And there are the Sex Pistols, who claim they don’t know what they want. [via BuzzFeed]

Veteran British music impresario Don Letts’ feature-length punk documentary explores the philosophy of the subculture, from Elvis Presley to the Stooges, Sex Pistols, and the Clash.

Originally released at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005, the out-of-print film is now back on DVD, featuring cameos from legends such as Jello Biafra, Chryssie Hynde, Jim Jarmusch, David Johansen, Henry Rollins, and Siouxsie Sioux. The two-disc set offers over 90 minutes of bonus material, including short pieces about the fashion, sounds, and spirit of the punk movement.

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Collecting four decades of work, James Hamilton’s You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen combines the dedication of a photojournalist with the passion of a true music fan and the eye of a fine-art photographer.

The new book, edited by longtime friend and frequent subject Thurston Moore, chronicles Hamilton’s 40 years immersed in the downtown NYC music and art scene. Lovingly culled from the artist’s vast private archive, the volume also features never-before published candid photographs of icons from Joni Mitchell to the Ramones.

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Yesterday, at long last, Girl Talk released his new album, All Day. He’s even offering it for free online, at Illegal Art, although the download queues are predictably massive. When you finally get that sweet, sweet zip file onto your hard drive, you’ll notice that Girl Talk’s two-year absence hasn’t dulled his mastery of the sample. Any new Girl Talk album doubles as an unofficial “Name That Tune” challenge, a trivia quiz for those who pride themselves on their pop-music literacy. But never fear! We  have a cheat sheet. Your intrepid listeners at Flavorwire have done our damnedest to compile a list of samples on the new album, in roughly chronological order, after the jump. Tell us what we missed in the comments.

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On Monday, Coach Leonard Skinner — the beloved high school teacher and namesake of Lynyrd Skynyrd — passed away at the age of 77, and a little piece of frat rock died with him. A sad event for lovers of Southern jukebox-jams everywhere, to be sure, but also a reminder of a pretty good band name back story. It got us thinking about our favorite, unexpected band names and where they come from. Virginia Woolf stories, slang terms for speed, poorly understood foreign terms: all are fodder for some pretty excellent handles. So, in memory of Coach Skinner, we’ve compiled the etymology of 10 famous band names.

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Few people know that the first person to call himself a Ramone was Dee Dee, aka Douglas Glenn Colvin. Born in Fort Lee, Virginia in 1951, the future rock star spent an itinerant army-brat childhood in Germany, relocating to Queens at the age of 15. In 1974, he went on to become a founding member of the Ramones, allegedly inspired to change his last name because Paul McCartney once briefly went by “Paul Ramon.”

The Ramones became five men who all adopted the same last name: Dee Dee, Johnny, Joey, Tommy, and Marky. The “brothers” referenced the raw emotions and simple, catchy riffs of their midcentury rock ‘n’ roll antecedents, but their rebellious, long-haired aesthetic and heartrendingly earnest sound was all their own. In addition to founding the band, Dee Dee is also the one to have written most of its hits, including “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,” the title of Roger Corman’s 1979 movie co-starring the Ramones and Andy Warhol icon Mary Woronov.

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Christopher Walken played him in the movie Basquiat, but the creative life of Marc H. Miller transcends that singular moment via his website, 98 Bowery.

Landing a loft on NYC’s infamous Bowery in the late ’60s, Miller blossomed as an artist, curator, journalist, and publisher. After organizing the very first punk art exhibition in 1978, he migrated to Amsterdam and shot Polaroid portraits in the red-light district, before returning to the Bowery to make videos about artists, write a column for the East Village Eye, and organize museum shows — a lifestyle that’s now amusingly and thoroughly documented online.

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Thanks to “Thriller,” Michael Jackson costumes have been a Halloween favorite for years. His untimely death, however, just moved the costume from parody to homage. This Halloween, you can expect a glut of glove-toting tributes — but that’s no reason to follow suit. Many other deceased musical icons deserve your hastily thrown-together attention. After the jump, our picks, from Biggie to Kurt, along with the essential-icon items that will make you sure to be recognized.

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Vera Ramone King spent a large part of her life loving the most notorious member of the Ramones — bass player Dee Dee Ramone. For those not old enough to recall, Dee Dee was the Ramones’ tabloid sweetheart. Despite the cliché rock-star debauchery, he was also a major songwriting force in the band. Dee Dee retained an infectious childlike charm and charisma that drew many to him, including the aforementioned Mrs. Ramone King.

Poisoned Heart, Ramone King’s memoir regarding her life with Dee Dee, is first and foremost a rock memoir with all the over-the-top excess you’d expect to hear from a band wife’s point of view. There’s a story arc that delves into Dee Dee’s mental issues, chemical dependencies, his stint as an aspiring rapper, and his tragic and untimely demise soon after the Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We dropped Vera a line and asked — really — what was it like to be Dee Dee’s main squeeze? Read More »