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Former 80s punk guitarist here. "It's really easy to make boring punk music" - so true! It was easy to identify the greats at that time, some of whom the narrat

Former 80s punk guitarist here. "It's really easy to make boring punk music" - so true! It was easy to identify the greats at that time, some of whom the narrator cites - Bad Brains, Minor Threat, DKs, etc. We found out about them through word of mouth, live shows, fanzines, listening to records at friends' places, or college radio. But man was it hard to write songs as good as that. And maybe the problem was we were listening to too much punk and hardcore and were determined to reject everything about "classic rock," and the 80s electronic influences that were taking over the pop charts. These seminal hardcore bands not only had fantastically skilled musicians (including vocals), but also they were coming from a much different place than we assumed, something I didn't find out until later. It's a mistake to think of them as amateurs who only knew the Sex Pistols and Ramones before they picked up their instruments. Bad Brains started out as a jazz/pop band. Greg Ginn of Black Flag also had some kind of jazz backgroud. I read somewhere that one of their favorite albums in the tour van in the early 80s was ZZ Top's Eliminator. Flea, who played bass in Fear before cofounding RHCP, was a high-level French Horn player in high school. East Bay Ray - surf and jazz. D Boon of the Minutemen studied flamenco guitar at one point. There's a great book by Michael Azzerad (Our band could be your life, https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/michael-azerrad/our-band-could-be-your-life/9780316247184/ https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/michael-azerrad/our-band-...) which gets into the influences of many 80s/early 90s bands including Minor Threat, who late in their existence were veering off into U2 influenced rock. I know hardcore is fast, but had no idea the BPM was 300-400 for many of these songs. I remember seeing the Circle Jerks once and their new bass player couldn't keep up. His hand was clearly in pain.

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scelerat 4y ago
> maybe the problem was we were listening to too much punk and hardcore and were determined to reject everything about [not punk] IMO a classic artistic trap, especially for those enamored with a particular genre. Also a musician here, who has seen plenty of copycat scene bands, as well as others who have transcended their niche partially by having rich and diverse sources of inspiration.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
>> "It was easy to identify the greats at that time" The slogan at the time was "kill your heroes". Hüsker Dü? For me, the greats at that time, 1980's hardcore, were the kids in the pit. The kids putting on shows in basements. The kids making copies of copies of copies of cassette tapes of music recorded from a boombox while driving around a city two hours away at 2 AM in the morning on a college radio station because that's the only time they played hardcore on the radio and it wasn't sold in record stores in your city. Bad Brains did not start out as a jazz/pop band. Darryl: "a lot of people try to misinterpret and say Bad Brains were jazz fusionists but we weren't. We were just teenagers that were looking into that style of music before we started to listen to punk rock music." They couldn't listen to hardcore because hardcore didn't exist yet, they had to help invent it. People exaggerate the musical background of those kids. And the importance of that musical background. The music was dance music for pissed off teenage kids with shaved heads. It didn't need to be great. If you look at the back of the DOA record Bloodied but Unbowed, it says "we want to create a world so free we can run wild". https://i.discogs.com/Oa4bo9uc2FZ0elSuP2u60tHbwXqvEPKdDLeSZaxY12M/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:594/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEwMTMz/MzktMTM2MjMzMTc4/My01NTY4LmpwZWc.jpeg https://i.discogs.com/Oa4bo9uc2FZ0elSuP2u60tHbwXqvEPKdDLeSZa... That's definitional hardcore. That's what is was about. That's what hardcore meant to me. It wasn't about chord progressions. We failed. And now that world is gone to the point that few remember it ever existed.

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scelerat 4y ago

> maybe the problem was we were listening to too much punk and hardcore and were determined to reject everything about [not punk] IMO a classic artistic trap, especially for those enamored with a particular genre. Also a musician here, who has seen plenty of copycat scene bands, as well as others who have transcended their niche partially by having rich and diverse sources of inspiration.

rufus_foreman 4y ago

>> "It was easy to identify the greats at that time" The slogan at the time was "kill your heroes". Hüsker Dü? For me, the greats at that time, 1980's hardcore, were the kids in the pit. The kids putting on shows in basements. The kids making copies of copies of copies of cassette tapes of music recorded from a boombox while driving around a city two hours away at 2 AM in the morning on a college radio station because that's the only time they played hardcore on the radio and it wasn't sold in record stores in your city. Bad Brains did not start out as a jazz/pop band. Darryl: "a lot of people try to misinterpret and say Bad Brains were jazz fusionists but we weren't. We were just teenagers that were looking into that style of music before we started to listen to punk rock music." They couldn't listen to hardcore because hardcore didn't exist yet, they had to help invent it. People exaggerate the musical background of those kids. And the importance of that musical background. The music was dance music for pissed off teenage kids with shaved heads. It didn't need to be great. If you look at the back of the DOA record Bloodied but Unbowed, it says "we want to create a world so free we can run wild". https://i.discogs.com/Oa4bo9uc2FZ0elSuP2u60tHbwXqvEPKdDLeSZaxY12M/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:594/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEwMTMz/MzktMTM2MjMzMTc4/My01NTY4LmpwZWc.jpeg https://i.discogs.com/Oa4bo9uc2FZ0elSuP2u60tHbwXqvEPKdDLeSZa... That's definitional hardcore. That's what is was about. That's what hardcore meant to me. It wasn't about chord progressions. We failed. And now that world is gone to the point that few remember it ever existed.