Rave down, hit the ground
Swervedriver | Redshift | Converge
Putting a dent in the endless flow of new music, newly-released old music and discovered-for-the-first-time old music.
One of my new favourite things to do last year was to go to All Ages Records in Camden – still London’s only punk and hardcore shop – and get buying recommendations from its owner Nick.
I run the shop’s Twitter account, which inadvertently led me to music journalism – but that’s a story for another way. What it does mean is giving Nick a good listening to as we catch up on all things punk.
There’s been the odd misstep – as much as I like Converge in particular doses, Crow Killer’s metallic hardcore isn’t for me. On the other hand, I’m still kicking myself for not buying the Leatherface-influenced Diaz Brothers record he played me that came with a CD of the album.
More recently Nick’s suggestions have been spot on – Buggin’s Concrete Cowboys (one of the hardcore albums that made my 2023 albums of the year list) and Worst Timeline Possible – the 2022 debut album by Vic Bondi (Articles of Faith) and his surf punk rock band Redshift (which would have made the list if it had come out this year.
Another was Unbroken’s 1994 influential early metalcore album Life. Love. Regret., which is for me even if I can’t believe how modern it sounds.
The Unbroken album - in a pretty oblique way, mind - brought to mind a recent BBC story on how new artists are being squeezed out. The BBC had in mind the huge, ongoing sales/streams of things like Abba’s Greatest Hits, but there’s a related point for more niche and abrasive records.
When music from 30 years ago, like Life. Love. Regret., sounds current it’s hard to find the cut-off point at which music can be categorised as old fashioned. Certainly, the likes of Spotify accentuate this by making (almost) all music from all time available, but it’s more than that.
When The Clash released their debut album in 1977 the big sellers three decades prior to that included Al Jolson, The Andrews Sisters and Perry Como – and I’m pretty sure no ’77 punks were humming ‘Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep)’. Fast-forward 30 years from 1977 and I’m sure many of the class of 2007 would be perfectly happy name-checking The Class (or Sex Pistols or The Damned or the Ramones, etc).
Wherever your personal cut-off comes, the fact remains that punk rock, alt rock and indie music have a longevity far in excess of yesterday’s genres – sure, generationally speaking, they may one day be seen like skiffle, but for now a modern band like Hotline TNT can line-up alongside 90s grungey-shoegazers Swervedriver, for example, with neither sounding dated.
Moreover, where in the 80s and 90s we had to follow the breadcrumb trials left by books such as From the Velvets to the Voidoids: The Birth of American Punk Rock by Clinton Heylin or Gina Arnold’s Route 666: On The Road to Nirvana, nowadays you can get whole loaves of music on demand.
Perhaps that’s why I’m trying my hand creating new music playlists and have called the first one – 20 tracks of the best punk rock, alt rock and indie each month - Fighting with the Undertow.
We’re never going to win against the ongoing tide of new music, newly-released old music and discovered-for-the-first-time old music, but perhaps we can put a dent in it, as Henry Rollins would put it.
Main image: Diego Jimenez on Unsplash