sonic reducer

(Almost) All The Punk References In HCLೃ⁀➷

Leaving out really obvious stuff like mentions of Nirvana.

1. Look! It's Joey Ramone! Joey appears for roughly 30 seconds at the start of the movie pretending to be a fan of Hard Core Logo. I assume this was some sort of quid-pro-quo for the movie licensing a Ramones song (Touring, which plays in the film and over the closing credits). Back in the late 70s the Ramones of course starred in their own movie, Rock N'Roll High School, as fictional versions of themselves.


2. Flash Bastard, Lick The Pole, Modernettes, Art Bergmann, DOA... Buck Cherry (aka John Armstrong) from the Modernettes said in an interview that he consulted on the script for Hard Core Logo although it's not clear what ended up in the final edit. Art Bergmann seems likely to have inspired the character of Bucky Haight - he played in bands, had a stalled solo career then moved to a house out in rural Alberta - while DOA could have inspired HCL (three word/three letter acroynm name, politicised Vancouver punk band). Apparently Flash Bastard and Lick the Pole are both real bands?! I assumed they were invented for the film. Jesus....


3. Punk t-shirts featured in the movie: Misfits, Swamp Baby (who did the music for the movie), Hard Core Logo.


4. Seymour Stein, Sire Records.... A real guy and a real label. Sire signed the Ramones, the Dead Boys and the Undertones. To be honest I think it's kind of weird for a punk band to be trying to get signed by Sire Records in 1989/90 but whatever, maybe there's something I don't know.


5. I'm tired of waking up tired... This is a song by a Canadian punk/new wave band: the Diodes, from Toronto.


6. Sonic Reducer... This is a song by the Dead Boys, a band from Cleveland, Ohio who upped sticks and moved to New York City in time to play at CBGBs and get signed to Sire Records. From the decadent wing of punk. The intro of the original is featured for about 30 seconds over the animated tour map.


7. The 10 Commandments of the Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle... Joe lists off a couple of these right before the final show at the end of the movie. The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is a semi-factual documentary about the Sex Pistols which explains how to get rich and famous with pop music with various "commandments". The commandments Joe lists are pretty much accurate, except for the one about the guitar player. Of course the Sex Pistols sacked their guitar player...and The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle ends with a fantasy sequence of Sid Vicious pulling out a gun onstage and firing randomly into the crowd, and then an acknowledgement that Sid died before the movie was finished...