100 Greatest Punk Songs, 23-34

We plow on. We, being my co-blogger (T) and me (M).

23. Circle Jerks - "Live Fast, Die Young"
Talk about anthems. I was 18 when this song came out. When you’re 18 you fluctuate between feeling like you are gonna live forever and feeling like you want to die. Those two things kind of lend themselves to each other when you spend every night doing some sort of damage to your body and your brain cells and your life expectancy, and you really just don’t give a fuck about growing old and you sit around talking about how much getting older sucks and what is the point when the world is going to shit anyhow so you sit outside the bar in your car wondering if you are too drunk or stoned to drive and you pop Group Sex into the cassette player and you spend the next hour screaming live fast, die young and you think, hell yea. That’s what I’m gonna do. Live fast, die young. We see how that worked out. - M download

24. NoMeansNo - "Big Dick"- Wanna call them punk? hm. Well they had a punk following. Does that count? Make your own call. I don't fucking know. They influenced a lot of punk bands. Does that count? Hm. I don't know. But, I guess you can call them punk, or not. I don't really care. This song was on a great album that basically changed the way a lot of people thought about punk rock. From guitarist and vocalist driven to bass drive. It changed a lot of things we were doing. We never thought about things like that. They had a new style and a new approach. "You could rule a set with a bass? Really? Really?" This band started making people think that bass players weren't the background anymore. They were up front. And they had issues. - T download

25. Swingin' Utters -"Derailer"
Ok. Some of you guys are gonna hate this for separate reasons. And I've heard them all before. They went to Fat, they changed their style, and they try too hard to sound like an English band. Well hey, hell that's all true. A band from San Francisco does sound pretty lame singing about the Queen while they were living in SF. Actually, it's kind of funny if you think about it. But this song was really about conformity and how bad you get beat when you move off the track. You better learn to get fucked. And you better get used to it. Cause you're a needy person. -T download

Article Author: Michele Catalano

Michele is from Long Island and writes about two of her favorite things - punk rock and fast cars -along with her better half at Faster Than the World.

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