Old School Punk Instrumentals
The name of this playlist might be a little bit of a misnomer as one of the bands is from the 90s and maybe one or two a little later (Night Birds), but you’ll get the point as you make your way through. This one started because I was listening to a much larger instrumental playlist and came across one of my all-time favorite instrumentals (of any genre) — “2:52 - Instrumental” from the wildly underrated and short-lived Bay Area group Fuel (not that Fuel). That took me into the rabbit hole of the many amazing Fugazi instrumentals (it was very hard to choose only one for this). After assembling about 15 or so I knew from memory, I started to get even deeper into the research, finding this amazing resource, and completing what I think are the 30 best OG punk instrumentals.
Yes, I know it’s weird to listen to punk without a singer. I mean so much of what punk rock is to so many people is encapsulated by the energy of the “punk rock singer.” What’s a protest song without lyrics? I get it. I just felt like this was a fun exploration of a weird subset of songs inside of a genre.
