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