Swissted New York graphic designer
Mike Joyce takes vintage flyers from punk, hardcore and indie rock shows and redesigns them "into international typographic style posters. Each poster is sized to the standard swiss kiosk dimensions of 35.5 inches wide by 50 inches high and set in berthold akzidenz grotesk medium, all lowercase. Every single one of these shows actually happened."
posted by BitterOldPunk
on Jan 11, 2012 -
36 comments
In Southern California in the 1980s, KROQ had this weird un-DJ-like guy named (seriously)
Rodney Bingenheimer, who came on late at night on Sundays and played punk records and new bands like Blondie, The Ramones, X, Joan Jett, Devo and Cheap Trick. Did this weirdo really have some influence? A 90-minute 2004 documentary now on YouTube,
Mayor of the Sunset Strip (Part 1) tells his story, and it's weirder than you may have imagined.
[more inside]
posted by planetkyoto
on Nov 14, 2011 -
24 comments
The most vivid figure in Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields's End of the Century was the least articulate and most archetypal of the Ramones: Johnny, the right-wing prole whose hard-ass sense of style the others nutballed and softened and accelerated and above all imitated. ... Exciting and absolutely right though their '70s sets always were, the film establishes that they kept the faith live till the end, lifted by Joey's goofy dedication and powered by the chords Johnny thrashed out like they were why he was alive. As unyielding in his aesthetic principles as he was in everything else, this reactionary was an avant-gardist in spite of himself. -
Robert Christgau
posted by Trurl
on Nov 9, 2011 -
17 comments
Folk-punk,
Orgcore (
UD definition) and
Dadpunk are all names for a
new wave of earnest, authentic rock that draws its roots from The Clash,
Billy Bragg, The Pogues, Social Distortion and Bruce Springsteen. In England, its best represented by
Frank Turner, the former singer of hardcore band
Million Dead. His anthemic songs about
life on the margins of fame,
poetry,
death,
inspiration and
the power of rock and roll have made him famous in England, leading to an upcoming
show at Wembley Arena. He follows in the footsteps of British folk-punk pioneers
Leatherface.
[more inside]
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn
on Oct 23, 2011 -
92 comments
Hank Williams III has had a rocky relationship with his label, Curb Records, from the beginning, when his first album with them was
an album with his grandfather and father, "
thanks to the wonders of 21st century digital overdubbing." A decade and a half later,
Hank 3 was free from Curb Records, though the label snuck out one last album, even though the contract was over. It was actually
an old album from a decidedly non-country style, but that didn't stop Curb from
offering it as a Hank III album at a fire-sale discount, ensuring
Billboard Country charting. That was in June of this year. Jump ahead to September:
Hank 3 released three albums over four CDs, spanning his broad musical styles and beyond.
CD1:
country (of sorts);
CD2:
haunted ambient soundtrack and
Cajun-tinted country, with guests (
like Tom Waits);
CD3:
cattle-core;
CD4:
doom rock.
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 20, 2011 -
91 comments
It’s maybe a
little early yet for year’s end retrospectives, but who cares:
we’ve got 157 songs, 10.5 hours, 1.12 GB of “some of the best and most notable music from 2010... covering indie, pop, rock, punk, folk, rap, R&B, soul, dance, country, modern classical, ambient and electronic music, and in many cases, hard-to-classify genre hybrids.” —Curated by FluxBlog’s own Matthew Perpetua.
posted by kipmanley
on Dec 3, 2010 -
30 comments
Bloodied but Unbowed "... chronicles, for the first time anywhere, the late 1970's/early 1980's Vancouver punk rock scene. The documentary tells a tale of rebellion and music — a fiercely independent scene created from nothing."
The full documentary can be seen
here.
posted by squeak
on Oct 12, 2010 -
31 comments
"...it's probably extra easy to trace my life & interests through these galleries. They start out in Kansas (most of the early non-Lawrence/ KC ones were sent to me either by people ordering copies of my zine or by a few pals of mine who had run away to CA), and as I move around in life the bands & venues change accordingly: Kansas, Ohio, Washington DC, Kansas again, Arizona."
The Jason Willis Flyer Collection, 1981-2006
posted by nomadicink
on Oct 3, 2010 -
4 comments
mid-70s proto-punk band, Death, have finally gotten a
real disc out. unearthed in crates lost for decades, their founder dead before seeing it happen, their children never knowing the shadowy past of their forebears, the sound of black pop-punk-politi-metal-wave is finally here.
[more inside]
posted by artof.mulata
on Mar 29, 2009 -
16 comments
Not all groups with synthesizers in the 1970s and 1980s were lame Top 40 acts with
keytars. Some groups of the era used synths for spastic keyboard bleeps, herky-jerky tempos, and angst-ridden aggression in a style now classified by record collector geeks as
synthpunk,
minimal synth, or
minimal wave. Several famous New Wave acts dabbled in the style before providing soundtracks for Molly Ringwald movies (
OMD, Electricty) or singing about waitresses in cocktail bars (
the Human League, Being Boiled), but vintage videos from synth punk acts all over the world can be found all over YouTube.
[more inside]
posted by jonp72
on Mar 14, 2009 -
29 comments
Mickey Ween: A security guard came onstage and Gibby threw the alcohol on him. The dude just started backing away, it was clear that Gibby probably would set him on fire. And now, knowing Gibby like I do, it was definitely within the realm of possibility.
Mark Pesetsky: And Gibby just gave me that psycho look with the Charles Manson eyes. He grabs a bottle of the rubbing alcohol and throws it on me and then starts walking towards me with a lighter. And John, the other bouncer, just jumps offstage. It was every man for himself at that point.
Gibby Haynes: Oh yeah, I do remember that. I mean, I've lit kids' heads on fire and they were smiling!
An Oral History of May 3, 1987: The Day The Butthole Surfers Came to Trenton, New Jersey. Butthole Surfers interviewed in bed, parts
1 and
2, playing The Scott & Gary Show on their first run through New York, parts
1 and
2,
playing live in 1985 [low quality],
live footage from the 80s.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 6, 2009 -
51 comments
David Goo and the
Variety Band have been gigging in London for a few years, but a recent appearance as a soundtrack to an
advert could be what propels them to the big time. Merging ska, punk, indie and
klezmer influences, read an interview with them here as they speculate on the concept of
'selling out'
posted by muggsy1079
on Jan 21, 2009 -
9 comments
Punkcast is a long running series of videos of live underground music in NYC shot by
Joly MacFie. Each video is usually one song. The Internet Archive hosts
its videos and offers downloads in a variety of formats. MacFie also has a
YouTube channel with
480 videos and a video podcast
[iTunes link, feedburner link]. Here are a few bands that caught my fancy:
The Icicles and The Besties, The Slits (
1,
2 ),
Andrew W. K., Oneida (
1,
2),
The Long Blondes,
The Gossip,
Acid Mothers Temple & Cosmic Inferno,
Art Brut,
Be Your Own Pet,
Cansei de Ser Sexy,
Lesbians on Ecstasy,
The Fall,
Fred Frith,
Rose Melberg and Jennifer O'Connor,
The Horrors,
The Homosexuals,
Bat for Lashes,
Radio 4 and Teddybears,
Kimya Dawson and Tiny Masters of Today,
Yeah Yeah Yeahs and
Nikki Sudden.
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 25, 2008 -
12 comments
30 seconds over Tokyo is a song that is both unpretentious and epic at the same time. Anticipation mixed up with fear, flying, crashing, burning. Nevermind just give it a listen
30 seconds over Tokyo. Rocket from the Tombs, a nasty bit of
rock history. Get out a shovel and exhume it's remains.
[more inside]
posted by nola
on Nov 18, 2008 -
18 comments
Frank Kerr
died on Wednesday, October 15th of throat cancer. The 51-year-old was better known as Frankie Venom, the lead singer of
Teenage Head, a punk band from Hamilton, Ontario that
some have called Canada's version of The Ramones. The Glasgow native formed the band in 1975 with some high-school friends and they released several popular albums and played at least two shows
that ended in riots. After splitting with the group in 1985 due in part to lifestyle issues, Venom later rejoined and began touring again. In 2003, Teenage Head recorded a special cover album with Ramones drummer Marky Ramone that was just released earlier this year. One fan got
some video of one of Frankie's last shows in Hamilton.
posted by mathewi
on Oct 16, 2008 -
18 comments
Aptly named hardcore deconstructionists Fucked Up are slated to play a
free, 12-hour show in NYC on Tuesday, October 14th. The show will feature appearances from the likes of John Cale, Matt Sweeney, David Cross, Mobb Deep, Akon, Vivian Girls, U2's The Edge, and others.
posted by auralcoral
on Oct 6, 2008 -
13 comments
What's
Folk-Punk? Although celtic-punk groups like the Pogues, Flogging Molly, and the Dropkick Murphys may have been the first bands to combine punk rock with folk music, other groups have been crossing over folk music and punk rock for some time now.
[more inside]
posted by dunkadunc
on Jul 29, 2008 -
55 comments
Death were a
proto-punk trio of black Jehovah's Witnesses based out of Detroit back in 1974. They were almost signed to Columbia, but bailed on the label when Columbia wanted them to change their name. Instead, they self-released a 7" which is now
quite a collector's item, influenced as it was by,
“Iggy and Stooges, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and The Who”.
But the story doesn't end there. Recently, Bobby Hackney, whose father played in Death along with two of his uncles, learned of the band and, lo and behold, his dad found the master tapes for their unreleased full-length in his attic. Is a new chapter in
punk rock history about to be written?
posted by stinkycheese
on Jun 11, 2008 -
35 comments
