Top Five Punk Rock Videos

I grew up listening to all the hardest mosh pit music. But as much as I loved thrash, death metal, hardcore, industrial, and what-have-you (all the music of youth misfits and outcasts, basically) my first love was always PUNK ROCK (well, I guess you could kind of consider hardcore and all those other genres as offshoots or "crossover" or, whatever). I was quite the slam dancer back in the days when I could still go and get in such a crowd and not expect to be carried to Emergency by EMTs on a stretcher.

Dead Kennedys, Misfits, Ramones, Black Flag (got their logo on my arm), GBH, Circle Jerks, Social Distortion--man, I loved all these groups. Even loved the stuff back before I ever got to go to any punk rock shows. But I went to a shitload of 'em, all through the mid-Nineties. Usually at the Emerson Theater, the fabled All Ages venue of yore, which was on the corner of Tenth and Bozart in Indianapolis.

Saw a lot of people get beat up there. Was there the night a near-riot (at least a massive brawl) broke out at a Murphy's Law gig. Later, they claimed someone had leveled a gun at singer Jimmy Drescher (a.k.a. "Jimmy Gestapo"). A guy I knew from the band Sicko and the Abnormals claimed Drescher came running back into the Emerson yelling, "Shit! This is Indianapolis, not fucking New York City! I'm gettin' outta here, me!" These days, you can get gunned down at Walmart buying groceries, but back then, such violence was a little more rare.

Anyway, fuck it. I've always loved these videos. And the seven or eight listed here are in my top five. (What? Punks can't do fucking math, asshole!)

Anyway, here goes.

Bad Religion - "American Jesus"

From the opening riff to the crosses in the desert to singer Greg Graffin riding atop a car with goggles on and wearing a bandleader's jacket (who thought up this costume?), there is something compelling and perfect about this anti-religious anthem. (Or maybe it's an anti "church and state" anthem). Greg intones, "I don't need to be a global citizen, 'cause I'm backed by nationality..." He was quite a handsome devil in those days. Most likely Graffin was the most intelligent and easiest on the eyes of any punk singer outside of Glenn Danzig or Henry Rollins. The video has a manic intensity. And yuppies carrying crucifixes. Quaint. (I've written about Bad Religion in another article, here: "The Blood on My Door".)

Social Distortion - "Ball and Chain"

Mike Ness was a handsome dog, too, though, although he vaguely put one in mind of forgotten stand-up comic Andrew Dice Clay (the Lenny Bruce of the Eighties), who was canceled long before canceling became a thing. Ness and Social D have been belting out punk rock since the early Eighties, and this song I remember from coming in with Mom, from the grocery or something, and sitting in front of MTV fascinated, having heard of this group from friends, but never heard them. It was so easy-going, yet, inarguably it ROCKED. And the Fifties, greaser-meets-punk hoodlum poolhall image of the band was a plus, I'll tell ya'. Anyway, to quote from another song by Social D, this one is "the story of my life."

"I wake there in the morning, or maybe in the county jail, times are hard, getting harder...I'm born to LOSE and destined to FAIL."

Take away, take away...

"...Now you know why they call it SOCIAL DISTORTION."--Metal Maniacs (early Nineties)

The Ramones - "Something to Believe In"

I first saw this video on a VHS home video called Lifestyles of the Ramones, which, like so much else having to do with a group with songs called "Pet Sematery" and "I Wanna Live" (their song "Cabbies on Crack" features the line, "I don't want to die before I've lived..."), and whose video for "Pet Sematery" features them walking slowly through a graveyard, is creepily ironic, insomuch that all of the original members are now dead. Be that as it may, they're one of the greatest bunch of hoodlums in leather jackets, scuffed sneakers, and torn jeans to ever pick up instruments. Influencing thousands of bands that profited far more than they ever did from imitating the Ramones' style, the Ramones broke up in 1994. By 2001, singer Joey Ramone (born Jeffrey Hyman) had succumbed to lymphatic cancer. Bass player Dee Dee (John Douglas Colvins) followed of a drug overdose soon after, and guitarist Johnny Ramone (John Cummings) also succumbed to prostrate cancer soon after Dee Dee. Original drummer Tommy Ramone (Tommy Erdelyi) was the last survivor of the original band but was dead just over a decade after Johnny, also of cancer.

The Ramones represent to THIS writer a piece of true, blue Americana, although no one would have said that while they were still alive. They represent a country that is largely GONE now, in much the same way as Jack Kerouac or Johnny Cash do. I've written about both of those guys, and I've written about Joey Ramone too, in this article: "Joey".

There's a shot in this video, where the camera pans over the glum, tough, unsmiling faces of the band, and Joey is singing, and he looks to be the most vulnerable. (Dude always had major psychological and health issues, ones that plagued him his entire life.) It's a perfect shot. You always KNEW the Ramones were music for misfits, outcasts; kids that really were looking "for something to believe in." A video that is supposed to be humorous (with a lot of famous faces and celebrity look-alikes) is actually weirdly poignant. Touching, Almost heartbreaking.

God bless the Ramones wherever they are. They sang the anthems for the kids, the kicked-around, the outcasts that are Too Tough to Die.

Naked Raygun - "Home"

I saw this video in 1990, when it was played on MTV's first alternative music show (a bit before grunge exploded, back then it was called "post-modern rock"), a show called "120 Minutes" hosted by a VJ named Dave Kendal. I knew the name Naked Raygun from my friend Chris who I was in the hospital with and was a skateboarder. He let me listen to the song "Rat Patrol." I dug the "oh, oh, oh, oh oh oh's" of the chorus a lot. I later bought the album Throb, Throb, which had like primitive digital artwork (like the old, forgotten comic zine Shatter from the Eighties), and listened to the AUDIOCASSETTE. (Which was like a little rectangle with two spools and a strip of magnetic tape in the middle. You placed the cassette cartridge into the player and the spool of tape unwound against a head that decoded the vibrations on the tape into soundwaves amplified out through the speakers of your Sony Walkman or "ghetto blaster." Oh, the things I get to teach the younguns!)

Fear - "I Don't Care About You" (from The Decline of Western Civilization)

Not an actual "official video", but I would be remiss if I didn't include this scene from the 1980 L.A. punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization (now generally conceded to be a classic), a scene which electrified me when I first saw it on Night Flight a few years before and didn't understand what the hell I was looking at. Just a couple of three years later I saw the entire movie on VHS while visiting my Dad in Baltimore and the thing sent me home that summer a dyed-in-the-wool punk rock fanatic. Fear and singer Lee Ving (also a handsome dude in those days) struck me as being the punkest, dopest, most hardcore, and totally, like, badass dudes I had ever seen, and this song just f-ing ROCKED. It hit all the appropriate buttons, so to speak. Nihilistic, tough as nails, and just RAW rock n' roll.

"I'm from South Street Philidelphia, I'm from Avenue C..."

(Well, I was from Marion, Indiana, but I still loved this song.)

Rancid - "Hyena"

Yeah, yeah, I know, call me a poser. A sellout. A phony that likes phony pop punk to accentuate his phoniness. To quote a song from Black Flag, "I've heard it before, don't wanna hear it again!" Tim Armstrong emerged from the ashes of Operation Ivy, one of the greatest of the skacore bands of all time, and Rancid deserved EVERY BIT of commercial success they attained, despite the naysayers and "punk purists" who roundly held up their dirty middle fingers. Fuck 'em. I know good music when I hear it. And Rancid was the first group I ever saw on MTV that looked like actual gutterpunks you'd see sitting on the curb at a show.

"I'm an old man that travels, concrete glass, stone, and gravel...hyena, fight for lion's share..."

TWO MORE

Sloppy Seconds - "Fifteen Minutes Or It's Free"

I couldn't leave here without posting a video from hometown heroes SLOPPY SECONDS, who I saw live half a dozen times I think back in the late Nineties, early Two-Thousands. The greatest pop punk "junk rock" band ever to emerge from the Midwest, singer B.A. and company have been going now for an amazing FORTY YEARS (since 1984), and they've never lost the spirit. This is one of only two videos I know of that they've done.

The Casualties - "We Are All We Have"

Finally, a song that has taken me through ALOT of hard times. I actually haven't heard much from this band, but I HAVE watched this video a hundred times. It's helped me keep the faith even when I felt like giving up, reminded me of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, and being TOO TOUGH TO DIE even when the world around me looked black. And so I send it to people who I know are also going through tough times. And I hope it helps them, too.

"Oi to the punks, and oi to the skins, and oi to the world...and everybody wins."--The Vandals

We are ALL WE GOT.

Now, I gotta run man. No really. I got something stickin' in my eye...

LOVE AND NAPALM...