Thursday, January 19, 2006


There was decent music in the '80s. I want to add this to the recent spate of documentaries that are on my must see list. Still waiting to see if the Minuteman film, We Jam Econo, shows up somewhere. K. also recommended, Rock School. Also I still have not seen the Metallica movie.
Throw in the Dylan film that I missed when it was on PBS and it seems like we are in the midst of music documentary New Wave. Notice from Pitchfork follows...

American Hardcore Doc to Debut at Sundance

Current trendhoppers may be surprised to learn that the 1980s weren't all one big John Hughes movie, that some alienated (mostly) white youth rejected the choice between Duran Duran and Mötley Crüe. These Reagan era moppets of suburban rage have been felt more than they've been seen or heard in recent years: with hardcore punk, they created a sound and a scene that forever altered American youth culture, bearing fruit as diverse as Metallica, the Beastie Boys, and Blink-182. But the resolutely anti-commercial hardcore era has been left out of most mainstream punk histories, lost in a Dark Age between the Ramones and Nirvana.

Writer Steven Blush brought these shadowy years into the light with his 2001 oral history American Hardcore: A Tribal History, and now he's joined with video director and fellow hardcore scenester Paul Rachman to produce a documentary film of the same name. The 90-minute American Hardcore premieres this Friday, January 20 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, with four further screenings scheduled throughout the festival. Yes, we know there's something weird about a film chronicling a raging basement revolution being brought to the public via a star-studded event like Sundance, but, hey, punks gotta get paper just like the rest of us.

Cobbling together footage from "before even the VHS video revolution," as Rachman told Billboard, the film includes vintage live clips of bands like Bad Brains, MDC, Minor Threat, and Black Flag, along with numerous contemporary interviews with the grown-up versions of the scene's major players. "I think the most interesting thing to me was to see what has happened to people [in the last 20 years]," Blush told Billboard. "You see how poor some of these people are, and how bitter some of these people are-- people who did not get their due."

A decidedly un-punk premiere party will take place at the Star Bar in Park City on January 25, featuring performances by the Circle Jerks and D.O.A. It's sponsored by Vans and there will be free Stella Artois and Aquafina. Somewhere, Ian MacKaye is banging his head against a wall.

Jason Toon

5 comments:

scruffylooking said...

It seems like it could be an interesting double feature to watch The Decline of Western Civilization and then American Hardcore - a before and after thing.
Is it wrong to comment about someone else's blog on yours? Were you 10 or 12 in that picture from Red State Librarian? If it hadn't been in the 80's they probably would have called you Doogie Howser. I can get away with giving you shit, since I looked like I was 12 right up until the time I looked like I was 80. There was no middle ground there.

Unknown said...

Alas,I think i had just turned 21. Youth is wasted on the young.

Anonymous said...

You could have seen Rock School at the Bijou back in September. The Bijou may likely also show "American Hardcore" when it starts making the theatrical rounds.

And the BIjou is doing a rock doc series on its new spring calendar (opening tonight) that begins with NEW YORK DOLL playing Feb. 2-9. It will continue with BE HERE TO LOVE ME: A FILM ABOUT TOWNES VAN ZANDT kicking-off the second calendar after spring break and later in the spring or summer there'll be playdates for THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON.

If you can tolerate the venue, I'd suggest you keep tabs on Bijou programming. More than just an occasional screening, films are on 7 nights a week year-round.

www.bijoutheater.org

Anonymous said...

And you may have missed my comment in response to your ragging on the Bijou in a previous post... about a year from now the Bijou will be in a new, renovated home on the first floor of the IMU, right next to the box office. The new space will include Dolby Digital Surround Sound.

But if we're going to the movies for the speakers and seats, then we're going to the movies for the wrong reasons. For now, the non-profit, student-run (mostly volunteer) Bijou can only work with what it's got.

Unknown said...

I am duly chastised. Thanks for the heads up.