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In my previous installment of this series I detailed some metal bands, guitar tones, and styles that I love to play on guitar. Even though that kind of music is very loud, fast, and brutal, it's also very demanding and requires discipline, mountains of practice, and respect for musicianship. Despite sounding very savage, the metal music I showed you demands a level of civility and sophistication to do it well. With this entry in my music series I'm going to go down a notch in the sophistication scale, and devolve into the realm of punk rock by showing you some songs I love to play and why the styles are important to me.

The worlds of punk rock and metal have similarities in the facts they are usually very loud, aggressive, and counter-culture, but when it comes to philosophies around musicianship, the two worlds often couldn't be more different. To even be acceptable and identifiable in the world of metal you have to be able to play your instrument with proficiency, as well as use good equipment to dial in a heavy tone for your guitar. By contrast, in the world of punk rock, being a musician isn't even technically a requirement. All you need is attitude. If you're an angst-ridden, energetic, counter-culture person who has something to bitch about, you have the right attitude. If you can throw together any assortment of musical equipment (even if its cheap and low quality) and pound some messy power chords together to augment your attitude, you have what it takes to be in a punk band.

There's an old punk ethos that goes, "It's cool to play shitty." When it comes to musicianship I don't live by that ethos, but the beauty of that kind of attitude is that you never give a fuck what anybody thinks, you never apologize, and you only play music for yourself. That's what I like about punk rock and that's what I take from it. I've never played for anybody but me. I like to take my love of metal's demanding, tight, punchy musicianship, and meld it with the chaos and freedom of punk rock. Now here's some punk bands I love and songs I like to play.

Traditional Punk Sounds

The Offspring: I started listening to this band when I was a young teen and since day one this song has always been my favorite. It's a perfect song, full of melody, catchy vocals, loud guitars, power chords, and a sweet solo to round it out. The lyrics are very dark so Dexter is kind of singing the blues, but this is very much a punk song. I've practiced this song so many times that I can practically play it in my sleep. I can play the rhythms, solo, I can improvise, play it at twice the speed, and turn it into a whole different version if I feel like it.

Social Distortion: Mike Ness is one of my favorite guitarists because he has a lot of soul and honesty. He's not too flashy or pretentious. He's an old-school rocker who absolutely worships Johnny Cash. I like Johnny Cash as well, so any time I listen to Social Distortion I'm getting a heavy dose of the Man in Black but in a heavier, louder, punk form. There's a lot of honky-tonk, country, and blues influence in the way Mike Ness plays and I love listening to him. I love playing this particular song because it grooves in ways that only rock & roll can, I can feel it in my gut, and it has beautiful solos that I love playing along with. The solos in this song are among my favorites of all time.

Bad Religion: I've loved this band for a long time. There are many older songs I could put up here from them, but I have to put this newer one because it's fast, short, sweet, has classic Bad Religion backing vocals (ooo's and ahh's), and it "pulls-a-Ramones" by just punching you in the face with a song real quick and ending fast before it overstays its welcome. There's a lot of folk influence in the songs Greg Graffin writes, and what will probably surprise you the most is that this band is very well educated. Their lead singer and song writer Greg Graffin attained his Ph.D. at Cornell University and is a Professor at the University of California where he lectures courses in Life Sciences and Paleontology. These guys are much more intelligent, well informed, and cultured than you're average punk band, and I love that about them.

Anti-Flag: Remember at the beginning of this blog where I explained that all you need to be in a punk band is attitude? Well this band is proof of that. When these friends got together and made a band, they didn't even play instruments lol. The name of this song is Angry, Young, and Poor. The vocal style is a little Sex Pistol-y, the guitars are a hot mess of power chords, and they have plenty to bitch about. How much more punk rock could you get! You couldn't, this is punk rock. Despite their lack of musical experience, these guys have written quite a number of great songs and punk anthems over the years. They've been in the punk scene for quite a while, they have many albums out, they're fairly respected, and they've never had to be great musicians to accomplish it.

Joan Jett: There's plenty I could say about Joan, but like a punk song, I'll keep it short and sweet. Joan Jett is the sexiest rock chick to ever live. She's got the talent, the attitude, she's beautiful, she has a sexy voice, and she doesn't give a shit what you think. If you don't like her you can go back to your Maroon 5, Adele, Lil Wayne, or whatever dog shit it is you listen to.

The Donnas: There's no shortage of estrogen on my list here as you can tell. All the men out there who think that being a badass and playing rock & roll is only a man's game need to take a punch square to their nuts and wake up to the real world. The male power fantasy is over. The inches of flaccid meat in between our legs doesn't make us superior, and bands like The Donnas will prove it to you. This small group of girls rocks harder than any of the poser boys I knew in high school all put together. This song is one of the most perfect rock songs I've ever heard, it has everything it needs and more. Their guitarist has a sweet guitar, great tone, lots of style, raw power, and if that isn't a turn on I don't what it is.

Dropkick Murphys: Back in the metal entry of this series I showed some music that had a little Celtic influence and imagination, but none of them are as authentic as the punk band Dropkick Murphys. These guys aren't authentic Irish people, they're from Massachusetts, but they do play excellent Celtic infused rock. This has always been my favorite song of theirs, and it's great to sing along with. I saw them live at a concert festival in Denver a few years ago and they played this song. I just about cried lol. If you're from around the Boston area and you've never heard of Dropkick Murphys, well you're probably not from Boston.

Bridging the gap between punk and metal

Children of Bodom: I already showed you some COB in the metal edition, but they deserve to show up here because their songwriter/guitarist Alexi Laiho is a big fan of punk rock and it shows in his music a great deal. This song was originally done by a Finnish punk band named Klamydia and COB did this great cover of it.

Pennywise: Listen to the guitars in this song. This is brutal guitar playing for a punk band. The guitarist is sliding around to power chords faster than I can take your moms bra off. He has crafted a super heavy guitar tone with deep lows and clear mid-range frequencies as well. He uses a ton of Metallica style palm muting to get a nice crunchy sharp sound when he needs to. These are some of the most difficult punk rock rhythms I ever learned to play. I can certainly play this song, but it never gets easier, it's a damn mess trying to play it right. Playing along with this band is often a pain in the ass.

Sum 41: This band has gone through a number of phases and has changed their sound with practically each new album. Their earliest albums were all about playing in the summer sun or robbing pizza places with super-soakers. The album Chuck is by far the most savage thing they've ever recorded, and with it they proved they aren't just a pop-punk band. The guys in Sum 41 are huge fans of Metallica, Iron Maiden, and songs like this prove they can really pound their instruments when they want to. I've seen Sum 41 in concert several times and seen them play these songs, and they're no joke, they really tear it up. I love everything about this song. It has heavy riffs, blazing solos, double bass drums, growling, and it's all coming out of a group of skinny Canadian boys. Fuck yeah, sign me up.

Thrice: This band has also gone through a lot of changes. Their early work was full of hard & fast music, full of guitar riffs and solos. This album was the kind of the apex of what they achieved with that particular style and I love the songs on it. I would sit down with this album and play all the way through it and not only was it beautiful but it also toughened my hands up and challenged me in ways I hadn't been tested before.

I've loved punk rock since I was a kid. I don't consider myself a punk, I don't spit on people, and you will never find me out in the streets getting tear gassed by riot squads, but I do love the music and I took some important things from it. I love the independence, freedom, and the occasional revolutionary chaos that happens in punk rock. I like to take some of those elements and blend them with metal culture and philosophy.

That does it for this edition! I decided the next edition of Let's Talk Musicianship will be the final one, so I'm that much closer to finishing this whole adventure up. Once all this music stuff is wrapped up I'm going to be diving straight back into games (seeing as this is a gaming site), and I have plenty of gaming blog ideas to keep me busy for quite a while. I've loved talking music like this with you, but I've honestly been trying to wrap this series up in a timely manner. While I've been doing it, I've also been thinking about all the video game stuff I want to do afterwards and I'll be happy to get back to it once this is finished. The truth is, I've been buying and playing some Grrrreat games and need to talk about them!