The Ongoing History of New Music, encore presentation: The history of pop-punk, part 2
[The second and final show of the holiday break. New episodes start next week. – AC]
Here’s a list of words that should not go together:
- Alone together: How many times have you heard that during the pandemic?
- Deafening silence: I know what that means, but when you think about it, the juxtaposition is strange.
- Definitely maybe: A good title for a Britpop album, but an odd colloquialism.
- Walking dead: A TV show, yes, but zombies aren’t real. Are they?
- Pop-punk: Wait–what?
I know you know what I mean by “pop-punk.” It’s a universally accepted descendent of the original punk rock of the 1970s. But those words should not go together any more than “jumbo shrimp.” Back in the day, punk was created as an attack on pop music. So how did we make the jump from a band like The Dead Kennedys doing songs like “Holiday in Cambodia” to Simple Plan singing “Shut Up?”
As weird as it seems, those two bands are related. Do a DNA analysis and it’ll come back positive. That’s because over the decades, pop and punk have merged into a hybrid that’s responsible for selling hundreds of millions of records and concert tickets and t-shirts.
How did this happen? That’s what we’re looking at. This is part two of a history of pop-punk.
Songs heard on this show:
- Green Day, Walking Contradiction
- Green Day, Longview
- Bad Religion, 21st Century Digital Boy
- Rancid, Salvation
- Offspring, Gotta Get Away
- Goldfinger, Here in Your Bedroom
- Offspring, Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)
- Blink-182, What’s My Age Again
- Sum 41, Fat Lip
- Green Day, American Idiot
Eric Wilhite has created this playlist for your listening pleasure.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
- Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9pm
- Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
- FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
- Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 11pm
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
- The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 8am and 9pm
- The Fox/Vancouver – Sunday at 11pm
- Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
- WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm
- We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.
If you ever miss a show, you can always get the podcast edition available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your on-demand audio.
