Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.

This is “Rat Patrol” by Naked Raygun:

When I was in junior high school, a lot of the older high school guys I looked up to were into Naked Raygun, and wore Naked Raygun t-shirts.  So I liked Naked Raygun long before I heard them. But then, eventually, I heard them. Naked Raygun hits a lot of my musical sweet spots: loud, razorlike guitars, melodic and driving basslines, choruses that you can sing along to, and which teeter on the edge of full-blown anthem.  Naked Raygun practically founded the punk scene in Chicago, and without that scene, a bunch of bands that later became favorites, from Big Black to Screeching Weasel to Seam, might not have found the same kind of platform.  Also, they were called Naked Raygun, which still seems impossibly stupid and awesome all at once–they wanted to  be the Sex Pistols.