Far better than average documentary on punk rock and the punk/reggae connection. Researched and written by the very fine rock journalist Robert Palmer (r.i.p.), this is smart and comprehensive. Broadcast on PBS in 1995 and currently unavailable on video or DVD. Enjoy.
Parts 3 - 6 after the jump…
Here’s the classic Bad Brains video culled from 4 hours of footage shot over the course of 3 nights of performances at CBGB in December of 1982. Hardcore rock/reggae doesn’t get any better than this. While most of this footage has been available in bits and pieces of varying quality on Youtube, here’s the entire video with superb sound and visuals.
You can buy this on DVD from MVD Visual here.
More badness from Bad Brains after the jump…
This has already been flagged on YouTube. Watch the insanity while you can!
(via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk)
Based on the new Fantagraphics book, Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film
From teenage ragers to mohawked post-apocalyptic gutteroids to actual, bona fide punks, this two-day multi-event mega movie showcase of pure power is a brick in the face of every film snob and/or high school principal! The book’s editors, Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly, will be on hand to casually guide you through the garbage-strewn annals of punk celluloid history. This is the final stop on their West Coast book tour, and they’re saving all the special guests, surprises and chaos for the grand finale! Plus, Sticky Rick’s will be here to curate a punk sticker display in the Cinefamily lobby!
The line-up for this is nothing short of wonderful:
TV Party Tonight: kicks off the event with a look at how punk was portrayed on the small screen. Who could forget the punk rockers on CHiPs and Quincey? The Dickies with Don Rickles on CPO Sharkey or Black Flag on Entertainment Tonight? Then it all goes kaboom with the seldom-seen Afterschool Special The Day My Kid Went Punk (one of Tara’s favorites).
Urgh! A Music War: A 1981 film of live performances by Devo, Dead Kennedys, X, The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Gang of Four, The Police, Wall of Voodoo, Klaus Nomi, Gary Numan, OMD, XTC, Pere Ubu, Magazine and more). The screening will be followed by scenes not included in the US version.
La Brune Et Moi, a 1980 look on the Parisian punk underground with Metal Urbain, the Go-Go Pigalles and Astroflash.
Shellshock Rock, a 1979 account of the Belfast, Ireland punk scene with The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers.
D.O.A.: A seldom seen gem featuring X-Ray Spex, Generation X, The Dead Boys, The Sex Pistols and an insane interview with a nodding-out Sid VIcious and Nancy Spungeon. Directed by Lech Kowalski.
Also screening, The Class of 1984, Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (with cast members and director, Dave Markey, Allan Moyle’s Times Square (with Tim Curry), The Slog Movie (LA-punk doc with Fear, TSOL, and the Circle Jerks), a special “punk in cinema montage” by the fine folks at Everything is Terrible!, and there will even be an after party at Part Time Punks when the on-screen madness ends! This looks to be a blow-out good time, people! Festival passes are on sale until midnight on Thursday.
Co-presented by Fantagraphics, L.A. Weekly, Alamo Drafthouse, Razorcake, Big Wheel Magazine, Don’t Knock The Rock and Part Time Punks.
Siouxsie segment from BBC documentary on the ‘Queens Of British Pop’. Odd to see Ms. Sioux being described as ‘pop’. Whatever the case, it’s a tasty bit of video and Siouxsie looks absolutely lovely. My heroine.
Siouxsie on Ulster TV sometime in the late 70’s.
In the annals of punk history, this has got to be one of the strangest events recorded on video. The term ‘what the fuck’ was invented for moments like this. The kids in the foreground seem utterly disinterested in the weirdness unfolding before them.
You gotta love David Thomas for doing something so absolutely freaky. Alfred Jarry would appreciate this.
Harry Potter seems particularly bewildered.
David Thomas grew up in Cleveland Heights Ohio. On November 24, 2006 which was BLACK FRIDAY (one of the year’s busiest shopping days), the Border’s bookstore at Severence Mall in Cleveland Heights Ohio allowed Pere Ubu to play an in-store 5 song set. The “quiet” version of Ubu chased folks out of the store…it was great. Here they close the show with SONIC REDUCER.
The Ramones rehearsing in the loft of their artistic director Arturo Vega in 1975. Vega created The Ramones’ logo, one of the most enduring images in rock and roll history.
Man, this is thrilling!
A sly, surly and sardonically funny Bob Dylan lays into Time Magazine correspondent Horace Judson in this scene captured by D.A. Pennebaker in 1965. This IS punk rock! John Lydon was 9 years old when this footage was shot. Bob went out on a limb when most pop stars played it safe. You know Lennon was paying attention.
Judson ended up writing a favorable piece on Dylan.
In response to the recent Glenn Danzig piece I posted, Dangerous Minds reader Phillip J. Birmingham sent me a link to a video of Danzig getting a taste of his own medicine. Apparently Glenn can’t walk it like he talks it. The incident documented below happened several years ago. So, it seems Glenn has a history of acting like a prick.
This may be old news for some of you, but it’s new to me. I’ve only recently become a fan of Glenn’s misadventures.
Danzig allegedly got into a scuffle with North Side Kings singer and frequent Soulfly collaborator Danny Marianinho following Danzig’s performance in Tuba City, Arizona. The following is Marianinho’s official statement regarding the incident, as sent to Blabbermouth.net:
Before crazy rumors begin to spread I would like to explain what happened:
North Side Kings were to play with Danzig last night in Tuba City, Arizona. To make a long story short the whole show was a disaster and a few bands got bumped off. Mr. Danzig (or his management??) refused to push back the original scheduled time slot so NORTH SIDE KINGS and RAPID FIRE would have to play ‘after’ his set. Whatever — we agreed to play later because we drove 6 hours and didn’t feel like going home without playing. Needless to say, as soon as DANZIG was finished, the venue turned on the lights and DANZIG’s crew and the staging company began to take the stage apart almost instantly. I confronted Mr. Danzig backstage while he was signing autographs and told him I thought he was an asshole because of his ‘rock star’ attitude and no consideration towards the FEW other bands that got bumped off tonight. In a fit of rage he turned around and slammed me into the wall yelling ‘Fuck you, motherfucker,’ trying to be a big, tough guy in front of his fans. I, in self-defense, punched him in the face, knocking him out as he was attacking me again. He went down, bleeding from his mouth, eyes rolled back, and in shock that he got knocked to the floor so quickly. A friend happened to tape the entire incident and this is all documented. Many witnesses saw him attack me, and I did what any man would do.
It was unfortunate that this went the way it did — and I hoped Glenn Danzig learned a valuable lesson tonight: Do not lay your hands on anyone unless you can handle what may happen. I apologize for nothing, except for the poor little kids that had to witness this big asshole get his ass kicked in a matter of seconds…”
Previously on DM: Former Misfit Glenn Danzig throws hissy fit.
Acclaimed British journalist and punk historian Jon Savage has curated Black Hole: Californian Punk 1977-1980, a unique and revealing compilation of the Golden State’s hugely diverse pre-thrash punk scene that gets released November 15th.
That seems strange on the surface. Strange that it’s both taken this long into the 21st-century American punk revival and reissue era for such a quality collection to emerge, and that it’s taken an Englishman rather than a Californian to do it. But this particular Englishman is more than qualified. As noted in his recent interview in the Quietus, Savage hepped up to the scene while on the West Coast in 1978 as a journalist for Sounds magazine, hanging with the likes of the Screamers and the Avengers and confirming to himself and others that the UK didn’t own punk.
Savage’s inclusion of both Northern and Southern Cali bands like the Bags, the Alley Cats, the Weirdos, Black Randy & the Metro Squad, and the Dils makes Black Hole most resemble the compilations released by the legendary short-lived L.A.-based Dangerhouse label run by Pat “Rand” Garrett and David Brown from 1978 to 1980. But Savage augments those with a range of others, from superstars like the Dead Kennedys to second-tiers like Crime, Middle Class and the Sleepers, and on to important obscurities like the two-single-releasing Aurora Pushups.
One of Savage’s rationales surrounding the comp, on which he expounds in Quietus, proves striking:
I don’t like hardcore. It’s too ‘boy’ for me. I was into the idea of punk being made for and by outsiders. And that meant outsiders of every hue, and that meant weird boys, hopeless boys, strong women, and gay men and women. As soon as it starts to get a machismo, and this happened in UK punk, too – I’m out of there.
Black Hole will join Penelope Spheeris’s classic late-‘70s documentary The Decline of Western Civilization as primary documents of a rough and energetic multi-city underground music scene—one that reflected the social dysfunction of the state in political schizophrenia with the world’s eighth-biggest economy.
Here’s the title track by the Urinals. This is Cali.
Get: Black Hole (Californian Punk 1977-1980) [CD]
