Customer Reviews

Punk - Attitude

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sometimes it does feel like punk never happened but, peel back the surface in a great many areas, especially in much literature and many films, and talk to some people in their teens and 20s and the true influences are still certainly there, albeit maybe a little beneath the surface.

If the question "where did the Punk movement come from & where did it go to?" has ever run through your brain then Don Lett's film "Punk Attitude", together with Jon Savage's book "Englands Dreaming", are the best places (so far) to start looking to answer this. They also both help explore the ways the movement influenced many peoples lives, and not only the musicians involved, especially in regards to getting them involved - to be players and not just spectators, also clearly demonstrating that it's still relevant to the FUTURE.

"Punk Attitude" makes it very clear that punk didn't all start with the Ramones in the US and the Sex Pistols & Clash in the UK and that punk = an attitude, not a hair cut or a style of clothing - just in case people might think otherwise! Although all three bands were hugely influential when they formed in the mid 70s, and still are very much so now nearly 30 years later, they didn't come from out of nowhere and had their own host of influences back to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and on through the British Invasion groups like the Who, Kinks and Small Faces. These groups in turn influenced the Standells, Sonics and Count Five and then on through the Velvet Underground, Doors, Stooges, MC5 plus the New York Dolls. Letts explores this cross polination and influencing process very well in "Punk Attitude", without turning it into a boring navel gazing university thesis style analysis that would have been totally inappropriate for such subject matter.

So what makes him qualified to do this? Don Letts is one of the very best placed people to make a documentary of this type. A very early player on the UK Punk scene, and prior to this even as a rag trade rival to Malcolm McLaren and Viv Westwood, he went on to dj at London's Roxy Club in 1977 and manage the Slits. At the time he was not a musician, Punks impact upon him was to make him realise he could be a film maker. He subsequently filmed many of the key bands of the era on Super 8 for what became "Don Lett's Punk Rock Movie" featuring the Banshees, Clash, Heartbreakers, Sex Pistols, X Ray Spex and the Slits. Some of this material, plus much previously unreleased live footage and recently shot interviews, surfaces in "Punk Attitude".

Letts covers the UK 76/77 era scene very well in the film (he was THERE after all!) as well as the New York scene. LA possibly gets a little unfairly overlooked, with no mention of X being a surprising omission. John Lydon is also intriguingly omitted, especially as Letts and he were and are good friends, but it's not as if Mr Lydon hasn't had his say previously. Syl Sylvain, Arthur Kane and David Johansen from the New York Dolls also help paint the pre 1976 New York picture, with Johansen mentioning how terrible he thought the Ramones were when he first saw them!

Letts also uses interviews with people who were part of the various scenes but who were not musicians, most notably fellow film maker Jim Jarmusch whose contribution adds a great deal to conjuring up the sights, sounds and smells of the late 70s, early 80s New York scene as Punk evolved into No Wave and later Hard Core.

Of the musicians the Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto interviews help highlight very effectively that Punk wasn't just a London and New York phenomenom, as does Chrissie Hynde, Wayne Kramer covering Detroit and Henry Rollins enthusistically covering the early 80s musical evolution of Black Flag on through to Nirvana and the birth of grunge in the early 90s. So who's not included who arguably could/should have been? Patti Smith and Iggy Pop were both touring and unavailable when Letts was filming and Lou Reed.........well he was Lou Reed! ;-)

Look out for the UK limited edition 2 x dvd version with a host of excellent extra features including a very entertaining interview with Dave Goodman, the Sex Pistols live sound engineer and first studio producer, who sadly died in February 2005 thus making this one of his last interviews. The limited edition dvd also includes a facsimile of 2 copies of the early UK fanzine "Sniffin Glue".

All in all this is VERY highly recommended viewing! Why only 4 stars out of 5? Probably only because Letts would have been the best person to explore the UK 1977 reggae/punk crossover and it's not covered here in any depth......but maybe he's holding that back for another day. If you want only the music then don't buy this - it's a documentary on the whole scene. One day maybe Lett's "Punk Rock Movie" will make it to dvd and THEN you can get much of the music too!

Just saw the the Don Letts produced and directed film "Punk: Attitude" on The IFC channel tonight. I think it really nailed what Punk really is, while at the same time debunked and demystified what corporate media tries to tell us to believe it is. Much was left out. What do you expect for an hour and half film. Some intelligent interviews are seen in the film, namely Chrissie Hynde, Henry Rollins, and Jello Biafra. Jim Jarmusch offers some interesting viewpoints from outside the music scene. But a lot of cool information is jammed into this hour and a half. Henry, Jello, and Thurston Moore even get a little political at the end which brought a little smile of amusement to my face. I dug it. I liken it to a fabric, torn, with many disparete threads, tied together in the end, giving the semblance of a cohesive whole. A video essay if you will. Of course, the film is made up of just personal opinions. Who's to say if they are true? Who cares? But, these are the people who were there, in the middle of it, who saw it happen. Noticably missing was Lenny Kaye (who did his duty in an earlier film) and Johhny Rotten (who has had his say many times over). I think the one bit of knowledge that we can all gain from this is that Punk (whether you call it by that name or not) is that it is one of the most enduring of the rock genres. It means freedom. It spells freedom. It's about freedom. It's not about fashion or guitar volume or how fast you can play. It's an attitude.

I highly recommend this documentary for any punk rock fans, or fans of music history in general. Even if you don't like punk rock music, there is a lot to be learned from this film. This movie does a pretty good job of summing up why these people were making the music they were making, starting in the mid-60's, going through roughly 1980 in detail. The film includes interviews with many people who either made the music (New York Dolls, Suicide, The Damned, The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Buzzcocks, and more...well, the members still alive who would agree to interviews, at least), and people who made music that was influenced by the first wave of punk rock (Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, Thurston Moore, Agnostic Front).

What is "punk rock"? That seems to be the mission statement of the film. How do you define a style that bases itself in the idea of non-conformity? One of the most interesting things to learn from the film is that many of the bands who made the music in the late `70's seem to believe that punk died when bands started referring to themselves as "punk".

The film does have a few faults. There are some glaringly missing interviews. From the pre/proto-punk era, they did manage to get a brief clip of John Cale from The Velvet Underground, and members of MC5, but not one member of The Stooges? Without a lot of interviews from the pre/proto era, that part of the film plays a little like one of those VH1 shows, where they show a clip of something nostalgic, and then a famous person comes on and says something like, "I remember that. I like that." Fortunately, there isn't too much of that, though.

Another problem with the film is the glaring omission of the 80's. The film has members of Black Flag, Bad Brains, and the Dead Kennedys in the movie, and yet sticks to the premise that "punk died in the 80's and nothing happened until Nirvana". This is a poor statement to make, for two reasons. First, when they say that punk died in 1980, many of the band members come off like those aging hippies who wag their fingers at kids and say, "music hasn't been the same since the Beatles". Maybe this is because I lived in California, where in the 80's punk and skate culture went hand in hand, but off the top of my head I can think of Bad Religion, Social Distortion, Circle Jerks, D.O.A., Agent Orange, Descendents, Millions of Dead Cops, Subhumans, D.R.I., T.S.O.L., Minutemen, Suicidal Tendencies, Husker Du, Flipper, JFA, Dead Milkmen, DI, Drunk Injuns, and many more. Punk was alive and thriving, as far as I could tell. It just wasn't like the days when bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols appeared on the record charts (which may have been a good thing).

Also, lightly touched on, was the 90's generation of punk. Think what you will about the pre-pop-punk like Pennywise, Vandals, Offspring, Green Day, Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, Swingin' Utters, NOFX, etc., like it or not, those bands are part of the "punk" legacy. Why would the movie mention Korn and Limp Biscuit, but not most of those bands? Fortunately the documentary does make the distinction between those bands, and bands like Blink182, Good Charlotte, and A Simple Plan, who represent the complete assimilation of punk into "the system", the true death of punk.

Well, shortcomings and all, this is still a wonderful movie that will provide you with a knowledgeable history of early punk rock. To fill in some of the blanks, I recommend seeing the movies "American Hardcore", "The End of the Century", "The Filth and the Fury", "Westway to the World", "We Jam Econo", "Repo Man", and "Devo - The Complete Truth About De-Evolution".

EDIT: For a complete punk history, do yourself a favor and watch "Punk Attitude" (~mid-sixties - 1981), "American Hardcore" (~1979-1986), and "Punk's Not Dead" (~1986-present). These three movies have come out in succession, all made by different directors. Yet, as luck would have it, they pretty much cover the span of punk history up to 2007. Also, some time in the next year (I'm writing this in 2007), "The Decline of Western Civilization" will finally be released on DVD.

I just caught this on IFC and found it to be a remarkably heartfelt journey into punk rock's greasy chasm. This is really the first Punk documentary I've seen that actually attempts to explore the punk thread way back to Jerry Lee Lewis (the Killer gets ample (vintage) screentime shaking his disheveled locks while standing atop a soon-to-be-torched grand piano.) Good attetion paid to
? Mark & the Mysterions, Standells, the Velvets, MC5 and John Sinclair, and of course, The Stooges, NY Dolls, Television, Suicide, The Ramones. Then we move to England and get The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks and the Damned. This section of the film is most succinct, perhaps due to Mr. Letts proximity at the center of the scene. This is very good, though, since it grounds the film a bit. I especially liked the "100-days-of-the-100-Club"
explanation.
The film follows punk into the post-punk movement (maybe a doc of it's own in the future?) And back to the US where the NO-Wave movement finally gets its screen-time. Then it's pretty much all west-coast Black Flag stuff, until Nirvana comes along and ruins everything. I would have loved to have seen the Germs, Adolescents, especially X. But I'm sure there just wasn't room. Maybe Mr. Letts will make another film and keep going, digging deeper and wider. I hope so. The interviews are what make this film special. Though I could have done with a bit less Rollins. S'funny... lots of the older British punks almost seem to cultivate some kind of Dickensian thing in manner and looks. This was really entertaining and kind of comes off as the antithesis of something like "The Filth and The Fury" : take a gander at Mick Jones, et al. On the other hand, the years have been quite good to (X-Ray Spex) Polly Styrene.

This film is a wonderfully engaging punk rock history lesson.

I'm not a punk guy. Never have been. The furthest punk I've been is listening to a Van Halen album. That's why when I saw this movie I see that I am in and have no idea about what Punk was or is. Let's just talk about the film on it's merits. It's a fascinating look into a subculture of music that actually broke through the ceiling of cult and became a facet, a staple of music all over the world. It's the underclass rebellion put to three chord rock, intentionally pushing the boundries of comfortability for the rest of the world. This is one of those WELL DONE docs that don't seem to be made all that much anymore and I, though not a punk, recommend it heartily

I want to emphasize that I am reviewing the DVD two-disc set and not the independent film that was shown on IFC. While I think the film that lies at the core of this set is quite good, the real value for me as a music fan is the vast amount of supplemental material and interviews. What they did was taken large hunks of the interview material that was not used in the final version of the film for IFC and compiled what is in essence a host of mini-features constructed around a number of important topics. For instance, one such feature is on the fanzines that were generated by the movement and another dwells on women in punk. The reviews here on Amazon are not especially positive for the film (though it should be pointed out that the low reviews here are completely out of line with its larger critical reception, which was quite strong), but I think if those giving it three stars or fewer had had access to all of the supplemental material, they might have viewed the project differently.

The main film attempts not to explain punk rock, as one Amazon reviewer bizarrely claims (where does the film make that ambitious claim?), but to provide an oral history through talking with many of its major participants. There is no narrator. There are only eyewitnesses. The film thus functions as a sort of visual companion to Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's PLEASE KILL ME: THE UNCENSORED ORAL HISTORY OF PUNK. Luckily they managed to bring a large number of important participants in for interviews. Unluckily, a number of critical individuals did not cooperate. One would have loved to see Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell, Patti Smith, or any of a host of lesser figures interviewed. As it is, they still managed to interview a huge number of the most important living participants in the punk movement. The interviews are accompanied by a wealth of visual images and a large number of excerpts from live performances. What I especially liked about the documentary is that it didn't try to focus on punk too narrowly. In other words, the film was in fact more about alternative or underground music more broadly conceived than with a very brief movement of the late seventies. I was very pleased with their emphasizing that alternative was not born immaculately with the release of NEVERMIND by Nirvana, but had been created over a couple of decades by a host of artists. I remember when NEVERMIND was released thinking that it was very much like three or four hundred other albums I owned.

In addition to the interviews, there is also a substantial documentary on Disc 2 on the L.A. punk scene. Henry Rollins in the main film makes a marvelously prescient observation when he says that punks often tend to be extraordinarily narrow-minded. I couldn't agree more. And one way that punks and even students of the punk scene evince narrowness is in ignoring or minimizing the L.A. scene. I'll confess that I'm not a fan of the L.A. scene. Few bands from the scene there have ever become a major part of my personal playlist. But nonetheless the importance of the LA scene should not be underestimated.

Ironically, though the film strives to achieve some balance by nodding towards the L.A. scene in the added documentary and by detailing much of the contribution made by the Washington, D.C. bands, I was amazed by how much was left out. Even a gesture to the national nature of the punk and/or alternative scene would have been nice. The fact is that in the eighties neither L.A. nor New York was the center for alternative music in the U.S., nor was Washington, D.C. If one knows the music of the period, one is aware of all that was happening in places as wide-ranging as Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland, Athens, Georgia, Boston, and Austin. Nor was NEVERMIND the birth of Pacific Northwest alternative. The sixties saw the great garage band The Sonics come from Tacoma while the late seventies saw The Wipers, headed by Greg Sage, a performer and guitarist who probably exerted more influence on the Seattle scene than any of the bands mentioned in the documentary. And not a word about the Pixies, probably the most influential band on alternative after Television. And why so much on Sonic Youth and nothing on The Replacements or Hüsker Dü?

So, if one wants to quibble, there is certain enough here to quibble with. But I want to keep my nitpicking in check, and instead enjoy the film and DVD set that I have been given rather than the one that I might have created if I had had control over the project. If one loves alternative music, one will find hours of great material in this DVD set. And if you've read PLEASE KILL ME and Jon Savage's book on the British punk scene, this should be essential viewing.

A few years ago, I was leafing through a magazine was startled to see the following term: "Christian Punk." Notwithstanding any anti-religious bias I might hold (plenty, to be honest), the term confused me. The very idea behind punk, or so I had thought, was to think for yourself, to go against established traditions and declare "I don't need you! I can do just find on my own terms!" As Patti Smith said, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." Now here was a movement devoted to upholding some of the most entrenched, dogmatic traditions in the world. At the time, the only response I could muster (after I recovered from slack-jawed confusion) was inchoate apoplexy. I wanted to find one of these "Christian punks" and scream a hearty chorus of FU right into their pious face. Well, I've calmed down a bit, to the point when I only roll my eyes when I see the offending phrase, but thanks to Don Letts, should I ever encounter one of these fabled creatures, I can just sit 'em down and show 'em "Punk: Attitude." Mind you, this isn't a recruitment video for The Dark Side, but heck, they have "The Passion," so why not?

The movie makes clear that there's no one definition of what "punk" is, either in sound or in spirit. Still, some basics are fleshed out, mostly from some of the people responsible for inventing them. Interviews with musicians such as Henry (Black Flag) Rollins, Jello (Dead Kennedys) Biafra, David (the New York Dolls) Johansen and even to my Sonic Youth-obsessing delight, Thurston Moore leave little doubt that whatever else you could say, punk is about independence, of having your own ideas about the world and sticking to your principles. Punk is about upending tradition, questioning authority and giving them a New York salute when they stand in your way. Punk is about a destruction that's necessary for reconstruction. A history is told: The Dolls, The Ramones, Patti Smith and Richard Hell in NYC and the MC5/Stooges/John Sinclair axis in Detroit were fed up with the Hippie aesthetic in the late 60's/early 70's. Englishman Malcolm McDowell took some of their ideas back home with him and thanks to his own ideas about philosophy and commerce, got the ball rolling in the U.K. Mind you, the kids over there didn't need much persuasion and the resulting explosion was much bigger then a carny barker like McDowell could anticipate or manipulate. Before too long, pemutations such as new wave, no wave (a noisy reaction to the former) and hardcore emerged. a long underground breeding/festering ground during the eighties led up to the "breaking" of punk in 1991 with Nirvana, which influenced Green Day, which was watered down into Blink 182 and corrupted into rap-metal, and before too long the term punk had been so debased that even fundamentalist Christians think they can be "punk" by playing simple three-chord rock and acting kinda bratty. Okay, that last part isn't in the movie, but it's inherently implied. The film of course goes into way more detail, and at various times while watching it, the "attitude" of punk hits you so strongly that one feels the impulse to throw some Clash or Dead Kennedys on the stereo, like right now!

Nevertheless, there's plenty that's missing here. No shows include such notables as John Lydon (always a great interview even if--or because--he's such a total dick), Patti Smith, Joe Strummer(okay, he had a good excuse), Iggy Pop and even McLaren himself. Pretty much everything past the early eighties is glossed over (except Sonic Youth--see what you get just for participating?). There's also something else that's skimmed over...whaddya call it...oh, yeah, MUSIC! Aside from the problems that copyright clearances can cause for a labor of love (read: low budget) such as this, the music that is included is heard mostly as snippets or in the background while some luminary is speaking. The bonus disc uses material cut from the original film (aometimes several times!) to go into more detail on the L.A. scene or punk fashions and gigs, but still hardly any actual music is heard. There are several comps and box sets out there that can redress this problem, but why should a new punk fan have to shell out extra just to hear the tunes under discussion? Old farts like me can consult a vast CD/vinyl (yes, vinyl) collection, so the film is like a nostalgia trip for me, but punk should treat nostalgia like it does tradition. So there are deep flaws here, but the attitude behind punk can still inspire younger bands (have you heard the Liars or Magik Markers? No? Well, trust me, they're punk) and even though not many people may see this film, maybe a lot of them will form their own bands. Just put that bible where it can't annoy anyone, okay?

After seeing about half of this documentary on the Bravo Channel I went online to buy one to see the whole movie. After seeing the whole movie, I bought 3 more to give away to friends. This is THE BEST history lesson of the history of the Punk genre and an explanation of how it still has influence to this day. A must see - must own DVD.

Amidst all the corporate dross that these days desecrates our favorite movement and what it originally meant, it is truly gratifying to come across something like this that puts Punk in its proper context. First, last and always, Punk is an attitude and for a brief moment in post-war Western history, this attitude (which has always existed in humans since time immemorial) expressed itself in popular music, the culmination of that being the blazing 18 months spanning 1976, '77 and '78. Don Letts' documentary is focussed firmly on that idea and really, when you think about it, remove the idea from the music and you're left with something rather dull and ordinary. The idea was what fuelled the music - something that relatively few musings on Punk these days seem to concentrate on. Packaged rebellion it was not.

As far as dealing with the music of Punk, this is an excellent, if slightly disjointed history of the roots and mechanics of the genre, stretching back to the echo-laden Rockabilly tones through to the '60s Garage band era (great footage of The Count Five!) and onto the proto-Punk sounds of the Velvets, MC5, Stooges, Dolls, Richard Hell etc. A large proportion of the documentary is dedicated to this which should be enough to recommend it alone. And all the while, Letts never allows us to forget the attitude that drove this music and made it what it was. The focal point is obviously the late '70s Punk explosion and I disagree with those who say that he neglects the '80s - a reasonable portion of the film is dedicated to Hardcore and it gets equal amounts of coverage/discoverage as anything else here. If there is a criticism, it is that the film has almost a piecemeal characteristic to it; you often feel as though it doesn't quite hang together and that as a history, it could have been tighter.

But then that's missing the "Attitude" portion of the title. As a manifesto, a true understanding of what this movement was, Punk Attitude is bang on the money. When someone way off in the distant future feels angry enough to kick out the jams once more, whatever their modus operandi, they'll be able to look back to the original Punk movement for inspiration. And this film will certainly be a part of that.

this dvd is awesome! by far the most extensive, educational, entertaining, thorough, and credible documentary on punk rock that is in existance, as far as i know. i've watched it 3 times already. it's that good! for anyone who wants to understand the attitudes and history behind punk rock, this is a must! i will cherish this forever and will be sure to educate my kids on it one day!