Blitzkrieg Bop (1977)

Synopsis: BLITZKRIEG BOP, focusing its collection of concert footage and revealing interviews on three prominent bands of the enormously influential mid-1970s New York punk scene, provides a gritty,... BLITZKRIEG BOP, focusing its collection of concert footage and revealing interviews on three prominent bands of the enormously influential mid-1970s New York punk scene, provides a gritty, blistering portrait of ground zero in a music explosion that sent shock waves into the 21st century. The three bands featured provide a contrast in style almost as telling as the diverging paths they would take after the film's 1977 release. The Dead Boys, originally from Cleveland, crash and burn through songs such as "Sonic Reducer" with a self-destructive frenzy copped in large part from protopunk band Iggy and the Stooges but taken to unimagined extremes both onstage and off (where violence-riddled heroin addiction eventually destroyed the band). Blondie, shown here playing "In the Flesh" and "Rifle Range," imbue their songs with a flickering, edgy, and strangely glamorous light, a quality (aided by the drop-dead beauty of their lead singer, Debbie Harry) that would catapult them to worldwide (albeit fleeting) fame and riches by the late 1970s. The Ramones, shown unleashing brief three-chord detonations such as "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker," "Rockaway Beach," "Cretin Hop," and the title song, seem in these vintage clips like an irreducible atomic element of rock & roll. Lead singer Joey Ramone epitomizes a certain urgency as he grips the mike stand as if it is keeping him from plummeting into an abyss, and the band behind him plays as if there is no tomorrow. But the Ramones managed to continue as a strong concert draw well into the 1990s, when the music revolution they helped start was blossoming anew into staggering success for punk-influenced bands such as Nirvana and Green Day. [More]

Starring: Ramones, Blondie, Dead Boys

Starring: Ramones, Blondie, Dead Boys