There's a lot of stuff these days I don't understand about punk myself. It became a very broad church, a long way from the Sex Pistols to the Talking Heads and from The Slits to the Dolly Mixture or something like that, musically. But also a lot of punks got the wrong end of the stick, and maybe some progenitors of it did as well.
"As the owner of Fat Wreck Chords, the label that put out most of NOFX's material, as well as albums by scores of other bands, a lack of seriousness was a luxury he couldn't afford. "It's a lot of responsibility," he admitted with a sigh of relief now that the band has stopped touring and the label has been sold to Hopeless Records.
The term '84 Days' originally started as an inside joke back when I was a teenager, but watching the world change so much it seems to be a fitting description for how things have become ... like something I read in a book once. And now we're in it.
The best country song about a city will forever be Waylon Jennings' " Luckenbach, Texas," but when Noelle started singing "Taos," her ode to the New Mexico town, I had to rearrange a mental list of runners-up. Every Gillian Welch fan has their favorite songs, and while she and cosmic-folk guitarist extraordinaire David Rawlings didn't play mine (" Wrecking Ball," a beautiful autobiography of life in 1980s Santa Cruz), their set at the Masonic still felt like a big, warm embrace.
At the San Jose Punk Rock Flea Market, the entire club felt like a stage. The Ritz was jammed for the occasion. At opening time, high noon, people were already lined up outside. After I shelled out a five-spot to get in, I was told that if I wanted to leave and come back, there would probably still be a line outside. And there was.
November 2025 issue.PUP is back. The Canadian punk rockers-whose name stands for Pathetic Use of Potential, a sentiment I can get behind-just put out their fifth studio album, evocatively titled Who Will Look After the Dogs? And as the title implies, it's about relationships-the bad ones. Those love affairs that curdle, those forms of dislike you can only really cultivate when you know someone a little too well.
The way Jobson tells it, his and the band's ascent to national prominence in the late 70s was bit of a miracle in itself: growing up in a bleak, postindustrial mining village outside Dunfermline, his first stroke of luck was bumping into Sid Vicious in Malcolm McLaren's Sex shop on a trip down to London as a 15-year-old in 1976 to try to buy some leather trousers.
It's easy to get a little cynical about the very concept of CBGB Fest. When one of the side stages - the Young Punks Stage - is presented by Ed Hardy, it's even easier. Is corporate integration and brand licensing really "punk?" Surely someone else can write that dissertation. Besides, the idea of counter culture in 2025, where monoculture is so fragmented it barely even exists, is rarely decoupled from capitalism.
He wore a Ramones cutoff tee while boating down the Mekong River in Vietnam in another episode, and later dedicated his 2006 book "The Nasty Bits" to Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee Ramone. Throughout the course of his decades-long on-screen career, Bourdain used his platform to further elevate his favorite musicians, dining with Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and breaking bread with Iggy Pop.
The Beatles and the Stones kicked things off in the '60s, but the Clash renounced both bands in '77. Duran Duran and Culture Club softened the edges with new pop in the '80s, which gave way to the Britpop moment and the Spice Girls' rewriting of the female pop handbook in the '90s. Amy Winehouse kicked off another wave in the 2000s, which Adele rode en route to becoming one of the best-selling artists of all time.
The Dickies were pop punk before pop punk was a thing, starting way back in '77 with catchy melodies, a nerdy sense of humor, and even some harmonizing. While other bands (who were sticking tighter to the punk orthodoxy) accused them of just being in it for a quick buck, the Dickies were winning over audiences with their musical chops, their quirky, playful lyrics, and wild stage presence (including a WHO-loving puppet penis named Stewart).
"We were throwing around the word anarchy a lot. Anarchy was just trying to take care of yourself and try to govern yourself and look out for yourself. Self-management, that type of anarchy," said Dave Dictor, vocalist of the band MDC.
After being introduced by Kimmel, the punk veterans tore through one of their most popular songs, which kicks off with the iconic deadpan line from guitarist Noodles: 'You gotta keep 'em separated.'
Canada's NoMeansNo have had a lot of labels slapped on them, being credited with playing and even helping to invent genres and subgenres from emo to jazz punk and hardcore.
"We've been joking about it for like 10 years: 'Wouldn't it be cool if Dance Hall Crashers got back together and we got to play with you guys?' So yeah, this is the coolest thing that could have ever happened."
Rikk's musical journey started before he picked up a pencil. At the age of four, he was given his first drum kit. Instantly, he realized that he had a natural sense of rhythm.
