Tags: bands | garage days | punk rock

Those were the days of High School and weekends watching garage punk bands play - get all crazy and wreck the family home

Now, we had to rotate houses because the folks came back and were mad, mad, mad. Yep, after one or two times of coming home to broken windows, broken furniture, and some very angry neighbors.  the folks took away the house key and made us stay at a friends for the next trip. Well, at least ’till we got back into their good graces and were able to do it all again. Luckily, 20 years later, I think I am forgiven… however, they still do not trust me with the key to the house.

So in my state of high school reminiscence (no idea if I spelled that correctly) I started looking through sites for articles about the 1980’s punk rock scene and I found a list of top 5 80’s punk bands (as voted by a bunch of people in some forum). The list goes as so.+

1 Circle Jerks
2 Black Flag
3 Subhumans
4 Dead Kennedys
5 Bad Brains

I also found a list of the top ’80’s punk rock anthems, here are a few below… remember these?

Download Oi Oi Oi - Cockney Rejects

Download Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia

Download Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop

What surprises me is that one of my favorite bands was not listed anywhere on these lists - Social Distortion. Now how do you have a top 50 punk rock list without Social D in in it? Even more so because their old-school music is still played regularly on radio stations nation wide.

Download Social Distortion

wait, check out the pics I found

I never have looked at the Social Distortion site, ’till now that is, but they still tour, have shows coming up and have some great content on their site including music and videos

This is the history of the band from their site socialdistortion.com

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOCIAL DISTORTION

In the late 1970s the first raw, sloppy, speeding guitar chords began to blare from the garages and backrooms of a Southern California suburb called Orange County. They echoed a sound forged in the preceding years in the seminal punk undergrounds of New York City and London.
By 1979, a 17 year old kid named Mike Ness had formed Social Distortion with drummer Casey Royer and brothers Rikk and Frank Agnew. The band’s world centered around Mike’s one-bedroom pad, dubbed “the black hole,” in a nondescript Fullerton, CA apartment complex. After meeting Dennis Danell, a punk loving classmate, Ness insisted Danell, who at the time didn’t play an instrument, join the band on bass. Royer and the Agnew’s soon split from the band and eventually form The Adolescents.

Local Los Angeles KROQ-FM deejay Rodney Bingenheimer embraced Orange County music, playing highlights from its major local bands, including Social Distortion, on his Sunday night radio show. In 1981, Social Distortion released their first single, “Mainliner/Playpen,” on the Posh Boy label. Around the same time, Mike Ness developed a reputation as a brawler resulting in a chunk of his left ear being bitten off during a confrontation at the Cuckoo’s Nest bar.

In 1982, Social Distortion, along with LA’s Youth Brigade and DC’s Minor Threat, are the subjects of the documentary “Another State of Mind,” which captures the band’s first stormy cross-continental tour in a beat up school bus. By late 1983, Social Distortion’s line up consisted of Mike Ness, Danell (now on rhythm guitar), bassist Brent Liles, and drummer Derek O’Brien. Released on the 13th Floor label, their debut album, Mommy’s Little Monster, gained the band a national name in punk circles. Returning home, the line up now included a nasty heroin habit for Ness. The madness that followed resulted in Brent Liles and Derek O’Brien bailing out of the band in the middle of a New Year’s Eve 1983 show.
Ness and Danell soon recruited John Maurer, another old school buddy from Fullerton to play bass and Christopher Reece, of the San Francisco band The Lewd, came in on drums. This lineup weathered Social Distortion’s toughest years, as Ness struggled with heroin addiction and the resulting series of jailings and detoxes, which finally ended in 1985. Ness is able to continue writing and hold the band together to being work on a new album. In 1988, Social Distortion emerge with the release of Prison Bound, an album whose moving title cut about a wasted life is one of the greatest songs ever to come out of Orange County. Ness turned Social Distortion’s albums into an ongoing dialogue about impulsiveness, its consequences and the hard struggle to overcome.

In addition to the early punk of The Ramones and The Clash, the band’s sound was culled equally from Ness’ love of roots music, specifically early country music greats like Hank Williams and the early blues recordings of the South. As Ness would later declare to Social Distortion audiences, “Without good black music, there would be no good white music.”
The self titled Social Distortion album followed in 1990. It is SD’s first release on a major label. The success of singles “Story Of My Life” and “Ball And Chain,” along with their remarkable cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire,” make the album Social Distortion’s first Gold record. The band are asked to join Neil Young on tour, beginning the process of bending punk expectation. They soon return with 1992’s Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell lead by the blistering single “Bad Luck,” the album also goes Gold. A co-headlining tour with The Ramones follows.

The band took an extended hiatus following the release of Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, and did not return to the studio until the fall of 1995. Earlier that year, Time Bomb Recordings re-issued Mommy’s Little Monster, Prison Bound, and released the single compilation Mainliner, Wreckage from the Past. Social D return in 1996 with a new album, White Light White Heat White Trash, and a new drummer, Chuck Biscuits of Black Flag and D.O.A. fame. The album is a success atop radio favorites “I Was Wrong” and “When The Angels Sing.” The band sign up as one of the main draws of the 1997 Warped Tour and then record and release the live album Live At The Roxy in 1998.

A solo record, Cheating At Solitaire, was released by Mike Ness in 1999. The album is an homage to the classic country, blues, rockabilly, and folk that shaped him as a songwriter. Later that same year Ness released Under The Influences, a collection of cover tunes further showcasing his love of American roots music with songs written by legends Hank Williams, Marty Robbins, and Carl Perkins among others.

On February 29, 2000, then 38-year old guitarist Dennis Danell dies suddenly of heart failure. At the time Mike is quoted: “I am saddened beyond any possible form of expression. Dennis and I have been friends since boyhood, starting Social Distortion while we where in high school. My deepest regrets to his family.” In the Fall of 2000, Jonny “2 Bags” Wickersham (guitar) and Charlie Quintana (drums) officially join Social Distortion. 3 years later Social Distortion head into the studio to record a new record - their first full-length studio record in 7 years and the first record without Dennis Danell. A live DVD, Live in The Orange County, is released in 2004. On August 5, 2004, after 20 years of serving as Social Distortion’s bass player John Maurer decides to leave the band for personal reasons after having completed the recording of Sex, Love and Rock’n’ Roll, the new Social Distortion album.

The album is well received nationwide, bolstered by the success of the single “Reach For The Sky.” Brent Harding of Ness’ solo touring band joins Social Distortion as their full time bassist. In 2005, the band go on to sell out a record 6 nights at The Wiltern theater in Los Angeles, that’s in addition to the record 37 shows sold out as part of their regular year end multi-night stands at House Of Blues clubs across the Southwest - an almost annual tradition since 2001

  Here are some more Social D pics

Another really cool thing I found on the Social D site were some of the old flyers - serious old school punk rock flyers, like hand written and xerox copied. Its surprising any still exist! I used to have tons of those in a drawer, wow, makes me sad now because I could have sold that shit on Ebay, haha, just kidding

 enjoy the old school punk rock picks!