Shellshock Rock is a punk rock documentary with an interesting history and provenance. Shot between 1978 and 1979, it’s a surprisingly affectionate record of the Belfast punk scene of the time. Now, it’s tricky for me to talk about this era with any degree of authenticity as I wasn’t born until ’82, but everything I’ve read or watched about the period suggests to me that punk rock was not taken seriously or treated with much respect by anyone who could be considered part of the British establishment of the time. This, of course, included people working in TV. Ian Glasper’s Burning Britain memorably features one early 80s UK punk band talking about a TV crew coming to do a piece on them. The crew asked the band to pose for a few shots and look as dangerous as possible, tried to provoke them into saying outrageous things and talking about their glue habits, and didn’t attempt to ask what the band or its members actually thought or cared about. Essentially, punk rock was regarded as a zoo to be approached with a sort of derisive fear.
So when Shellshock Rock director John T. Davis secured Arts Council funding to shoot a documentary of punk rock in Belfast, it is little surprise to learn that he was initially regarded with some suspicion. Fortunately he had already made some connections with the punk scene through previous work as a photographer and demonstrating his knowledge of music and his interest in 60s garage rock and proto-punk. In time he was accepted by the local scene and shot footage at a variety of Belfast shows and venues.
The production values of Shellshock Rock are low – I want to clarify this early on. Arts Council funding does not equate to large sums of money and surviving copies of this 50-minute documentary appear lower quality than, say, Another State of Mind (the ’84 tour documentary following Youth Brigade and Social Distortion on tour in their shitty yellow school bus). The budget was not great and the crew was, I imagine, John T. Davis plus whichever friendly sorts wanted to help him.
You may remember Mixtapes from my review of their split with Milwaukee’s Direct Hit!, about which I said:
“…the least convincing band rivalry since Radon burned that church down and Bad Religion wrote them a really stern letter.”
Hey, go check out their joint video if that has you curious!
So, since then the boys and girl in Mixtapes have been busy engineering an advanced form of mad science, allowing them to cram 7 songs over 16 minutes onto a single 7″. A Short Collection of Short Songs is the result, and there’s actually a real mixtape feel to it – a mix of songs with varied pace and songwriting, plus, of course, a cover.
Let’s begin at the beginning: ‘Birthday Party Summer’ (subtitled ‘Helllooo Meggannnn’ – bless those punx and their in-jokes). It opens soft, steady and gentle but with quick root notes on the bass to indicate that things are going to pick up. At first, though, you’re left to soak in some sweet vocal harmonies, occasional delicate guitar picking and ever-so-slightly sappy lyrics. There’s a faint smattering of piano, too, before the pace picks up alongside gang vocals and more energetic drumming. But the song is, essentially, an extended intro for ‘Real Hotel California’, the faster pop-punk number that ‘Birthday Party Summer’ was always promising to build toward. » Read the rest of this entry «
When I last reviewed Atlanta’s Campaign – all the way back in the heady days of last June, a time I’m sure we all remember fondly through the haze of distance and nostalgia – I noted that the five-piece were clearly intent on reliving the legacy of Gainesville heroes Hot Water Music and the other great bands that outfit inspired (of which there were many).
To be specific, I said:
The Hot Water Music comparison is probably one that’s been made in almost every review of this band but it’s perfectly apt. With It Likes to Party Campaign aren’t pushing this established sub-genre in any new directions but they’ve got their own identity and the EP’s title is spot-on. What you have here are five fast-paced, explosively dynamic punk rock anthems played with passion and panache.
I could almost copy-paste that summary into this review – without obviously quoting it, I mean – and it would apply equally well here. Fortunately for you I’m not that lazy, and plenty has changed since that EP. For example, Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! has four songs, not five, and its title isn’t as good.
Long-term fans of British DIY hardcore may remember Margate’s Babies Three, who were about between ’99 and ’04 and released a handful of records before briefly changing their name and splitting up. I never got to see them but they toured Europe with Yaphet Kotto and Song of Zarathustra, which is pretty fucking badass.
So, this record – TB3LP to give it its official name – is a collection of the band’s early EPs, 7″s and the like that preceded their breakup. I don’t have any of these original releases so I’m not sure which records are collected here and when the various tracks were recorded, so suffice to say that you have 12 tracks which are variably good and average.
Take for example first track ‘Guilt Free Youth’, with a powerful edge of desperation to its sound, a rapid pace and a plaintive screamo-esque edge to the vocals, or ‘Wimpfest’, with its bruising hardcore punk riffs, full-steam-ahead drumming and throaty roars – these remind me of the old ebullition acts I used to love like Bread & Circuits and Torches to Rome. These tunes have a lot of energy to them and stand up well today even given their age. » Read the rest of this entry «
Late last year, whilst meandering through the day’s crop of Tumblr posts, I came across the “Fuck Hardcore Shows Manifesto”. The original post and blog appear to have been taken down, possibly due to the amount of attention, number of comments (many aggressively negative) and reposts it received. Fortunately the nature of Tumblr is such that once something is out there, it tends to stay out there. Here’s a copy of the original post in full:
it’s one of those things where you avoid something you take issue with for a while, and then suddenly find yourself in the middle of it, and it catches you off guard, ill-prepared, and you start fuming.
i went to see envy at reggie’s last night (amazing, by the way!). one of the opening bands was trash talk. it was funny, because the first two bands were some instrumental band from belfast and touche amore, and although kids were going nuts and singing along, it was no big deal. then trash talk came out. immediately, a huge pit formed in front of the stage, squishing almost everyone else back against the back wall. and then the familiar scene began.
pacing back and forth, posturing aggressively, stomping, kicking, punching, violently flailing arms. two dudes accidentally knocked into each other and started posturing at each other and shit talking, needing to be separated before a fight. kids crisscrossed the room, performing one of the most extreme versions of macho masculinity ever to dilute the political bases of punk rock. because this violence isn’t even raw and reactionary; it’s planned, staged, practiced. it privileges machismo unquestioningly. it privileges the antiquated notion that dudes can’t control themselves and need to blow off steam violently because men will be men. it’s such an obvious fucking farce. » Read the rest of this entry «
The furrow ploughed by Gainesville’s Hot Water Music was wide and deep, and in their footsteps have followed a panoply of young bands inspired by the urgency and passion of their melodic post-hardcore. It seems obvious that The Great Explainer are among this host, counting Chuck Ragan and company among their influences, and with their debut EP The Way Things Swell they’ve established themselves as a distinct outfit with a solid understanding of how to write naturally anthemic punk rock songs.
‘I Finally Found my Dreamboat’s lush guitar and expansive mid-pace chorus are carried up by dual vocals that blend gruff, throaty aggression with soaring clean singing, culminating in an intoxicating mix of hooks. The bridge in closer ‘Michael Jordan 666′ boasts an alluring bridge, stripping back to simple vocals before a lush melody slips in to carry the song away.
Whilst it’s true that you’ve pretty much heard what’s on offer in these four tunes before, that doesn’t really matter with tunes this good. The Great Explainer won’t change the face of music, but they will bring a lot of pleasure to those who choose to listen to them. And of the many bands offering tribute to those that came before, it’s obvious that The Great Explainer are already forging themselves into a forerunner that shares the passion and knack for songwriting of their heroes.
It feels a little odd to be reviewing this record during the coldest few days Britain’s experienced this year (at least, I don’t remember January being this bad), with its summery youth crew vibe, warm and nostalgic cover art, and the fact that Go Rydell are lucky enough to hail from Orlando, Florida, but on the other hand it’s good to listen to unseasonal music to drag your mind and heart elsewhere.
So yeah, Go Rydell rock out with melodic hardcore stylings ala. Shook Ones, Kid Dynamite and Lifetime; upbeat punk rock with a generally positive attitude – although Go Rydell throw in some more sinister lyrics that at times subvert your expectations of this sound. Aside from this they don’t bring much new to the table, but this remains a good, solid collection of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them good time songs that are helping me shake off my winter blues.
‘A Little Too Raph’ is a particularly good tune with some excellent “woahs” (and if you don’t dig a good “woah” you may as well stop reading right now). ‘Drawn and Quartered’ opens with a tight and simple riff contrasted with hanging power chords; it’s also one of the aforementioned songs that exposes something darker beneath the posi vibes: “Everything is wonderful to me” is followed by “world drawn and quartered, how can you sleep?” Ditto ‘Satellites’: “every morning, I feel so robotic” / “you know I want to feel like a satellite, search the world with you”.
It seems a bit daft to highlight fairly unexceptional lyrical juxtapositions but in all honesty there’s only so much I can say about The Golden Age. It’s a good collection of punk rock tunes and if you dig this kind of melodic hardcore, you should definitely check this out. And these songs are too good to dismiss, so if you want to give them a try then go for it. But they’re not doing anything that hasn’t been done before. Still, who really gives a fuck about that? Go Rydell obviously know exactly what they want to do, and this is them doing it. Let the good times roll!
Dude Trips collects up all of Bangers’ recorded output as of earlier this year, including tunes from their splits with Dirty Tactics and Brighton’s own Break the Habit among others. There’s 10 songs in all from this gruff pop-punk three piece who hail from Falmouth (oops, sorry guys, for ages I thought you were from Wales).
Bangers took a while to grow on me but now that they have I’m really into their style of earnest and honest punk rock. Their lyrics sound heavily autobiographical, which ranges from being surrounded by fashion-focused people (“Show me anyone whose priorities aren’t fucking dumb and I’ll show you five who’ve all got love affairs with clothes and hair”) to drinking all night with friends (“Home’s just where you stop when comfort outweighs your sense of adventure”). They’re a three-piece but thanks to some good guitar lines it’s easy to think that there’s a second six-stringer. I actually thought there was until I caught them live. Yep, I get things wrong a lot.
‘Excuses be Damned’ is one of my top picks from Dude Trips, an anthemic opener with the chorus “We’ll make the next one better!” which I think is about fucking up arrangements with friends or dates, but which works fairly well if you apply it to playing shows and going on tour. “We got held up on the way up, but we’re here now so could you please cheer up now.”
It’s a shame that Dude Trips wasn’t issued as a vinyl release, since all of the tracks on it are available elsewhere, a lot of them on other vinyl records, and collections always feel a bit more special on the bigger format. Still, it’s a good CD that collects some great songs from one of the UK’s hardest-working and touring punk bands, and despite their disparate origins the songs fit together perfectly as an album. Plus, you can download the songs free from Bandcamp if you don’t want to buy it. There’s no excuse not to do one of the two.
I’m trying something a bit different here – a live stream of Montreal punk band the Sainte Catherines playing at The Fest in Gainesville. Hopefully the embed code will work, and thanks to Erica of Yowie.com for alerting me to this.
This post goes live at 8pm and the set will begin at 9pm GMT. If my embed doesn’t work, then the source page is here.
