We all know punk and fashion are intertwined. This can be a hot topic as the debate over the phrase “if you don’t wear studs, fuck you” can get a bit intense. But there is a common ground where a magical combination of punk, fashion, politics, and all around rad feminism converge onto one site. The Thunderhorse Vintage blog at thunderhorsevintage.tumblr.com has been a favorite with the folks at the MRR house and many radical punks alike. Thunderhorse Vintage, as a store and site, support DIY punk artisans and uphold the core Maximum beliefs to the highest. The store is located in Sacramento, CA, but punks near and far can experience the magic online. Many posts will make you think, if not laugh out loud, with their political wit and satire regarding all ironic and dumb things punks say, do, and wear, while providing a just critique of the strange times in which we live. Fashion is not just about aesthetics and wearing your safety-pinned heart on your sleeve, but can be a good way to say “fuck off” to the mainstream. The women behind this blog and store are also booking shows in Sacramento and have a history of being in solid bands like Verräterisch. DIY or die! Up punx!

Jason Traeger (R) with Boston's Billy Ruane (RIP) in 1998

My attempts at writing an introduction to Jason Traeger’s blog have so far proven fruitless. The man’s writing really speaks for itself. On his blog you will find wonderful tales and artifacts from the past, anecdotes of discovering punk in the far outskirts of Seattle in the early ’80s, growing up in the scene in Washington state and San Diego, CA, and his journey through other places and music scenes as well. But this is not some random old coot’s boring nostalgia trip. In fact, you get a stern admonishment in that regard from the very beginning:

I’m the last one to cast a misty-eyed glance back at the “good old days.” In my experience the people who take this angle are usually the ones who weren’t there. Whatever mistakes, false starts and missed opportunities I’ve had the pleasure of having, I was wherever I was for better or worse.

This blog is not meant to romanticize any choices I made or any particular era. It’s simply a place where I share stories and take stock of where I’ve been as a way to figure out where I might want to go next. I’ll celebrate some people along the way, some of them you’ll know or know of, others will be new to you. I’m glad to have known every one of them.

Jason Traeger’s list of credentials is possibly too long to present here, but you might recognize his artwork in many of Maximum Rocknroll magazine’s scene report headers, and the cover to the BCT comp LP We Can Do Whatever We Want. He did the classic ’80s fanzine Leading Edge with Martin Sprouse and has performed music as a solo artist for many years now.

Almost all of Jason’s stories I would describe as “heartwarming.” What else could you say about your mom being cool enough to go see the Circle Jerks and the Fartz with you, and even sporting  Motörhead t-shirt for the occasion so as not to look too much like a mom? Or this, my favorite one: a Certificate of Patience made and signed by Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson of Minor Threat for waiting for his mail order copy of the first pressing of Out of Step to arrive. Of course I couldn’t go without mentioning his post about MRR‘s role in connecting the punk scene and how it helped hook him up with his lifelong best friend.

You can enjoy all of this and more at jasonotraeger.tumblr.com.

Hey, look at that — I wrote an introduction to Jason Traeger’s blog!

"Fuck the East Bay, This Is N.O.K." CD - 1997

We live in an age where almost every punk record ever released is available for download. Usually you’ll find what you’re looking for on one of the hundreds or Blogspot sites dedicated to making old out-of-print vinyl accessible to everyone, and that is awesome. But what the vast majority of these blogs lack is a personality, a connection of some kind to the music presented. All you get is the record cover, a download link, and if you’re lucky a track listing or a sentence or two about the record.

So it’s totally exciting when you find a site like Greg Harvester’s Remote Outposts. Like Terminal Escape (which is dedicated entirely to cassette releases and includes entertaining reviews of each tape), Remote Outposts can be just as enjoyable to read as it is to listen to all of the great music available. Greg’s musical tastes are all over the map — literally — but you will find a heavy concentration of “Region Rock” (hard to define, but mainly music from the Southeastern US from the ’90 thru now that tends to be melodic and rough) and a preference for demos and records that never found the appreciation they deserved. Lengthy descriptions accompany each post, giving these releases a much more tangible essence. “I try to talk about how it makes me feel or talk about what kind of people made up the bands. Sometimes, I think that’s even more exciting than the music…the stories behind it,” says Greg.

Mr. Harvester, who names Terminal Escape and Region Rock and More as sparking his interest in blogging, is a veteran of too many Southern, Midwestern, and Bay Area bands to mention, and in his touring and moving around the country has amassed quite a collection of demos and records over the years. So many that he’s been able produce a blog post every single day recently. Also in the mix lately has been a bunch of great demos and live tapes on loan from the collection of Erick Lyle (formerly Iggy Scam of Scam zine, and also a million bands from the South and the Bay Area).

But don’t think that just some old dude digging up tapes from the “good old days.” Remote Outposts features a lot of current bands, like Wade Boggs from Athens, GA, who released their LP on the site, and Cleansing Wave from Worcester, MA, a newish noisy crust band.  Greg says, “I like to think of it as an archive more than nostalgia… I also revel in pulling people into the blog by posting bands they like and then using that as a platform to discuss ways they can combat sexism, transphobia, macho bullshit or racism in their own punk scenes. Music is definitely the driving force behind it all, but it doesn’t end there… I did one full week where I posted only bands with only women in them because I was sick of so many music blogs (and punk and society and everything) that were so male-centric. I’ve been trying to be more conscious of posting bands with women in them.”

When asked for his favorites, or suggestions on where readers should start on his web page, Greg cited: “Fred Lane, Twat Sauce, Pink Collar Jobs (from NC), the multiple Impractical Cockpit tapes I’ve posted, Hickey Million, The Curse, Jarvis (or any band from Chattanooga, TN, or labeled as Region Rock),  Potential Johns, Uke of Phillips, etc, etc….Download anything on there. So far, I love everything that is on the blog. I just want to share music that I love and hope that people will enjoy it.”

Radio Survivor came to my attention as I was looking for help following the bullshit KUSF sell off. I am a total radio geek, and was thrilled to find one place that had information on all kinds of radio… in their own words:

Radio Survivor attempts to shed light on the ongoing importance of radio: from the airwaves (FM, AM, Short-wave, HD, satellite) to online. We are proponents for the relevance of radio as a participatory communications medium. As both fans and producers, we write about the problems and prospects of radio. We embrace college radio stations in crisis. We defend radio pirates. And we care about the on-going survival of our favorite radio stations. We are obsessed with the future of radio and are charmed by radio historians, radio dramatists, radio bloggers, and anyone else who cares about radio as deeply as we do.

photo by Jennifer Waits

Ah yes, that’s me! I found punk through the radio, and in the ’80s in small town California radio saved me from the provincial attitudes of back to the land hippies, spitting rednecks, and those random folks who just wanted to run you down. Radio told me of other places with other angry kids, who were sometimes angry enough to stand up and take action, and sometimes angry enough to destroy. I need both. So, thanks to the radio.

I recognize the names of some of the people involved. One wrote a great book on the Pacifica Radio Network (although they skipped the part where Maximum Rocknroll hosted a protest outside KPFA in the early ’80s resulting in a prime-time time slot for its popular punk radio show), one is now an advisor to WNUR, an amazing college radio station in Chicago. Jennifer Waits is the one doing all the great reporting on the KUSF situation.

There are tons of archives and articles dating back to 2009 to explore the important world of radio. There are  interesting political articles (did you know that the Netherlands Radio Communications Agency intends to enact a new policy making it easier to fine and shut down Dutch Pirate Radio?), tips and tools (this was the first place I heard of turntable.fm and dar.fm) and great stories (their report on WFMU and the anti-hippy tradition is especially enjoyable!). I also appreciate how they keep tabs on all the college stations that are being sold off, not just KUSF.

It may be a bit hard to scroll through if you aren’t totally obsessed, but clicking on the tags seems to be the best way for me to find an article that I had read once, and wanted to reference again. I wish they had links or a suggested listening, cause you know they listen to some fascinating and/or obscure radio stations. Tuning your radio dial may seem ridiculous when you can listen to whatever song you want whenever on a digital device, but I have to say that the joy of discovery is still out there.

I appreciate Radio Survivor for helping keep me up to date on those that are fighting for community space on the airwaves and creating their own audio world.

www.radiosurvivor.com

La Cantatrice Chauve (“The Bald Soprano”) is a French music blog offering streaming music, downloadable MP3s, the occasional video when available, and vintage flyers, covering mostly French punk and alternative music. The title is a nice play on words for the aging among us. Chauve means bald in French. The Bald Soprano covers French oi, punk, new wave, and hardcore music largely from the ’80s, so if you were around then you may have been bald by choice, and if you are still around now you may be bald by nature — in either case it works. The blog is amusing to read, but unfortunately it is only in French. The blog started in 2008 but appears to in a dormant state since January of this year. Still, the site offers a nice, varied collection of music, reminding us that French music wasn’t always as bad as it is now. I get to say that because, one, it is true, two, I lived the for last four years in France, and three, because I can.

Here are some of the musical highlights from the most recent post alone, and forgive me if the groups are well known… 8°6 Crew brings a straightforward ska number from Vieille, France ( 2nd song in the first music player), and Ausweis offers up Pas Demain (midway through the same post). La Cantatrice Chauve calls Ausweis “cold wave,” and if that classification is too granular for you, think Killing Joke, and think very good. And at the player at the bottom at that post, check out Métal Urbain: fuzzy guitars, gravelly voice, and drum machine, well ahead of their time. MKB also offers their disk Feu in its entirety on the site — deconstructed music, confrontational lyrics, highly dramatic, ils prennent la tête I must say, but they are French after all.

There is a lot of good but fairly standard French ’80s punk, oi, and hardcore, so if that is your thing, get the right click button on your mouse ready for a download-fest. Most, I would dare say, you haven’t heard before. The real interest in this blog though, is its extensive collection of vaguely punk music that lived around the perimeter of those standard styles, and it is in that music you can really hear a distinctly French influence, whether it is the jazzy influence of Serge Gainsbourg, the witty vocals influence of Jacques Dutronc, or the aloof cooler-than-thou vocal delivery. If you like new wave, no wave, experimental, or early industrial, you can find some real gems here.

— Owen Peery

And, what the hell — here’s a bonus video from the great Métal Urbain:

I’ve been meaning to do a write-up about this website for a long time but every time I go to “research” it, I get caught up in all the cool shit there is to look at and listen to and I forget why I was there in the first place… I guess I’m a sucker for regionally-based zines and websites. While technology like Google street view or any other virtual reality type crap tries to make you feel like you’re really “there” in some real or imaginary place on your computer screen, I feel like there’s nothing like looking through the historical archives (or current show reviews) of another town or country and letting your imagination and experience transport you there. Enter shavedneck.com, a.k.a “Arizona Hardcore Punk Rock Flyer Archive 1982-1984“…Sure, there are quite a few of these kinds of websites out there but most of them have a certain air of fetishistic early HC worship or a “you young kids don’t even know how fuckin’ cool it was back in the day” kind of attitude. But in his About page for this website, original CONFLICT guitarist Bill Cuevas actually got me a little choked up with the story behind his flyer collection, how he nearly lost or got rid of it on several occasions before the possibility of sharing it with the world via the internet was ever an option, and this wonderful sentiment at its conclusion: “It’s with this in mind that I ‘tip my beer’ to the present generation who instead of wallowing in the past use it as a foundation upon which to build bigger and better things.”

Civil Death (photo by Ed Arnaud)

This website was built in 2004, so it has a clunky feel to it compared to most newer sites, but in a weird anachronistic way that adds to old-school feeling of digging through these archives, and the joy of stumbling on new things you didn’t see before. The site’s main focus is flyers from Tuscon, but you can also find a bunch of flyers from Phoenix and LA, as well as photos by Ed Arnaud, stickers, fanzines, and some awesome music downloads. The coolest things I found on my most recent visit were an excellent live recording of HÜSKER DÜ just after they recorded Metal Circus, and the Youth Manifesto comp tape out of LA… And of course there are downloads from Tuscon greats CONFLICT and CIVIL DEATH as well. Surfing this website feels like digging through someone’s old boxes of flyers and tapes. It’s a real joy! Check it out — I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

You can’t always judge a book by its cover, but Art 4 Punks is a record review site with a difference: ignoring the music, blogger Paul D’Elia reviews the artwork and packaging instead. He casts a critical and thoughtful eye on something that is often considered throwaway or even an afterthought by many bands and labels, and highlights those who make an effort to deliver an effective visual counterpart to the music on the record. Paul’s something of a punk rock renaissance man, having played in several bands (including Tear It Up, Dead Nation, and The Rites) and turning out a fair amount of art himself (evidence at screenin4achange.com). I took the opportunity to get some background on the Art 4 Punks blog and get his thoughts on punk cover art. —Allan

How long have you been into design and how did you get into it? Was it from a particular punk record?

I guess I got into design while I was at college. I had started out as a photo student, but I went to a very liberal art college that encouraged you to try any and every medium in order to carve out your own creative path. While I was there the whole world of photography was shifting to digital and I began to lose interest in shooting, so I started working more with screen-printing instead. The only problem was that I needed to have images to print, so I guess that was when I really started to think about building art more in the form of design. Truthfully, I was looking more to vintage poster and skateboard art for inspiration than I was punk records at the time.

Which designers or artists do you look up to (Both ‘punk’ and non-punk)?

Raymond Pettibon is a huge one for me. I love his illustration style, and the art created for Sonic Youth’s “Goo” might be my favorite album he’s done. The skateboard art that Jim Phillips was doing in the 80′s was very important to me while I was learning about screen-printing. Beyond that, anything collage/abstract in content tends to interest me. I’ll spare you the laundry list.

Which current labels and bands do you think are putting out the best-designed product?

Youth Attack and Feral Ward are the two labels that continue to kill it for me: every release is expertly thought out and executed beyond the normal expectations of what a punk record would look like, and I can’t get enough of that. As far as bands, I’d have to say Daylight Robbery and Masshysteri both pulled together some of the most mature/best looking records of the last few years, with an honorable mention to Cola Freaks for their general flawless sense of style. It’s really hard for me to pin a few down because I really do love so much of what I see coming from bands right now… everyone is really upping their game for 2011!

A lot of bands and labels don’t spend a lot of time on graphics/artwork, like there’s something extra-punk about a throwaway aesthetic. Why do you think it’s important?

I have always been a very visual person, so for me when I am listening to a record the visual presentation is nearly as important as the audio… and that is not to say everything needs to look really slick and polished, cause it definitely doesn’t; I think it’s more about effectively creating a vehicle to help deliver the audio message regardless of the budget or available resources.

What are your five all-time favorite punk record covers, and why? And can you name a couple of great records with terrible covers?

Man, that is a really hard question! Let’s start with the good… not necessarily a “top 5″ but more like a “5 really really great” covers.

X – Adult Books 45

It’s a great layout all around really, but I really love the front and back cover. It’s smart without coming off too conceptual…. all the Dangerhouse releases were exceptional enough to mention visually. They really had their finger on the pulse of what was happening on an artistic level in punk at the time…

Buzzcocks – Orgasm Addict 45

I’ve loved this record for so many years and I still don’t know which side of the art is up! The beauty of this graphic mystery is that it really doesn’t matter because it looks amazing no matter how you are holding it. AND the back cover is just as beautiful and confusing… it’s the ultimate “punk meets hi-art” example, and it will always be a top cover for me.

Discharge – Realities of War EP

A simple photo turned punk phenomenon… when I think of “punk” looking records, this is what comes to mind (well, this and Hear Nothing…) the simplicity is so striking, sometimes less is more ya know?

Void – Faith/Void split 12″

The color breakup between the black and white on this cover continues to be one of the most creative and sophisticated uses of negative space ever to grace a punk record. The black bar on the bottom creates a really nice balance for the illustration in the center and then the bold type on the top. Without it, it would have just been an illustration, not a composition.

The Misfits – Bullet EP

This cover is pop-culture misappropriation at it’s finest. You take an image everybody knows and arguably feels something about when they see it, photocopy it to oblivion, and then add a touch of red for effect. We all know Kennedy was shot in the head, yet this cover is still shocking the first time you see it. It’s gritty and raw, yet oozing with style. Black. White. Red. This record is king.

As for the bad, there are a lot that come to mind… pretty much any ALL or Descendents record would fall in that category. Both those bands have catalogs full of music I adore and cover art I can’t relate to. I love the Big Boys, but there is a bit of a cringe factor to the Lullabies Help the Brain Grow cover art. Richard Hell and the Voidoids, or any other early 80′s band that just phoned it in with a mediocre photo of themselves and then slapped some Helvetica over top… Really though, there is way more that I am just indifferent to, and I don’t know if that’s better or worse.

art4punks.blogspot.com