EVERYBODY'S HAPPY NOWADAYS

Listen to EVERYBODY'S HAPPY NOWADAYS by The Buzzcocks.

The Buzzcocks were never just "punk." They were "punk-pop" or "poppy punk" or "radio friendly punk." Well, not that last one, because of their tendency to name songs things like Orgasm Addict. Not exactly radio friendly. But musically, The Buzzcocks are as accessible as you would ever want.

Everybody's Happy Nowadays even embodies qualities that you don't normally hear in punk music. Wistfulness, nostalgia, even regret. It reminds me of a late 70s All Summer Long, in fact. Fun, but misty eyed. An excellent song.

Thus ends our little tour of punk music! Tomorrow I will be posting a Jason-like song in his stead (he's currently off in Oz, so we'll see), then next week we'll be back with some exciting content and (hopefully) a remodel of the blogspace. Can't wait!

Photo: Soho Graffiti (4).

TYPICAL GIRLS

Listen to TYPICAL GIRLS by The Slits.

Absolutely classic punk rawk from The Slits. What, you were expecting something more?

Photo: Soho Graffiti (3).

LONDON GIRLS

Listen to LONDON GIRLS by The Vibrators.

In ideological terms, The Vibrators can't catch a break. They weren't REAL punks, you see. They didn't have an agenda. Careerists. Hacks. Dressed-up pub rockers. They weren't into subverting the establishment or setting the scene.

Thankfully, here at the blog we listen to our music, not argue with it. And their first album is pretty fine (and to be fair, most music fans agree).

When I went looking for fun punk music to share with all of you, I frankly didn't expect to dip into the Vibrators catalog. But London Girls came up one day when I was thinking of something else, and that riff never quit. It stuck with me for a few days until I was forced to admit defeat, and upload the song.

Photo: Soho Graffiti (2).

DO THE DU

Listen to DO THE DU by A Certain Ratio.

A late blog this morning, but with the expected low traffic with today's holiday, I'm sure you both will forgive us.

I know none of you will skip this post, because that would be silly. Do The Du is only the most danciest, floor filler-est, funnest dance punk single imaginable. And that's no exaggeration. Well, slight exaggeration, because I'm sure someone out there could imagine a song that would automatically force everyone in the world to stand up and pogo for two minutes straight and sweat five buckets of sweat.

But that song would just sound like Do The Du. With video game sounds. We should make this song. Then we could make it our national anthem like Valentine Strasser. The Republic of Liberal Fascism. That would be good.

Photo: Soho graffiti (1).

YOUR GENERATION

Listen to YOUR GENERATION by Generation X.

Your Generation is another "important" punk rock song that also happens to be fun to listen to.

Two good facts about Your Generation, one not very well known, one even less well known. One, Your Generation is sung by the lead singer of Generation X. Obviously. That lead singer's name was Billy Idol. Most people that grew up on MTV don't realize that Billy Idol was once a legit punk rocker.

The even less well known fact is that our buddy Bayou Chris once said that Your Generation was "the most important song of all time." Fact.

Photo: Empire State Building series, #4 (New Yrs Eve '07).

SAND IN MY JOINTS

Listen to SAND IN MY JOINTS by Wire.

Wire made their reputation for smart, angular post-punk rock. (Well, with my generation, they made their reputation as the band that Elastica ripped off.)

People that are at all familiar with Wire know their debut album, Pink Flag, which is strikingly concise and aggressive (and whence Three Girl Rhumba, the Elastica song, comes). Over time the band got longer and more esoteric. By the time their third album came out, 154, Wire was truly sui generis. But here at the blog, we like the fun stuff. Sand In My Joints, from Wire's second album, is about as fun as Wire gets.

In other words, it may not a party, but it's rifftastic, and it's short, so what's not to like?

Photo: Empire State Building series, #3.

AMBITION

Listen to AMBITION by Subway Sect.

If there's one thing that's been consistent in all my years of listening to music, from old skool rap, to Britpop, to Ghanaian funk rock, it's my belief in this fundamental truth of the universe: Video Game Sounds Make It Better. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ambition by The Subway Sect.

You can go other places to find the story of Vic Godard and Bernie Rhodes and why this group released so little music, but the point of this post is to reaffirm the truth: Video Game Sounds Make It Better.

What Ambition sounds like is slightly incompetent Jonathan Richman playing a Television song, with completely (completely!) incongruous Atari noises bopping along in the back. And that's what it is! It's been reported that Rhodes or somebody overdubbed an actual arcade game without the group's permission, before it was released as a surprise hit in 1978. Whoever did it, they knew this basic truth: Video Game Sounds Make It Better.

Photo: Empire State Building series, #2.

LOVE COMES IN SPURTS

Listen to LOVE COMES IN SPURTS by Richard Hell & The Voidoids.

Love Comes In Spurts is a seminal punk rock song. It's two minutes of unbridled energy, but it's also a song that has long endured with music lovers.

You see what I've done there? On first listen, Love Comes In Spurts is what you might call a single entendre song, but I think it's better to call it something like a reverse double entendre. It's not really about sex (though it is), but more about the pain and difficulty of intense adolescent relationships. As Mark Deming writes,

Hell's real subject wasn't Eros so much as the maddening search for validation through a relationship. ... [I]t's made obvious that this song isn't about sex, it's about love that arrives in measures too few and far between to ease the pain of a harsh and abrasive world.

This reading is defensible with the benefit of hindsight, as Richard Hell proved to be one of the more literate and intellectual members of the New York punk scene. Likewise, it's apparent now that the late, accomplished Robert Quine's jagged and angular guitar attack is an aesthetic choice, not garage band incompetence. A lot going on in this dumb little ditty!

Photo: Empire State Building Series, #1.

LOLA

Listen to LOLA by The Raincoats.

This one is a curious pick, because I think it's a curio, not a classic. The drums on here are so amateurish they almost make me want to join a band!

But The Raincoats are another seminal feminist punk band, famously name-checked by Kurt Cobain back in the day, and loads of people love this version in particular. Also, I've been listening to The Kinks non-stop this week, so this cover is a way to give a little love back to them while staying on the theme. Plus, you have to say the female viewpoint to this song does give it something a little different.

Anyway, have a listen so you'll know what The Raincoats are all about.

Before we go, we'd like to share some excellent news with you. Starting tomorrow, and continuing every (or at least the occasional) Friday, our good friend Jason will be spinning his tunes here on the blog. He's got carte blanche to post whatever he wants, so you'll get something very different than what we're doing the rest of the week. Check back here tomorrow to see what he's got.

No matter what, we'll be back here Monday with some more fun punk music!

Photo: Palace kitchen chimneys.

SPLIT

Listen to SPLIT by Kleenex/LiLiPUT.

I was just saying yesterday that sometimes these posts write themselves. Here we go again! Today we have John Harris of the Guardian to thank, because he has said everything I want to say about this fantastically ecstatic joint:

With lyrics like 'Hotch-potch, hugger-mugger, bow-wow, hari-kiri, hoo-poo', how could anyone forget late 70s punk outfit Liliput? ...

Kleenex, once fleetingly cracked up to be the "Swiss Slits" and forced to change their name to Liliput (which should actually be written LiLiPUT, apparently) by the international tissue manufacturers. They lasted from 1978 until 1983, and have since been pretty much lost to history. ...

The third is a product of their Liliput/LiLiPUT incarnation, and probably the best: a brilliantly cacophonous song called Split, whose lyrics go, "Hotch-potch, Hugger-mugger, bow-wow, hari-kiri, hoo-poo". [It] sound[s] a bit like the terminally underrated Elastica (or, rather, Elastica sounded like them)

Girl power, eh? Hope you like it!

Photo: Downtown afternoon.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS

Listen to MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS by Delta 5.

Sometimes these posts just write themselves, and thanks to youtube, today is one of those times. I had two ways to write about Mind Your Own Business by the Delta 5. One, since it's the New Hampshire primary today, I could make a dumb joke about this being a Ron Paul-style campaign theme song. But Ron Paul has already beat me to it! (Here's another politically-themed version actually using the song.)

Or, I could say that if you've never had an irrepressible urge to dance around like an idiot, then you definitely have never heard this song. Here are a couple of girls bouncing around to it. Here are a couple more. And here's my favorite, a guy dancing around the corner of Prince Arthur and St. Dominique, which is kinda ground zero for tourist Montreal. In fact, that bar in the background is exactly where the bachelor party last summer initially gathered. Anyway, great tune, unstoppable bass line, you'll love it.



Photo: Sun goes down in Hudson Square.

OH BONDAGE UP YOURS!

Listen to OH BONDAGE UP YOURS! by X-Ray Specs.

Hello, it's me! I say that only because some of you (all of you?) may be disappointed to learn that Corbett isn't blogging this week. Instead, I'm here, and Corbett will pick up again sometime soon. We do have an innovation to introduce later this week, though, so stay tuned.

My posts for next few weeks are going to have a rough theme: "Punk Music Is Fun!" I want to write just a few words about that. It's an advertisement for the tunes we're posting (i.e., these are going to be fun and you should listen to them), but also an admonishment for myself. For a bunch of reasons, punk music has never seemed that fun to me. More like hard work. Punk music was supposed to slay the dinosaurs of 1970's rock music. The trouble was, I knew those dinosaurs pretty well, and loved them too!

Punk, on the other hand, didn't get played on the radio, and didn't played at my house. So I didn't know much growing up. And with so much written about punk's aesthetics, ideology, secret histories, and everything else, I felt it's almost easier to tune the music out than to engage with it and get to know it.

That won't do, though, because even if you think (as I do) that the Sex Pistols are tedious and overrated, there's a ton of great music sitting there that doesn't need an explanation or an argument to get it across.

Anyway, I don't want to overstay my welcome here, so let's get to the music we're posting. The idea is to post some great, fun songs, nothing too obscure, favorites of ours from the punk canon. We do hope you'll like them if you don't love them already!

Oh Bondage Up Yours! is pretty famous, but these days you're more likely to hear it sampled (Poly Styrene's ecstatic lead-in, "1! 2! 3! 4!," appears in dance & hip hop tracks with some regularity) than played through.

The title pretty much sums up the lyrical content to the song, and it's considered a feminist manifesto, the opening track to any decent "Woman In Rock" compilation. The best part of the song (apart from the wailin' sax) is how much righteousness and defiance is in the vocal. She means it, man!

Photo: Christmas Day.