PUNK LIVES! Watching this film, be prepared to jump, shout and scream!! Otherwise, you're dead! A film that has to match the spirit of the subjects, the audience was as raucus as the film subjects!!
While paying brief homage to punk legends the Ramones, the Clash and the Sex Pistols, this gleefully raucous doc tracks the history of punk rock from the underground scene of the ’80s through the movement’s commercial breakthrough in the early ’90s to the punk-influenced bands of today. Focusing primarily on the American and U.K. music scenes since the early ’80s, director Susan Dynner compiles interviews with punk luminaries from every era, from DOA’s Joey Shithead to Minor Threat’s Ian McKaye to Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong. Punks past and present share war stories from the road and comment on the scene’s clashing commercial and anti-corporate factions. Dynner goes a long way to flesh out the legacies of lesser-known but legendary groups like UK Subs, the Adicts and the Subhumans. While today’s watered-down million-sellers like Sum 41 and Good Charlotte plaster TV screens and Rolling Stone covers, the old-sc
hool bands (many still touring) sustain the DIY spirit, supported by fervent fan bases. Dynner’s film examines punk not only as a musical genre but also as a social movement uniting outsiders and nonconformists. In the words of McKaye, "It was the portal to a common cultural world." Though the old farts of the punk world gripe about the lack of political urgency in today’s bubblegum takes on the genre ("Punk rock should be appalling, disgraceful, totally berserk," claims Damned founder Captain Sensible, before stripping and slapping his bum), Dynner proves that the movement, though splintered, remains healthy and alive.
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