A Cheese Lover’s Punk Playlist
Punk Cheese Playlist
I came of age in the 70s listening through teenage osmosis to the works of Johnny Winter, Led Zeppelin, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Just after graduating from high school, on the eve of the 1980s, I discovered local bands in South Florida playing punk rock. I immediately cut my hair, got tattooed, and helped launch a fanzine called the Borington Journal. Today I love jazz, I appreciate old-school country and alt-country, but I still worship loud guitars and a bad attitude.
So, I have accepted the challenge to pair a dozen great punk songs with 12 great cheeses. My “research” involved spirited discussions and listening to all six sides of the Clash’s Sandinista! Album. I have found that it’s really hard to do justice to punk rock with just a dozen songs. Tough job, but somebody had to do it. Great punk anthems pair in different, weird ways with great cheese. I didn’t worry much about which eras to highlight—but wound up focusing mostly on the well-known early stuff from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Painful omissions aplenty; I would love to discuss them in the comments.
You are invited to listen along to the Punk Cheese Playlist on Spotify
Smash it Up (the Damned) with Keen’s Farmhouse Cheddar
Smash it Up (the Damned) with Keen’s Farmhouse Cheddar
The Damned might be my favorite English band, and Smash it Up parts 1 & 2, from their outlandishly good Machine Gun Etiquette LP, may be their theme song. It starts with a quiet melodic intro, leading to a raucous, pound the drums “part 2”. Captain Sensible’s guitar licks are clear as Alpine air, and nobody croons better than singer Dave Vanian.
Keen’s is a classic English cloth-bound Cheddar available primarily at Whole Foods Markets. In traditional Cheddar making, a curd slab is broken (smashed?) to bits by a tool called a peg mill, or some automated equipment that replicates it. Both the song and the cheese are among the most delicious items produced by the UK.
Fearless Vampire Killers (Bad Brains) with Garlic Clothbound Cheddar
Fearless Vampire Killers (Bad Brains) with Garlic Clothbound Cheddar
There was no other band quite like Washington DC’s Bad Brains. They blasted onto the hardcore punk scene in the early 80s, loud, fast, brash and physical, catching their breath every third or fourth song with a reggae interlude. FVK was aimed at the real-world vampires who repress, rather than the horror flick bloodsuckers, and it clocks in at one minute and six seconds.
Garlic is said to hold vampires at bay too, and Redhead Creamery of Minnesota offers a clothbound cheddar laced with garlic powder. Fear not, and crank up the volume.
New Pleasure (Richard Hell and The Voidoids) with BluZu
New Pleasure (Richard Hell and The Voidoids) with BluZu
For a brief while, Richard Hell and The Voidoids were instrumental in the early New York punk scene, centered at the dive bar CBGBs. Their scant recordings are a must-have for any punk. I love them all, and this song is emblematic of how this band worked outside the four-chords-and-a-holler framework. Poetic, dream-like, ethereal.
And for cheese lovers, a new pleasure might be BluZu Blue Cheese from Oregon’s Rogue Creamery. Released just this year, it’s a blue cheese that’s soaked in yuzu citrus sake. Leave time for misty daydreams when you pair these two.
White Girl (X) with Brabander
White Girl (X) with Brabander
The Los Angeles quartet X also illustrates how punk was never pigeon-holed. Wisps of psychedelia, boy-girl harmonies, and infectious melodies mix with hot, LA street grit in their best work. This tune brings it all. It’s hypnotic, and it might have been based on a forbidden crush on a member of another LA punk band. We all love Gouda, and there is no better goat Gouda than Bradander from Fromagarie L’Amuse, with its pale paste and white coat, it is sweet/salty/tart perfection. I may send some to John, Exene, Billy and D.J. Who you callin’ a fanboy?
Complete Control (The Clash) with Hornbacher
Complete Control (The Clash) with Hornbacher
There are many types of Clash songs—Joe Strummer protests, Mick Jones love songs, and cool/weird stuff from Sandinista! Dozens could make the cut. Even hits like London Calling please the ears to this day. Complete Control rails against all sorts of oppression. The word “control” is important to cheesemaking. Master makers like Michael Spycher sacrifice some control by starting with raw milk, and yet they craft big mountain cheeses in Switzerland (and elsewhere) with the precision of old-world watchmakers. Dig this song and dig into a real Alpine specialty.
Preaching the Blues (The Gun Club) with Gorgonzola PDO
Preaching the Blues (The Gun Club) with Gorgonzola
From The Gun Club’s first LP, Preaching the Blues is a send up of a Robert Johnson tune Preachin’ Blues. It also references a similar Son House standard. A 1981 New York Times review called it “wildly exciting...with slide guitars whining madly and the drums and bass thrashing away at a deliberately manic tempo…” It still stirs the soul after 45 years. The LA-based band burned bright, and lead shaman Jeffery Lee Pierce left the planet in 1996. If you cherish great blue cheese as much as bluesy punk, you can’t go wrong with creamy, tangy, Gorgonzola Dolce from Italy. Unique cultures and production procedures make Gorgonzola noticeably different in flavor and texture from most other blues.
Breakdown (The Buzzcocks) with Camembert d’ Normandie PDO
Breakdown (The Buzzcocks) with Camembert d’ Normandie
The Buzzcocks were among the first British punk bands, and they still tour with one original member and all those angry, broken-hearted, near-perfect songs. At their best, they played fast, with precision, and emotional conviction. Breakdown, from the pioneer EP, Spiral Scratch is two minutes of distilled angst.
When milk becomes cheese, chemical and physical changes occur. Fats breakdown and, with soft ripened cheeses like raw-milk French Camembert, the breakdown continues in the distribution chain, producing flavor, aroma and ooze aplenty. No angst when you enjoy this world-class bloomy.
Uncontrollable Urge (Devo) with Wisconsin Cheese Curds
Uncontrollable Urge (Devo) with Wisconsin Cheese Curds
From Devo’s iconic Are We Not Men? album, this number is a wonderful slice. Signature herky-jerky vocal stylings, alarming synth bits, and with this one, a super-driving rhythm. I would advise listening to this whole LP in sequence however, and doing some Devo research, perhaps with the 2025 Netflix documentary, Devo. While watching that, you might want to snack on Wisconsin (or local) cheddar curds. Once you have had them you will feel the urge for more. And you will never again think of this band as a one-hit wonder.
Big Cheese (Nirvana) with Sbrinz AOP
Big Cheese (Nirvana) with Sbrinz
Call it Grunge, but punk was the main ingredient in the Seattle Sound recipe. Big Cheese from Nirvana’s Bleach LP is a fine sample of the band’s greatness: grinding distorted guitar chords at mid-tempo, popping drums and Kurt Cobain’s whisper-to-anger vocals. The lyric references a less-enjoyable big cheese, but we will pair it with one of those big wheels from the old country. How about Sbrinz? The Swiss beauty can weigh close to 100 pounds. And unlike the wanna-be fat-cat of Cobain’s tale, this whole milk cheese contributes, with tyrosine crystals and rich caramel/nut flavors.
Havana Affair (The Ramones) with La Dama Sagrada
Havana Affair (The Ramones) with La Dama Sagrada
Selecting one great Ramones song is daunting, but Havana Affair is a personal favorite. Nearly nonsensical lyrics describe an agricultural worker becoming a CIA spy, but the structure is pure, four-chord punk, with an added missile sound effect. It’s the second track on side two of the debut album, and that entire side should be heard in sequence. The original punk band, the Ramones, first performed publicly in 1974. By 2014, all four original members were no longer among us.
Traditional cheeses were made in Cuba for more than a century, but unless you can visit the island nation, you might need a substitute on your punk cheese board. How about La Dama Sagrada, from Spain. Cuba has had a long, complicated relationship with Spain, but La Dama is a lovely, firm goat’s milk cheese with textural similarities to sheep’s milk Manchego. I’m just guessing that Johnny hated goat milk cheeses, while Joey would have been happy to try them. Gabba Gabba Hey!
I Live Off You (X-Ray Specs) with Feta PDO
I Live Off You (X-Ray Specs) with Feta PDO
If you haven’t heard X-Ray Specs you haven’t lived fully. Front woman Poly Styrene was just 20 years old when she sang this, and OH! HOW SHE SANG! “The whole world lives off of everybody.” Poetry? Philosophy? I know of just three early punk bands to regularly utilize the saxophone. Completely UNLIKE any other rock and roll music to that point in history. In 2001, Spin magazine ranked the album Germfree Adolescence at number five on its "50 Most Essential Punk Records" list.
Pair it with a truly important cheese—Feta PDO, made only in Greece. The cheese described in Homer’s Odyssey is considered to be the ancestor of Feta. And for more than 5,000 years, similar cheeses have helped sustain the people of the Mediterranean. You will taste some history in a sheep or goat milk Feta. Nibble it, cook with it, or toss it with watermelon and balsamic. Live fully!
Suspect Device (Stiff Little Fingers) with Coolea
Suspect Device (Stiff Little Fingers) with Coolea
Released in 1978, this is thought to be the first Irish punk record. Stiff Little Fingers formed a year earlier in Belfast, offering power anthems railing against oppression and preaching personal integrity. Decades later, leader Jake Burns still puts the band on the road, and when I saw them in 2024 with a full house chanting the choruses I had goosebumps. Suspect Device encourages us to stand up to “them,” whomever the oppressive them may be. Let’s pair this protest song with an Irish cheese everyone will love. Coolea is a farmstead Gouda-style cheese that’s right in tune with sweet and salty flavor notes. Be what you are—a punk rock turophile!