Today's Three Signs That The Concept Of "Punk" Has Reached An Awkward Age

These riches could be yours.

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1. The CBGB brand is up for auction.
Not all that surprising a development given the financial woes suffered by the company that used to hold the trademark had. But still a little sad? Especially because of the high odds that Forever 21 or Urban Outfitters wins out?

2. Nouvelle Vague's loungey cover of the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk To Fuck" used in an alcohol-awareness campaign has been yanked from an ad campaign because of concerns that it actually encourages people to binge drink.
"Heineken's aim was to link the idea of 'relaxed consumption' of beer with music that had been 'uncharacteristically slowed down' from the original track." Maybe someone should re-record the track as "Too Drunk To Figure Out A Coherent Advertising Campaign"? Jeez.

3. The first four Ramones are being re-released on fancy-schmancy 180-gram vinyl, so they can be properly appreciated by audiophiles/collectors.
I thought the pairing of high-end listening and the Ramones' particular brand of scruffiness seemed a little off—yes, even in the era of John Varvatos' record-and-clothing shop being in the old CBGB space—so I asked musically knowledgable friends for their reactions. Peanut-gallery reactions to this ranged from J. Edward Keyes' "haha indeed" to Eric Harvey's "I bet there are some Tommy production tricks in there that people will dig" to Joe Gross' "Oddly, the first one is hard to find—I have all the rest of the The First Four. So I welcome our new 180-gram overlords." Ah, marketing!