Punk Song Quotes

Those letters are everything. They’re her and me, kids just trying to figure themselves out and going through our growing pains. They’re where I first started to fall for her and need her. They’re my fucking songs and a part of me.

It's the ballads I like best, and I'm not talking about the clichéd ones where a diva hits her highest note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies. I mean a true ballad. Dictionary definition: a song that tells a story in short stanzas and simple words, with repetition, refrain, etc. My definition: the punk rocker or the country crooner telling the story of his life in three minutes, reminding us of the numerous ways to screw up.

You know what punk is? a bunch of no-talent guys who really, really want to be in a band. Nobody reads music, nobody plays the mandolin, and you're too dumb to write songs about mythology or Middle-earth. So what's your style? Three chords, cranked out fast and loud and distorted because your instruments are crap and you can't play them worth a damn. And you scream your lungs out to cover up the fact that you can't sing. It should suck, but here's the thing - it doesn't. Rock and roll can be so full of itself, but not this. It's simple and angry and raw.

I thought those were pretty big words coming from a guy who covered AC/DC songs.

My heart is beating a punk rock song against my chest.

--that we humans have little or no influence on the two most important moments of our life. Being born and dying. That felt like the right kind of fuck-you to the universe that a great punk rock song requires.

Why was fabulousness important? The world was a scary, sad place and adornment was one of the only ways she knew to make herself and the people around her forget their troubles. That was why she had opened her store almost five years ago. Everyone who entered the little square white house with miniature Corinthian columns, cherub statues, and French windows seemed to leave carrying armloads of newly handmade and well spruced-up recycled vintage clothing, humming sixties girl-group songs, seventies glam and punk, eighties New Wave one-hit wonders, or nineties grunge, doing silly dances, and not caring what anyone thought. Weetzie loved the old dresses she found and sold, because they had their own secret histories. She always wondered where, when, and how they had been worn. What they had seen. Old dresses were like old ladies.

You like this?” he said, thrusting with every word. “You like this. Worthless. Street. Punk. Fucking. You?

There are certain things a girl just knows, like that a fourth minute on a punk song is a bad, bad idea,

Loving a band with all your heart is something you understand when it happens to you. On the surface, others can see its a petty obsession, but they'll just never know the feeling of putting so much fail into a few people on the other side of the world. It's hard to explain it to them, the listening to a song after song on repeat, the waits for new albums, the excitement and surreal sensation when you finally see them live. They don't understand why the lyric books give you a sense of comfort, or why you paste photos of them on your bedroom walls. And they can't understand why one band could matter to you so much. And you think to yourself ‘Because they saved my life’. But you say nothing, because thy wouldn't understand.

Punk was just a single, venomous one-syllable, two-syllable phrase of anger—which was necessary to reignite rock & roll. But sooner or later, someone was going to want to say more than fuck you.

Anything well done has the feeling of death to me, of being finished. I don't want to "master" anything. I want to spy, and sneak, and capture things just as they are . . . record all that comes before and after the song—jokes and fights and private moments. Having an unfillable hole inside is a great catalyst. You're always trying new things to fill it. People with holes look good! Look ready for action. But then sometimes you're home alone, and there's nothing new to try, and the hole's still there. "Hey," it growls, poking you from inside, "I'm hungry." I get tired of it! We are like two living cells inside a just-dead body—doomed, terrified. She argues herself out of anything she's working on, halfway through. As I stand there in the downpour and pull the mailbox open and drop my letter down the hole, I think about how Cindy is more beautiful, intelligent, and intricate than me, but still I have the winning point: whatever I do, even when I'm wrong, I go all the way. It's dark humor, but it's rooted in something real. What you present to the world is light humor. You keep it fun and fast-paced. No one can relate to that long-term. Struggle is what makes life rich—not success.

The only thing that made the music different was that we were taking lyrics to places they had never been before. The thing that makes art interesting is when an artist has incredible pain or incredible rage. The New York bands were much more into their pain, while the English bands were much more into their rage. The Sex Pistols' songs were written out of anger, wheras Johnny was writing songs because he was brokenhearted over Sable...

...politically charged punk that combined activism and art. Forged out of a meeting of friends who decided they wanted to start a “girl riot,” the women gave rise to bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, addressing rape and violence in their songs, publishing zines, popularizing “girl power"...

So I had this date last night,” Dane goes on, ignoring my order. “Do you remember that girl from Sigma Kappa Whatever? She was at the gig last night, and everything was going great, both of us eye-fucking for like four frickin’ hours…” He pauses and turns to me, his voice turning urgent. “She takes me home, dude, and I’m sitting in the living room while she’s in the bathroom, and I’m so ready, because she’s so hot, right? And who walks in?” “Dane.” I close my eyes, willing him to shut the fuck up. “Her mom, dude!” he bursts out. “Her mom in her light pink nightie with legs for days. And let me tell you, man…Stacy’s mom has got it going on?” I can’t help myself. I break out in a laugh at the song reference and pinch the bridge of my nose, tired but a fraction more relaxed, even if I’d never admit it to him. Such an idiot.

Like punk?” She wrinkled her nose. She could stand a few Dead Milkmen songs, but other than that, she hated Park’s punk music. “I

The first noble truth, suffering, represents idealism. When you look at things from an idealistic viewpoint everything sucks, as the Descendents said in the song called “Everything Sucks” (from the album Everything Sucks). Nothing can possibly live up to the ideals and fantasies you’ve created. So we suffer because things are not the way we think they ought to be. Rather than face what really is, we prefer to retreat and compare what we’re living through with the way we think it oughta be. Suffering comes from the comparison between the two.

Project Princess Teeny feet rock layered double socks Popping side piping of many colored loose lace ups Racing toe keeps up with fancy free gear slick slide and just pressed recently weaved hair Jeans oversized belie her hips, back, thighs that have made guys sigh for milleni year Topped by an attractive jacket her suit’s not for flacking, flunkies, junkies or punk homies on the stroll. Her hands mobile thrones of today’s urban goddess Clinking rings link dragon fingers no need to be modest. One or two gap teeth coolin’ sport gold initials Doubt you get to her name just check from the side please chill. Multidimensional shrimp earrings frame her cinnamon face Crimson with a compliment if a comment hits the right place Don’t step to the plate with datelines from ‘88 Spare your simple, fragile feelings with the same sense that you came Color woman variation reworks the french twist with crinkle cut platinum frosted bangs from a spray can’s mist Never dissed, she insists: “No you can’t touch this.” And, if pissed, bedecked fists stop boys who must persist. She’s the one. Give her some. Under fire. Smoking gun. Of which songs are sung, raps are spun, bells are rung, rocked, pistols cocked, unwanted advances blocked, well stacked she’s jock. It’s all about you girl. You go on. Don’t you dare stop.

She’s the reason he will probably become an embittered old fuck before he’s even of legal drinking age, distrusting women and writing rude songs about them, and basically from here into eternity thinking all chicks are lying cheating sluts because one of them broke his heart. He’s the type of guy that makes girls like me frigid. I’m the girl who knows he’s capable of poetry, because, like I said, there are things I just know. I’m the one who could give him that old-fashioned song title of a thing called Devotion and True Love (However Complicated), if he ever gave a girl like me a second glance. I’m the less-than-five-minute girlfriend who for one too-brief kiss fantasized about ditching this joint with him, going all the way punk with him at a fucking jazz club in the Village or something. Maybe I would have treated him to borscht at Veselka at five in the morning, maybe I would have walked along Battery Park with him at sunrise, holding his hand, knowing I would become the one who would believe in him. I would tell him, I heard you play, I’ve read your poetry, not that crap your band just performed, but those love letters and songs you wrote to Tris. I know what you’re capable of and it’s certainly more than being a bassist in an average queercore band—you’re better than that; and dude, having a drummer, it’s like key, you fucking need one. I would be equipment bitch for him every night, no complaints. But, no, he’s the type with a complex for the Tris type: the big tits, the dumb giggle, the blowhard. Literally.

I yelled "Revolution girl style now!" before "Double Dare Ya" like I'd been doing live and reassured myself that the session was meant to take a snapshot of our songs, not to make them sound perfect. Maybe being sloppy would inspire other girls to start bands.

Up till then, I'd dated people by default, because I either needed help paying rent or was afraid of what would happen if I rejected them-but Luke was different. I chose him. I ended up going home with him after a party a few nights Inter and woke up so deeply in love that there aren't enough poems or songs or words to ever explain it.

I cannot explain to you how utterly crazy these comments by my "punk family" made me feel. I had just seen the most important band in the world. All I wanted to do was to get their information so I could invite them to play at Reko Muse, All I wanted was to be near them. They were everything. I'd seen God and she was three women playing songs in a shack in the middle of nowhere.

The first time Amy Carter played live I felt like I was gonna puke all over the microphone. But by our third song, the feeling I had being Annie in grade school and the feeling I had opening for Acker morphed into one thing. We performed a couple of times at Reko Muse and then the band fizzled out when senior year started, which was fine. I knew who I was now. I was a singer in a band.

I Feel Love,” by Donna Summer, and this had a profound influence on how I perceived music from that point on. Additionally, it led me toward a greater appreciation of disco; Chic were now filed next to the Clash in my album collection. These elements, merged with many other stylistic references, formed the basic blueprint for Duran Duran: the raw energy of punk, disco rhythms, electro pulses, and the panache of glam rock, which was already deeply embedded in our consciousness.

Palmolive wrote the lyrics to ‘Newtown’ too. The song was originally called ‘Drugtown’, but I changed it to ‘Newtown’, thinking about all the new towns that are springing up around the edges of London, like Milton Keynes and Crawley. The young people growing up there are so bored, they take loads of drugs and drive around really fast or beat each other up at football matches, then they get up and commute to their dull jobs on Monday morning. Palmolive made up these great words like ‘televisina’ and ‘footballina’ as drug names, I think only a foreigner could do that.

The pain I feel from the Slits ending is worse than splitting up with a boyfriend, my parents divorcing or being chucked out of the Flowers of Romance: this feels like the death of a huge part of myself, two whole thirds gone. Now the Slits are over and Tessa has recovered, I’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to do; I’m cast back into the world like a sycamore seed spinning into the wind. I’m burnt out and my heart is broken. I can’t bear to listen to music. Every time I hear a song I feel physical pain, just to hear instruments is unbearable, it reminds me of what I’ve lost.

Music brought the war in Vietnam right into our bedrooms. Songs we heard from America made us interested in politics; they were history lessons in a palatable, exciting form. We demonstrated against the Vietnam and Korean wars, discussed sexual liberation, censorship and pornography and read books by Timothy Leary, Hubert Selby Jr (Last Exit to Brooklyn) and Marshall McLuhan because we'd heard all these people referred to in songs or interviews with musicians. [...] Music, politics, literature, art all crossed over and fed into each other. There were some great magazines around too [...] Even though we couldn’t afford to travel, we felt connected to other countries because ideas and events from those places reached us through music and magazines.

They started calling people my grandfather’s age “generation ink”. He represents the era when extensive tattoos tipped into the mainstream. Now the old men and women sit together in the lounge room of my grandfather’s nursing home, watching daytime television. They don’t watch sport. Tattoos from their wrist to shoulders and across their chest, snake beneath their woolen cardigans and cotton shirts. Withered souls eternally painted in often incomprehensible scrawling. Faded colours. But that’s not to say that they regret getting inked. Far from it. It’s a part of who they are. As real and as precious as the blank skin they were born with. Their tastes in music haven’t mellowed either. They slowly approach the sound-system, leaning on their walking frame, and skip to songs by Pantera and Sepultura. Or Metallica, Slayer and Iron Maiden. My grandfather enjoyed punk and post-rock bands like Millencolin, Thursday, Coheed and Cambria or At The Drive-In.

Johnny Rotten slouches at the front of the stage, propped up on the mike stand. He's leaning so far forward he looks as if he might topple into the empty space in front of the audience. · His face is pale and his body is twisted into such an awkward ugly shape he looks deformed. He looks ordinary, about the same age as us, the kind of boy I was at comprehensive school with. He's not a flashy star like Marc Bolan or David Bowie, all dressed up in exotic costumes, he's not a virtuoso musician like Eric Clapton or Peter Green, he's not even a macho rock-and-roll pub-band singer – he's just a bloke from Finsbury Park, London, England, who’s pissed off. Johnny sneers at us in his ordinary North London accent, his voice isn't trained and tuneful, it's a whiny cynical drawl, every song delivered unemotionally. There's no fake American twang either. All the things I'm so embarrassed about, John's made into virtues. He's unapologetic about who he is and where he comes from. Proud of it even. He's not taking the world's lack of interest as confirmation that he’s wrong or worthless. I look up at him twisting and yowling and realise it's everyone else who's wrong, not him. How did he make that mental leap from musically untrained, state-school-educated, council estate boy, to standing on stage in front of a band? I think he's brave. A revolutionary. He's sending a very powerful message, the most powerful message anyone can ever transmit. Be yourself.

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.

Here's a song, here's another, here's a third...now go on and write a story.

Pierre wakes up for good. As he's lying there yawning, he vaguely remembers a couple of false starts inspired by a ringing phone. He looks to his left. It's eleven. Next thing, he's stumbling down the hall toward his phone machine. 'Wait. Coffee,' he whispers in a shredded voice, veering back into the kitchen. He does what he has to, then plays back the messages, sips. Beep. 'It's Paul at Man Age. Appointment, twelve-thirty P.M., hour, Gramercy Park Hotel, room three-forty-four, name Terrence. Later.' Beep. 'Paul again. Appointment, two P.M., Washington Annex Hotel, room six-twenty, a play-it-by-ear, name Dennis, I think the same Dennis from last night. Check with us mid-afternoon. You're a popular dude. Later.' Beep. 'P., it's Marv, you there? . . . No? . . . Call me at work. Love ya.' On his way to the shower Pierre makes a stop at the stereo, plays side one of Here Comes the Warm Jets, an old Eno album. It's still on his turntable. It has this cool, deconstructive, self-conscious pop sound typical of the '70s Art Rock Pierre loves. He doesn't know why it's fantastic exactly. If he were articulate, and not just nosy, he'd write an essay about it. Instead he stomps around in the shower yelling the twisted lyrics. ' "By this time / I'd got to looking for a kind of / substitute . . ." ' It's weird to get lost in something so calculatedly chaotic. It's retro, pre-punk, bourgeois, meaningless, etc. ' ". . . I can't tell you quite how / except that it rhymes with / dissolute." ' Pierre covers his ears, beams, snorts wildly. Tying his sneakers, he flips the scuffed-up LP, plays his two favorite songs on the second side, which happen to sit third and fourth, and are aurally welded together by some distorted synthesizer-esque percussion, maybe ten, fifteen seconds in length. Pierre flops back in his chair, soaks the interlude up. It screeches, whines, bleeps like an orgasming robot.

You believe in authority, I believe in Myself I'm a Molotov cocktail, you're Dom Perignon

She presses play and Andrea listens to the song. A guitar starts playing, then another and then drums; it’s an unusual sound; it seems like rock music but is strange, somewhat gothic and punk. It’s a melodic song, though, and his foot taps the beat without him realizing. A man’s voice, full of sadness, sings the first words:   "When routine bites hard And ambitions are low And resentment rides high But emotions won’t grow And we're changing our ways Taking different roads..."   Andrea knows it! He hears the song arrive from his distant past with a suitcase full of memories. He sees himself as a child, sitting in the living room, his little legs dangling from a chair. His father has just received a new CD from abroad and couldn’t wait to receive it so Gina the caretaker has sent it on to him in Clusone. He’s really excited and tells mom all about it. She’s happy too. Barbara has pigtails and is eating a piece of focaccia with olives, sticking her fingers inside to take them out one by one. She’s tiny, five years old or maybe younger. Andrea sees the CD on the table and wonders what is so special about it. There's a very pale guy on the front, with dark hair and a strange fringe. His mouth is right up to the microphone and everything else is black. It’s written in a language that he can’t read, though he knows that it’s English. His parents are so happy that he decides to take it and have a listen. He snatches the disc and CD player and runs off. He runs very fast...   "Then love, love will tear us apart again" sings Ian Curtis, the voice of Joy Division, his parents’ favorite band. It’s a compilation that came out in 2000, containing a special song, "Love will tear us apart again." Andrea runs to a little girl that he loves very much. He has fun all day long with her in the mountains. He runs to his inseparable friend, his dear... "Susy!" he exclaims, eyes open wide. She smiles and nods. He

Iggy and Alice. Alice and Iggy. Iggy was the total street-punk sex god—no shirt, his private parts sticking out of his pants. But he was a great performer. The band was so basic and raw, but it didn’t matter how well they played. In fact, the Stooges made the Ramones sound like a string quartet. The Stooges were relentless, and no matter what happened to Iggy out there in the crowd—somebody in the audience might knock him out cold, whatever—the band would never, ever stop playing. The roadies had to revive Iggy and set him back upon the stage, but meanwhile the band would go right into the next song. The Stooges were serious customers. I hated going on after Iggy! He wore the audience out. Musically maybe we were the better band, and visually we might have been more stunning, but the Stooges rocked.

I love my fans [and] Slayer fans,” wrote Lombardo. “But the fact is: Today's Slayer is not SLAYER. They can play all of the songs, but the heart and the backbone is gone.  If the current mindset was present at the beginning, we would have never made it this far.  We were not greedy sellouts, going through the motions on stage merely to cash a check. We were the epitome of the punk/thrash mentality. If they ever get back

To any old punks who’re reading this: yes, Chickentown is a shout-out to John Cooper Clark’s memorable song, “Evidently Chickentown,” a striking evocation of heroin withdrawal in small-town/suburban England in the 1970s and 1980s.

No one could explain why a punk would ever follow any mainstream rule about how many songs you could put on a single.

MILF Token: What Is It and What Are the Prospects? Why MILF symbols? Whoever had actually the intense suggestion of producing a MILF token has actually located a cutting-edge means of touching into 2 distinctive yet similarly eye-catching streams. On the one hand, here's a fresh cryptocurrency including distinctively collectible characters, with evidence of possession saved in a blockchain. On the various other hand, when it concerns those characters, it likewise ventures a fixation among several songs in the very early 21st-century: fully grown, sexually knowledgeable ladies looking for daring times with their suitors. Any kind of speculator wanting to explore the idea behind these extravagant as well as attractive characters can conveniently acquaint themselves with a few of the very best sites concentrating on dating MILFs. These systems provide an algorithm-based solution, where brand-new consumers can surely join, as well as the details offered throughout this enrollment procedure - inspirations, kind of MILF they are brought in to, and so on. - can surely be as compared to the information they currently carry submit. This way, the liaison can surely be easily organized without the individual enquiring also needing to make up a candid message. The computer system software application will certainly give a shortlist of ideal dating prospects. Comparable character-driven symbols MILF symbols are top on from formerly prominent characters that have actually gripped the focus of crypto investors, such as CryptoPunks. These were a collection of 10,000 characters, each distinct, that exposed evidence of possession on the Ethereum blockchain. MILF symbols operate similarly. Due to the fact that no 2 characters are alike, each token can surely ended up being the authorities residential building of a solitary proprietor on this blockchain. Those 10,000 CryptoPunk symbols were quickly purchased, immediately providing the specific characters boosted worth. The presumption is that the MILF symbols will certainly go similarly, so any individual wanting to obtain their practical a certain MILF personality will certainly need to buy this through the market-place that's likewise installed in the Ethereum blockchain. Presently, the most affordable offered rate for MILF symbols is $0.00004078, standing for a 0.61% increase over the previous 24-hour. Shade coding Generally, these characters will certainly have actually a condition when they show up in the crypto markets. Where the CrytoPunks are worried, a blue history suggested that punk was except sale, neither exist energetic quotes. Punks that were offered offer for sale would certainly have actually a red history. Those with an energetic quote would certainly have actually a purple history. MILFs have actually built such a solid track record for desirability, their incorporation as

Our fans were often the same age as us, and we would prove to ourselves and them that we were the real punks. We were zealots of a kind with a determination not to surrender our values to the big cities, but rather bring them our true punk values like respect for the people who were paying to see us. We’d make it our business to stop and talk, to sign autographs. We wanted to fuse with our audience in the way no punk band had been able to. And as the singer, I had to create that fusion, to make a chemistry set of the crowd, by rubbishing the very idea they were a crowd. This was not just a nucleus of unstable atoms banging into each other; this was a gathering of sentient beings who for those few hours every night played the most important role in the drama, transporting the band and therefore themselves to some place neither had been before. Finding some moment that none of us had occupied before, or would ever again.

The narrative oral history is such an incredible format because it draws from every art form: the chapters have the rhythm of song, the cuts are cinematic, newspaper headlines can punctuate incidents, slang is celebrated, and first-hand accounts bring the poetry of the spoken word. There’s not a single art form we can think of that is not included, from painting, weaving, even pictographs, for great art tells a great story.

Our message, such as it is, has always been, have fun,” he continues, attempting to define the secret of their longevity. “That’s timeless and appeals to everyone. If your songs are about the political state of the country, or a victim of police brutality in the Eighties, then the agenda that you established for yourself becomes obsolete. You become an anachronism…

The gig was a disaster though as their singer Hendo drank a bottle of whisky before he went onstage. Halfway through the first song, he passed out, fell off the stage and didn’t get back up! Gig over!

For another two minutes, I clenched my eyes shut and powered through this song no one had ever heard, and to which no one could sing along. For them, it was background music for their toasts to another year gone by. I was toasting, too. It was a farewell song. This was the night I said goodbye to Thomas James Gabel.

Some songs take time, some songs dissolve into nothing, and very rarely, a song will simply find you in the night.

The Ten Commandments of Punk Thou shalt know everything by the time thou art seventeen, with a great and sure certainty. Thou shalt proclaim the year zero and not honor the past because the new alone shall count. Thou shalt wear a garb of torn leather jacket and trousers, with accessories bearing a hint of S&M, with thy feet shod by Doc Martens. Thy T-shirt, like thy lyrics, will bear a slogan to offend. Thou shalt be bored, angry, pretty vacant, or at least faintly pissed off. Thou shalt have no more heroes, nor accept anyone in authority. Thou shalt bear an adjective for a surname like Rotten or Vicious. Thou shalt connect with thy audience so that they may invade thy stage or receive thy spit in their eye. Let them mosh. Thou shalt speak the truth in a fake cockney accent, even if thou art Irish or went to a minor English public school. Thou shalt not grow old lest thy come to realize the biggest authority thy will need to defeat is thine own self.

Deedee dropped out of her ska-punk band and joined an eight-person madrigal chorus. She had a clot somewhere deep inside her that was connected to the people she had lost in the flood, or might lose in the aftermath, and the endless conversations where everybody compared notes on their respective tragedies only made her feel shittier. Just saying the words "My brother is still missing" made Deedee want to throw up and then head-butt whoever had asked. She needed an alternative to the dull repetition of facts, a way to share her uncut heartbreak without any particulars, and to her amazement she found it in these strange old songs about doomed lovers.

They crashed together in time with their discordant, four-chord punk songs, took shoes to their faces, and generally danced like they were trying to beat the snot out of each other. They felt everything. It had been glorious.

Fired up by the punk explosion, they wrote their first song—“Storming Tarragona.” Named after the down-at-heel housing development where Boon lived, the song was about tearing down the projects and building real houses for people to live in. Boon and Watt, it turned out, had a powerful populist streak. “D. Boon didn’t think our dads got a fair shake,” Watt says, “and I think he was kind of railing against that ever since.

Vivienne [Westwood] and Malcolm [McLaren] use clothes to shock, irritate and provoke a reaction but also to inspire change. Mohair jumpers, knitted on big needles, so loosely that you can see all the way through them, T-shirts slashed and written on by hand, seams and labels on the outside, showing the construction of the piece; these attitudes are reflected in the music we make. It’s ok not to be perfect, to show the workings of your life and your mind in your songs and your clothes. And everything you do in life is meaningful on a political level. That’s why we’re all merciless about each other’s failings and why sloppiness is derided.

Musicians are our real teachers. They are opening us up politically with their lyrics and creatively with experimental, psychedelic music. They share their discoveries and journeys with us. We can’t travel far, no one I know has ever been on an aeroplane. ... whatever they experience, we experience through their songs. It’s true folk music — not played on acoustic guitar by a bearded bloke — but about true-life experiences.

According to my three-time ex-drummer Brooks Headley, "The D-beat is so stupid that it's easy to fuck up. And when you fuck it up, it goes from brutal military pictures of dead bodies straight to Benny Hill theme song.

His songs now accompany television commercials and have been reinterpreted across the musical spectrum, from the British punk acts to jazz divas like Cassandra Wilson and Norah Jones. Hank’s songs, in fact, are almost everywhere. As the records grow smaller, Hank Williams grows bigger.

All our good and bad memories—they were like our B-side diaries. They were like those songs on old dusty punk albums that no one listened to anymore.

They began a new version of ‘Baby’s Request’ the next day. The song has been likened to ‘Honey Pie,’ a pastiche in a 1930’s pop style, but there is a difference. While ‘Honey Pie’ was a sly parody of the style, ‘Baby’s Request’ is a straightforward adaptation of the style’s hallmarks, commissioned by a vocal group that specialized in it. It also suited one side of Paul’s compositional sensibility at the moment: except for the overt punk-influenced tracks, a growing number of his recent compositions used a harmonic language more germane to jazz than rock. In ‘Baby’s Request,’ augmented chords, and chords with added sevenths and ninths are plentiful and support a gentle, eminently croonable melody.

There's not much to do in a small town. Teens have to make their own fun. This usually means partying. Cheap beer. Making babies. But we had other ideas. We'd film movies. Write songs. "Attack of the Demonic Broccoli People" is a lost horror classic. Shut down by a teacher who said it was "Of The Devil." "Angie Girl" lyrics rhymed porch swing with ding-a-ling. We were the new New Romantics. I'd leave handwritten stories with confused cashiers. Pass proto-folk-punk tapes around school. You can get a lot done with no money. If the motivation is there.