Punk Turns 30

Cheetah Chrome crunching down on what was once a hot chicken wing at a house-warming party in Nashville, TN last year... as I have said many times on these pages, Cheetah is one of the genre-defining guitar players of punk rock, not to mention one of my fave guitarists and fave people. Good news for Toronto fans of Cheetah, The Dead Boys, Rocket From the Tombs, Frankenstein and punk rock in general. Tomorrow night, Wednesday, June 20... a great one-off gig with Toronto's own punk rockers, The Screwed backing Cheetah on the songs his bands made infamous. Here's what you need to know to go: Wednesday June 20 Bovine Sex Club 542 Queen St. W Cheetah Chrome backed by the Screwed The Chelsea Hotel which for its entire lifetime has been home to the glitter- and-gutterati alike just experienced a certain coup d'etat, ousting the manager, Stanley Bard and his family, who have run the place for 50 years... Please visit the always interesting Hotel Chelsea Blog for all the...

We interrupt our salute to punk rock guitar heroes to tell you about a FREE show in NYC tomorrow night, starring some punk rockers from the Second Coming of Punk (that would be 1984 onwards... right after The Golden Age of Punk, which was, according to me, 1976 - 1980). These guys have been Raunch Hands, Coy Dogs, Star Spangles... Without further ago...from the horse's mouth... (and that horse would be the mighty Mike Edison, a Raunch Hand ... the Rocket Train conductor....) Mike Edison in a photo taken by someone unknown to me - thanks whoever you may be. Have Mike buy you a beer!! Photo courtesy Mike Edison SEX! DRUGS! WRESTLING! TWO BIG NIGHTS at KGB's TUESDAY JUNE 19 TUESDAY JUNE 26 7 pm - 9 pm MIKE EDISON will be reading from his forthcoming memoir I HAVE FUN EVERYWHERE I GO - _ Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and The World's Most Notorious Magazines Live soundtrack provided by the Rock...

Playing in a band with Iggy Pop requires more than just chops. You’ve got to be able to go with the flow, improvise and vamp as he launches into any one of his famous antics, from crowd surfing (he may have been the first one to do that) to stripping to inviting the whole audience up on stage. Oh, and he scales the amps as if they were the Alps and hurls stuff around too ( Darby Crash copped the peanut butter thing from Iggy). Darby Crash got a lot of his stage schtick from Iggy Over the years, Iggy has had some capable, some seminal and some stellar guitar players in his bands. Ron Asheton who was with him in the Stooges is back now that the Stooges are playing and recording again. When Ron Asheton moved over to play bass, James Williamson joined on guitar, contributing a certain musical signature all his own, too. Then the band was dropped from their label. Iggy disappeared from the music scene for a while, then Bowie showed up and helped Iggy get it together again, making t...

photo from Cheetah Chrome's website - thanks to the unknown photographer Cheetah Chrome and Jimmy Zero of the Dead Boys are probably my favorite two guitar players in the punk rock pantheon... yeah - they are. Cheetah and Jimmy were the Yin and Yang of the Dead Boys... one brutal and hardcore, the other a touch jangly, a touch pop. They both have a distinctive Ohio punk rock pedigree. Dead Boys first Los Angeles show at the Starwood. You can sort of see Cheetah behind Stiv Jimmy Zero was the last original Dead Boy playing with Stiv at this Whisky a Go Go gig in 1979 Cheetah Chrome was a member of Rocket From the Tombs with the future Johnny Blitz, future Pere Ubu frontman, David Thomas, and the late Peter Laughner, who if you don't know, you should look him up - he has a brief but deep history as an important musician, writer and fan... a Lester Bangs kind of character who died rather young (aged only 24) from years of hard living. Laughner could be considered the...