the stooges

Record stores are magical places. A good, well-stocked and curated record shop with a knowledgeable staff can influence tastes, expand horizons and serve as the hub for a local musical community. It can be a community center, a place to meet with your friends, promote your band’s upcoming shows by hanging up flyers, even sell […]

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 Though it remains unpublished, I asked in the course of it what he thought of Rancid.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 waxed effusive, noting he’d met the Berkeley punk traditionalists in the course of a […]

To consider Alternative Press’ list of 1994’s top 15 punk albums, one has to bear in mind two factors: Green Day’s Dookie was released Feb. 1. Kurt Cobain died by his own hand April 5. The alternative nation’s voice was suddenly, shockingly stilled. After three years of the most popular music being an agonized scream […]

When the ball dropped in New York City’s Times Square at the stroke of midnight Dec. 31, 2009, punk rock had been around 35 years. (Or 33, depending on if you date the subculture from when the Ramones began playing gigs or from the mythic Punk Year Zero of 1977.) It was well into its […]

“Detroit is the capital of Australia.” That phrase got thrown around a lot in ’80s American fanzines as our underground discovered Australian punk’s loud-and-aggressive charms. The basic sound: U.S. protopunk, especially of the Stooges/MC5 variety, mixed with ’60s garage, played with thermonuclear energy through modern heavy metal amplification. There was also an especial appreciation for […]

When it initially blasted into the world from New York’s Lower East Side almost concurrently with punk in 1977, it was dubbed no wave. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau referred to it as “skronk,” an onomatopoeia based around the general guitar sound. He uncharitably dubbed its ’80s practitioners “pigfucker” bands. This writer’s personal name for […]

Post-punk had to happen. Punk rock opened all this space for people to make exactly the kind of art or culture that the disenfranchised had been imagining in their heads, and maybe had limited means or skills by which to make it. But what if you didn’t want to crank out recharged three-chord rock ’n’ […]

Duets are all the rage these days, and largely without the intention of releasing said duet as a single. Case in point: YUNGBLUD’s recent sitdown with Avril Lavigne to blaze through her hit “I’m With You.” That’s just all about making it go viral. But there was a time when duets were truly something special—two […]

Punk has a million precedents—musical, spiritual. The basic sound and attitude can be traced back to the wildest, most primitive rockabilly records of the ’50s and the most fuzzed-out garage bands of the ’60s, plus the racket the New York Dolls and Iggy and the Stooges raised in the early ’70s. You see it in […]

In the ’70s, England had two great punk cities. Most across the planet thought London was the world’s only punk capital, completely ignoring the music and culture’s beginnings in New York City, mostly due to the Sex Pistols’ outsized reputation and influence. But if London was English Punk City No. 1, Manchester definitely came in […]

Punk was, by design, meant to be small and regional. True, bands might break out and become national or even international. But the overarching idea was keeping things small and accessible. You wanted to be able to reach out and touch your favorite band in a small sweaty club, maybe have a beer with the […]

When pub-rock singer Joe Strummer of the 101ers first met with former London SS guitarist Mick Jones in 1976 to brainstorm material for a new band eventually named the Clash, Strummer was shown one of his songs, “I’m So Bored With You.” He wasn’t having it: “‘Ere, let’s rewrite this now!” The rather wimpy romantic […]

Welcome to Alternative Press’ pick of the 15 best punk albums of 1991. It was a momentous year, one in which underground culture burst into the mainstream, taking punk and all its offshoots with it. Blame it on one album: Nirvana’s Nevermind.  Many punkier-than-thou types will moan when seeing this album’s inclusion. They’d be denying […]

Sylvain Sylvain Mizrahi—born in Cairo, Egypt on Valentine’s Day, 1951—died Wednesday, losing a battle with cancer. He was 69. You knew him as Sylvain Sylvain, or Syl Sylvain, the corkscrew-haired guitarist bopping at stage right in vintage videos of punk-rock architects the New York Dolls. “As most of you know, Sylvain battled cancer for the […]

My Chemical Romance always insert references in lyrics, videos, performances and wherever else they can fit them. In fact, they’re so abundant and often well hidden that the more subtle ones may be overlooked for years. While we love pulling out trivia regarding the real “Helena” and Blade Runner, the best nods are lesser-known. Better yet, […]

Part of the initial hype around punk rock was it had “no guitar heroes.” That was an exaggeration. To clarify, punk (in part) was meant to destroy the cult of technique. The obsession with 15-minute guitar solos, cramming in every note and lick you know at lightning speed. After all, what’s the point of playing […]

Welcome to the best punk albums of 1987. But first, some context. Feb. 20, 1987: An attack by a domestic terrorist called “the Unabomber” plants a bomb in a Salt Lake City computer store. The owner is injured. March 4: President Ronald Reagan owns up to what was swiftly called the Iran-Contra Affair in a […]

For many, first-wave punk was the sound of liberation. Chainsaw guitars, locomotive drums and screaming singers delivered brutal street poetry about the times. It saved us from a lifetime of dull progressive rock, snooze-worthy singer-songwriters and six-string heavy metal. For certain die-hards, ’70s punk is the only punk. For them, both the music and the […]

In a night of good old fashioned rock and roll, we got to see 5 Seconds of Summer Ashton Irwin team up with Palaye Royale. The night features a host of videos of a slew of bands covering classic hits such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen to “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin. The event was […]

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. Burroughs paperbacks and clothes stolen out of Goodwill dumpsters, then […]