It does have a Spinal Tap feel with the close ups and lip synching.

It would be kind of funny for someone to do a mockumentary on the documentary.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

My punk rock experience in Chicago was limited to the 90s mostly with the Alley in Wrigleyville and punk shows at the Fireside Bowl and the Metro. There are some venues that have punk bands such as Schuba's, the Vic, the Empty Bottle, the House of Blues and other hipster places still around. Fireside Bowl is now actually a remodeled bowling alley that was in the movie "The Breakup." I know there was a place called "The Thirsty Whale," but that may have been before my time as well.

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To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Favorite band from the fireside era?

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

Smoking Popes.

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To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Joe King Carasco at the Cubbie bear, 1988? Snuck in after Cubs game, stayed all night

Early 90's, best band to see in Chicago was "SOMETHING FOR JOEY" Yes, it was a cover band, they put on a GREAT show! That was classic line up the shots! Could never do that again nowadays! Every guy in the band could play every instrument and had great crowd involvement. "Love will keep us together" sped up to a punk rock pace and the lead singer just basically mimes the words.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

I remember the Thirsty Whale as a mostly heavy metal outpost. I used to work nearby & I recall passing a sign in the late 80's advertising Molly Hatchet performing there. The Whale was nose-diving fast by then and the repeated flooding of the Des Plaines River sealed its demise.

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“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Both of these posts are spot on. Vic Bondi works for Microsoft, for God's sake. How do you rail against corporate America while receiving stock options? He's become a cartoon character like the girlfriend in Ike Reilly's great "Commie Drives a Nova".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvoOLR9v7Ls

But Articles of Faith was always an overtly political band. For all my leftist leanings, save for a tortured attempt at Reagan-bashing which was de rigueur for hardcore bands of the era, I tried to stick to things I knew and really cared about: girls who wouldn't give me the time of day, beer, cars that didn't work too well, beer, drugs, and beer.

It isn't that the band isn't as good technically on that new cut. They're probably better. It's that they don't have anything to say. The passion isn't there. "We had our cake and ate it too. Now they're back with a vengeance"?

Years ago, Vic did a solo record called The Ghost Dances. It built on his work in Articles of Faith while being completely different musically. It actually showed some maturation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WblcFQuGm4
But now he's resorted to this craven grab at I don't know what. What I do know is it's dreadful.

Dorian, the guy in the Riot Fest Sucks shirt (Which I believe might be tongue in cheek, but who knows? Some of these hipsters are so ironic, they're not even ironic anymore.), is an accomplished guitarist and singer/songwriter who is still doing his thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x81dhd-bvTw
He should be embarrassed to be associated with this nostalgic trip down memory lane.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Were any of the bands in the documentary better than Screeching Weasel?

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To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Hell no.

Hey JORR, have any good ben weasel stories from back in the day? Even tho I'm a fan I don't have any delusions about his whole deal, and even tho I haven't crossed Bill Drummond's 33 1/3 year old threshhold yet, I already have felt creepy weird and old standing in the pit at reggie's rock club watching kids sing along to Hey Suburbia while a Jughead-free-outfit called itself "Screeching Weasel" --- c'est la vie.

I do wanna see this documentary tho, so what's the DOC channel? Is this sort of thing on demand with comcast?

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Well, sini, I'd disagree with you in that I think just about every band in the movie was better than Screeching Weasel. Jughead is a talented guy, I'll give you that. But Screeching Weasel came a little later later than the bands in the film and they had their own suburban scene, i.e. Durty Nellie's, MacGregor's. To me they always just came off as a Ramones tribute band. Nothing wrong with that, of course. You could pick a lot of worse bands to emulate.

Ben Weasel wrote the scene report for Maximum RocknRoll. He covered his suburban scene while largely ignoring what was happening in the city. He called me and my band "Nazis" in one scene report. I wish I still had a copy; I would post it. He didn't know shit about us. Near the end of my band we played a gig out at Durty Nellie's and he was there. I confronted him about that and he backed off.

I think he was angry because of one particular incident. We were almost like the house band at this DIY venue called Hellhouse at 666 N. Milwaukee Avenue. Here is a photo my girlfriend shot in front of it:


L-R, Junk (now deceased), Chicago cop, Richie Herrera (now deceased), Pat Kelly

One Saturday, one of the bands from the Weasel scene was on a bill with us at Hellhouse. I think they may have been called the Subverts, although there was another more famous Subverts. Anyway, the main guy from this band had played in or with Screeching Weasel and was good friends with Ben. This band was pretty good. But at the time, we were at the absolute height of our powers and a few Goons stood in back and began chanting "HAZARDOUS YOUTH! HAZARDOUS YOUTH!" during their set. My friend Gus who was playing drums with Life Sentence at the time and who would later play with us, pulled a chunk of drywall off and threw it at the stage. Suddenly, all kinds of shit was flying at this band. The stage there had a gate in front of it that was normally used to lock stuff up like old motorcycles, etc. The frontman was cool as cucumber and he just shut the gate in front of him and shit started bouncing off it. Then he said, "One more and Hazardous Youth will be up here." People cheered and they played the song. But in true punk rock style the guy then said, "Oh, you want to hear one more?" and they cranked into another one. They must have played four or five more songs before they left the stage.

Anyway, I think word got back to Prospect Heights or wherever the fuck Ben Foster is from and I think he blamed us and decided to call us Nazis in his scene report. We did attract our fair share of skinheads and sometimes some of us dressed the part, but I don't think Ben Weasel knew much about American skinhead culture, Anti-Racist Action, or the fact that Nazi skins were not tolerated on the North side punk scene.

Finally, everybody got to see the real Ben Weasel when he attacked that girl in Texas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOXuvbT0eUo
I knew he was a douche back in 1987.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

in the original draft of my post i had noted that i'd bet that all of the bands in the movies could play their instruments better than weasel, cuz yeah they're obviously what they are. you have to keep in mind that being born in 1980 and thus doing high school from 94-98, weasel had some of that legendary thing going on cuz you couldn't go see them live like every other pop/punk/ska band of the epoch. naturally, there was always someone whose cousin had a hoverboard who was going off to see nirvana/weasel/NOFX when they were 11-12... with their 9-10 year old brother of course.

but yeah, to prevent the tl;dr thing, my age and suburbanness combine to form the perfect set of circumstances to help the whole weasel thing. the SXSW incident you reference was prolly a work, to hearken terms used in the wrestling forums. he's in the fan service business, as nowadays he lives off of royalties and selling records/playing shows for people who are already in the cult of weasel. i heard the $100 VIP packages for his new years eve gigs @ reggie's sold out, even tho ~19 year old fans of the chinese telephones swear him off cuz he dared to hit a woman (gasp)

i reckon if i had been born ~15-20 years earlier, or whatever our age difference is, and had been around when you did i'd feel awfully similar. the only thing i'll contend tho is that only hearing the stuff you've linked in thread (and related videos on youtube and the such) is that ben's lyrics hold up with the old guard, granted he was kind of doing the pop-punk thing back when stacy's mom had a nickname related to her blowjob prowess.

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oh, and my favorite piece of ben weasel's writing is his stream of consciousness account of meeting nirvana at the aragon back in ~92 or whatever. the maximumrocknroll stuff would prolly be called "trolling" today, cuz like, establishing a rigid punk rock dress code is very punk rock, you know?

but yeah by all accounts the guy seems to have that miserable asshole thing down pat. ask his band who went from opening for green day on their first dookie tour to like, not playing a show again for ~6-7 years. whatever happened to green day? idk. but people do always tell me good things about the methadones, can't deny that.

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I don't think the thing with the chick in Texas was a work, although Ben obviously enjoys playing the heel role. I just don't see what good could have come out of it for him. I don't give a shit that he smacked a bitch that was throwing shit at him, but that's a big deal to people today. Then again, getting hit by ice wasn't something to cry about back in the 80s. I expected to have shit thrown at me every time I got on a stage.

I don't mind any of the bands on that scene, Sludgeworth, the Methadones, the Riverdales etc. They were all okay. I like the Queers too. There was a great Goon guitarist named Dave McClean who made his way over to that scene. I haven't had many experiences with Ben Weasel but when I have, he's been an asshole. And I take the beefs with all his band members as confirmation of what I think of him.

Jim Derogatis really pushed the hell out of Screeching Weasel and I think they have far more reputation than they deserve. They certainly weren't groundbreaking. They're okay.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

When I read this I'm reminded of a quote a friend of mine with 90s suburban-quasi-punker had regarding fall-out boy when they had that dance dance song everywhere: "i wish i was into this band years ago before they got big" --- I think that's the draw of Screeching/Ben Weasel.

i think that weasel has that "coulda woulda shoulda" vibe about it, and thus since they never formally "made it" there's something to be said about reveling in the past. that and ben weasel had a run of lyrics from boogada(x3) to anthem that are up there, IMHO. the dude can write a song, i mean, there's a reason the asshole can still get kids to sell out reggie's in pretty short form. that's where the work thing would come in, as weasel's now on fat wreck chords and the year before weasel's thing @ sxsw was fat mike trying to generate controversy by handing out tequila shots during his set and then declaring that he pissed in the liquor, having some people freak out and run off to flush out their system..... and he'd only claim it was bullshit a few weeks later in an interview.

cuz i'll be damned if that whole thing wasn't a perfect storm of ben spending the day on his twitter stump bashing the concept of SXSW and rah rah rah then the incident happens, no charges, all of a sudden ben's getting a ton of press everyone's having their referendum on screeching weasel, then a few months later he's got a themed EP called carnival of schadenfreude out there and since weaselfest(TM) had to be canceled his next shows were sellouts as people "showed their support" for him in his ~10th "comeback" and etc.

but yeah, the dude's a prick. ask the people who tried doing a documentary on weasel. they got a bunch of shit together but then after starting off in favor of it, when attempting to tell the true story of weasel.... welp, just like no empathy, ben weasel don't like it.

anyways, where can i find this documentary? i'd be interested in seeing it.

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That's a great song by No Empathy and I was never a huge fan of them either. I had words with Marc Ruvolo over some nonsense, but he's really a good guy. They added Chuck Uchida from the Defoliants who was a monster guitar player and I'm guessing he's doing most of the work on that track. But that stuff came later and I was already pretty much gone from that scene.

I guess the way I see it is that a song like that one by No Empathy is great, but it isn't important in the way the stuff Silver Abuse and Strike Under was doing in the late 70s/early 80s is important. But I'm aware I may just be an old guy reminiscing and remembering wrong. I'm just telling you how it seemed to me. Bands like Screeching Weasel, No Empathy and, yeah, my own best band, Hazardous Youth, were a step behind. When we hit a peak it didn't matter as much anymore. When I was in high school and played in the Maggots, we could barely play, but that was a great band. There was an energy and an idealism that I didn't have later when we could really play.

I think Dolphin said he saw You Weren't There on DOC, which I assume is a premium documentary channel that my girlfriend doesn't pay for.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I don't think it's premium. It's in the mid 200 channels on whatever system I have. I'm kind of like an athlete who ends up broke. I put the check into the checking account and have no idea what happens to it afterwards until the account reaches a red flag level and I go nuts.

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.