the jam

To the outside world, punk rock was initially believed to be an English invention. Blame this on the Sex Pistols’ precocious ability to garner national and international headlines mere months after forming. The truth was, punk began in the early ‘70s with the off-center, jagged rock ‘n’ roll efforts of bands such as the New York Dolls and Detroit’s Iggy And The Stooges. Then some axis-jarring ‘70s

The most notable aspect of punk rock in 2002 was the mainstream ascension of garage for the first time since the ‘60s. But all those albums by the Strokes, the White Stripes and the Hives that went mega this year were all recorded and released in 2002. Whic...

Lars Frederiksen is one of the most influential figures in American punk-rock history. Frederiksen has been the co-vocalist and guitarist for Bay Area punk legends Rancid for over 30 years. In addition, Frederiksen has also been a member of bands such as Lars Frederiksen And The Bastards, the Old Firm Casuals and many others...

Welcome to the second installment of our exclusive two-part conversation with Leeds, U.K. post-punk icons Gang Of Four, represented by singer Jon King and drummer Hugo Burnham. We learned last time what the Marxist funkateers picked up from organizing political demonstrations and seeing early punk bands in the student refectory as Leeds University students...

September 1963: A young R&B combo called the Rolling Stones are rehearsing, preparing for a recording session. Their manager, former Beatles publicist Andrew Loog Oldham, was tearing his hair out. They were about to record their second single, a follow-up to their modestly successful remake of Chuck Berry’s “Come On.” But they had ...

Britpop was the sound of England taking back rock ‘n’ roll after American grunge and alt rock had annexed the world’s airwaves and charts for the first half of the ‘90s. Vox amps, Union Jacks, 1964 Paul McCartney haircuts, Ben Sherman shirts and Chelsea boots became all the rage, as bands plundered their British Invasion, David Bowie and early punk records for ideas. If you played your... Read Mo

This past March 5, the French punk label Guerilla Asso quietly slipped a genius album into the marketplace: Rocket To Kingston, credited to Bobby Ramone. The melding of the isolated vocal tracks from nine of Bob Marley’s most deathless classics to edited Ramones backing tracks, it sounds like a joke on paper. The ...

In 1996, Your Punk Professor interviewed the Clash’s distinguished lead guitarist Mick Jones for a proposed Alternative Press piece on punk’s original guitar heroes. Though it remains unpublished, I asked in the course of it what he thought of Rancid. Jones waxe...

As we exited the ’90s and entered the new millennium, pop divas, prefabricated boy bands and rappers bragging about conspicuous consumption and how poorly they treated women ruled the airwaves. Meanwhile, what passed for “rock” was the white guys who beat you up in high school P.E. class who’d di...

Southern California gets a lot of credit for being the birthplace of many bands that you know and love such as Black Flag and Bad Religion, but Northern California’s discography, which includes both Green Day and Metallica, isn’t exactly that shabby either. The area m...

Brooklyn pop-punk quartet Hot Knife are here to stick it to the corporate elite in their brand-new track “TOP 10 HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE.” The band are exclusively premiering the riffy and sarcastic song with AltPress. The sin...

By 1980, U.S. major labels abandoned punk with Sid Vicious' corpse. The American underground reacted, hard: “Don't want us? Fuck you, we'll do it ourselves!” The independent record distribution and touring network kicked off in earnest, as the harder/faster/louder hardcore punk sound started revving up, initially in Los Angeles before spreading across America through the year. Meanwhi...

Punk festered the entire ’70s: The Stooges and New York Dolls cleared the field as all the misfits on the margins waited their turn, marinating in a stew of poverty, filth, midnight John Waters screenings, scratchy thrift-store garage and rockabilly 45s, ancient dimestore William S. Burr...