Doc Shoe's Music Blog

Pure Hell was an all-black Punk band in Philidelphia back in the ’70s.  There had long been rumors they’d recorded an LP, but that record never came out—at least, not until the master tapes were found in a closet 28 years later.  Ladies and gentlemen, here’s a choice track, “Hard Action,” from a long-overdue slab of vinyl called Noise Addiction.

Doc’s On A Tangent Again: Blues historians will often complain about the frustration of hunting for battered 78s and trying to establish the vital statistics of artists who left us very little in terms of official records.  When was John Lee Hooker born, what was Sonny Boy Williamson’s real name?  This is what happens when you try to write the history of something that grew monumental only in retrospect.  And the history of Punk is almost as obscure.  In hindsight, the Smithsonian should have made field recordings at places like Mabuhay Gardens.