Punk

Sure you may not like Green Day but they helped put punk back on the map. Bands like No Use for a Name, Lagwagon, Pennywise and Good Riddance all exploded off the back of Green Day getting so much attention. Nofx sold 500k records off the back of it too.

What a delightful surprise to find this outstanding series. So many music documentaries are narrated by word salad tossers who talk over the music ~ competing with the artists & their art. The narration in Punk comes from the participants in the punk movement themselves. The artists tell their stories while sitting on some very fascinating couches that became, for me, co-stars in the story.

The documentary traces punk from the late 60's through what's left of punk today. I enjoyed punk in the early days, but drifted on to other music as I aged and as the internet changed the music game. After watching Punk, I'll be exploring old & new bands.

This is a well crafted, perfectly paced film that left me wishing for chapter 5.

WHERE ARE THE FOOKIN MISFITS??? And if you talked about SoCal sound, where's the mention of Social Distortion and then a quick mention or recognition of psychobilly as a genre? Otherwise it was an entertaining and good watch.

There are some great moments in the earlier episodes for sure, but I believe the filmmakers went a little too far in trying to please everyone. As in any other genre of art or music, there was great punk rock and well... there were shameless posers.

Part four was a complete throwaway. If you understand the ethos of Iggy Pop, The Buzzcocks, The Clash, Sex Pistols and other pioneer punk bands, its pretty hard to reconcile it with Green Day and the like. Post-Nirvana punk took a hard tack towards pop/commercialism. The music suffered as well.

At one point in Part 4, one of the Green Day people actually bragged about how many records the band sold and pointed out that they out sold Nirvana. Oh the irony! These dudes are just not too bright. Its cringeworthy listening to them speak.

Let's put Green Day and their ilk solidly in the shameless poser camp. Its skateboard pop.

Say what you will about Kurt Cobain, but his demise was eerily similar to the death of punk rock in the early 90s. When your art form is based on fierce integrity and honesty, it can't survive in a bought and sold medium. One might as well just kill themselves.

UNK (Epix, 2019) - A four hour Documentary co-Produced by Iggy Pop does an okay job of outlining the history of the music sub-genre from it's earliest roots in the late-60s to the grunge boom in the 90s. Director Jesse James Miller and his writing team break down the Doc into four chapters: 1. 60s and early 70s Proto-Punks like the MC5, New York Dolls and Iggy's The Stooges. 2. Mid-70s NYC's CBGB's with the Ramones and London's scene including the Sex Pistols. 3. 80s California's Hardcore bands like The Circle Jerks and Black Flag. 4. 90s with Nirvana and Green Day. The interviewees range from Marky Ramone to Blondie to Johnny Rotten to Penelope Spheris to Henry Rollins to, of course, the patron saint of Rock Docs, Dave Grohl. As will all these survey shows, one can always argue about which artist deserved inclusion or not, or which bands got too much or too little attention, but PUNK has a genuinely large chapter missing - the late 70s/early 80s 'Post-Punk' movement which included such major stars as Elvis Costello, The Jam, Sonic Youth and Rotten's own band Public Image Limited. It seems like Miller and the Producers wanted to focus on harder edged bands, which is fair enough. Still, if lighter groups like Blondie, Television and the Talking Heads are covered why not Joy Division, Wire, Devo and The Fall? It's a major missing chapter and feels somewhat arbitrary. PUNK is an entertaining enough sampler with some obvious gaps. If nothing else, it's kind of interesting to see the interviews and hear disparate voices like Jello Biafra, Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna, Legs MacNeil, Flea, Exene Cervenka and Joan Jett look back at that era in music.