[For those who keep campaigning for a new punk thread...]
I have a relative who is about to turn 15. He's into the usual pop-punk of the day. But now I think it's time to introduce him to the real thing. So: What's the best first- or second wave British punk album to give a 15 year-old? Note I'm trying to cultivate an interest in pursuing the genre further.
In my view, Never Mind the Bollocks is just too obvious, and the Clash are too sophisticated. Does that leave Damned, Damned, Damned and Machine Gun Etiquette? Is Pink Flag too experimental? The Buzzcocks too pop?
Should I just trash the aspiration for a British album? Then what? Walk Among Us? Plastic Surgery Disasters?
You advice would be appreciated.
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53 comments:
COC's Animosity or DRI's Dealing With It, but maybe these are too close to crossover for what you want.
If you decide not to go British, I recommend Bad Religion 80-85.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrNrqLMyPeo
The only possible result of this exercise is your learning, once again, just how really old you are.
The first record I ever got was a Dead Kennedys 45. A neighbor gave it to me. "Holiday in Cambodia" on the A side and "Police Truck" on B. I remember my mom's reaction: "that name isn't funny." I'm not recommending this, really, I just wish I still had the record.
Not British, and not really punk, but hearing Fugazi for the first time when I was 15 changed my life.
honestly, if you are trying to transition him from pop punk shit to the real stuff, I'd go Buzzcocks.
But why British? I would take, from personal experience, Dead Kennedys and Ramones to be really good at that transition.
Also, a Clash 'Greatest Hits' album might not be too experimental, if you aren't adverse to that. 'The Story of The Clash' is a 2 CD set that has all the necessary songs, and a good booklet explaining the history and such.
Or you could just buy him some gg allin.
If not British, why not Irish, Stiff Little Fingers' Inflammable Material? The Ramones (too obvious?) might also work since they came pretty close to inventing the genre. (Insert music geek rebuttal here).
Dude. I don't see this as an even mildly hard decision.
Damned, Damned, Damned.
It's the only 77 punk that still stands up. Period.
What the fuck are you thinking?
Anon at 6:14:
He realize how old he is when he remembers he was too young for the first go around.
Agreed about Pistols and Clash.
Wire's "Pink Flag" is awesome but maybe too experimental. Scratch that.
Buzzcocks are too much like the fake punk the kid is already listening to. Fuck that whiney love song crap.
The Damned's "Machine Gun Etiquette" still sounds good. A definite maybe.
But I'd probably go with something harder like the Exploited or GBH (on the UK side), or Dead Kennedys or early Black Flag (on the US).
Buzzcocks, Buzzcocks, Buzzcocks. The crappy pop-punk of the day doesn't have songs like 'Orgasm Addict', does it? Not that giving the kid a Damned disc is going to do him any harm.
Buzzcocks, Love Bites
To judge by the number of kids with videos on You Tube with Wire songs, I don't think you could go wrong with Pink Flag or Chairs Missing. And, as has already been noted, the Buzzcocks is a nice transitional choice. London Calling and All Mod Cons might be worth considering, too. (I reckon Entertainment! is later than what you're looking for, and Blank Generation from the wrong continent.) Or, you could just clobber him with Trout Mask Replica.
The Modern Lovers' first album ("Roadrunner", "Pablo Picasso", "Boyfriend", etc).
You have a moral obligation to get him the following albums.
Dead Kennedys- Plastic Surgery Disasters (Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables should probably be on here, but it's so lyrically disturbing that the kids parents might get mad).
Iggy and the Stooges'- Funhouse (aka the best rock album ever).
Black Flag- (1) The First Four Years (pre Rollins era singles), (2) Who's Got the 10 and a half (live album from height of Rollins era), (3) Loose Nut (this and My War these by far the best two Rollins era LPs and actually legendary in their own right; again, My War is so emotionally unhinged that the kids Mom might get too mad at you).
Circle Jerks- Group Sex.
Bad Brains- I against I.
Misfits- (1) Walk Among Us, (2) Earth A.D. (while the lyrics on EArth A.D. are even more disturbing than Fresh Fruit and My War, the production is gloriously muffled that neither the kid nor his mom will understand them).
If he doesn't like this flowering of culture, then we can comfort ourselves with the fact that Aristotle too despaired that kids of his day listened to post-M.T.V. garbage, and also wondered why the recession in Athens wasn't producing a decent music scene the way the one when he was in high school (80s punk) and then when he was in grad school (90s grunge) did. I mean what the &%$# is wrong with Athenian kids today.
Why only British?
First 2 albums by The Jam.
First RAMONES
First PATTI SMITH
XTC's drums & wires
First Undertones LP
Talking Heads 77
First CURE LP
Gang of Four's Entertainment
Elvis Costello's This Year's Model
Does the kid have a twisted sense of humor? Nick Lowe's Jesus of Cool
Joy Division
Replacements' Stink
Stiff Little Fingers
Consider these for later:
The Slits
The Raincoats
Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance
The Fall
I never thought of The Clash’s ‘Give us enough rope’ as sophisticated! I would have thought it a good balance, given your aim.
Elvis Costello and The Attractions : This Year’s Model is the best punk album in sheer music terms.
Other possibilities:
The Jam – All Mod Cons is a good album as is The Buzzcocks Love Bites: both are catchy and accessible if you decide to go for that.
UK Subs: Another Kind of Blues
The Scream: Siouxsie and the Banshees
I also have a soft spot for Germ Free Adolescents by X-Ray Spex. ;-)
And I agree Stiff Little Fingers are good....
Why not give a selection (let’s face it, you can afford it!) then the lad can make his own choices. And then you can include ‘the obvious choice’? :-)
Yup, Buzzcocks is the perfect choice. Not too experimental to scare off a newbie, but not too bubblegum either. (Naysayers, have you listened to the Buzzcocks lately? Not everything they did was straight pop, nor were they limited to love songs.)
And isn't Singles Going Steady the perfect Buzzcocks to start with? The three studio albums are good to great, but SGS is the only one that's perfect start to finish.
(I'll add, though, that Side Two of Different Kind of Tension is among the best in all of rock.)
This is a no-brainer. The kid is 15. He's probably pissed about almost everything. Bypass the early punk stuff and go straight for American hardcore; Black Flag, Bad Brains, and Minor Threat.
And don't forget to give him This is Boston, Not LA.
He'll learn to love the earlier punk stuff later.
for this kid I would go with Buzzcocks- Singles Going Steady or The Clash- London's Calling. Also, The Jam- All Mod Cons or The Stranglers' compilation- Peaches.
If you want something newer and American that is hardcore punk I recommend The Bronx- st (1,2,or 3) anything by the Bronx is good. Also The Germs are a good basis (I know, they aren't british).
Crass - Stations of the Crass (1979) and/or Penis Envy (1981)
If you're going to immerse him in various flavours of punk rock, you might as well include some challenging (but rewarding, I like to think) social-criticism stuff as well. It's been a while since I've listened to these myself, however, I must admit...
And I know this is really cheating because it seems you're looking more for period pieces (in the best possible sense of the term!), but Bikini Kill's Pussy Whipped (1994) is a really good album too. And who could deny someone the joys of exposure to feminist consciousness via such wonderful music!
Here we go...The Day My Kid Went Punk (ABC After-School Special).
I would go with Crass, Feeding of the 5000 - about perfect whether 15 or 40something
or go later, with the Exploited?
And agree with an anon - work towards the Fall as high point...
My choice would be to go with either the Buzzcocks, mentioned above, or one of the first two Saints albums -- probably "(I'm) Stranded" -- mainly because of Chris Bailey's vocals and lyrics. Lots of good teen alienation stuff.
If you go American, Minor Threat (Minor Threat) really spoke to me when I was 15. Teen angst and insane self-righteousness. Same with Fugazi (13 songs), as I was leaving high school. DK too. I would love to recommend Bad Brains, as they really rise above American Hardcore , but I think they are more the place you end up than the place you start.
And, I don't think that you can go wrong with the Clash: Smart, sophisticated, aware, and amazing music. I would go with London Calling, although I go back and forth with my wife about the definitive Clash album. It might even provide an opportunity for some history lessons. When else would you have the opening to tell your nephew about the Spanish Civil War, for example?
If the point is not to be historically authentic but to sell the kid on earlier punk, it seems to me that you'll need to isolate what the earlier stuff does that pop punk doesn't. And since pop punk has very slick production and a wide dynamic range, an ear trained on it will likely find a lot of the earlier bands a little sonically thin. So I'd suggest focusing on the thing that earlier punk has in spades and that pop punk lacks: good lyrics. My vote would be the following triumvirate:
Crass: Penis Envy
DK: Give me Convenience or Give me Death
Elvis Costello: This Year's Model
I love The Clash as much as the next guy, but Joe Strummer didn't exactly enunciate and the reference points depend on some understanding of the politics of the period (not just Spanish Bombs but also Guns of Brixton will make no sense to a 15y.o.). Fortunately, the US is still run by Reganites like Obama, so everything on a DK album will still apply (sometimes without even changing the names), which is a history lesson in itself.
Or you could just cut to the chase and give the kid every Velvet Underground record.
What English Jerk just said.
That's why I additionally suggested The Modern Lovers' first album which, while anticipating a lot of great stuff which lay ahead, naturally leads back home to The Velvet Underground.
Discharge -- Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing
Raw Power
Another vote for Buzzcocks: Spiral Scratch and Another Music did it for me. Group Sex is another great idea.
Here's one that hasn't been mentioned: Mission of Burma.
15 years old. In 2010. The kid probably does not own a CD player. So why the talk of albums and discs? Just pick a few tracks from i-tunes and it'll be "Uncle Spiros's Guide to Music to Punch Things to."
Maybe start with something a little more modern, that's still at least somewhat legitimately punkish? Like, say, The Strokes?
Then on to Stooges and Joy Division?
Maybe best to approach the really angry sledgehammer-into-the-wall stuff a little less directly, because the production on, say, My War is pretty primitive and will sound rough to someone used to the slicker production of a Blink-182 record.
If you want him to be really cool, you should get him into early 80's Scandinavian hardcore: Anti-Cimex, Mob 47, Protest Bengt, Raped Teenagers, Terveet Kadet, Rattus, Driller Killer, etc.
From Japan: Every single Gauze record, and that GISM bootleg discography that's always floating around.
From the UK: Discharge. Crass. Conflict.
US: Black Flag - Damaged (pace Jon Cogburn, this is the best BF record, although Rollins was the worst BF singer). DK - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Minor Threat - Discography.
And a subscription to Maximum Rock N Roll wouldn't hurt.
You should make him a mixtape and give him a cassette player with it. Apparently cassettes are making a comeback with the hip kids.
Lots of Clash, Ramones, Television, The Slits, and then Siouxsie: Hong Kong Garden, and The Jam - Down in the Tube Station at Midnight. Stick to songs with good tunes, and don't be too purist -- Gangsters by the Specials would help, and some early Dead Kennedy's singles. Then send him a bunch of URLs from YouTube so he might watch them.
Spiros:
I was in a similar situation many years ago, when I was 15, and a non punk guy in my class asked to borrow some albums to see what punk was all about. So he was like your nephew in being open to classic punk, but not pre-committed. I lent him DRI's Dirty Rotten L.P., DOA's Bloodied but Unbowed and some third thing that I forget.
I remember him responding that DRI was "too hard," a concept I did not understand at the time but now completely get. DOA on the other hand he absolutely loved and could not take out of his walkman. I still listen to Something Better Change, which has a lot of the stuff from Bloodied, and now see how discriminating his taste was.
If you are looking for a punk band that can sustain a whole album, then DOA deserves consideration alongside The Stooges, The Damned, Bad Brains, the Kennedys and the Misfits mentioned above.
If you decide to go with a compilation, by contrast, then I think we both know it has to start with The Dickies' cover of Paranoid, regardless of what else you put on it.
--J.P.
Cassettes may be cool but their sound quality is rubbish - meaning he is less likely to appreciate the music. MP3, CD or Vinyl would be better.
If you wanted to give him a real treat you could get him a second hand Rega2 or Rega3 turntable, a phono amp and some second hand records (ebay etc). All that lovely artwork and the tactile pleasure of playing the record. Real novelty value! Plus a good turntable sounds great.
Three words: Mark Fucking Gormley.
I'm pretty surprised that no one recommended Exploited earlier. Beat the Bastards was my first and strongesr contact with punk.
It's still kicks ass.
What about the Au Pairs? And count me as another vote for DKs, either 'Plastic Surgery Disasters', or 'Give Me Convenience'.
UK: Damned, first album
US: Husker Du, New Day Rising
As evidenced here, Chicago punk always gets ignored by the coastal/uk punk elites: Naked Raygun, The Effigies, The Bollweevils, 88 Fingers Louie, Screeching Weasel, Flatfoot 56. If you go for the playlist idea try to represent Chicago.
A few of the 80s/90s bands I grew up with and loved: Bad Religion, Propaghandi, Good Riddance, Fugazi. I'd hate for The Refused to not get mentioned. Newer stuff that's pretty respectable: Against Me!, The Gaslight Anthem, Bear vs Shark. Blurring the punk/hardcore/metal distinctions: Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan.
Also, all the Dk admirers need to check out new stuff from Jello & The Melvins. Hate to say it, but The Melvins are a way better band to back up Jello's antics than the DKs ever were.
If you want to move him away from pop disguised as punk, you might go with punk disguised as pop:
Chumbawamba, Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records
(or First 2, which includes Never Mind the Ballots -- perhaps the best anarcho-punk album title, ever)
You just have to try really, really hard not to think about Tubthumping when you listen to it.
Reading about Chumbawumba, I was reminded of a band I saw them in concert with: Skunk Anansie: Great. I prefer Skunk Anansie myself. They’re 90’s punk, but have recently reformed & have a ‘great hits’ album out called ‘Smashes and Trashes’ - lots of good stuff there.
Moreover, like Chumbawumba, the Clash, Jam, Elvis Colstello, Buzzcocks, and others, Skunk Anansie have a conscience and decency: unlike some nasty, fucked up punk, rock, thrash, metal, rap etc that you get. And I take it that the point to make to the 15 year old is that rebellion, passion, non-conformity, release, & a bit of anarchism etc can go with having a conscience: they don’t have to go with egoism, hedonism and nihilism.
Skunk Anansie even have a song called ‘Just because it feels good, don’t make it right’. ;-)
I particularly like Charity. You can listen at
http://www.youtube.com/SkunkAnansieOfficial#p/c/FF8FED4E6CBBDB3C
Fantastic Super cool black female skinhead lead singer – with a great voice…
Why not The Ramones' Rocket to Russia? That was my first punk album thanks to my dad, who thought it would be nice patriotic Italian music.
Dead Boys. Young, Loud, and Snotty. Can't believe it didn't come up already. For shame.
The popular comment layout is common, so it is easily recognized scanning to post a comment. If the comment section is in a different format, then I am going to spend more time trying to decipher what everything means.
study abroad
I was introduced to such things chronologically. (Mind you, my dad started before I was fifteen.)
I'm a fan of the chronological method. Though, for a nephew, that might not be the best as, you know, you can't control what music he listens to at all.
That being said, go for something more pop. Unless he's the kind of kid who would go for the radical change into actual punk music, warm him up to it with something that bridges what he hears now with what you're trying to share with him.
Why on earth would "too obvious" be a criterion for a 15 year old into crap pop punk?
There is _nothing_ to obvious for the cretinous youth of today, especially for a 15 year into pop punk.
On a sidenote, even classic punk is the fucking definition of obvious. So get this kid into it fast, so it can outgrow it by the age of 17 like those of us with some fucking taste.
Blank Generation, Stations of the Crass, Live at the Witch Trials, Singles Going Steady, Damaged.
Definitely agree on Ramones. Every kid at the mall has a Ramones shirt. He'll be popular.
If he has a thing for today's pop punk like Blink 182 and Crappy New Green Day, I'd recommend a few of these to make the transition easier:
39/Smooth, Kerplunk, and Dookie, by Green Day- It's Green Day, he knows them, and back then they were actual pop-punk, not new "pop-punk".
Smash, by The Offspring- Ought to help him along the way, although it's by no means straight punk.
Bleach, Nevermind, In Utero, and Incesticide, by Nirvana- Kurt Cobain's grunge band would probably make the transition a bit easier.
Anything by The Buzzcocks. Period.
Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, by The Dead Kennedys- Yes, it's a compilation album, but it has all their best songs, and Pull My Strings, the band's real masterpiece of epic proportions.
Squirtgun, by Squirtgun- Lesser-known band, but they're amazing.
Boogadaboogadaboogada, by the Screeching Weasels- Today's real punk. Seriously.
Punk in Drublic, by NOFX- Fat Mike's sense of humor, plus the band's skate punk stylings, won't disappoint.
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