In 1997 I was 18 and living with my close friend Dave in Bethlehem,
PA. We worked a lousy job at Lucent MicroElectronics writing shell and
perl scripts to convert all of Lucent's documentation to web pages for
our vendor portal. It paid the bills. Being the wild and crazy guys we
were, instead of having friends or well a life, we talked our way into
the 8pm-10pm slot on Lehigh University's radio station, 91.3FM WLVR.
We called our show Punk 101, mostly playing late '70s punk and mid
'90s pop-punk. When we got bored we'd ask for callers and take
requests, and one night somebody asked if we'd play a song by Rancid.
We talked to him for a bit, then put on some songs. For some reason it
seemed appropriate to queue up Rancid's "Sidekick", a song where Tim
dreams about being Wolverine's sidekick. The song ended with
"Wolverine got sad, and it made him mad, and every single cop got a
bullet in the head".

After the song played, the caller called up and said, "Nice choice.
How did you know I'm a police officer?"

Of course, in response, we had to play a song by Anti-Flag, this one:

(He became a regular caller until the semester ended and we had to
give up our slot).

Here's to you bro, I can't believe you're getting married.

This one is a bit obscure. The entire song is sort of a reference to the chorus of Fishbone’s “Ugly”, including bassline. I could explain it more, but watch the videos, and you too will find punk-rock enlightenment.

“I’ll give you an alibi, I, I’ll give you an alibi, too.”

“U.G.L.Y. You ain’t got no alibi, you’re so ugly”

Call it the nerd in me, but I really like putting together references in songs which reference, rip-ff, or pay hommage to other songs/bands/musicians. I’ve been recognizing and geeking-out about these a lot lately, so I thought I woul start punishing the world with my observations. Here’s the first one: Operation Ivy’s song, “Hedgecore” (A berkeley favorite) is very clearly referencing Minor Threat’s “Filler”. Here’s the proof:

Operation Ivy’s Hedgecore:

“What happened to your bush it’s not the same something in your hedge made a violent change”

From: Minor Threat’s Filler:

“What happened to you You’re not the same Something in your head Made a violent change”