David Johansen

David Johansen

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David Johansen talks to the audience at the Friars Club Gala who honoured the Icon Award to Martin Scorsese held at Cipriani, 55 Wall Street, Manhattan, New York, United States - Wednesday 21st September 2016

David Johansen
David Johansen, Mara Hennessey and Martin Scorsese
David Johansen
David Johansen
David Johansen

David Johansen Thursday 31st March 2011 New York Dolls perform live at The Old Vic Tunnel London, England

David Johansen

David Johansen Thursday 20th May 2010 The Jazz Foundation of America's 9th Annual A Great Night in Harlem Gala and Concert at The Apollo Theater New York City, USA

David Johansen

David Johansen Tuesday 20th April 2010 New York Dolls performing live in concert at The Academy Dublin, Ireland

David Johansen

Punk: Attitude Review


Excellent
At the start of Don Letts' excellent new documentary Punk: Attitude, ex-Black Flag-er and perennial curmudgeon Henry Rollins explains punk as being in essence one guy looking at the world he's living in and saying "Fuck this." A pithy summation of the movement, to be sure, and also quite a smart one, as this is one of the few films about the birth, death, and pseudo-revival of punk rock to actually acknowledge the genre's limitations (you can only say "Fuck this" while playing 90-second songs for so long), while simultaneously reveling in another trip down the antiestablishment memory road.

Most of the literature and documentaries on punk tend to start out in the same place, talking about how in the mid-1970s music had become this bloated, big-business monster, with pretentious arena rock bands playing 20-minute solos and so on - and then came The Ramones to shatter all that. Letts - a former producer and icon in the scene, as well as director of the authoritative documentary on The Clash, Westway to the World - digs deeper than that, going back to the 1960s and early '70s, finding the root of the coming musical uprising not just in expected places like The Velvet Underground, MC5, and Iggy Pop, but also in the jaggedly poppy sounds of many now mostly forgotten garage bands (whose sound is still inspiring post-punkers like The Hives). In describing the ascent of punk later in the '70s, Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra talks about how just about every smaller town and city had one guy who was into The Stooges and The Velvet Underground who then moved to the bigger cities, met up with all the other like-minded small-town new arrivals, and started bands.

Continue reading: Punk: Attitude Review

David Johansen

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