The Ramones- the accidental first parody of a boy band

Sorry Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett but the Ramones were the first band to satirize the manufactured pop stuff since the lead three members seemed to parody the archetypes accidentally, think about it.

1)Joey: So sensitive that the poor man had OCD

2)Johnny the tough guy to the point of being a racist, controlling asshole

3) Dee Dee-the "wacky" guy who was obsessed with nazis and even fantasized about killing his girlfriend in a song. Also illiterate as any account on the making of Rock n Roll High School will tell you(took him 50 some takes just to get the word Pizza)

4)Tommy/Marky: the straight man who tried to keep everyone together although Marky was an alcoholic for a while and well, with people like the above going at each other's throats(for good reason, granted, Johnny stole Joey's ladyfriend and married her), who could blame him?

Bonus review thing: Cap'n Jazz's alphabetapolothology disc 1

So I've sampled Cap'N Jazz's stuff before and could never understand what the hell they were talking about even when I looked over the lyrics. I figured they were depicting some sort of twisted nostalgia for a traumatizing childhood as seen in songs like In the clear which depicts a child's fear of a child eating dog or Yes I'm talking to you which is apparently about mournfully reminiscing of eating cookies with your childhood friend turned best girl on a moonlit night. But then, there's songs like olerud which seems to involve a boy venting all his love problems onto his fairly young father or my personal favorite, Que Suerete which tells of a love/hate relationship between a boy and girl. So is it a concept album biography? How one person develops from a fearful boy into an equally timid socially awkward young man? What? While this record's interesting, the idea of surreal childhood memories was better explored with Boards of Canada's Music belongs to Children, I think.

Texas

So listening to the sample of texas I put together, I found it's not like California at all,it takes after the likes of Washington with the diverse sound; there's the skuns for instance with their straight up rock of Earthquake Wave while Plastic Idols composes a slinky, spaghetti western-esque if politically incorrect tribute to Asia with Siamese Lust. Even the actual defined punk bands are diverse; Big Boys bring a funk rythym to the incredibly short "Lesson" while The Dicks give us crunchy, grinding guitars in No Fucking War. Could it be that post punk had more of an impact than punk itself? If so, how and why? Does this phenomonon extend to the southeastern region as well? We shall find out!

four corners of hardcore: an experiment

So my summer boredom has led me to explore whether the four corners of The U.S. (Florida, Washington D.C.*, California, and Washington) had a different hardcore sound and here's my results:

D.C.: Maine didn't have much, I'm afraid so I used this one and took away the obvious bands Minor Threat and Bad Brains. Here, I found that a lot of themes of the music dealt with rage against the government which likely resulted from being constantly surrounded by government buildings and the like. Lewis Black highlighted this as for why he does his angry shtick in one of his specials too. I also realized that the area as well as the states surrounding it, there were quite a few songs dealing with the hardcore scene itself like Government Issue's anarchy is dead or minor threat's bottled violence. I was gonna put th' inbred here too, but they're from the midwest, thought they were from Virginia!

California, specifically Oxnard: Much more thrashy and skate styled as opposed to the others with a general fuck parents let's skate! tone to the songs as opposed to D.C. Thus, despite what many punks claim, there was a tiny bit of influence from the devil may care druggy whimsy of 60s San Francisco.

Florida (more like flori-duh! Amirite?): Florida's sound is basically the Boston of the south; there's no real politics except teeny tiny pockets(i.e. Proletarian in Boston, the Eat(maybe?) in Florida) with the rest being pure stupidity (roach motel, Hated Youth vs.The Freeze, Gang Green, F.U.s) Lots of hatred for the state itself though, particularly from roach motel. probably due to the heat and far too much tourism( as they address in reptile land)

Seattle:this had less punk on it and more post punk, but still provided some interesting insight. For one, it showed that hardcore punk even then was making an impact after its initial period what with the U Men's solid action starting with a punk bass beat whereas The Melvins and Fluid deviated from it, choosing more of a 60sish rock flavor. For another, the punk sound a lot less alike;The Fartz were typical fast hardcore while the Lewd was much more traditional. So Seattle is the most diverse of this group, obviously. Sorry Portlandia.
I may do two others, comparing the rest of the southeast scene with Florida and Texas with California.

"Childhood is short,maturity is forever

Okay kids,I have a little reading assignment for you all, read the following lyrics:

All-O-gistics by the Descendents:
http://plyrics.com/lyrics/descendents/allogistics.html

Halloween-Dead Kennedys:
http://plyrics.com/lyrics/deadkennedys/halloween.html

Minor Threat-Minor Threat:

http://plyrics.com/lyrics/minorthreat/minorthreat.html

Now,I want you to really think about what these lyrics are saying, the tones may be different,but they all share the same theme: A celebration of youthful freedom. However, consider the personas these frontmen exhibited: Ian was serious about uniting teenagers together to change the world, Jello was satire and sarcasm and Milo was, well, a kid: an awkward, lovelorn, goofy kid. Think back to your high school peers: they were underdeveloped, nervous about the future, and working out life in general. With all these stresses in life, adolescents either turned to snarkiness or retreated to their own little world of immature jokes and obsessions( farts,junk food,women,etc.) as a form of escape. They want to be their own person and understand the world on their own terms and enjoy themselves before adulthood hits. Thus, I think All-O-gistics captures this time of life. Minor Threat and Halloween seemed more like calls of action or moralistic statements: Individuality without actual appeal.