Thursday, April 21, 2016

Salad Days: DC Punk

When I started really skateboarding around 1985, everything changed for me. I didn't care enough about sports to actually try and be good at them and I never really got along with the people in my peer group that played sports or whatever. So when I discovered skateboarding, I started hanging out with different friends that liked to skateboard, I started changing the way I dressed to accommodate my skateboard lifestyle, and subsequently I started listening to different music. A friend gave me a tape one day, one side had The Dead Milkmen, the other side had the first Minor Threat album. I was blown away, it has such a different sound from the Van Halen and Iron Maiden albums I was into at the time, with the energy in the music and I loved the fact this music wasn't on the radio and you could go to your local teen center or community center to see them play when they toured. I listened to that Minor Threat tape over and over until I wore it out...and to this day its my all time favorite album. I always had a love for the music that came from the DC punk scene, though I was into a lot of the west coast punk, my heart was on the east coast and what was labeled "hardcore punk".
Anyway, here is a documentary on the scene. When I lived in DC in the late 90's, I met several people that were actually there to see this all happen. I'm sure they are in the scenes of this...here it is broken down in 8 fifteen minute episodes:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

1 comment:

Ben said...

Thanks for the heads up Dave, this should be interesting to watch. I had a similar introduction to punk music and culture, before that I was all into hard rock/heavy metal (and the Boss of course). I think the first bands to creep through for me were Black Flag and the Sex Pistols. To steal a sentiment from Homer, punk has been the cause of, and solution to, many of my life's problems.