Punk Pod

“Punk rock really needs about 10 episodes to do it justice, but we’ll try and tackle [it] anyway. Learn all about this movement right now. “

This is where I learned about Los Saicos. It was fun for an imbecile like me – curious to see what the more refined punko snobs think.

6 Replies to “Punk Pod”

    1. Solid podcast by the way. Chuck Bryant has a movie podcast, too. Movie Crush is definitely worth a listen, but it’s front-loaded with a lot of filler. Eventually they talk about the movie.

      Oh, and Richard Hell was the bass player in Television, not the guitarist.

  1. Informative podcast, especially when it came to 80’s punk and beyond, about which I don’t know much. I’m pretty much the old guy in the bar they talked about, the one saying it was all over by ’79. For me, punk was successfully ultilized later by more poppy bands (like the Replacements), but as a genre in itself was pushed to the limit very early.

    The podcasters were a little shakier when talking about early punk and proto-punk. Makerbot pointed out the Richard Hell error. I found that error funny, because RH, as bassist for Television, was in over his head musically with guitarists like Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine. I’m not knocking him, just pointing out that he was far more a lyricist and performance artist than a musician.

    Also, at one point I think they said that the Velvet Underground was not proto-punk, which is wrong. Even if you define proto-punk as down-strumming (as do the podcasters), you can hear that in several VU songs (“I’m Waiting For My Man,” “Sister Ray”). Interestingly, you can also hear it in “Communication Breakdown,” but not many people would call Led Zeppelin proto-punk, although early Zep had an aggression that was repugnant to many hippies at the time.

    The problem here is that it’s hard to define proto-punk in purely musical terms. It was more a matter of attitude and aggressive playing (which can be done without down-strumming every chord). Where the hippie ethos was “let’s noodle on our guitars and bliss-out communally,” proto-punk bands were more “we’re here to play loud–if you like it, great, if not, fuck off.” Some bands (again, like early Zeppelin) had both hippie and sorta proto-punk modes.

    I don’t remember if the podcasters said this, but it’s often said that punk killed off the hippie ethos. That’s an over-simplification. The assault began in the late 60’s with proto-punk and continued in the early 70’s with glam and early metal. Also in the late 60’s, a more unintentional reaction began with aggressive blues-rock. Many of those bands had exhausted themselves by the mid-70’s, so punk came along to finish the job. Except it didn’t work. Musical hippedom never fully died, or we wouldn’t have jam bands.

    Sorry for length of that. Avoiding real work this a.m., and that kind of discussion always pulls my string.

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