Punk, New Wave and All that Jazz

Michele has some good posts on Punk rock and related stuff.
The posts can be found here, here and most recently here.

The reason for these posts was the release of a compilation of Punk being released by Rhino.

I was going to chime in but in a way it is too personal for me to talk about since I was a bartender at several hot Punk Clubs in New York during the late 70's and I knew a lot of these people.
No CBGB's was not one of them, thank goodness.

I will probably buy the CD but I know it will leave a lot to be desired since it is not possible to capture the mood or the energy that was going on then on a record.

Working 5 sometimes 7 nights a week I got to see a lot of what was going on behind the scenes. It was really an amazing time.
I suppose I could go into details about how the Ramones acted or what David Byrne drank (dewar's and water, believe it or not) but I don't think that that is that important and I might want to save it for my memoirs someday.

There was excitment in the air, more so at any time since the whole Beatles invasion.

Try to explain the Beatles today and people just can not understand the sheer craziness that just gripped everyone of that generation. Punk was like that except it wasn't as out in the open with everyone. With everyone that was into of course but there was more going on.

When the Beatles hit there really wasn't that much going on musically.

When Punk hit Disco was king and they actually coexisted for a while. In some cases , like Blondie, Punk groups actually had Disco hits.

Anyway go read Michele's post and be sure to read the comments too. It will keep you busy for while but if you don't know much about Punk or even if you do there is some good stuff there.