Milo Goes To The Movies
May 31, 2011 6:41 PM   Subscribe

FILMAGE: The Story of DESCENDENTS / ALL is an upcoming feature-length documentary about pop-punk pioneers Descendents. The makers are looking for photos, video, and film of the band. The band's first album, 1982's Milo Goes To College, was an instant classic with songs like I'm Not A Loser. Various splits, reformations, and line-up changes followed. Their most reformation in 2010 included sets at Australia's No Sleep Till festival (full Sydney set at Moshcam). Classic Desendents: I'm The One. Merican. Hope.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn (24 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
all? NO ALL
posted by radiosilents at 6:50 PM on May 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


MUGMUGMUG
posted by jonmc at 6:51 PM on May 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


Sorry about that. I wanted to include them, but honestly I don't know as much about the band as I should. I crammed in preparation for that Sydney show, and I really do love them, but I was too young to really get a handle on everything. Hearing I'm The One and Hope and Descendents live was so awesome though.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:52 PM on May 31, 2011


Excellent -- I'm looking very forward to this. In addition to Descendents being a huge influence on me musically in high school, I always looked up to lead singer Milo J. Aukerman as a kind of awe-inspiring geek god.

Singing in a seminal punk band and also first author on several scientific papers regarding a small flowering plant related to cabbage -- that was pretty much my dream as a young nerdling.
posted by xthlc at 7:07 PM on May 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


Descendants > All.

Thanks, LiB.
posted by koeselitz at 7:08 PM on May 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


Excellent -- I'm looking very forward to this. In addition to Descendents being a huge influence on me musically in high school, I always looked up to lead singer Milo J. Aukerman as a kind of awe-inspiring geek god.

Singing in a seminal punk band and also first author on several scientific papers regarding a small flowering plant related to cabbage -- that was pretty much my dream as a young nerdling.


Somebody smarter than me and with more punk cred could do a post on Greg Graffin from Bad Religion getting a fossilized bird named after him and teaching at Cornell. they're playing Australia this year
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:15 PM on May 31, 2011


They should have stayed broken up instead of reforming and putting out the crap from everything sucks on.

That being said, they got me through high school and college.
posted by TheBones at 7:55 PM on May 31, 2011


About 8 or so years ago a friend of mine was getting his Ph.D. at UW-Madison, in some specific area of biology. We both grew up listening to punk rock. I was living in Minneapolis and would visit him in Madison. On my first visit Ben said, "Yeah it's kinda cool. I'm working in the same lab that Milo from the Descendents got his Ph.D. in. I'm told he now works for Dow Chemical. Well, once a punk always a punk."

I still listen to "two things at once" fairly often. great stuff.
posted by rainperimeter at 8:14 PM on May 31, 2011


item, yeah, some of those old songs don't age very well. "Kabuki Girl" was also confounding.

Back in 1985 I interviewed them outside CBGBs in their van. One of their girlfriends broke wind and we had to stop the interview because no one could keep a straight face. I sort of suspect that it was a running gag they pull on everyone foolish enough to follow them into their van.
posted by cazoo at 8:23 PM on May 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


I'm a Loser: for those who prefer a little casual homophobia in their sugary pop-punk.

Ditto. That song is great until that last verse, where you turn it off and say "the Fuck?"

Classic Desendents: I'm The One. Merican.

One song from 1996. The other from 2004.
posted by gcbv at 8:33 PM on May 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


I hate myself for not seeing them in Melbourne. Every review I read was awesome complementary to the extreme and speaking to some people that went apparently hardened punks were in tears. Anyway, some of my favourites:

Sour Grapes
Clean Sheets
Get The Time

So many high school memories. At least I saw ALL.

Didn't Blink-182 start life as a Descendents cover band or something?
posted by bdave at 11:58 PM on May 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


And watching that preview gave me goosebumps, thanks.
posted by bdave at 12:07 AM on June 1, 2011


They played again in April in Long Beach and have a show in June at NXNE in Toronto. Thanks for the moshcam video, I hadn't seen that. Hope they do a wider tour but they've already cancelled a few shows because of Milo's voice. Hope he can pull more shows off!
posted by jeffmik at 12:29 AM on June 1, 2011


ALL @ the Prince Of Wales on the night of my 18th in '92... a damn fine night, what I remember of it... still have the Allroy Saves shirt I bought that night in a box somewhere...
posted by russm at 3:34 AM on June 1, 2011


Descendants > All.

Undeniable but for some reason All's "Mass Nerder is an amazing album, especially the lead-off track "The World's on Heroin".
posted by jeffen at 5:07 AM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]


I want to be stereotyped. I want to be classified.

Their show at FunFunFunFest last year was one of the best shows i've ever seen.
posted by jbelshaw at 5:57 AM on June 1, 2011


Along with Big Black, Jawbreaker, and Minor Threat, the Descendents were a life-changing band for me.
Descendents more-or-less created the concept of pop-punk, and nobody has done it better since.

Milo Goes To College is one of my top 50 desert island records, and Clean Sheets and Silly Girl slot easily into my top 25 all time favorite songs.

time to go put on my vinyl copy of Somery and turn the volume to 11.

The first time I saw the Descendents, they were the fastest band I'd ever seen...


couldn't sell out a telephone booth, what I'm telling you is the truth! we're the proud, the few, DESCENDENTS, rockin' alone tonight...
posted by namewithoutwords at 6:02 AM on June 1, 2011


Everything I had to say pretty much already got said here (post-reform songs are by definition not classic, they sure had some embarrassing lyrics, etc) so I'll share my one private story about the band: I interviewed Bill Stephenson when they were doing press for the "Everything Sucks" tour. Asked him "if you could have a third eye anywhere on your body, where would it be?" He said right above his penis, for "action shots."

Unrelatedly, now that 20 years have gone by since my prime Descendents-audience years, a lot of the songs reveal a weird, proprietary attitude toward women/"girls." Bikeage and Hope, two of my all-time favorites, are hard to listen to for that reason...
posted by jtron at 9:27 AM on June 1, 2011


KWAH-KWAH, KWAH-KWAH!
posted by Hoopo at 10:43 AM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]


Sadly, my prediction that they'd be the Beach Boys of the 1990s never came to pass.
posted by whuppy at 11:53 AM on June 1, 2011


jeffen: “Undeniable but for some reason All's "Mass Nerder is an amazing album, especially the lead-off track ‘The World's on Heroin’.”

Holy WOW. I have not heard that song in many, many years. Thanks for reminding me.
posted by koeselitz at 1:52 PM on June 1, 2011


Unrelatedly, now that 20 years have gone by since my prime Descendents-audience years, a lot of the songs reveal a weird, proprietary attitude toward women/"girls." Bikeage and Hope, two of my all-time favorites, are hard to listen to for that reason...

Hope is so Nice Guy it hurts. But it also hurts because it's so true to life. The night before their Sydney show some drunk at a party was singing it, and it was painful because he was so naked about how he was living the song.
Didn't help that I was in the middle of something similar.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 3:44 PM on June 1, 2011 [1 favorite]


I'm a Loser: for those who prefer a little casual homophobia in their sugary pop-punk.

I've always had that in my head as a line from the jocks he's singing about. Milo being the one with the tight trousers and all.
posted by MattWPBS at 3:53 PM on June 1, 2011


They played Punk Rock Bowling in Vegas last Sunday. The crowd could best be described as "ebullient".
posted by outlaw of averages at 12:12 AM on June 2, 2011


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