40 YEARS A PUNK!
By all "official" accounts punk music has been a thing for 50 years now ... debatable given the origins of select outfits, but I leave that discussion to the nit-pickers. By all factual accounts, summer of 1986 was MY first real foray into the wide world of punk rock and I've never looked back. It's the only good thing my older brother ever did for me in fact. Unintentionally of course. We had moved to Canada from the UK a few years prior where my brother who was eight years older than I first fell in love with bands like The Clash, The Specials, Cock Sparrer and Stiff Little Fingers. By 84-85ish he was taking regular trips from our home in Nova Scotia to NYC, Detroit, Toronto and Montreal to check out bands, hunt for records, DJ, make and trade bootlegs, etc. Upon return from these trips he'd lock himself away for days, spinning all his new wares. I'd already heard many of these bands in the background but was so young and preoccupied I hadn't really developed any taste in music yet. However, that all changed in early august when the shrill yet infectious 'Mating Sounds Of South American Frogs' whaled throughout the house for over a week straight. The still (at that point) controversial sophomore album by Peter & The Test Tube Babies had actually been released a few years prior (I believe just after we left the UK) but my brother had just got his hands on it and was making up for lost time. And in no time, songs like Never Made It, The Jinx and Easter Bank Holiday had me well hooked too. By months end I had exhausted my brother's collection of records and cassettes a few times over, falling head over heels for Cock Sparrer and The Test Tube Babies especially. In the early days I didn't have a whole lot of exposure to first and second generation American punk and most of what I heard, I didn't particularly like. The few exceptions were Dead Kennedys, The Freeze and Minor Threat. It wasn't until into the early 90s that I became more fluent in many of its sub-genres (the budding melodic hardcore sound, gunk, ramonescore, thrash, lo-fi, pop punk, streetpunk/oi! and so on). By the late 90s, with the emerging internet outlets, barely a stone had been left unturned. And I surely need not overstate how easily accessible music has been since then; even punk. This isn't to say "I've heard it all!". I most certainly have not, in fact I've made very little effort to keep up to date for going on a decade now. I also don't listen to many non-english speaking bands so there's plenty of punk music I've simply never heard. I've never once been in a band but since my pre-teens I've never not been a contributing member of a music community -- or several -- both locally and online.
ANYWHO ...
Let's get at it. Essentially this blog is a place to share my personal anthologies ... carefully curated collections of my favorite punk and punk-adjacent bands. Often featuring rare material and sourced from varied mediums, all tracks here are remastered (some to greater affect than others). Most punk bands don't generally have anthologies or greatest hits collections and if they do, they tend to have a bunch that just feature the same old tracks in slightly different order. This isn't that!
I thought about sharing discographies in conjunction with these collections but this will require enough effort as is and there are other sites where one can fill coffers. With the effort goes time, these projects take quite a bit so posting will not be all that frequent. Most of the collections will come in double and triple disc formats. I don't do anything in the way of artwork but it's tagged as such and I will try to offer all pertinent details, info and links pertaining to the music with each post. I can promise unique and exclusive content and hope to offer exposure to something new and/or another perspective to the familiar. Welcome. Enjoy, or not ... blah blah blah.