why you would want to see that. It's just a cover band. To me, that's a little bit strange." He adds, with a sigh, "If there are no original members, who cares?"
But mainly, it's the result of the New Orleans duo's unique stamp on the sound of underground punk: Honeywell, often in a leather vest, howls with a pack-a-day voice over racing, lo-fi guitar, while RJ Santos, always sporting a dapper suit and tie, plays pedal steel. It's garage punk with an old-school country twang; as their personality seeps through the sound like dye, it takes on the color of music's sepia-toned past and technicolor present.
