Their Generations

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 22 2006 9:00 AM

Submitted by Dr_Frank. Edited By Dr_Frank.

Larry Livermore reports on a night spent watching Australian TV. Around halfway through the post there's a kind of personal review of Don Letts's punk-umentary, Punk: Attitude:

The first thing I saw was the Velvet Underground playing live around 1966, followed by a quick cutaway to the MC5 and my old friend John Sinclair waxing rhapsodic about "dope, rock and roll, and fucking in the streets." Then there was a good bit of MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer explaining, as baby boomers are wont to do, how all that dope, rock and roll, and f.i.t.s. helped to instill society with a new vision of itself and, of course, stop the Vietnam War.

Lots of people I know or who've met ... were there sounding off on the History and Meaning of Punk, some tendentiously, some hilariously. Henry Rollins was in particularly good form, getting off one zinger after another, though both he and John Holmstrom might have been annoyed to find that the reviewer from the Sydney Morning-Herald had thought Henry was John and vice versa.

There was Jello Biafra in his "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" and Dr. Frank lookalike era, and in his modern, weightier and non-Dr. Frank lookalike form, expounding, much as Wayne Kramer had, on how important HIS generation had been. Personally, I preferred Wayne even if he is perpetuating many of the myths that make my generation so annoying, because he was more gently spoken, better dressed, and, well, it still is my generation.

4 Comments

MrsRobinson

I'm lost

February 2006

FEB 22, 2006 09:16 AM

This doc, he is talking about was on american tv last fall (fall?) (cable?) (it's all a big blur), and his blahg commentary about it was right on. Starts off good/interesting, but his quote here hits the nail on the head:

"But get it straight, dildos: Sonic Youth were NOT PUNK. Nirvana were NOT PUNK. SY were alternative college art rock. Nirvana were just plain rock. Both might have borrowed a few elements from punk, a few chord changes and a slight DIY ethos..."

one of those things that starts off fascinatingly interesting, but the entire last half hour or so could have just been left out of, because it becomes absurd.

TheFuckOffKid

NEWSWIRE

Australia

FEB 22, 2006 03:12 PM

We've all been wistfully discussing this documentary in SG Australia. (And parochially lamenting the absence of any mention of, oh, The Saints, Radio Birdman, or [the Australian] X.)

But is that Larry Livermore this Larry Livermore?

Is he living in Sydney now?

Should I invite him around to a BBQ at my place?

spgphil

Fremont, CA

August 2005

FEB 22, 2006 03:15 PM

"But get it straight, dildos: Sonic Youth were NOT PUNK. Nirvana were NOT PUNK. SY were alternative college art rock. Nirvana were just plain rock. Both might have borrowed a few elements from punk, a few chord changes and a slight DIY ethos..."

SY is still more "punk" than most bands labeled "punk" today.