Carolyn Kellogg

Carolyn Kellogg, who is also known at times as Pinky, has a killer sense of style (you should see her apartment), organizes a swell literary doo (the last one was at the HMS Bounty for the LADWP), has a proufound knowledge of LA History and all things noir (I swear she can quote Dashiell Hammet). Also, her hair is bright red.

Hello, awesome!

We first met on the telephone when she was interviewing me when she was a music journalist and I was moving through the world in the capacity of my former life as an indie rocker. (the band was Cecil Seaskull /Nerdy Girl. Music available on iTunes/emusic)

I knew we were kindred right then because our interview lasted two hours! When Carolyn moved back from NYC to the great LA and we became fast friends in real life and have been ever since. We've both moved from mostly music into more literary careers, but you can still find us out at the occasional punk / rock show together.

She currently handles blog duties at the great LA Times Jacket Copy Lit Blog as well as doing book reviews for them. She's also working on her first novel.

Behold Carolyn Kellogg's annotated top ten essential punk songs!


Congratulations on the paperback release! Chalk that one up in the win column.Thanks for asking! Here's my very personal list. Like Douglas Wolk, I'm including YouTube
videos.



10. Space Oddity - David Bowie

Raised on a diet of crappy soft rock radio, my high school years were
a period of musical terror and discovery. Had Bowie recorded decades
earlier? Yes. Was his individuality -- musically, personally -- a
revelation? Yes and yes.

9. Working for the Clampdown - The Clash

When I first heard The Clash, I thought they were dissonant, abrasive
and scary. But I couldn't stop singing them at my horrid job in the
cafeteria's dishroom.

8. True Men Don't Kill Coyotes - the Red Hot Chili Peppers

As a was wee high school sophomore, I camped out in the local record
store to watch MTV; it was the only place in town with cable. I saw
this video once, and thought the band was not just unlistenable, but
insane. And I never forgot it.

7. Dirty Water - the Standells

Every band that came to my New Hampshire school played "Dirty Water."
I didn't know it was by the Standells, or that their 60s amateur
sixties garage rock was a punk progenitor. I just knew I got real
sweaty when I danced to it.

6. Rock Lobster - the B52s

Before the B52s became a neutered pop radio novelty act, they were a
bizarro ensemble from a small town in Georgia. They didn't know what
rules they were breaking when they wrote the overly-long,
strangely-trilling, kooky-break-in-the-middle Rock Lobster. And I
danced like mad to it too.

5. Oh Bondage Up Yours - X-Ray Spex

I moved to LA for college and became a semi-regular at a dingy noodle
shop called the Atomic Cafe in Little Tokyo. The owner's daughter had
stuck punk posters up over the stains in the ceiling and stocked the
jukebox with punk 45s. This one was, it was said, impossibly rare. I
played it every time.

4. Garbageman - The Cramps

My freshman year I had this thing with this guy, and over the summer
he sent me tapes. I listened to them again and again, and because they
were tapes I couldn't skip over songs that sounded harsh and
abrasive.And soon the Cramps sounded exactly perfect.

3. Freddie's Dead - Fishbone

By my sophomore year of college (aka my first year as a dropout) I was
going to shows, and I saw a lot of Fishbone. Manic madness, a brass
section, hard metalish guitar and funk and (less fortuitously) ska,
Fishbone pioneered a genre too schizophrenic for anyone to follow.

2. Los Angeles - X

I also saw a lot of X, the least-google-able band name ever. I saw
them play their last show ever before they called it quits, then I saw
their first reunion show. Like their on-again-off-again bandness, X's
sound was always splitting apart, male and female vocals gorgeously
discordant, with rockabilly roots like the Cramps and the wildness of
that X-Ray Spex single.

1. Thelonious Monster

Try, in this video is not my favorite Thelonious Monster song; Union
Street or Walk on Water might be, but neither is on YouTube. This was
the problem with Thelonious Monster -- known for having a wall of
sound (and too many guitarists to count), the energy and chaos of
their live shows was never adequately recorded. People would tell you
that it was singer Bob Forrest's drug-enhanced unpredictability that
kept the band back, but with better, maybe more insane sound
engineers, they would have had much more of a shot. At least this
video, with its poor audio transfer, captures some of the band's mad
spirit.

Libba Bray

What can I say about Libba Bray? That she's awesome? check. That she's brilliant? check. That she's a great writer? check. You know her from her amazing Gemma Doyle series. (love!) But she also has an awesome book that includes string theory and a garden gnome coming out called Going Bovine. And she has an amazing story in the Geektastic anthology I co-edited with Holly Black. She's a playwright. She's got the heart and humor of a BBC television series. She know how to do the timewarp. And she speaks the language of punk fluently.

Behold her list!


Hey Cec Balls,

Wow. This was tough. How do you define punk? Is it the snarl of Johnny Rotten or the in-your-face politics of Henry Rollins? Is it the art-house punk of Television or the verging-on-goth of early The Damned? Do I leave off Suicidal Tendencies, The Minutemen, Husker Du, and Wire? Very, very tough. But I did my best to choose songs I absolutely love, even if it means foregoing some others I also love.

So. In celebration of the most excellent BEIGE, here is my list of eleven fave punk songs. (Because this goes up to eleven.)

Everything the Clash ever recorded ☺
Anarchy in the U.K.
I Wanna Be Your Dog/Iggy Pop
Los Angeles/X
Sheena Is a Punk Rocker/The Ramones
Blank Generation/Richard Hell
Horses/Patti Smith
Neat, Neat, Neat/The Damned (My favorite Damned song is “In Dulce Decorum” but that’s really from their goth phase, not punk)
California Uber Alles/Dead Kennedys
A tie: Why Can’t I Touch It? What Do I Get?/Buzzcocks (Although “Oh Shit” runs a close third)
See No Evil/Television

Abby Denson

Behold Miss Abby Denson's song and film list!

I met Abby Denson at a comic book convention. Cause she does comics. Like Dolltopia and Tough Love. Also, she just did a Spider Man, (Spider M'am) and she rocks. I mean, really rocks. With a band. More than one band. But also, she does the great food round up of delicious NYC sweets called The City Sweet Tooth. I always want to taste everything she thinks is good. Basically she's a modern renaissance girl. And I love that in a lady! If Abby and I lived in the same city, we would surely go out and cause delicious trouble together, with guitars and chocoloate and our mighty pens.


Abby not only sent me songs. She sent me punk movies you should see, too. Fill up your ipods and Queue up your netflix lists!


Abby's Essential Punk Song List!

Anything by The Ramones

X Offender - Blondie

I Can’t Do Anything - X-Ray Spex

Cherry Bomb - Runaways

Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell – The Stooges

Jet Boy, Jet Girl – The Damned

Love Comes in Spurts – Richard Hell & The Voidoids

Where Eagles Dare – The Misfits

Sonic Reducer – The Dead Boys

Rock n’ Roll Cleopatra – Jayne County



Bonus! Abby's Essential Movie List for Punks!


Times Square

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains

Liquid Sky

Rocky Horror Picture Show

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Polyester

Breaking Glass

The Decline of Western Civilization

Smithereens

Rock and Rule

Rock and Roll High School

Greg Miller

Greg Miller, is like a guru to me. He, along with his partner in crime Beth Lapides, run the amazing Uncabaret Lab. They do magic with people on stage who are telling their stories, getting to the CORE and workshopping their fabulous stand up/ one person shows/ crazy diatribes.

And they do it in a totally punk way. Because it is UNcabaret. And we all know that anything UN, or ANTI , or NOT is alternative and because that expands the mind and makes you think. Thinking is tres punk.

You should probably totally take their workshop.

Here is Greg Millers totally punk everything list.

Because sometimes we have to remember that there is more to being punk than just music. There's punk comedians. And artists. And movies. And authors. And spirits. And revolutionaries. And you know everything else.

More than ten. Trying to get away from base 10 anyway - Greg

Tom Paine
Andy Dick
Kenneth Anger
Sex Pistols
Clash
Mae West
Lenny Bruce
Tristan Tzara
Van Gogh
Ramones
Emma Goldman
Ken Kesey
Abbie Hoffman
Kathleen Hanna
Roseanne
Iggy Pop

Stephanie Kuehnert

Stephanie Kuehnert is a punk rock chick. She hung out with Riot Grrls, wrote a bunch of zines, she works at a legendary club in Chicago and she wrote a kick ass book called I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone. She has a great blog where she has a great thing that she does called Women Who Rock Wednesday's.

Behold, Stephanie's Essential Punk list!

thank you for asking me for my punk essentials list! It was hard to come up with one and some of what I consider punk may not be punk, but whatever. I tried to do 13 cause that is my lucky number, but ended up having to do 17, I hope that is okay :) - Stephanie





1. Story of My Life by Social Distortion
2. Death or Glory by the Clash
3. Radio by Rancid
4. Pretty On The Inside by Hole
5. Negative Creep by Nirvana
6. Second Skin by The Gits
7. I Am A Revenant by The Distillers
8. Bastards of Young by The Replacements
9. Gimme Danger by Iggy and The Stooges
10. Son Of A Bitch by Civet
11. Oh Bondage Up Yours! by X Ray Spex
12. Unity by Operation Ivy
13. Black Masks and Gasoline by Rise Against
14. Pints of Guinness Make You Strong by Against Me!
15. Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill
16. Radio by Alkaline Trio
17. Apparently I'm a PC Fascist by Propagandhi

Douglas Wolk

Douglas Wolk is a pop culture critic. He writes about comic books and he even has a new book of essays out about them called Reading Comics. He also did an ultra cool 33 1/3 book on James Brown Live at the Apollo. I met him at CMJ when I was in Nerdy Girl. We hit it off, and Douglas used to send his friends the COOLEST mix tapes. He really just knows music. And it was cool when in my new incarnation as comic book writer, he came back into my life again!

So I am delighted to share with you Douglas and his very multimedia essential punk!

Thanks, old buddy!


X-Ray Spex: I Am a Poseur (no embedded version available)
Poly Styrene was way, way ahead of her time--angry, funny, smart, really loud, and a better lyricist than almost anyone ever. X-Ray Spex basically self-destructed after one album, Germ Free Adolescents, but everything on it is great. Also see the intro to their first single (which I notice is perched at the top of your iMix, Cecil): Polly announcing "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, but I think--OH BONDAGE! UP YOURS! ONE TWO THREE FOUR!"

The Raincoats: Fairytale in the Supermarket

Raincoats bassist Gina Birch's original video for their first single--I had no idea this even existed. In a way, it's too bad that YouTube's compression makes Vicky Aspinall's violin sound like squeaky crud. In another way, that's not so bad: the Raincoats were never as cranked-up as their scenemates, but the most punk thing about them is the way they lunge at you to catch your attention--"listen to me, damn it, LISTEN to me!"

Devo: Uncontrollable Urge

A live version that's way too quiet--crank it up, please--but it gets across the two big things about Devo that get lost by reducing them to, like, "Whip It": 1) The point of the band was that they felt totally, profoundly, agonizingly alienated from mainstream culture, and from the pre-packaged way they were supposed to experience reality and emotion. 2) They were freaking hilarious.

Wire: Another the Letter/The 15th

A live 1979 performance of two songs from the German TV show Rockpalast, by the band I probably listened to more than any other in my late teens. "Another the Letter" is the great one here, stripping the already-pretty-minimal studio recording down to a one-chord rocket-blast. I'm pretty fond of the way that the four of them, even on stage, look and sometimes sound like they're in totally different bands...

Flying Lizards: Money

Punk as prank, or rather as getting into the "normal" way of doing something and eating it whole, from the inside. You can also read that as "not even trying to do anything right," if you like. The self-titled Flying Lizards album (on which this appears), by the way, is fantastic and mostly nothing at all like "Money"; it can be found in used record stores everywhere, thanks to having been bought by people who thought the rest of it would be more like this.

The Clean: Tally Ho

The greatest band in the history of New Zealand. This was their first single; they still get together every five years or so for a tour, and miraculously keep getting better over time. Here's what they sound like now...

Delta 5: Mind Your Own Business (no embedded version available, and actually I think this is somebody's homemade clip)
One of the most perfect songs ever written: a loping loop of a groove, eight flawlessly indignant lines, a neatly affectless unison-then-not vocal, and two guitar breaks that are pure spattering havoc.

The Fall: Totally Wired (live)

The band that will outlast us all, live in New York in 1981, monomaniacal flame-jets in their eyes, on the verge of falling apart, even though they're mostly just hammering away at one note. I love Mark E. Smith's top-of-the-dome spasm of obscenity two minutes or so into this clip... trying to keep track of the Fall's enormous discography and still-ongoing career can be exhausting, but the 1979-1982 period is pretty impeccable.

Melt-Banana: Monkey Man

Oh, right, the other thing about punk rock? It's fast a lot of the time. This is somebody's ridiculous homemade video for the phenomenal Japanese hardcore band Melt-Banana's cover of Toots & the Maytals' "Monkey Man"; I'm sure there exist faster songs and recordings, but Melt-Banana give the impression that they're actually playing so fast they can't stop.

The Thermals: No Culture Icons

You can argue that all punk is about punk--I don't think so, but this is, for sure: the Thermals' first single, it's also their manifesto, a declaration of what they demand and what they're rejecting. Low-fi, low-tech, high-minded in a really good way--a testament to what punk rock is good for in the 21st century. And one of my favorite things about living in Portland is getting to see them play a lot.

many thanks, & I hope you'

Ed Brubaker

Ed Brubaker writes comics. You may know Ed from his stint on Captain America, which had a lot of press when issue #25 came out. He's written Uncanny X-men, Catwoman and The Authority just to name a few other titles. But I know him and I love him because he wrote a monthly series called The Deadenders that made me long to write comic books because it was so YA. When Shelly Bond called me to ask if I was interested in maybe writing a graphic novel, I told her that one of my fave Vertigo titles was The Deadenders. Turns out Shelly edited that.

The Deadenders is where it's at. Go get it.

So, flash forward to my new life in comics and color me so excited when I got to meet Ed at Wizard World LA. Everyone else in line had their copy of Captain America Issue #25 in their hands to get autographed, but me, I had my copy of The Deadenders.

Ed was kind enough to give me not only his punk list, but his YA list, too.

Because he rules.

Cecil -

Here's my list, but this is all off the top of my head, and could change tomorrow. I think these are the ones that made me care back then, though:

The Once Over Twice - X

Away From the Numbers (I know it's the ballad, shut up it's still punk) - The Jam

Courage - Minutemen

Celebrated Summer - Husker Du

I'm So Bored With the USA - The Clash

I Wanna Be Sedated - Ramones

Beverly Hills - the Circle Jerks

Look at the Rain - Meat Puppets (this is more from their post-punk era, but it's a punk song)

I Love Livin' in the City - Fear


I still like most of those songs, I think.


Here's my top ten YA books, which is easier:

Nobody's Family is Going to Change - Louise Fitzhugh

Great Brain at the Academy - John D. Fitzgerald

You Must Kiss a Whale - David Skinner

The Farthest Shore - Ursula K. LeGuin

The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death - Daniel Pinkwater

Young Adult Novel - Daniel Pinkwater

The Egypt Game - Zilpha Keatley Snyder

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler -- E.L. Konigsburg

The Long Secret - Louise Fitzhugh

Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh