Music Monday

HARD CORE LOGO

Director	Bruce McDonald
Year	1996
Starring	Hugh Dillon, Callum Keith Rennie and John Pyper-Ferguson
Rating	R
Run Time	92min
Age Policy	18 and up; Children 6 and up will be allowed only with a parent guardian. No children under the age of 6 will be allowed.
More Info	IMDb

Sponsored by Austin's greatest music store, End of an Ear Records, and Austin's most essential vintage furniture and decor store, Room Service.

Hailed as a punk rock version of THIS IS SPINAL TAP, Bruce McDonald’s HARD CORE LOGO is largely considered to be one of the greatest Canadian films of all time. A mock documentary about a punk rock band reuniting for one final tour through Western Canada, what unveils itself onscreen is a fiction too real to be fake and a reality too strange to be true.

The complete devolution of punk rock music plays out onscreen in screamed lyrics and fists thrown at both audience members and fellow bandmates. The film itself is a ghostly, tongue in cheek echo of John Lydon’s closing remarks at their January 1978 concert, the last Sid Vicious would ever play with The Sex Pistols: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” For all the sincerity and good will put forth towards HARD CORE LOGO’s reunion tour, that accounts for the film’s structure, no one ever said a house built on rock ‘n’ roll was structurally sound.

Originally released by Quentin Tarantino’s short-lived Rolling Thunder Pictures, HARD CORE LOGO is a too-oft forgotten modern classic. (Sam Prime)