Of the punk subgenres, one of my favourites is that which emerged from the Berkeley, California area in the late 1980s and centred on 924 Gilman Street. Though the bands in this scene were indisputably punk, in ethos and attitude, the music was often as catchy as anything being put out on NME cassette compilations at the time. They were the successors to the great pop-punk bands of the 1970s like the Buzzcocks, Rezillos and Undertones, although a bit more DIY and hence less polished-sounding than those bands (or at least their recorded legacy).
Some of the Gilman bands were also a bit more political than their '70s predecessors, although you'd rarely get the kind of pure politicism of their anarcho-punk contemporaries. This is a good example: although more of a "fun" song than anything else, the opening verse is an amusing dig at the hypocrisy of the Reagan administration.
Green Day came out of this scene, by the way, and I still love them. So there.
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