Punk Turns 30

North Fork Sound is 3 years old today. The best way to wish them a Happy Birthday is to LISTEN! Easiest way to listen is to visit their site and click on the PLAY icon while you read the playlists and what not. Where else can you hear Social Distortion and all things Lemmy on the same playlist? This is free form radio the way it ought to be. Happy Birthday North Fork Sound!

On September 14, there was an URGENT message in my email from awesome rock chick, Jahna Rain, telling me of a flood in the basement storage area of a warehouse where a big chunk of the Punk Turns 30 photo archive has been stashed. There was significant flooding and the landlord wanted all the stuff out immediately (ostensibly to clean, restore and repair his property), so I sent out a global 911 to everyone in my email address book. Maybe you received it. I have to say that I'm rather touched by the replies I received from folks on MOG who read my post there. That's pretty gross looking stuff, isn't it? David Landis, a graphic designer friend of a friend who happens to live in the general area where my archive was stored, was kind enough to drop what he was doing the following morning and schlep my waterlogged boxes of photos, slides and negatives to his house, where they were carefully transferred to new, clean, dry storage boxes and bins. While some of my archive susta...

Dave Treganna, Dave Parsons, Jim Carroll and Stiv Bators, NYC, 1981 He whose most well-known song was "People Who Died" has died. Poet, singer/songwriter, spokesman for a generation, Jim Carroll passed away in his home while working (writing). A heart attack took him from us on Friday, September 11, 2009. He was 60 years old. Just about a year ago, my good friend, Dave Parsons, of Sham 69 forwarded to me that photo above, of himself, former Sham bassist, Dave Treganna, and Stiv Bators with Jim Carroll, whom we all met in NYC when the Daves and Stiv toured as The Wanderers. I took at photo backstage at the Palladium, when the Wanderers opened for the Ramones there in 1981. You can read more about our Wandering Into Jim Carroll here on punkturns30... the link is to last year's post and memories of how Jim Carroll taught Stiv and me how to maneuver the night life in Manhattan. We all knew who Jim Carroll was back then... The Basketball Diaries, the til-then c...