“Let Them Know: Story of Youth Brigade & BYO Records” DVD
BYO Records

“Let Them Know” is documentary covering the punk trio Youth Brigade and the legendary DIY record label/movement, The Better Youth Organization. You name a band in the early ’80s West Coast punk scene and they’ll probably cite Youth Brigade as an inspiration. Both the band and the label were the brain child of three brothers that had a love for punk rock and a true do it yourself ethos. The shredded in the studio and pumped out classic records that still hold strong today.

The film includes interviews from all the major punk players, including Fat Mike, Ian McKaye, and Kevin Seconds. It also really helps paint a picture of what the punk movement in California looked like after punk started dying out and just before New Wave became a buzz word.

The camera work is top notch, the editing is flawless, and the interviews are engaging, but the film can’t get out of the shadow of the “Another State of Mind”—The original punk tour documentary that spawned a million Social D and Youth Brigade clones—which is covered quite a bit in the new film. “Let Them Know” was directed by Jeff Alulis, the same guy that made “Do You Remember? 15 Years of the Bouncing Souls”—quite possibly one of the best punk docs of the past two decades.

The story of the Stern Brothers, Youth Brigade, and BYO Records doesn’t resonate the same way as The Bouncing Souls documentary did, but that could be because Youth Brigade never had the same internal drama that the Souls had or the same level of popularity on the East Coast that Social Distortion had. Sorry if I’m stepping on toes here, but “Let Them Know” is more of a feel good story that inspires, rather than a riveting documentary. The biggest problems Youth Brigade had was its stylistic shift in the mid-’80s and internal strife within another Stern-brother band, The Royal Crown Revue.

In the end, “Let Them Know” is a perfectly good movie that will hopefully bring more attention to BYO and Youth Brigade. What this world needs is more people like the Stern brothers willing to take nothing and make something great. Now let me get off my soapbox and go staple some fanzines.

So I couldn’t beat temptation and watched the first half hour of Wolverine: Origins the other night, and I’m happy to report that what I saw was pretty awesome.

For those living under a rock, the fourth X-Men installment was leaked on the Internet mid-last week irking Fox Films in a major way. In fact, the Fox Network is so upset that it is supposedly firing its movie reviewer for writing about the film on the Fox News blog. So much for journalistic integrity. The funny part, is that he loved the film.

That kills my original theory, which was that Fox leaked the movie itself to stir up some buzz for Wolverine. The franchise was decimated after Brett Ratner royally screwed up the Phoenix Saga plot line in the third movie. That movies should have been a gimme given author Chris Claremont’s phenomenal source material, but no. It sucked. With Wolverine: Origins, the focus is primarily on Wolverine and covers most of the Weapon X Project story line.

The 30 minutes I saw included a few minutes of the original Origins story, documenting Wolverine’s youth, and then goes into a historic montage a la the opening sequence of Watchmen. I got to see a pretty good action scene involving everyone’s favorite Merc-With-A-Mouth Deadpool, and Logan’s departure from his mercenary troupe (including the Blob, Sabertooth, and some other well-known acquaintances). Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a shame that some of the best movies (particularly documentaries) never get released to the mass audience. Case in point: Joy Division. This penetrating look at one of the best bands to ever come out of Manchester hammers home the fact that this quartet became legends in only two years time and only a few hundred people can say they’ve seen them live.

The film gathers the surviving members of Joy Division for conversational one-on-one interviews that delve into the birth and rise of the group. They chat earnestly about singer Ian Curtis’s epilepsy and how they chose to not talk about it rather than help him. Even more moving is how the band admits that they never really paid attention to Curtis’s lyrics and didn’t realize how dark they were until he hung himself. Read the rest of this entry »