The Vandals "Oi! To The World"

Here's another Weekend Post:
It's gonna be a punk rock Christmas . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are fun to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.

Reel Big Fish "Sell Out"

I remember being 30 years old and going to the Warped Tour.

Looking around, I wagered that I was roughly twice the age of the average attendee.

But I loved the festival and I loved the day.  You'd see 30 punk bands plow through a dozen songs each in their allotted 30 minutes of stage time.  You'd see a few "name" bands, a few mid-level bands and a few bands you'd never hear of.

I remember looking around the festival, at age 30, knowing that I was enjoying the show as much as any teenager.  But also aware that there would probably come a day when I didn't want to go to the Warped Tour.

I happened upon this year's Warped line up, and was horrified.

Of the 30 or so bands on the bill, I'd only heard of one of them.

And the only band I'd heard of, last had a hit over 15 years ago.

So while I could go to an all-day punk rock show, and see one fun nostalgic ska-pop band while being thrice the age of the average attendee . . . maybe I'll just use my AARP discount to get the Early Bird Special.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Bad Religion "Stranger Than Fiction"

I didn't really discover punk rock until much later than the average punk rock kid.

Let's face it, I didn't have much of a punk rock upbringing.

And from the outside, in those years when fellow teens may have been turning their musical attention to the punk rock of the day, the music held no particular appeal to me.

As a gentle kid, I didn't respond to the anger.

As a low-key, under-the-radar flier, I didn't respond to the fly-in-your-face-ness.

And as a kid who felt like the only thing he had going for him was that he was smart, I didn't respond to the rebellion that I perceived as not only anti-authority, but anti-intellectual.

The very primal nature of the music, as well as the sneering disdain, struck me as kinda cretin-ish.

Later, in my mid-20s I was turned around on that, really, by this one song.

Going forward (and looking back at the much of the music I missed out on), I discovered that lost in the image (or anti-image) and the anger, was that there were some pretty amazing and literate people writing these songs.

The first time I heard this song, the very first sentence sent me running to the dictionary:

"A febrile shocking violent smack . . ."

I'd never had a song send me to the dictionary before.

But how many bands had lead singers who have a Ph.D. in zoology, and when they are not touring, teach Paleontology at Cornell?

This one song made me reconsider the form, and led me down some wonderful roads, to Rancid and The Descendants and Social Distortion. Bands I never would have considered, if I hadn't had my vocabulary challenged by Greg Graffin and Bad Religion.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Reel Big Fish “Everything Sucks”

Hitting Random on the iTunes list . . .

This is the sound of 1996 calling. Ska. Silly. Ironic. Ironic. And Ironic.

I enjoyed the mid-90s ska revival like I enjoy barbecue chicken. A little sauce on the meat on a hot summer day tastes delicious.

But hearing this track today, was a little like swallowing a big ladle of barbecue sauce, without the context of the chicken.

In the 90s, when bands exciting young bands paved the path to pushing away the over-serious excesses of hair metal, U2 and classic rock, part of the groups charging forward used irony and sarcasm as their weapons against self-importance. And things became drenched in irony.

“Everything Sucks” wasn’t just a song, it felt like a mantra meant to take the piss out of what the musical movement was against, as well as the movement itself.

The only problem was that there WERE bands like Nirvana---who might have used a dash of irony---who didn’t feel like the punk-based-rock they were performing wasn’t weighted with a serious message.

I saw Reel Big Fish at a Warped Tour stop in Atlanta. They had to follow Social Distortion, lead by the glowering, bad-to-the-f’ing bone Mike Ness, who’s neck bulged with tattoos and lyrics brimmed with righteous anger. And then Reel Big Fish came out with Day-Go shorts and beach balls and songs about “Doin’ The Fish,” and somehow, somehow, they seemed pretty inconsequential.

Fun, but no more than a little bit of sauce on the meat of the era.



See the very 90's music video for this song, here

Buy the Reel Big Fish album, "Turn The Radio Off"