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From The Firm Records, here is Brasil Oi Volume 1. Holy cow, this thing is boiling over with meat and potatoes, and Brazil nuts! My favorite is track 2, “Stinkin Hippie Scum”. It wouldn’t be an Oi record without some hippie-bashing would it? Oh man, there’s just something so likable about this. I think Portuguese is the perfect language for singing as if your mouth is full of bangers and mash.
FROM: NICO PERDIDO (MENTES PERDIDAS PUNK ROCK)
Hi bro! First of all, thank you very much for looking at us to publish our material on your blog, it goes pretty cool! Second, “punk rock” is not part of the name of the band, but applies to what we do, here in Argentina is generally used a lot of “punk rock” or simply “punk” to give another intonation to the name haha. On the other hand, our genre is a style called “Espinosa Punk Rock” that comes from Ricky Espinosa, founder and singer of the legendary punk band FLEMA. One of the first punk bands in the country, and well, left a new way of punk, which we more or less follow, but with a touch of ours. Maybe that’s why it sounds a little pop punk, like you said. I invite you to know more bands of our country that there are of all kinds and different style within the punk culture, thank you very much compadre! Regards!
Hey Nico, thanks for the feedback man. Very cool to learn a bit about how the punks do punk stuff in Argentina. I hope someday I can go down there and see some shows. I bet it’s a lot of fun. Keep it easy,
SD
If you were a punk and a Canadian in the 1990’s you were aware of a pubescent band from Vancouver called d.b.s. (always lowercase). There was a great deal of speculation about what d.b.s actually stood for. One of their earliest demo tapes says ‘Dirty Black Summer’ on it, so I’m gonna go with that. I seem to remember the liner notes of their first LP asking people to write to them with ideas of what it might stand for.
None of this is important.
What matters is they were fiercely energetic and a talented band. I used to go to their shows in the gymnasium of a preschool in North Van. Their home audience was not always friendly towards them. Especially after they appeared on MuchMusic, in studio, with Sook Yin Lee (couldn’t find the d.b.s one). They even had a music video in circulation, and they toured with Rancid. Their history as a band took them from adolescent pop punk, to screamy emo through the span of their career from the early 90’s to the early 2000’s.
Someone has been kind enough to create a bandcamp page featuring all of their releases, including some live performances and an appearance on Vancouver CoOp radio station, CiTR. The video below is a skateboarding feature on a Canadian show called Power 30. It has footage of the band skateboarding, and from their performance on CiTR with Nardwaur. If you were a teenager around this time (1994?) this video will be a nostalgia-overload for you. Especially if you had a skateboard or purple hair before everyone and their mom had skateboards and purple hair. Literally, their moms. There are probably more moms with purple hair now than there were punks with purple hair in 1994.
Mentes Perdidas means ‘Lost Minds’, the jury is still out on what Punk Rock means. It’s weird that they have ‘punk rock’ in the name of the band. I’ve never seen that before. Where I come from it’s totally un-punk to use the words ‘punk rock’ in your lyrics, but I don’t know what the rule is for band names. There are so many rules to this unruly subculture, it’s hard to keep track. Ummm, oh yeah.. This is really good, nice and speedy, weasely, pop punk from Argentina. Remember the ‘G’ has an ‘H’ sound, so it’s like Ar-hen-tina. Way more fun to say it like that.
Local Programming – Seymour Glass
Track 2 is kind of lousy, but all of the other songs are goddamn incredible. I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what this reminds me of. I think it’s just cuz he sings like a guy from a band a few years back called Forming. I’m almost convinced it’s the same guy. It could be. Ok I’m just going to officially proclaim that it is most definitely the same guy. They’re the same person. Please don’t fact-check this.
Needles//Pins – Goodnight Tomorrow [Buy it on Amazon!]
Scrappy punk outfit from my home town, so you know I gotta champion this. I’m hearing some good old fashion ramonesy-punk here and also I wanna say some Newfie/Irish folk roots of some sort. I don’t know if that was intentional but it’s working for me. I will be in attendance at the next show. 
Listen on Bandcamp or Spotify
The Strays – Soundcast Session
Awww yeah this is smoo-ooth baby. Beautiful live studio sessions from this soulful rock outfit from LA. This is like close-your-eyes-and-bob-your-head-back-and-forth-with-a-slight-pout-on-your-lips music. Hopefully while your special someone is rubbing against you on a hot summer night in New Orleans. What the hell am I even talking about? I mean in general, all of the time, not just right now. Listen on Bandcamp
Dead Selves – Western Body
These are nice dramatic folk-punk tunes from Atlanta. I love it when really cool bands come from the south that aren’t so stereotypically southern. Album cover is reminiscent of Frame & Canvas by Braid. The music is not. By now you should be able to tell, exactly what this sounds like. In case there was any confusion, It’s awesome. Listen on Bandcamp
Yulia – Big Boys Fall Hard
I used to work with a woman named Yulia. She was from Belarus. Nice lady. Track 4, Amos, might be my favorite song for June. It’s so phat and phunky. On the cover there’s a guy with his face blurred out drinking what appears to be a bottle of Fireball. You can interpret that however you want. Oh yeah, the music.. It’s phat and phunky guys! Listen on Bandcamp
The Doesn't Suck 