Got That Attitude

IFC is running this history of punk documentary called Punk: Attitude. At 90 minutes, it's able to cover more territory than the punk chapters of either the PBS/BBC History of Rock, or the other one that ran on A&E or TLC or something, or for that matter the 25 Years of Punk thing that ran on MTV a while back. The Dictators got some love (Yay!), but Jonathan Richman got the shaft (as usual!). X were barely mentioned. But I guess you can't cover everything. I would have liked it if they'd spent some time on the Riot Grrrl movement, or the indie zines and labels of the '80s. And too much Agnostic Front for my taste, but I guess they are a good representative of what the mid-80's hardcore scene was like. Some choice quotes:

A lot of the early punk bands, and early new wave bands, were made up of kids who were the only Stooges fan in their town, the only Velvet Underground fan in their town. Then they went off to college, or moved to the big city, and met each other, and said "Hey, let's start a band."
-Jello Biafra

The first time I saw The Ramones, I HATED them. I hated them so much that I was mad. I was so mad at my friend for bringing me to see this crap. All I could think about was how mad I was for the next 24 hours. Then I went back the next night.
-guy from The Bush Tetras

Then Johnny Rotten left the Sex Pistols and started Public Image Ltd., who I thought were 1,000 times more interesting than the Sex Pistols.
-Henry Rollins

I thought, what if I took the horror of Alice Cooper, but made it about real life? And instead of writing about vampires, I could write horror songs about cops.
-Jello Biafra

Then we entered a period where, if you did anything different, if you took a guitar solo, or if a song lasted more than a minute and a half, everyone would be like "What is this shit, Freebird?" And we'd say, "Come on, guys, can't you give us a LITTLE space?" "NO!"
-Henry Rollins