pussy galore

In the 1990s, a pro-choice benefit album Choice: The Freedom Remix was set to feature an all-star cast. Years later, the album still hasn’t been fully released, but is as relevant as ever.

Welcome to Alternative Press’ selection of the 1980s’ 11 best punk drummers. One key factor happened that changed it, and the character of its musicianship: hardcore. ‘70s punk posited that Anyone Could Do It. While this was true on paper, some degree of basic musicianship was required to make truly great punk rock. This was […]

The Rolling Stones invented the very notion of the modern rock ‘n’ roll band. Which means, in turn, their impact on punk rock and alternative music was total. This is the point where there’ll be a loud and noisy exit from our tale. “Aw, c’mon maaaan! No way! The Stones have had it!” True. They […]

Kid Congo Powers has been one of punk rock’s most valuable players since 1979. That was the moment when boho poet/Slash journalist/Blondie fan club president Jeffrey Lee Pierce handed an open-tuned electric guitar to the Ramones fan club president, who’d previously been one of the suburban teenage habitues of influential local DJ Rodney Bingenheimer’s storefront […]

When it initially blasted into the world from New York’s Lower East Side almost concurrently with punk in 1977, it was dubbed no wave. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau referred to it as “skronk,” an onomatopoeia based around the general guitar sound. He uncharitably dubbed its ’80s practitioners “pigfucker” bands. This writer’s personal name for […]

Alternative rock still dominated popular music in 1993. This obviously begged the question of just how “alternative” something was if it was now on a major label and on the radio. Not necessarily a bad thing. After all, we’d never have to hear Whitesnake again. Bottom end and distortion returned to rock record-making in a […]

What a year 1987 was! Ronald Reagan was all all up in the Iran-Contra affair, but his Teflon psyche made sure none of the backlash stuck to him. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher brought uptight conservative rule to the U.K. for a third term. Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) came to notoriety as a domestic […]

Welcome to the best punk albums of 1987. But first, some context. Feb. 20, 1987: An attack by a domestic terrorist called “the Unabomber” plants a bomb in a Salt Lake City computer store. The owner is injured. March 4: President Ronald Reagan owns up to what was swiftly called the Iran-Contra Affair in a […]