The Hardcore Show #5

I am having a hard time writing about today’s show because I haven't followed the rules I set down at the outset. There is no punk rock in todays show, and definitely no hardcore. But I still believe that its spirit is here.

Over the years I have come to realize that I look at the world is through the lens of punk rock. To many people that may seem strange. To them, punk rock was only an anomaly of pop culture, a gang of mowhawked or skinheaded young people who may have flourished in the late 70s and early 80s, but had no real impact on American culture.

I’d beg to differ. Punk wasn't just a temporal movement. Punk represented an impulse that is inherent in human nature, one of rebellion, of resistance, of a sense of estrangement with the world into which you were born. The way I look at it, the early American revolutionaries were punks, reactionaries who resisted the status quo, seekers of true freedom.

That said, I think a lot of the music in today's show embodies that impulse. I'm not sure how this is true, it's just instinct, a feeling I get from the tunes that I don't get from others.

This is even more true because it took me longer than I expected to cobble these songs together. I had orginally selected a different set of songs, but when I juxtaposed them, they didn't communicate what I thought they should, so I re-evaluated and came up with these.

I have no idea if they'll speak to you in the way the speak to me...but I hope they do.

Click to listen.

Cab Calloway – Utt-da-zay
Louis Prima – Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody
Leon Redbone – You’re a Heartbreaker
Klezmatics – Undoing World
Warren Zevon – Carmelita
Tiger Lillies – Russians
Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah
Eleni Mandell – Tristeza
Chuck E. Weiss – Marcy
The Ziggens – The Waitress Song