I don't find myself plopping down in front of the TV much lately; my schedule is nuts -- rife with freelance, impending travel dates, band stuff, trade shows, you name it. But yesterday, thanks to the magic of TiVo, I did get the time to sack out and finally watch Punk: Attitude. It was fucking incredible.
Not to say that it was perfect -- two hours is hardly enough to truly chronicle punk. The proto-punk years were covered fairly well, as was the 70s explosion in the US and UK, but the 80s were really skimped and the 90s and 00s completely ignored. I would have liked to see better coverage of New York and DC Hardcore (though they did interview Ray Cappo, briefly, and used quite a bit of interview footage from the Biohazard guy, which puzzled me), I would have liked to have seen more coverage of the Riot Grrrl movement and nods to the Chicago and Minneapolis scenes. But hey. I'll take what I can get.
And in the midst of all this craziness lately -- August is turning out to be one of the busiest months of my life -- I finished the documentary with a real charge in me. It was so incredibly invigorating to hear all these people, whom I hold in such high respect, talking about their motivations to do what they did, and they were all the same: don't wait for someone else to do it. Do it yourself.
Onward.