Thursday, December 16, 2010

I'm still not a punk fan

Nor do I think I ever will be.

I got a call from my buddy Gerry in Toronto.  Haven't talked to him in a bit.  Halfway through the chat we started to talk about music, and he listed off a bunch of groups that's he's been listening to lately, which of course I wasn't smart enough to write down and only remembered about three of the groups.
I told him about The Bad Shepherds. 

I stumbled on them about six months ago when I was looking for comedy stuff by Adrian Edmondson (The Young Ones, Bottom, Bad News) and just loved their take on things.  Adrian Edmondson is the lead singer, which if you've seen the Bad News skits/videos you would never think he'd be able to pull it off, but he does.
If you haven't heard them, they play old 70's-early 80's punk songs with folk music.  Yeah, it's different. 

Sort of reminded me of that time in high school when this dude Vinny played Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss on acoustic guitar.

But, you know, I've tried many times over the years,  to go back and give a listen to the original stuff  and dude, I still don't like it all that much.  Ramones are about the only punk band I've ever really liked.
I know Headstones, were considered by many to be punk-ish.  When you listen to  Picture of Health or Teeth and Tissue there is more of a harder rock edge with really heavy lyrics. Hugh Dillon can mix pain and partying perfectly. Turning an addiction into a love song, that's massive.
Speaking of Hugh Dillon;  Hard Core Logo part 2 was released for a special showing this month in time for the presentation of the live stage version of HCL. That's a trip. I can not wait for Hard Core Logo 2  to get it's major release.  If you haven't read the original book, track it down and do so. It's like a 95page book of song lyrics and photos, you can read it in an hour. I'm still amazed at the way they were able to turn it into not just a movie but an Iconic element.