“A punk rock song won’t ever change the world, but I can tell you about a couple that changed me.”
-“Fuck Shit Up” – Wingnut Dishwasher’s Union
I’m Connor, just another Midwestern micro-blogger bringing you my directionless opinions on today’s scene. But today I have no whiny reviews or editorials, but my own introspective on the songs and the bands and the albums that made me fall in love with this music.
So, in order of when I discovered them, here’s my list of songs. Take it for what it’s worth here.
1. Flogging Molly – Drunken Lullabies
I’m still not exactly sure how this happened, but I listened to celtic punk and ska punk before making my way deeper into the genre. That’s not a bad thing because I still love this stuff. I’m positive I had no idea what the lyrics really meant, but they were snarky and darkly poetic/angsty at the same time.
2. Streetlight Manifesto/Catch 22 – Day In, Day Out
The road into ska for me is fairly stereotypical: I was a band geek as a pre-teen and my punker older brother introduced me to horn-tinged rock and punk like Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger, but when I found the Keasby Nights album, the high school angst was just too much to keep me away from falling in love with all of Tom Kalnoky’s work. Yes, even this.
Within a few months, I had ventured into the harder, thicker side of the ska punk, mostly through Rancid and Operation Ivy. This is when the social attitudes and lyrical themes began to affect me deeper. Also, I’m pretty sure I learned to skank to this song. This may be the most important fact of all and one of my only life skills.
4. Me First And The Gimme Gimmes – One Tin Solider
Having never listened to NOFX, Lagwagon, etc, I didn’t know this was a cover by a cover band. The lyrics sounded really hippie-esque to me (because they are), but with the undertones of 200BPM distorted guitar, it was awesome punk hippie rock to me.
5. Real Mckenzies – Dropping Like Flies
Back to the celtic stuff again! This song was cool because it’s about how the first generation punk bands affected the singer in his youth, which was mimicking what was going on with me: being an idiot and spending all my money on records and concert tickets and idolizing the musicians I loved to a ridiculous point. It seems a bit sadly ironic that The Real Mckenzies are one of the last bands still on my list to see live.
Dat bass solo, ’nuff said.
7. Street Dogs – Fading American Dream
Once again, the relevance of important political issues in my music became to perpetuate itself and grow. You can imagine how happy I was when this band came to my hometown multiple times in the past year to support state labor.
8. Dead Kennedys – Jock-O-Rama
This song epitomized the hatred that any dumb punk high schooler has for his jock counterparts. For some reason I’ll never know, I was really drawn into all the warbling. For most of high school, on any given day of the week, I could be found wearing one of the half-dozen Dead Kennedys shirts I seemed to own.
9. Big D & The Kids Table – Hell On Earth
Super-fast paced, heavily distorted ska punk with humorously cynical lyrics? Why would anyone not like this? If I’m not mistaken, this is the first song I got trampled in a mosh pit to.
10. The Guns Of Brixton – The Clash
I actually heard this song first through the Dropkick Murphys version on their Singles Collection Vol. 1. That’s kind of an embarrassing way to first come into The Clash, but it’s the truth.
The youth of my era had (and continue to have) a core misunderstanding of the word “hardcore,” which is a shame, because they’re missing out on the greats of one of my favorite subgenres, East Coast and D.C. hardcore. When I heard this one, it was the fastest, roughest thing I’d ever heard.
No elitism could ever trample out my love of horns in punk rock. Songs like this about being on the road as a band took me beyond just the music and sparked my interest in playing music of my own.
13. The Specials – Little Bitch
2-tone was my way of going “retro.” Despite the hipster appeal, I truly love (and still do) every song on this album.
14. Lars Frederiksen And The Bastards – Dead American
And thus, my love of hardcore began. This newer stuff made me check out the old classics like Black Flag and Minor Threat.
15. What Do I Get? – The Buzzcocks
In a time where we called shite like this was being labeled pop punk, I didn’t realize that there was actually an older breed of the genre that I loved until I listened to bands like The Buzzcocks, Screeching Weasel, and Lagwagon. Boy, was I missing out.
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