Biden And Punk Rock

 

People have been bootlegging the 415 Records catalogue for at least 3 decades. But we finally found a reputable company to do official releases. They started with a Still Disturbing the Peace compilation. I just got a copy on Saturday and what a hoot listening to that music again, especially some of the stuff that has never been properly available digitally.

Listening to this music recorded in the '70s and '80s put me back into a very different headspace than the one I live in now and then, out of the blue, someone sent me the Biden ad up top-- the one about the Blind Pig. No band on my label ever did a national tour without a gig at the Blind Pig, basically the CBGBs of Ann Arbor.

The club opened in 1971 long before the puck scene took off. It was name refers to policemen who took bribes to turn a blind eye on illegal speakeasies and by the time punk bands were touring cross-country it was a venue on everyone's list. They're one of the few venues from the scene still operating-- or at least they were, until Trump screwed up-- and continues to screw up-- the way the pandemic has been handled. And that's what the ad is about. (The Beastie Boys licensed a song for it.) Despite shaking his bootie to "YMCA" onstage-- Bill Maher claims Lindsey Graham put the set list together for the Trump super-spreader events-- Trump hates music... the same way he hates dogs. He's like a damn alien from another solar system. Why did the pandemic virtually disappear in China, while Trump fumbled so badly that the U.S. is the world's worst-impacted country?

I don't think the Pop'O'Pies ever got to Ann Arbor-- or even out of San Francisco... but I sure loved playing this song on my radio show on KUSF, a station owned by the Jesuits.





Not sure about The Mutants. I think they did tour and did play the Blind Pig. Here's the song from the compilation-- always one of my favorite Mutant tracks, "Insect Lounge."