Of course, Don Letts makes no mention of Bob Mould. I guess when you are in husker du and regarded as one of the fathers of american punk, this filmaker does not care.

Perhaps because Bob did clean up his life and never sold out. After all, Bob did refuse Lallapolloza AND producing Nevermind (the multi platinum album from Nirvana).

Oh well. Punk begins with Nirvana I guess.

Don Letts ended up spending about 15 minutes for the Q&A, but at one point said he was really tired of talking about the film because spending too much time talking about it felt contrary to the spirit of punk, that idea of responding and acting spontaneously from your heart, without too much excess thought and meditation.

The original cut of the film was more than 3 hours. What’s left was largely dictated by what his financial planners could afford (or had budgeted) to pay for the licensing. As he said, “you buy, you play.” He started off the Q&A by saying he didn’t want to talk about the bands he’d left out, though later on he did concede that it was rights fees that kept very much of the West Coast scene from being included: “You lot on the West Coast always get fucked.”

Letts has two children, aged 12 and 18, and that was his driving force in making the film: he wanted to communicate more of the sense of the attitude behind the music, not a MTV or VH1 “history of,” for the younger generation that is only familiar with the record covers and t-shirts.

He wanted to draw more parallels to the punk attitude inherent in the work of artists, writers, filmmakers, etc., throughout recent history (“Lenny Bruce was a punk”), but in the end wound up with something more akin to a straightforward music doc. More’s the pity, because I think the film he really wanted to make would have been something far-reaching and eye-opening.

Of course, you could carp all night about what’s left out, but I thought he did a fantastic job of telescoping so many bands and personalities into 90 minutes. Beyond the entertainment (and memory factor for those of us who lived those years), I think Letts succeeded in making something valuable.

I’m sure there were other living legends present, but the only one I recognized was John Lydon (!!!). Yup, the former Mr. Rotten looked amazingly fit and fantasic, and during the after-party reception (open to all ticket holders) he posed with pictures and signed autographs (and, after I told him “You changed me” said “Hurry! Change back!”). Letts constantly deflected attention to Lydon and called the Pistols his “inspiration” for getting involved with punk in the first place.

Isn’t most of the MC5 stuff in the current documentary? Most of it seemed tres familiar to me. And some of it I felt I had seen before, not available for purchase, but private collectors, rock n roll conventions, etc.

Thanks.

The Pretenders performance of ‘Stop Your Sobbing’ is also pretty rare and is taken from a German documentary licensed through Bue Film GMBH.

This is actually not the case – unless of course you are fortunate enough to have a route into the ever burgeoning bootleg DVD market. This is now rife in America given that all of the FBI’s records relating to the bootleg traders were stored in the basement of the World Trade Centre! The FBI have now (unoffically) given up pursuing purveyors of “unoffical” archive (allegedly).

Items which have never been offically released before are:

Magazine performing ‘Shot By Both Sides’;

Footage of the Damned’s first album being manufactured;

The Sex Pistols watching themselves on the Bill Grundy show;

Bad Brains filmed in New York on Super 8;

James White & The Blacks in concert;

P.I.L. – super8 footage;

Rarely seen black and white Iggy Pop footage;

Much of the MC5 super8 footage (such as the bands hitting one another with guitars!);

The Dictators footage seemed to suprise Dick Manitoba as it has not been seen in this quality in many years!;

Don’s Clash footage certainly featured a couple of shots that had not been seen in any other documentary; and finally

The Screamers shots are outtakes which have not been widely seen

I hope this answers your questions and inspires you buy the DVD which is out in September!!

I agree with many of your comments. I really liked the film, and the Sylvain/Arthur interview you mentioned was absolutely my favorite part! (And IMHO David Jo is justified in dissing Malcolm.) I also agree on your assessment of Rollins, I’m not a Black Flag fan but he nailed a LOT of it right on the head.

I just LOVE the interview (damn I can’t remember who it was with) where the guy said he went to see the Ramones at CBGB and he thought it sucked SO BAD that it pissed him off so much he couldn’t think of anything else but the Ramones for 24 hours…then he went back the next night. Classic!

Of course the omissions kind of suck, I wish they would have spent more than 30 seconds on Television, but as Letts said after the screening, it’s a 90-minute film and you can only put in so much (he was more open to questions tonight, he tried to walk off but once people started asking he waited until there were no questions left). He needs to get hooked up with a PBS deal like Ken Burns (lol), then he could do an 8-hour series!

I have to say I’m SO GLAD to read what you wrote about Nirvana! Yeah, they were ‘good’, but they’re SO overrated! If I see or hear one more thing proclaiming Kurt Cobain or Nirvana as the freaking second coming I’m gonna puke. At the point where, I think Jarmusch says something like, “Nirvana took all of the knowledge gained from the punk era…” my brain inserted, “except not to shoot smack”!

As a final note (hope you don’t mind such a long comment) you mentioned that Danny Fields was there — I’m jealous, he’s so cool! I met him for a half a second after the Stooges show at Roseland in 2003, and while trying to establish a common tie (a friend of a friend is friends with him) he misunderstood what I said and thought someone he knew died! Well, *I* could have died, doh!