A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

From the day Kurt Kobain died in 1994 until I went to college in 1999 I listened to almost exclusively punk rock music. I have a pretty amazing 7″ record collection from that time period. I had a record label and ran a zine and supported my local scene DIY till you die, etc. I went to probably 2-3 shows a week during that entire period. Punk rock was my life. I mostly focused on local DC area bands, but I had my national favorites too. A lot of these bands rarely toured and with not much internet at the time the only way I heard these bands was buying comp CDs, getting mix tapes from my friends or reading the reviews in MRR or Flipside. I used to do so much mail order, ordering music from all over the country. I used to write back and forth with these bands. I thought it was amazing that my favorite bands would hand write me letters with shit I ordered. It instilled this weird mentality in me that makes me very unimpressed with musicians that I meet. For example, if I met an actor in a movie, I might get really excited, but meeting famous musicians has never been exciting to me (except when I hung out with Weird Al). Anyway, my three favorite punk bands in the mid-1990’s were all local bands who I hung out with daily and who I put out records by, and have no video footage to show you, so I am going to skip them and just talk about my three favorite national acts. Keep reading to find out who they are.

1. The Dwarves
I almost didn’t think to put the Dwarves on this list. Probably because I got even more into them later in their carreer and wasn’t as obsessed with them during my punk rock glory days. They do happen to be my second favorite punk band of all time (Chavo fronted Black Flag being #1). They also are one of the only bands I really love that is still making music. My facebook page currently lists my interests as “Young girls and free cocaine” which happens to be a Dwarves song. In the mid-90’s I had a bunch of Dwarves 7″ that were released by Reptilian Records out of Baltimore who in my mind were a local label. They also had naked tattooed girls on their covers which along with Probe magazine was the only alt-porn I could find at the time. But I didn’t really get into their full lengths until the late 90’s. I had a lot of trouble trying to see the Dwarves. I tried to see them and the Qunicy Punx (see #2) in Lancaster, PA, but I didn’t end up making the trip and then I tried to see them again with the Dropkick Murphys. It was part of some Epitaph records tour and DKM were so big at the time the show was sold out even at the 1000+ capacity venue the 930 Club. Seeing all these pop punk kids with Hello Kitty backpacks get in and not me pissed me off to no end and I have hated DKM since that day. I finally saw them a few years ago in Baltimore on Halloween. Anyway, point being is I love the fucking Dwarves. Every record is amazing from their weird psychedelic early stuff, to their brutal punk stuff, to their pop-rap weirdness of today. Fuck you up and get high.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDN5K3xJwtk&feature=related[/youtube]

2. Quincy Punx
The Quincy Punx are probably one of my top 10 favorite bands of all time. Their “Me” 7″ is most assuredly the record I have listened to the most in my life. I am sort of surprised that the grooves still play. They just sang about being punk and drunk and fucking shit up. Their LP “Nutso Smasho” came with a comic book of them violently reenacting the lyrics to their songs. I think I own every thing they ever recorded. The worst part was I never got to see them. In all the years I was a fan of them they only played in DC one time and I couldn’t make the show for some reason. It was with the Blanks 77’s who were also one of my favorite bands at the time. Missing that show is one of my biggest regrets as a human. There is not much video of the Qunicy Punx on Youtube, but I would kill to see more. If anyone has any video of these guys, let me know, I would kill to see it. And if you just have it on VHS and want to send me a copy I would pay to digitize it and put it online. PS. I just put in “Me” and all the groves are fucked. It skipped probably 5 times just on side one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGKD3VRD6xA[/youtube]

3. The Pist
The first two bands I listened to mostly sing about booze, drugs and fucking. Since I was straight edge at the time, and didn’t have sex until 1998, I could not really relate to the lyrics. The Pist on the other hand were very political and sang songs about destroying society and killing hunters and shit. I couldn’t really relate to them either, but man I fucking loved them. I did relate to the anger of all these bands if not specifically the lyrics. I made my own Pist T-Shirt and probably had every bit of music they ever put out. Once again I had trouble seeing them. They broke up before I had a chance, but I went to see a few members play in another band called East Coast Panic. The bands van broke down on the way to the show and then I think they broke up. Oh well. The Pist have a pretty exhaustive website you might want to check out. There are a bunch of mp3s on there that I just downloaded. Here is some footage they did at a reunion show in 2002.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj1KjhHTw04[/youtube]

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