The Ongoing History of New Music, Episode 817: The 90s, Part 6: The Punk Rock Revival
The early 90s were an amazing time for music. Generation X, a powerful demographic force, reached the age where they were in a position to dominate music, demanding material that reflected their needs, wants, wishes, desires, and fears.
The biggest sea change came from the rise of grunge, thanks to Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and, of course, Nirvana. But that music just served to kickstart the Alternative Nation that came to dominate most of the 90s.
For many, grunge was alternative music with training wheels. Those who liked what they heard were invariably and inevitably led deeper into a musical ecosystem that had existed outside the mainstream for years. Gen X embarked on a journey of music discovery, introduced into different flavours of so many genres. That included punk.
Punk had been around since the 70s, of course. It burned itself out at the end of that decade but it never died. The Ramones kept touring. Bands like Husker Du and Black Flag were writing the rules of hardcore. Punk was just biding its time as a niche thing.
But then an interesting set of circumstances came into play that resulted in a massive resurrection of everything punk. Echoes of that resurrection are still being felt today.
This is chapter 6 of our look back on the 1990s: the mid-decade punk rock revival.
Songs heard on this show:
Green Day, Longview
Rancid, Salvation
Offspring, Come Out and Play
Social Distortion, Bad Luck
Bad Religion, 21st Century Digital Boy
NOFX, Linoleum
Fugazi, Cassevetes
Ramones, Blitzkrieg Bop (Live)
Blink-182, All the Small Things
Sublime, Date Rape
Doughboys, Shine
Sleater-Kinney, I Want to Be Your Joey Ramone
Eric Wilhite has created this playlist for us.
Don’t forget that you can get the podcast version of this podcast through iTunes or wherever you get your on-demand audio.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7
- Live 88-5/Ottawa
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener
- FM96/London – Sunday night at 7, Monday night at 11
- Power 97/Winnipeg (Sunday nights at 11)
- Rock 97.7/Grand Prairie – Sunday nights at 6.
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton
- The Zone/Victoria
- The Fox/Vancouver
- Live 105/Halifax
- WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown The show runs at 11 am Sunday. This, by the way, is a great option for American listeners who are prevented from listening to the show live because of geo-blocking,
We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, 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.
