When Punk Was Meant to Hurt You: Penelope Spheeris’ ‘The Decline of Western Civilization’

By K.E. Roberts

Early in Penelope Spheeris’ 1981 documentary on the Los Angeles punk scene, she asks Eugene, a 14-year-old skinhead who talks like a Valley kid, what he likes about punk. “It’s like, it’s not bullshit,” he responds. “There’s no rock stars now, you know?” It’s to the director’s credit that the next hour and a half, elapsing with the speed and eloquence of an autobahn car crash, both proves and refutes that answer…

“By the Time I’m a Parent”: The Poignant Prophecy of Boards of Canada’s “Energy Warning”

By Michael Grasso

Our bailiwick here at We Are The Mutants is the often weird pop culture of the Cold War period. From our perspective, “Energy Warning,” the eleventh track on Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada’s landmark 2002 LP Geogaddi, is an artifact of a future time. But Boards of Canada’s own artistic and indeed ontological territory is the lost, forgotten, and abandoned…