If you're into American punk, don't miss the DC episode of Sonic Highways (1 Viewer)

[superchuck500]

It's airing this week - HBO.

This is Dave Grohl / Foo Fighters show that goes to different cities and records there, plays a club, and (most importantly) documents the music scene there and how it has influenced them.

Grohl, of course, is a huge DC punk fan - as he was in school in the DC suburbs when that scene was big and it launched his career. But the show is all about the scene with Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Dischord Records, Inner-Ear Studio, etc.

Great stuff.

 

[wnelson]

I am all about bad brains and minor threat. grohl has become quite an ambassador for rock music.

 

[wnelson]

"Had I imagined that it would last more than a month and a half I might have named it something else" – Dave Grohl on the Foo Fighters name

 

[Saints 4 life]

I am all about bad brains and minor threat. grohl has become quite an ambassador for rock music.

Minor Threat. Been a fan of theirs since I was 13. It's a shame they only had one album. Dag Nasty is the closest thing you can get to another album done by Minor Threat. The guitarist from MT is in that band, and you can hear MT's style musically. Even the singer's voice and style sounds like Ian at times.

 

[wnelson]

My older brother was a huge 80s punk fan. I still rock out to the dead milkmen.

 

[Saintman2884]

If there's any city Grohl needs to visit to research American punk, it's Detroit. Before Seattle's early 90's grunge, Malcolm Mcclaren, the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten, Clash, there was the MC5, John Sinclair "King of the Hippies", rock, dope, and f-ing in the streets White Panthers, a once-vibrant city whose long-simmering racial tensions exploded into a week-long orgy of riots, 43 deaths, huge parts of inner city destroyed, after Detroit vice cops raided an black afters-hours party for two brothers returning from Vietnam. And that whole mid/late 60's Detroit scene was such a marked contrast from West Coast burgeoning psychedelic scene and England's "Swinging London's" and has gotten overlooked in rock history due to Detroit's other major music giants, Motown. Bands like the MC5, Stooges, Amboy Dukes, Alice Cooper influenced so many later punk, especially hardcore punk, and thrash/death metal bands, so much so that it's arguable Black Flag, Agent Orange, Sex Pistols, Clash, most of CBGB bands wouldn't exist. The only major contemporaries during this same period that was just as influential was NYC's Velvet Underground and New York Dolls, who came later, and maybe the Sonics in PNW but even the Velvets and Dolls, to a lesser extent, didn't bring that same level of raw, vicious intensity to their music almost akin to runaway B-52's bombing entire cities to dust during WWII.