We recently caught up with The Bogarts,  vocalist / guitarist Alex Johnson to get his take on the songs that got him in to punk rock.  Check out his list here.

“This list is going to make a lot of people feel really old, seeing as I’m twenty years old.”

 1. Green Day – Panic Song

“The first Green Day song I ever knowingly heard was Welcome To Paradise. I was nine years old in my dad’s car. He put on Dookie, and I fell in love instantly. It wasn’t until a few years later when I was thirteen that I finally heard Insomniac, which to this day is still my favorite Green Day album. Panic Song, in my eyes, is one of Green Day’s most underrated songs.”

2. Dead Kennedys – “Police Truck”

“I first heard Dead Kennedys when playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater at my next door neighbor’s house when I was a little kid. I didn’t know it was DK, but I heard the instrumental version of Police Truck that’s in THPS, and I sang along with East Bay Ray’s guitar parts all the time. Later on, I found out it was a song about police brutality.”

 3. Anti-Flag – “A New Kind of Army”

“A New Kind Of Army was the first Anti-Flag album I bought, and I remember it came with the fold-out poster / CD insert that was a small poster of a soldier that read “Too smart to fight, to smart to kill” and fourteen-year-old me thought that was fucking awesome.”

 4. Violent Femmes – “Add It Up”

“Violent Femmes is another band that my dad got me into. A lot of people would be willing to argue that the Femmes aren’t even a punk band to begin with, but I’d have to disagree. It doesn’t get more punk than your drummer having just a snare drum and one cymbal.”

 5. The Clash – Brand New Cadillac

“London Calling is obviously a staple in everyone’s music collection, and Brand New Cadillac’s groovy rhythm and guitar parts really stuck out to me as a kid that was in the middle school orchestra and was just picking up the guitar.”

 6. The Living End – “Prisoner of Society”

“I had a MotoX game for N64 that’s name currently escapes me, and Prisoner Of Society was the intro song on it. I remember hearing the song when I was a little kid and thinking it was Green Day. I later found out I was wrong, and that Chris Cheney can play circles around BJ.”

 7. Blink 182 – “Josie”

“The first time I heard Josie on the radio, I was probably around seven. I vividly remember being at my grandma’s house playing with the portable radio tuner that was in my room, and finally settling on KROQ right as the last chorus was coming to a close. Not knowing who the song was by, I searched for it for years and finally found it again when I was in middle school.”

 8. Devo – “Gut Feeling / (Slap Your Mammy)”

“Growing up with parents that were just hitting their 20′s as the 1980′s rolled in, I heard a whole fucking lot of Devo, DK, Oingo Boingo, The Clash, etc. Are We Not Men was a consistently spun album as I was growing up, and it stuck with me as I got older.”

9. Against Me! – “Politics Of Starving”

“When I was just going into high school, some kid that sat next to me in a class told me to go home and listen to Against Me! I went and bought Reinventing Axl Rose and was completely taken aback by how rough Laura’s vocals were, especially when that first verse in Politics Of Starving comes in.”

 10. X – “Los Angeles”

“The first rock show I ever saw was X and Rollins Band. Billy Zoom is the king of cool and a great guitarist. X is just one of those bands that’s remained in my life since the beginning and they’re there for a reason.”