Bankrupt turns 15

It was in March 1996 that the first line-up of Bankrupt started rehearsing in a school basement. It consisted of Rocco, William, Canadian singer Michael K and Black Peter on drums. Michael left in ’99 and the 2 axemen split the vocal duties. After a Spinal Tap-style succession of drummers, Shorty entered the picture in late 2000, and we haven’t had any line-up changes ever since.
Bankrupt has turned 15 this month.

2010 in numbers

2010 is almost over, time to sum up our annual achievements.
Concerts: We played only 10 gigs this year,which is a negative record, even if the Stustaculum gig in Munich was one of the best moments of our history. We’ll need to improve this next year, and with a Czech mini-tour already booked for January, hopefully we’ll be more active in 2011.
Videos: We came up with 5 videos this year (Koheed & Kembra, All Day In The Car, Wave Of Bankruptcy, Agony Bay, Sidewinder), which is a positive record. They’ve got a total of about 13,000 views so far on BlankTV and our YouTube channel, which is not a lot, but not too bad either.
Songs: We haven’t written any new songs since Razor Wires And Neon Lights, which is a shame. We should definitely come up with something next year.
Website: We’ve launched the new WordPress-based website, and now we have about 5 times more daily visitors than before. We should have done this earlier, but better late than never.
So that was 2010 for us. Now let’s move on to a more eventful 2011…

The oldest punk rock bands ever

As the generation gap is constantly widening between us and the latest generation of punk rockers, we need to find solace in comparing ourselves to bands that are even older than us. This list doesn’t include novelty punk rock acts featuring very old people, such as One Foot In The Grave, or Team Spider, it’s more like a longest running punk band list with some special considerations.
The rules: bands first got points for active years, then they got penalty points for losing key members, releasing less than 10 albums, or releasing non-punk stuff, or received a bonus point for featuring an extra old member. Obviously, we didn’t consider bands here that reformed without any key members just to perform at the Holidays In The Sun festival. Here’s the list: Continue reading

MySpace is a sinking ship

When MySpace got big around 2005, a lot of bands decided to center their web presence around their MySpace profiles, and abandoned their own websites. It seemed like the best and easiest way to present your band. All the other bands you liked were there, the labels were there, the zines were there, and most importantly, your audience was there. Three years, and about a billion friend requests later the audience had enough and decided to leave. Continue reading