In the past few weeks we've spoken with a number of bands, a comedian, and a couple comic book writers. Don't miss out on these interviews:
Punknews content is syndicated to a handful of your favorite social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Join our Last.fm group and contribute your listening habits to our weekly charts. All of our high definition video footage can be found at Vimeo.
Here's your final question and answer of the week from the Punknews Formspring:
Q: You got a last wish? Last will and testament before this place goes kapeesh?A: Man, that's a ghoulish thing to ask. How do I want my possessions to be distributed after formspring shuts down? The closure of a website doesn't necessarily mandate that I contemplate my impending mortality.
Though, if Nick Blinko and Rudimentary Peni have taught me anything, it's always a good time to contemplate one's own impending mortality. So, my advice is this:
First, whatever it is that you want to do, start working on it today. I don't mean "today" is in pretty soon, but I mean TODAY, as in this very day. Go without sleep. Skip that episode of The Simpsons (SPOILER ALERT, its okay but not as good as the older stuff) Don't live vicariously through other people's achievements. The Grim Reaper will come knocking on your door before you know it and he will not wait a few weeks for you to wrap up that screenplay that you've been working on.
Second, in a more direct sense, go to that concert that you want to go to if you can. I'm not saying sell all your possessions to go see OM in Bangladesh or something, but if the only thing holding you back from going to a concert is "because you're sleepy" or because "you don't like the crowd" MAN UP (or woman up) junior. Go to that concert! Bad concerts don't leave permanent scars and sometimes they are even enjoyable in their badness or comedically. (Ask me about Days of the New Sometime). BUT, good concerts will leave the impression of a lifetime. Ask me about GWAR, Amebix, Rolling Stones, Melvins, Jello Biafra, CD6, Morris/Rollins or OFF! sometimes.
You'll be dead before you know it! Get to work!
-John G
PS- Formspring is back, despite my words last week. So, if you want to ask us questions, you can still send us questions at formspring.
Of course your day wouldn't be complete without knowing every inane detail of your humble editors' lives. Follow @aubinpaul, @adamwhite, @howtobepunk, @johngentile, @dante3000, @ameliaaacline, @kiraface, @mcflynnthm, @kidecono, @wackymondo and @BrittStrummer's every move at Twitter. A few of the new fathers on staff have even started a punk dad blog.
Where else are you online? Share your links below and keep connected with the Punknews community.
Check out the Punknews Music page to stream all sorts of new music from recent or upcoming releases. Our latest additions include:
Also, don't forget to check out a brand new song from Paint It Black.
We've also expanded our podcast empire to something that will eventually resemble a network. Be sure to check out the original Punknews Podcast (subscribe via RSS or iTunes), Adam's Ontario showcase Some Party (subscribe via RSS or iTunes), Matt and Mondo's Punk Rock Power Hour, and Greg Simpson and Greg Moore's Two Gregs One Podcast.
Hello everyone and welcome to Navel Gazing: your look back in the week in Punknews. I'm Brittany Strummer Bryne Yancey and I'll be your guide through some of the juiciest, most popular and otherwise noteworthy stories from the last seven days. Remember, every Punknews story is built from tips from our wonderful, good-looking readers, so get to submitting. Here's what got the strange, slow and old community talking this week:
"I pull at her buckle; it's turned around to the side of her pants. Ten scene points. I grab her hair, which is jet-black and covers her face in just the right way. Twenty-five scene points. She's about to get the boy you couldn't catch in between the sheets. One hundred scene points."
With that, we hand over this Sunday evening to the Punknews community, where anything is possible, from the next amusing-then-overwrought meme, to the creation of bands and message boards, to alienating sports chatter. So talk amongst yourselves, spin some tracks in the Navel Gazing turntable.fm room and we'll see you Monday morning.
In the past few weeks we've spoken with a number of bands and a comedian. Don't miss out on these interviews:
Punknews content is syndicated to a handful of your favorite social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Join our Last.fm group and contribute your listening habits to our weekly charts. All of our high definition video footage can be found at Vimeo.
Here's your final question and answer of the week from the Punknews Formspring:
Q: What artist was influential to many of the first wave punk rockers that doesn't get respect from contemporary punk rockers? Is this a bad thing?A: Wow! That is a phenomenally great question, anonymous-me-from-several-months-ago!
I've spoken about this before, but from my subjective perspective, it seems that the younger and youngest generation of kids don't care about the history of their music. I may be wrong about this, but it seems like younger people these days don't know much about the Ramones, sex Pistols, New York Dolls, Bad brains, etc etc etc. People like to dis on the Sex Pistols these days, but no matter how "influential" you think Refused, or Jawbreaker, or Third Eye Blind is, The Sex Pistols were 100 times more influential, literally. Plus they rocked man. they rocked the hell out,
I attribute this loss of history to text messaging, but i'm not sure how the two intersect. On the other hand, it could just be that era of punk rock is over and it is fading away and being merged with "indie" music or whatever. By comparison, I don't really know anything about Tommy Dorsey, or Glen Miller, or Gene Krupa, but back in the day, they were the Jay-Z's of swing music. And now, no one gives a rat's patootie about them. Maybe the same thing is happening to Johnny Rotten. Hell, even Elvis is being forgotten. ELVIS!!!!
Anyways, in loosing the history of the important punk rockers, I think we are also losing their influences. i know alot of the early west coast punks were big fans of glam rock like Sweet (THE SWEET - FOX ON THE RUN (original album version UK)), Slade (Slade - Mama Weer All Crazee Now) and T-Rex (T. Rex - Rip off). All those bands were awesome.
On the east coast, a lot of the bands were influenced by the original hard rockers like AC/DC (Shot Down In Flames by AC/DC the second best band ever?), Van Halen (Van Halen - Van Halen II - Beautiful Girls), and the Nuge. (Ted Nugent - Stranglehold) Nuge has some really whack politics now, but his classic 70's albums are all beasts. Really, for a while, The Nuge was the ultimate badass.
But, I think the most under appreciated musician who influenced the most original punk rockers would have to be Alice Cooper. the 80's might have transformed him into a cartoonish glam metal, hair rocker, but in the 60's and 70's, the Coop was a real threat. He killed himself on stage at every show! Zappa mentored him! He sang about having sex with dead people! The Coop was goth before goth existed. He made rock go from being sexually dangerous to physically dangerous. Plus the band is phenomenal. Check out theKiller, Billion Dollar Babies, Love it to dEath, and Schools Out albums. They are ALL mind blowingly good.
You could argue that the Stooges had a bigger impact, but they are more appreciated in punk than the Coop. Also, it's a tight battle between he stooges and The Coop, but I think the Coop is just slightly better due to all the radical things that he brought into music.
My point is this. Don't dismiss the history of punk rock and music in general. You will find amazing music that you never could have conceived. Moreso, you will find that you appreciate contemporary music that much more because you can now see the strands connecting music.
-Johnny G
PS- Form spring is shutting down, so this will be the very last question answered here. It's been a good run, y'all. But if you would like to have more questions answered, you can send in questions in the same way as here on our tumblr page. http://punknews.tumblr.com/ask
Of course your day wouldn't be complete without knowing every inane detail of your humble editors' lives. Follow @aubinpaul, @adamwhite, @howtobepunk, @johngentile, @dante3000, @ameliaaacline, @kiraface, @mcflynnthm, @kidecono, @wackymondo and @BrittStrummer's every move at Twitter. A few of the new fathers on staff have even started a punk dad blog.
Where else are you online? Share your links below and keep connected with the Punknews community.
Check out the Punknews Music page to stream all sorts of new music from recent or upcoming releases. Our latest additions include:
Also, don't forget to check out a new song from Ivy League, a pair of new jams from Success, the latest 10-inch from Epic Problem, the latest release from Gateway District, the new album from After the Fall and six songs from Brutal Youth's new album.
We've also expanded our podcast empire to something that will eventually resemble a network. Be sure to check out the original Punknews Podcast (subscribe via RSS or iTunes), Adam's Ontario showcase Some Party (subscribe via RSS or iTunes), Matt and Mondo's Punk Rock Power Hour, and Greg Simpson and Greg Moore's Two Gregs One Podcast.
Hello everyone and welcome to Navel Gazing: your look back in the week in Punknews. I'm Brittany Strummer and I'll be your guide through some of the juiciest, most popular and otherwise noteworthy stories from the last seven days. Remember, every Punknews story is built from tips from our wonderful, good-looking readers, so get to submitting. Here's what got the strange, slow and old community talking this week:
With that, we hand over this Sunday evening to the Punknews community, where anything is possible, from the next amusing-then-overwrought meme, to the creation of bands and message boards, to alienating sports chatter. So talk amongst yourselves, spin some tracks in the Navel Gazing turntable.fm room and we'll see you Monday morning.
In the past few weeks we've spoken with a number of bands and a comedian. Don't miss out on these interviews:
Punknews content is syndicated to a handful of your favorite social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Join our Last.fm group and contribute your listening habits to our weekly charts. All of our high definition video footage can be found at Vimeo.
Here's your question and answer of the week from the Punknews Formspring:
Q: When it comes to the ages of members of a new band, would you say that older musicians are more likely to be well-received by the punk/hardcore community than by a mainstream audience? Or is it about the same (where the cutoff age seems to be about 25)?A: That's a pretty good question. I think that if the band members are already established, age is not as important. I mean, if say… Stevie Wonder started a new band, then of course he's going to be well received simply because he has already earned goodwill. Of course, the reverse is true. Like, if Kevin Federline released London Calling 2, it might still get a bad wrap simply because people (myself included) would have a hard time extracting said douche's personality from the work itself.
But, for newer bands, the fact is, as ugly as it may be, looks and age are incredibly important. They are not ultimate barriers, but those that are old and/or ugly that do become famous are the exception to the rule.
If we look at pop music since the 2000's, almost all the most famous people have been very young: Britney Spears, Biebs, Taylor Swift, Jonas bros, Joe Pelone, Rhinnna- all those people have been young and good looking before becoming famous and well received. Really, the last ugly dude that became famous that I can think of is John Popper from Blues Traveler and he was only famous for like 7 minutes.
You could argue that people like Susan Boyle became famous despite being old and not being what is conventially described as attractive, but the fact of the matter is, not being young and/or able to appear in Seventeen magazine was sort of her selling point (yes, she is a good singer). But, stack her up against all the other musicians that are well received, and you'll see she is in the minority.
So! Is punk/hardcore/metal more receptive to old/ugly people? The answer is yes, but only marginally so. As for the age dynamic, most bands that make it big in our small, small, tiny, insignificant world, are young when they do so: Against Me!, The Gaslight Anthem, The Lawrence Arms, Gnarboots. All those people were basically under 25 when they had their first "big hit."
There are exceptions to this rule, and the ratio of exceptions is bigger than pop music, but only by a little bit. What punk guy became famous after being 25? Frank Turner maybe? Even bands that we consider older, were already kind of big when they started- Franz Nicolay, WIFS.
Where punk does get the upper hand is ugly people. In punk rock, being ugly is not as big as a barrier to being well known as it is in pop. I won't name names, but let us look at the converse. A lot of our most well known bands, AM!, Gaslight, Vivian Girls, Joyce Manor, Menzingers, PS Elliot, are all packed with good looking people.
So, even us punk rockers, who "don't care about such trivial things as sexual attraction" must admit to ourselves that we like a pretty face.
Though, there are bands that are fairly popular in the punk rock world despite not having conventional good looks, and at a significantly higher ratio than pop music. I'd attribute that to two main things.
First, because punk rock has less money for advertising and promotion, the bands, pr companies, and even fans are exposed to, and fixate less to what the band looks like. In many situations, the first time you see a band is when you see them live. It's a rare specimen indeed that will go see a band and then storm out only because the band is ugly.
Check out the Punknews Music page to stream all sorts of new music from recent or upcoming releases. Our latest additions include:
Also, don't forget to check out 6 songs from Brutal Youth's new release.
We've also expanded our podcast empire to something that will eventually resemble a network. Be sure to check out the original Punknews Podcast (subscribe via RSS or iTunes), Adam's Ontario showcase Some Party (subscribe via RSS or iTunes), Matt and Mondo's Punk Rock Power Hour, and Greg Simpson and Greg Moore's Two Gregs One Podcast.
Hello everyone and welcome to Navel Gazing: your look back in the week in Punknews. I'm Brittany Strummer and I'll be your guide through some of the juiciest, most popular and otherwise noteworthy stories from the last seven days. Remember, every Punknews story is built from tips from our wonderful, good-looking readers, so get to submitting. Here's what got the strange, slow and old community talking this week:
With that, we hand over this Sunday evening to the Punknews community, where anything is possible, from the next amusing-then-overwrought meme, to the creation of bands and message boards, to alienating sports chatter. So talk amongst yourselves, spin some tracks in the Navel Gazing turntable.fm room and we'll see you Monday morning.
In the past few weeks we've spoken with a number of bands. Don't miss out on these interviews:
Punknews content is syndicated to a handful of your favorite social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Join our Last.fm group and contribute your listening habits to our weekly charts. All of our high definition video footage can be found at Vimeo.
Here's your question and answer of the week from the Punknews Formspring:
Q: Who would you rather see between Flag and Black Flag if they were playing adjoining clubs on the same night?A: Good question, Justin! Good question, indeed! I would really be torn. On one hand, you have Greg Ginn, who is a certified genius. Like for real. If you've ever seen one of the multitudes of live shoes that Ginn has done, it will just blow you away. Ginn has been criticized for being a difficult person to get along with, and just generally being a weirdo, but, honestly, if that's what one has to accept to get pure, magic guitar like Ginn plays, it's way worthwhile. Don't believe me? Here is evidence of Ginn's genius- watch the second half where he just DESTROYS the theremin (Greg Ginn @ Coachella 2012) Also, Black Flag has Ron Reyes who i just interviewed and is a hella nice dude. Plus, live he still kicks out the jams. (Black Flag Jealous Again - Greg Ginn at Ron Reyes 50th B-Day July 24, 2010).
But, on the other hand, the last Black Flag project with Ginn, the ill fated 2003 shows, were… terrible. Still, I am sure that the Black Flag shows will be stellar.
On the other hand, Ginn was fundamental to Black Flag, but he wasn't the only fundamental part of Black Flag. Flag has Keith Morris who is making some of the best music of his life and is still in his prime with OFF!, it has Chuck Dukowski who is still in his prime with CD6 (I saw them live and they were AWESOME), when Dez is doing BF songs with the Misfits, they are totally awesome. Plus, Bill Stevenson and Stephen Eggeton are as clutch a unit as there is.
Word is that Keith may also do some post-damaged material. Also, we know that FLAG is amazing live, because they already played an amazingly amazing set. (BLACK FLAG - Nervous Breakdown EP (FULL SET). LIVE 2011 Santa Monica Civic. GV30)
So, it's a tough choice. Right now I have plans to see both bands. But, if I had to pick…
Because Flag has 5 legends that I'd love to see play BF songs, (as opposed to Black Flag's 2), because Flag might have Keith perform "My War", and because Keith Morris is THE MAN (The Duke is the man, too) (and Dez Bill, and Stephen) I'd have to go see Flag.
But, as both Ron Reyes and and Stephen Eggerton expressed, you don't have to pick! You can see both, and I HIGHLY advise that.
Also, stay tuned for a really awesome FLAG feature coming up soon.
-John G
Of course your day wouldn't be complete without knowing every inane detail of your humble editors' lives. Follow @aubinpaul, @adamwhite, @justinaugust, @brian_shultz, @dante3000, @ameliaaacline, @kiraface, @mcflynnthm, @kidecono, @wackymondo, @BrittStrummer, and @bryneyancey's every move at Twitter. A few of the new fathers on staff have even started a punk dad blog.
Where else are you online? Share your links below and keep connected with the Punknews community.
Check out the Punknews Music page to stream all sorts of new music from recent or upcoming releases. Our latest additions include:
Also, don't forget to check out a new song from San Jose, CA's Point of View, a new song from Albany, NY's After the Fall, and a new song from New York City, NY's Stigma.
We've also expanded our podcast empire to something that will eventually resemble a network. Be sure to check out the original Punknews Podcast (subscribe via RSS or iTunes), Adam's Ontario showcase Some Party (subscribe via RSS or iTunes), Matt and Mondo's Punk Rock Power Hour, and Greg Simpson and Greg Moore's Two Gregs One Podcast.
Hello everyone and welcome to Navel Gazing: your look back in the week in Punknews. I'm Brittany Strummer and I'll be your guide through some of the juiciest, most popular and otherwise noteworthy stories from the last seven days. Remember, every Punknews story is built from tips from our wonderful, good-looking readers, so get to submitting. Here's what got the strange, slow and old community talking this week:
With that, we hand over this Sunday evening to the Punknews community, where anything is possible, from the next amusing-then-overwrought meme, to the creation of bands and message boards, to alienating sports chatter. So talk amongst yourselves, spin some tracks in the Navel Gazing turntable.fm room and we'll see you Monday morning.
