Rock or Die!: Punk Rock Compilation

I’ve put together this online compilation of my favorite Punk and 80s Hardcore songs.
The thing that inspired me to finally do this was a show I did with my friend Jeff Kipilman on KBOO fairly recently. Many of the songs from this comp. were played on that show but we didnt have the time to play all of them. After the show ran, I collected all the songs and leftovers into this comp. (with lots to spare). These are literally my all-time favorite Punk and Hardcore songs.

I tried, where possible, to make it as obscure and eclectic as possible. I passed on bands or tracks that appear on virtually every Punk comp. or bands that really don’t need any introduction to anyone. I also made it so that almost nothing on it happened after 1984 or so because after that, I can almost count the ‘punk’ bands that I found interesting on one hand. The supposition of the comp. is that Punk happened between the mid-Seventies to the mid-Eighties. The rest was just about selling shoes and soft drinks.
In some instances, I played more than one contiguous track from some records because that’s how I remember them – either played on the radio back-in-the-day or from mix-tapes I either made or got from friends, collectors, etc..
It’s just the way I wanted to do it.

A few caveats about quality: The whole thing originated from mix-tapes I’ve had since the early-mid-eighties, sources on the web in the ensuing decades and from my own collection. Like lots of projects like this, the audio quality varies widely. Some rarer songs were actually sourced from my mix tapes from my collection and I’ve been too busy (or lazy – take your pick) to look for better ones. Please don’t bother whining about audio quality or bitrate. I put a lot of work into preparing this. If you don’t like it, go spend all your money on the Killed By Death series and leave me alone.

Download: Rock or Die! (133 megs)

Comments vs downloads:
Comment: 1  Downloads: 27

English As A Second Language (Talking Package)

Amazing and vast collection of brief spoken word and poetry pieces by various Los Angeles artists, Punk musicians and scene fixtures.
This is one of two behemoth two-record albums produced by Harvey Kubernick on Freeway Records.

This is the first of the two, released in 1983 as English As A Second Language (Talking Package).

Most tracks are less than a minute, with few ever going more than two minutes and some clocking in around two to five seconds, so – as you can see – there’s a lot of tracks.
The standouts are people like Charles Bukowski, Henry Rollins, Exene Cervenka, John Doe, D. Boon Chris D (of The Flesheaters), (and loads of folks from the SST Records roster) etc., plus some L.A. area poets, as well as some folks not generally known for spoken word stuff (like Bob Flanagan), L.A. stalwarts such as Rodney Bingenheimer, Kim Fowley, etc. Some of the best tracks are both from L.A. area poets like Luis Campos, Wanda Coleman, Dennis Cooper and Dave Alvin (of the Blasters). There’s also some brief musical numbers here and there.

Most of the tracks are interesting, some have aged well, some have not. Some of it’s indulgent or pretentious, but much of it is wonderful. It’s a dizzying time capsule collage of eighties L.A.

Plus, dig the groovy cover by Raymond Pettibon, years before he went from Black Flag covers and flyers to highbrow art galleries. That fact alone is one of the things that gets this listed on Ebay and sold relatively quickly. As far as I know, this has never been shared anywhere until now.
UbuWeb has graciously accepted this LP’s tracks and curated them here. You can listen to the individual tracks there and download the entire album here:

English As A Second Language.zip (177 megs, 192k)

The Films of Amos Poe

The wonderful UBU Web have made the entire filmography of Amos Poe available online.
Poe made Blank Generation in 1976 with a veritable who’s who of New York punk in the movie.

Another notable movie is The Foreigner, with one of the earliest glimpses of The Cramps, who play a gang who beat up the protagonist in the film.
Poe’s films have a certain early Warhol, Kuchar Bros appeal to them. That they’re sort of crappy is beside the point, when one looks at what great documents they are of early NY punk.

Check ‘em out:

U B U W E B – Film & Video: Amos Poe

Repost: Stranger Than Fiction Pt. 1

(Reposting this DJ-less mix I put together years ago):
Around 1980 I discovered that, late Thursday nights, some DJ was playing strange, alien music. My appetite was whetted by Devo, Pink Floyd and strange bands I had read about in Heavy Metal magazine (having nothing to do with the genre of music that would later take its name) and I wanted more. The discovery of KBOO’s Stranger than Fiction completely opened the door to new, exciting music for me, and I’ve never looked back. The hosts of STF – the enigmatic Mr. B and Equinox – played a combination of New Wave, skinny-tie pop, novelty music (Barnes and Barnes, Bonzo Dog Band, etc.) and lots of acts that straddled Prog and Post-Punk (Gabriel, Fripp, Hammill). Thier show was like a complete education in alternative music and it really saved me in those lost years of being a weird, alien-feeling teenager, even if it meant that my friends would never let me play my mix-tapes at parties.

Eventually, Mr. B and Equinox expanded the program to handle early and late shifts, Mr. B starting at 1:00 AM, playing mostly newly released import singles and Equinox taking over duties at 3:00, playing lots of ambient music, prog and space rock until morning. I used to go home from school on Thursdays and go right to sleep so that I could stay up all night drawing comics while the show was on. I even taped a lot of it, but the tapes sound horrid now. As the eighties gave way to rock video, STF’s programming went a little too mainstream for my tastes and I was getting into hardcore punk by then. I don’t even recall when they finally went off the air.

the tracks I chose for this mix were songs that were either played often on their show, or played once and really made an impression on me.

I dedicate this mix to all late night DJs out there, playing new, weird music for alienated kids.

Play

Download (90 mins. 82 megs. @ 128kbps)

Playlist:

1. Godley & Creme – Freeze Frame
2. XTC – Senses Working Overtime
3. Lene Lovich – Lucky Number
4. The Normal – tvod
5. Robert Fripp – Disengage
6. Fad Gadget – Ricky’s Hand
7. Karel Fialka – The Eyes Have It
8. The Fabulous Poodles - Mirror Star
9. Gary Numan – I Dream Of Wires
10. Robert Palmer – I Dream Of Wires
11. The The – This is the Day
12. Peter Hammill – Now More Than Ever
13. The Silicone Teens – Memphis Tennessee
14. Fred Frith – Dancing In The Street
15. Hawaiian Pups – Baby Judy
16. Midnight Oil – Tin Legs and Tin Mines
17. Public Image Ltd. – Pied Piper
18. M – Pop Muzik
19. Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers
20. Boomtown Rats – Whitehall 1212
21. The Psychedelic Furs – Pulse
22. Laurie Anderson – Sharkey`s Day
23. Morgan Fisher, et. al. – Excerpt from Miniatures

Life During Wartime

The excellent Punk show Life During Wartime – perhaps Portland’s longest-running Punk show and wonderful exemplar of the DIY wing of Punk – has a new podcast site, where you can listen to shows (it’s on a little late for this old, working wretch) again and read playlists, peruse archives, etc…

Life During Wartime started in 1995, and is on every Wednesday night
from 11 pm until 1 am (PDT), here on KBOO. We play DIY Punk And
Hardcore records, have live bands, and do a weekly local shows listing
for the Portland area (Wild Weekend).

GO THERE NOW.

KBOO page for Life During Wartime.

Joe Strummer Appreciation Day

For me anyway…

I just got around to watching The Future is Unwritten and remembered how much I appreciated Joe Strummer’s music and cultural/political outlook throughout the years. He was the person – via The Clash – that made me aware of the world at large and what was going on in it as a teenager. I probably wouldn’t have known anything about what was going on in Central America if I didn’t become obsessed with the album Sandinista! after my Mom bought it for me for Christmas one year (I begged her, thinking she’d take one look at the cover and buy something safer instead. Thanks, Mom!). I wanted to know what the songs and liner notes were about and it led me down the garden-path to leftist politics, at the tender age of sixteen or so. Take that, Tipper Gore!

It was a punch to the gut when he died. Even though I hadn’t followed his latest musical projects that closely, I became a fan of his radio stints, where he would offer these free-wheeling excursions into music from all over the world. It made it obvious that despite his aspirations to rock stardom in The Clash, he simply loved music and its ability to give voice to people and their struggles the world over. It made some of his global hodge-podges on Clash records and subsequent bands – some more successful than others – make much more sense. He saw music as a unifying force and the people’s megaphone for change.

Enough sermonizing…

Here’s an open dex of his BBC radio show London Calling, reprised in 2007 with intros and outros mentioning the five year anniversary of his passing. These shows are great. Joe plays music from all over the world and across timelines. They’re rather brief, but he talks about why the songs matter to us.

Here’s a guest slot he did on WFMU in 2001, not long before his untimely death.

Post-Mortem Cramps

“Hey I’m on my way, on a journey out of this world…”

~Lux Interior (10.21.46 – 2.4.09)

On Thursday the 12th, from 10pm to 12am Pacific Standard Time, we will be paying tribute to The Cramps and the recently departed Lux Interior (aka Erick Purkiser , Vip Vop, etc…):

Predating and never quite participating in
the early ’80s rockabilly revival, the Cramps used that genre’s primal
sound as a jumping-off point for a uniquely weird pastiche of
rock’n’roll, psychedelia and a monster movie/junk food/swamp-creature
aesthetic. Led by uninhibited vocalist Lux Interior (Ohio native Erick
Purkhiser, who was clearly a student of Cleveland television’s
Ghoulardi) and guitarist Poison Ivy Rorschach (California native Kirsty
Wallace), the band had its roots in Cleveland but was actually formed
in New York. (Drummer Miriam Linna, guitarist Bryan Gregory, drummer
Nick Knox and guitarist Kid Congo Powers are among the Cramps’
illustrious alumni, who all went on to spread the bad word far and wide
among the faithful.)

~Ira Robbins, Trouser Press

We’ll have many Cramps albums both rare and classic, as well as interviews and other surprises.

3-D glasses available at the concession stand.

That’s on KBOO, 90.7 FM in Portland and streaming on the web at www.kboo.fm/listen (iTunes, Winamp, WMP, VLC, etc…)

KBOO is Portland’s non-corporate, listener sponsored community radio.