5 Punkxploitation Records with John Reis

In early 2023, San Diego punk icon John Reis met with longtime collaborator Rick Froberg to begin sketching out new song ideas for their ongoing Hot Snakes project. “We were all very excited about the initial recordings, and the songs set the bar high,” Reis recalls from those 2023 Hot Snakes writing sessions. “As I continued writing, I started to notice some songs would likely have an eventual home on a different record of some kind. This music branched off and I figured I’d revisit it sometime in the years to come with 2024 being an exciting year for Hot Snakes.”

Before that could happen, Froberg died suddenly of an undiagnosed heart condition, bringing an abrupt end to Reis and Froberg’s ongoing songwriting partnership, which began in 1986 with Pitchfork, and continued with Drive Like Jehu in the ‘90s, followed by Hot Snakes in the ‘00s.

Reis was heartbroken and shellshocked following Froberg’s death. In November of 2023, he decided to finish the songs he had started during those earlier sessions, under the name Swami And The Bed of Nails. “I tried to un-paralyze myself by surrounding myself with friends, making something out of nothing, and playing music which felt timely to me,” said Reis.

In the summer of 2024, Reis returned with All of This Awaits You, a 9-song tribute to his writing sessions with Froberg, born from a challenging time of reflection and redirection. But instead of speaking about the record, Reis decided to dig deep in his stacks for his 5 favorite punkxploitation records.

“I’m just gonna call it five punk records that were made by people who were not necessarily considered punk,” says Reis.

Reis: It definitely has a footing in punk, but it’s a record made by John Du Cann, who is a guitar player. He played my favorite stuff. He was in this band called The Attack, then Atomic Rooster. 

He made this record with at least one of the dudes from Status Quo and the record didn’t come out until the ‘90s, but he recorded it in 1977. It’s called The World Is Not Big Enough. It has a couple great songs. It has a kind of ‘70s glam element to it. It’s definitely punk rock, with a little bit of that kind of boogie that you would expect from someone in Status Quo. He’s definitely one of my top 20 favorite guitar players. And he was super underrated and he made a great record. There’s a couple great songs on it. “You Didn’t Know Any Better,” it’s such a great song. It’s really catchy. And yeah, I would say that’s probably one of my favorite punk rock records made by someone who was not a punk rocker.

It was recorded in ‘77, and it didn’t come out till ‘92. I didn’t hear about it in 1992. It wasn’t really on my radar until the early 2000s. A lot of his music benefited from those great reissues happening in the early 2000s. He was someone where, you can hear it in his guitar playing sometimes, it wasn’t always necessarily progressing. He would sidestep and take it down a dark alley every once in a while, which I appreciate.

I really don’t have a lot of information on this record. They are a French band called Bulldozer. And their LP is self-titled Bulldozer. I think these guys have roots as session players in France. I believe they’re from Paris. I know one of the guys in the band, I think he did some disco stuff maybe right around the same time or slightly before. 

They have a song called “J’suis Punk” which I think is such a great song. It kind of has a little bit of a feel of “Satisfaction” by the Stones but with this weird kind of automated percussion kind of clicking away. It has this weird kind of goose step vibe to it. And yeah, I love this song so much that I basically covered it and just changed the lyrics and it came out as a B-side.

I wanted to cover it but I don’t speak French and then Tommy who I played with who was in Night Marchers, he helped me translate it and the translation just didn’t work. But lyrically it definitely reinforces the fact that this is punk rock made by people that aren’t punk rockers. 

Yeah. It’s a great record. I wish I knew more about it. I don’t. As fans of music, we come up with these descriptions and titles and genres, and I just don’t want it to be demeaning because it is a great record. The thing for me is these records are just as good, if not better, than any records made by people who actually considered themselves “punk,” which starts you down the path then, what is punk? What does it even fucking mean? And then you start describing it and then you’re just kind of like, you can apply that to any kind of music. 

Next up is a record that Rick [Froberg] turned me on to. He really loved this record by a band called Christ Child. I’m not sure where they’re from. But it’s a great record. I bought my copy on Discogs years back. It wasn’t a super expensive record. I am imagining these guys being kind of like a sleazy hard rock band from the San Fernando Valley. I don’t know if they were, that’s just what it sounds like. It kind of has a Mystic Records production vibe as if they traded studio time for meth or something like that. 

There’s something about it that’s pretty sleazy in a good way, sleazy dirty bluesy the way that Bon Scott’s hair brush was probably covered with sleaze. The guitars and vocals have this cool kind of ‘80s artifact to them. This is kind of a sidebar: I think it was really hard to make a good record in the ‘80s. I had only made a couple recordings by then though.

Vom were somewhat intellectuals. Richard Meltzer being a rock journalist meant that he actually wrote it, and it was a great sounding record. And Metal Mike, I believe, was in the band. They kind of took the torch from the band like the Fugs, who are again an intellectual band for the most part, but weren’t afraid to get very stupid with it, and it just kind of sounds like it was recorded in the bathroom in the best possible sense. It reminds me of the Sleepers because it has this kind of sonic queasiness to it that’s a bit disorienting. You can’t tell if they’re making fun of punk or celebrating it, which is kind of great because I mean there’s a lot to make fun of. It’s not a whole lot of songs, it’s not like they’re singing about Ronald Reagan. “I’m In Love With Your Mom” is a great song. The lyrics are still just as stupid and amazing now as when they wrote them. Someone needs to reissue this. Richard Meltzer is a genius and I just love it. I think that recorded it in 1978, so it was before Angry Samoans.

It’s one of the best punk records of all time. It’s basically a band, Downliners Sect, who were a ’60s band. I think they even predate the Rolling Stones. As times were changing they decided to make this punk record called Punk Rock. I have three versions. There’s Spanish, French, and Italian. And they all have different covers. I think there’s an Australian version that has a different title and I don’t have that one, but I believe they all. have different album cover art.

It’s a great record. The production is just amazing. It has this intent to harm kind of delivery. It sounds to me like Mark E. Smith from the Fall fronting one of those really early second wave punk bands from England. You can hear the kind of sick roots in it throughout. There’s some harp on it, harmonica, it’s pretty garage. This would be the record, first and foremost that I would share with someone who claims to like primitive kind of punk. It really has that kind of knuckle dragging sound to it. It’s thuggish and yeah, it’s just a beautiful record. It’s really really good.