10 Punk Bands Essential To Me: The 1990's

This is another "tandem" post that I'm doing with my Born Too Late co-host and pal Lord Rutledge. For his list of "Essential 90's Punk Bands, go check out his blog Faster and Louder. This time, I have no idea what he's going to put on his list. This proved to be FAR more difficult than I had imagined. I tried to use completely different bands than the ones I mentioned in our previous tandem post "My Favorite Records of 1996". There was so much going on in the 1990's that it wasn't hard to think of bands, it was hard to narrow it down to only ten(ish)! So below, after hours and hours of inner conflict and deliberation, I present to you my list of bands that were "essential" to me during the 1990's. 

The early 1990's included my high school years. This was also the time I discovered underground rock n' roll/punk rock. I was coming into the decade already being a fan of 50's Rock n' Roll, 60's British Invasion, 70's Glam and Punk, 80's Goth/New Wave and all the junk oozing in between. So when I got an earful of all the underground bands taking their primary influences from this stuff, I was barley able to keep it under control. It was like a shopping spree, grabbing at everything I could get my hands on. 

Also, go check out the Spotify playlist I made at the bottom of this post featuring 50 songs by 50 bands that I loved in the 1990's. If you were like me, your tastes were all over the map. So just play the list, sit back, close your eyes and let it take you back to the days when you didn't worry about rent, you didn't check the weather, or be concerned if that sharp pain in your back would go away on it's own on not. 


Operation Ivy/Rancid

I was at a party that I talked my friend into going because there was this band I wanted to see play. I was supposed to meet him there at this strangers house. Well, that "friend" never showed and the band didn't end up playing. But there was something really interesting coming from this little boom box on the patio. I was so intrigued by this music, I had to go ask what it was. Someone finally handed me the cassette and I took perfect mental notes of what it was. It was Operation Ivy's Energy. The next day I was at my local Tower Records. For whatever reason the tape was in the "Imports" section. I looked as the record label it was on and that day I was whisked away to another world that I have yet to return from. And when I learned Lookout Records was releasing a 7" by a new band called Rancid that half of OPIV was in, I was first in line! 


Supercharger/The Rip-Offs/The Infections

As many of you already know, there's one thing all three of these bands have in common and that's the presence of one Mr Greg Lowery. To pick just one of these bands as the most "essential" to me during the 1990's would be a pointless endeavor. The sass brat behavior and incredibly infectious hooks of Supercharger, The Rip-Off's flaming middle finger in your face attitude mixed with brilliant minimalist lofi punk, to the stunning head turning Heartbreakers meets The Angry Samoans style songs of The Infections Self Titled LP. No way I could do without any of these, they're all as vital to me as oxygen or chesse burgers! Again, and example of moving punk rock forward by taking it back to its roots. Lowery clearly has a masterful knowledge of it, then he pukes it back out with some original flavors mixed in,  and I lapped up every ounce!   


The Stitches 

Oh sure, I was content with the morsel the punk gods had thrown my way, with Johnny Peebucks and The Swingin Utters. Don't get me wrong they were great and I am in no way a blasphemer! But when The Stitches 8 X 12" hit the world like an extinction level asteroid, it didn't just leave a crater in Southern California, is sent a ripple effect felt all around the world. Here was a band that not only took the sounds of 70's punk, pounded them all together but made it faster, snottier, grittier and pretty much upped the ante in every way possible! Was this shit for real, I mean, how could this be?! The fantastic thing was that it was for real, and it ushered in an era that couldn't have been foreseen by even the wisest of profits. An era where similar bands started forming, labels started up to put out their records, and fans like myself stood up to salute the dawning of a glorious new age.


NOFX

I would be lying if I said I don't still put on a NOFX record every now and again. If you were involved in skateboarding culture in the learly 90's, it was nearly impossible to avoid NOFX. They were like that era's JFA or The Faction. The perfect soundtrack to those saturday afternoon skate sessions with your friends. It was cool to have a band that seemed like they "got" you, that was similar in age and kind of dressed like us too. Also a band that you could go to your local club and see up close for like $5. I remember thinking that the Ribbed LP was alright but I still didn't hear the big deal. But when Whiter Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean came out, that too was a major game changer for me. Suddenly it seemed like everyone was paying attention to them and Fat Wreck Chords became a force to be reckoned with.  


Boris The Sprinkler 

I used to be a huge Maximum Rock N Roll dork. Imagine how I felt when I found out my favorite columnist in that magazine had his own band?!? And Boris The Sprinkler was 100% all things Rev Norb for sure. All the humor, sarcasm, obscure pop culture references and underlying sincerity were all present in Boris The Sprinkler's music. All that and add heaping amounts of over caffeinated guitar riffs with Norb's vocals delivered like he was on a relentless sugar high! I mean, who else could make a song called "My Prom Date's Parkin' With Grand Moff Tarkin" work! Not since like The Dickies or The Toy Dolls had I heard a band have humor like this in their lyrics. I never got a chance to see Boris The Sprinkler live, even though they did come to my hometown once or twice. I don't have many, but that's one of my regrets in life.      


Jawbreaker

I remember when my friend played Bivouac for me, I thought it was fine. I really liked the first song "Shield Your Eyes" but the rest, to me at least, was kind of forgettable to be honest. But everyone loved this band so I went to their previous record Unfun and that still didn't do much for me. But when their LP 24 Hour Revenge Therapy hit, talk about yet another asteroid hitting. This record was pretty life changing for me. I don't think there's a bad song on this record and it really holds up. This time around, Jawbreaker added more energy, bigger hooks and that's what my creepy little teenage brain needed from these guys. I will still champion Revenge Therapy as one of the best records of the 90's. However Jawbreaker lost me again with Dear You. I just couldn't get into it, still can't. And I realize it's a "me" problem, I know a lot of people love it.    


Green Day

I mean hey, the kings of Lookout Records right? I think that's pretty undisputable at this point. This was the first band I dug up and purchased after going through the Lookout Records catalog and doing a little research. Green Day's 39/Smooth and Kerplunk! came out in my most formative years and they meant the world to me, they still do. I love Dookie as well but that came later. These records are as much a part of my adolescence as my first high school crush, actually more so because they didn't make me sad! And these records were just the starting off point for these guys, what Green Day did from these days forward was nothing short of astounding. They changed the world with their music forever and made living on this smelly mudball more tolerable for a lost dorky kid quickly being shoved into adulthood like myself. 


The Bouncing Souls

One of the things about Bouncing Souls I really liked was the fact that well, I guess their music could technically be classified as "pop punk" if I were being lazy and like The Dude, I am most certainly that. But along with their pop punk-ness they had a touch of street punk that made them a bit tougher si I wasn't called a sissy pants for liking them. For example, when I told people I liked The Parasites who coincidentally are also from New Jersey. When I needed a small breather from the "pop" part in pop punk, The Bouncing Souls emphasized the "punk" part. Their music was loud, catchy and their songs were pretty cool and they didn't take themselves too seriously like most Street Punk bands. See "These Are The Quotes From Our Favorite 80's Movies." Oddly, I never got a chance to see them live back in the day but I bet they were great.  


Those Unknown 

It's been difficult to choose just one band from all these scenes that existed parallel to each other. Along with the pop punk and lo-fi/garage punk I really got into some Oi!/Street punk that labels like Pogostick, Beer City, GMM and Headache Records put out. Other bands like Those Unknown that I loved were The Reducers SF, The Wretched Ones, and The Bristles just to name a few. But Montague, New Jersey's Those Unknown were my favorite. They're lyrics didn't seem overly political, they just seemed like common sense. Apparently they're accused of being commies now because of Rich Owens (now an accomplished poet and essayist) column in MRR. They also had this weird/wonderful  air of Americana to them too. Along with Bill Owen's insane blood gurgling vocals, the hooks in their songs were so sick, like Cocksparrer sick. It was almost difficult NOT to like these guys. 


Defiance 

One day I got a wild hair up my ass and ordered this compilation LP called Pogo Attack from this label I'd never heard of called Pogo Punk Records. I saw it in an ad in Maximum Rock n Roll so I took a chance. Because that's what you did back then. You stuffed an envelope with cash and prayed to the punk rock gods that it would reach it's destination safely. The cover was really cool looking and colorful and it had a few bands I liked on it like The Pist, The Bristles, Blanks 77, and The Wretched Ones . The Comp also had Aus Rotten, Mankind?, and all these other anarcho type bands that I never heard. Doing some digging down the rabbit hole after I got the comp in the mail, I came across Portland's Defiance. They seemed to straddle the wall between anarcho punk and bands like Discharge and GBH which I really liked. So thus my love for bands like that came to grow and flourish from there.