Punk

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is a question for people who didn't experience punk firsthand (sorry o wise eldersaurs!)

How did the ideas/legacy/presence of punk affect your listening to and thinking about music?

(I didn't say it was a small question)

And do you still feel it as a presence within pop music and culture? Does it affect current music? Does it affect how you approach the music that came before it?

I'm interested in 'my' generation of listeners (30somethings) but also especially in 20somethings and younger - and in British people especially.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Its influence was entirely negative for the six months or so I thought I 'should' like it! Then I realised I really detested it, just on a sonic level, couldn't care less about the politics, and found it slightly...unhygienic. That canon Sex Pistols album is one of the worst things I have EVER HEARD. And since then it has not crossed my mind except for the occasional rockist-baiting declaration of Avril Lavigne/tATu/Lindsay Lohan as "totes punk rock" (I have no idea what I mean by this as it's clearly one of those words with a gazillion defns depending who you talk to, and I don't care enough to ponder it too deeply).

It clearly signifies lots of approved things for many people my age though - it is usually a sign that I should not pay attention to anything they say on the subject of music.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Hurrah a comment!

I don't expect many kids nowadays are that into the Sex Pistols, but I'm curious as to whether the notion of punk as a rebellious or purifying or authentic (these 3 words not wholly connectable obv!) force is a sustained one today or whether people have "got over it".

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Avril Lavigne - US punk != UK punk.

AN OLD PERSON RIOTS

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the idea of "old people's music" as intrinsically rubbish is something of a punk meme obv, taken up from 60s rock and turned against it

lex what is yr opinion of joy division? (i am tryin to write abt em RIGHT NOW)

(haha "unhygenic")

Re: AN OLD PERSON RIOTS

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

punk = era when i wz more or less lex's age and definitely lexishly year-zero in attitude!

anyway BACK TO THE YOUNG-o-DONS

Re: AN OLD PERSON RIOTS

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I have only heard the famous song! I like it but need not hear it ever again, and definitely prefer the Nouvelle Vague version. I was quite shocked to discover recently that they were the same people as New Order.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

can i go out on a limb and say that punk was the last (post war) rebellious youth movement and that everything after that has built on that established platform - no longer needing to say 'fuck you i won't do what you tell me (to do)' (except by the silly people who felt the unnecessary need to actually say that) but just going on to say 'and this is the new thing X that we're doing'. it's really odd to see how "shocked" grownups act in the 50/60/70s due to the antics of the kids. and i don't think that since then 80s/90s we've had anything like it. and are not likely to.

but it was NOT about authenticity.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

punk is on the edge of my musical memory. but i am on more solid ground with post-punk/new wave (i was 8 in 77). the primary emotion i get from punk at that time is a visceral energy.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble accessing lj at the moment, this page took about five minutes to load fully!

I latched on to Punk as a 'history project' big time in my first year of uni - before that I was firstly aware of it as something that Elastica etc had 'copied', & latterly as this big rebellion against rock dinosaurs. However I never really enthused about the music itself (I still don't really like the Sex Pistols as much as PiL), as once I started to investigate punk in any depth I realised that it was later stuff eg Strangers/Wire that both Elastica and myself preferred. Music in not living up to hype shocker.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

this is the "help me write my p!tchf0rk column" thread, right? ;)

PUNK for me, gave a distrust of PROG (still working through) and also THE MAN (pretty much gotten over now).

interestingly i have 0 recollection of punk-punk at the time (being *just* too young), but everything that came after good or bad (jam, police, adam etcetc) were the foundations of my music love. i guess i didn't rly know about '76 punk til the latelate 80s (can that be right?)...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Haha yes WELL SPOTTED it is indeed that time of thee month.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I remember a slightly older neighbourhood kid showing me the cover of Frigging in the Rigging back in the day. But I was in Hong Kong until the middle of '77, so didn't directly experience anything before that.

I didn't mind the music (once I was a bit older), as I regarded it as a sped up loud version of '50s rock'n'roll which I liked. But I didn't particularly like the obnoxiousness, faux or otherwise. It's so-called DIY ethic didn't really rub off because when I was an young teenager we were doing it ourselves anyway, and we were more influenced by rock and early metal. And I preferred ska to punk anyway.

If it inspired people to form bands and write songs, then great, but it was more of a short-lived hyped-up fashion statement. On the other hand, it was a time when there were a lot of people about who really couldn't see how the '80s was going to be any better than the '70s, so the "no future" thing appealed to them.

The bands who became most successful starting in the punk era only really adopted it as a fashion statement before going on to do their own thing - e.g. the Police. Apart from the Sex Pistols (where music wasn't really the primary driver) I can't think of any really successful bands in the genre. Perhaps success wasn't the point, but you'd think there would be some longer-running and financially sound punk bands if it were a serious genre, especially given all the '80s bands/singers touring their hits in the past few years. Maybe it's harder to differentiate the music from various styles of rock.

I remember CRASS and Dead Kennedys, but neither of those were really UK punk bands. I guess The Damned did OK in the genre, but weren't really what I'd call a punk band. Exploited and the Anti Nowhere League are more what I'd call punk bands, but they didn't really get anywhere and the mysogynist lyrics probably didn't help.

(I'm not talking about American punk rock cos that's a whole other scene).

[sbp.livejournal.com]

So do the Clash count as punk, or the "going on to do their own thing" part of my argument?

Me & the received notion of punk

[(Anonymous)]

Missed punk by dint of being in far-flung places as well as being too young. Arrived back in the UK, aged 13, in 1984 as fledgling classic rock fan. Over the next two years struggled to like Cream, Led Zep etc or Hendrix beyond the singles... and meanwhile fell in love with the Ramones and the Mary Chain. So when the 10 years of punk barrage arrived in the NME in early 86, I was totally willing to absorb it, but more in terms of 'values' than any particular interest in actual original punkster bands. And that ideology, as I read it, has stuck with me. I think that's because it was a good fit for what I actually like, rather than because it was so persuasive – I'm naturally anti-noodling, grandiosity, technique for its own sake (as I would see it), pro-short songs & so on. In the succeeding two decades, my views on art and architecture (for instance) flipped almost entirely, but my basic approach to music hardly at all. I'm still prog-phobic (which applies as much to Radiohead as Yes) and not the least bit apologetic about it... -mcarratala

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

Anyway. I like punk. It's fast and energetic and great fun to dance to. It's like Happy Hardcore in that respect, it's just something I can't help but feel smiley and bouncy to.

I guess that I feel it's most lasting effect is speeding music up, putting energy into it? I fully support this, faster music is more fun.

Although I maintain you can experience punk firsthand today, and that there are punk bands out there currently making music.


I'm currently playing the Dropkick Murphys.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Dropkick Murphys aren't punk as what is meant by this thread - the whole US punk thing evolved separately from the UK scene.

[perfectputsch.livejournal.com]

the punk idea wasnt anything that new really - the diy stripped down garage thing of the 60s was already being celebrated in the early 70s with the "nuggets" compilations but i guess all the newspaper headlines brought it to the mainstream and maybe people started to feel that they didnt have to be virtuosos like Yes to make good music. and also people realised that Yes were shit...

its just another wave of teenage rebellion in the great history of teenage rebellion, but i think its beautiful.

i think it did a lot for women in music too because it was quite an asexual phenomenon - all that s&m stuff wasnt really about sex and certainly not about being conventionally sexy, and the girls could have really short hair or look like Poly Styrene and people thought that was cool. women weren't being judged primarily on sexual allure, and also women screaming and shrieking and throwing themselves around a stage in an unladylike fashion was suddenly cool and kicked ass, so it changed the way we view women in music i think, paved the way for riot grrl. its a far cry from the motown girl groups in matching dresses made to smile sweetly and firmly in the control of their managers. so yeah i think it opened up opportunities for women because girls decided that if they didnt want to be groupies or Pans People or whatever, then that was fine and they could do their own thing instead. sexy, unsexy, soft, abrasive, quiet, loud, sing about fucking, sing about politics, whatever...

because punk seems kind of old now there's a lot of ironic, post-modern anti-punk talk but thats just people trying to be cool and contrary if you ask me. it'll probably come around again in this relentless cycle of things. i guess stuff just looks more annoying if the old farts at Mojo like it. but i'm all for it.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

its just another wave of teenage rebellion in the great history of teenage rebellion

It's just another wave of *orchestrated* teenage rebellion in the great history of *orchestrated* teenage rebellion set up to sell music - from Elvis to Malcolm McLaren to Busted and Avril.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

By the time I got to punk, it had been affected by grunge and other horror and there was the distant glint of Aiden coming over the horizon. Despite this, it is my favourite musical genre 4 lyfe and I know its aesthetics shape my thoughts about other songs quite heavily.

I like the frustration that powers punk... actually, no, obviously I don't like it but I relate to it and it's the widdling time-wasting pissing about slapping itself on the back of other music that makes me furious. Which is why I don't think much of the Sex Pistols.

Punk, to me, in a 'contemporary to myself' sense (and no previous punk music is punk to latter generations, IMO) was Skunk Anansie, The Offspring and Rancid. They were all only just about contemporary to me but still, I can remember them happening. I never realised they were punk at the time I listened to them a lot, though- I'd assumed that was a genre only found in strange places to which I had never been, like Manchester or other Angry Northern metropolitan areas; punk, in my head, was something you did because Thatcher had shut the mines down and this never corrected itself in my head until I realised, aged fourteen, that it was in fact QUITE, QUITE MAD.

The odd thing is that the attitude dubdobdee mentioned, regarding all the older generation's music being bollocks according to punk is strangely dead now, as I suspect punk to be except in isolated pockets; musicians seem to want to earnestly proclaim their debts to and love for previous masters and the grovelling of artists to proclaim themselves heirs to [insert punk artist being plagiarised by band here] is just embarassingly shit. 'Hi everybody, we're punk because we smoked our first cigarettes aged seven to a Sonic Youth record. That is totally what all this is about- check out my Che Guevara shirt. Of course I think The Ramones are god and no modern music can ever really compare; I fall beneath the genius of my forebears because [ageing rockist journo/broadcaster of choice] is RIGHT and TRUE and they tell me what to think. Yeah, punk!' Actually this is making me really angry.

Essentially; I currently feel there is a return to the restrictive social attitudes, albeit in a very different format, that created the roaring fury of punk. I don't know if this was even remotely relevant to the question you asked and I'm not sure how I got here.

Is this all with any reference to the attempt by NME to get God Save The Queen to number one?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

AKSHULLY, that para re: punk contemporaneous to myself is bullshit. Those were punk bands which I love but the fact remains that my punk rock is Girls Aloud.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

one important thing re: punk is that ROCK ITSELF was still young, really -- only ten years since sgt pepper, just over 20 since elvis

and this was the first ever "youth-culture revolt against youth-culture goes mainstream", at least in so many words (obv mods vs rockers etc in times gone by, or skinheadism as a pocket of dissent in the late 60s)

rock's revolt against pop culture -- in elvis days or in beatles days -- was maybe a revolt against dad-pop (sinatra) or teenypop (paul anka etc), and had a very conflcted sense of itself as BCZ WE'RE YOUNG (YET WE KNOW THE SCORE = we are TRUE SECRET ADULTS) (something like that)

punk was playing off the bad present against the good past at the same time as claiming to be a year-zero renewal -- i love the pistols bcz rotten's persona and lydon's personality were just revelations to me, as a quiet middleclass country kid, i wz really uttterly in love with him (and i still kind of am, he'd really have to do something very nastily criminal indeed b4 i didn;t rep for him)

a second element which is hard today to recollect is that this was stuff you had to go out and find, and stuff from even the recent past had absolutely vanished: it didn't pour in on you through every spigot!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

mmmm, hot and cold running lydon...

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

The Ramones are the only punk band I like.

Most punk music seems pretty basic and boring to me, and a little joyless.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I will be very disappointed if your column makes no reference to the fact that you went to a major public school at which every school band covered Anarchy in the UK, many in 'hilarious' re-worked versions. Wykhamy in the UK anyone?

I came to punk AFTER metal (which had also led to glam) and I was always a bit unsure as to how the Sex Pistols and the Clash and the Dead Kennedys were supposed to fit together. The answer to me at the time was -- they don't, since the Clash seemed like Classic Rock, the Pistols still had an edge (but then so did the Psychedelic Furs), and the DKs were most obviously agit-punk (part of me wanted obvious 'political' content (I was 13/14) while part of me just liked the anger / rage / confusion of the Pistols). Then I got into indie and EVERYTHING went wrong because I learnt all the fossilised dogmas (Floyd bad (I was very ready to hear this because everyone at school was into PF -- but this is why the Clash seemed to be in the same category); guitar solos bad; long complicated songs bad (bye bye Metallica, but I could keep listening to AC/DC) while at the same time hearing the Buzzcocks and wondering why everyone was making such a fuss about them. The Mary Chain I liked for their energy but also for the bubblegum / rock n roll element. This is very similar to my relation to 'theory' i.e. I got into it because there was some energy there that I needed or wanted while also simultaneously having an emperor's new clothes moment because a lot of what you were 'supposed' to agree with or like seemed either obvious or wrong. If I were to try and humour Frank I would compare this to my social experience at school i.e. depression and stasis induced by the gap between my need ro revolt and the transparent conformism of rebel postures.

Oh and...

[(Anonymous)]

I wrote a dreadful piece about punk's-legacy-via big books for the Statesman in the early 90s that mushed together Jon Savage, Griel Marcus, riot grrl, S*M*A*S*H and Cornershop. Had a pleasant chat with Mark Perry down the pub in New Cross (or maybe Deptford) as part of the research, so I guess it was worthwhile in the end.
mcarratala

very late but for what it's worth...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

i perceived punk in a very historical context, i.e. through the rolling stone record guide and, to a lesser extent, through Lipstick Traces. and given that i did all this in the pre-nirvana era, i definitely saw it as a kind of year zero, despite the fact that my "historical" approach lead me more through the winding trails of prog as much as anything else. when grunge came along i gradually suspected that punk was more likely one end of a cycle (albeit perhaps an extreme end), although hip-hop tends to complicate such simplifications.

my cultural experience of punk was somewhat scornful, i.e., ultimately i didn't differentiate the punks i saw from sha-na-na - different tribe but same idea.

(of course i'm not british)

Re: very late but for what it's worth...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

oh yes, and in terms of current listening, i could be somewhat more explicit if you're trying to pin me down: i guess there are two sides - as a genre, where my attitude is a bit like the above: if you definte yourself as punk then, yawn; however in terms of attitude, i can see it as a certain rebelliousness (vs. a "rock" attitude, which is more about power than rebellion).

belatedly

[cis.livejournal.com]

My problem with punk is that it means several different things inside my head and they're often mutually contradictory. The basic core contradiction is a sort of:
i) punk means the music of the previous generation is obsolete
ii) punk is the music of a previous generation
iii) punk has been rendered obsolete Q.E.D.

When I was one of the kids we were certainly theoretically into the Sex Pistols, but i don't know how far into practice it really went. I started thinking uh 'critically' about music in the britpop years o'jingoism, at which point the active genre that called itself punk was ska-punk-type US punk rock, which a lot of my friends were into - NOFX, Bad Religion, etc - but clearly that wasn't 'real' punk, 'real' punk was the late-seventies British genre that was by now dead and ossified, and less relevant than were The Kinks. Apparently it was against prog, which I was fairly cool with when younger because as far as I could work out prog sounded like Cream, who I violently disliked before I had any idea what punk might be. And lots of people I was 'for' counted themselves on the side of punk, which meant it had to be a good thing, but... I never really worked out how, and I've not really found a 'punk' record that I truly like. I doubt I will, either, as I really seem to have lost the patience for scratchy loud music.

What I've taken from punk is the idea that there's a really healthy energy in taking down sacred-cow forms of pop music - which is why I'm very and gleefully happy to say "Avril Lavigne is more punk than you or anyone" because her dress-up pop-punk functions very well as an attack on 'authentic' punk.

Re: belatedly

[cis.livejournal.com]

by 'record' here i think i mean album! I like 'have you ever fallen in love (with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with)' and I believe that's a punk song? and I like some songs by the clash, and stuff, you know, the pop songs.

oh oh and I bought some dfa compilation a few years ago and put it in the record player to find that one of the cds, although it looked like what it was meant to be, was in fact 'never mind the bollocks'! it was the first time i had ever heard it and I turned it off pretty quickly because I wasn't in the mood, but kept it because I thought it was lulz.

[aubade1984.livejournal.com]

punk was a big influence on me around the ages 16-20, for very personal reasons, but i couldn't really tell you what i think of it now. while automatic-contrarianism (this is bad therefore = it is punk = it is good) was pretty liberating at the time (and still is now and then) it starts to gall after a while.

i don't think it exists anymore - it seems grotesque to say that sonic youth or sleater-kinney or whoever are "punk" - any more than '50s rock'n'roll still exists; it was the product of a moment and that moment is lost.

my favorites were always the sex pistols, in part because i think NMTB is still the ultimate pop record, in part because of lydon, who remains the most fascinating stage performer ever. (are they a hard band to love? the distaste for them expressed in these answers, and among a lot of people i know, suggests so.)

i HATED the "stupid"/hedonistic side of punk - sid vicious, iggy pop*, "please kill me," et al - with a passion. no better than jim morrison - in fact, considerably worse, since it lacked even JM's occasional idiot elegance. metal bands always did that routine better.

*i do like the iggy of "funhouse," which seems barely comparable to the one who made the other records.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I'm 24 and to answer your question: it hasn't. Punk is a style of clothing, as far as I'm concerned (you dress punk when you're feeling rebellious and noisy).

I tune out when the conversation turns to punk, because it means we're about two minutes from someone getting all, "In the good old days..." or bringing up Avril Lavigne.

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

(Slightly late... oh, and I'm only recently 30.) When I was 14 I bought a Sex Pistols badge and wore it proudly to school despite the fact that I'd never actually heard anything by them (and when I did, I didn't really like it... also, I was much mocked for being a wussy kid with a Sex Pistols badge) - it seemed very important as an idea of rebellion when I hadn't really realised that rebellion was an option. Then I started listening to the Damned and was puzzled that they didn't really seem to fulfil the ideals that I'd read about, which I found elsewhere in Riot Grrl-tinged indie (eg DIY, rejecting conventional society, being actually quite surprising to listen to...) I think getting into punk at an impressionable age made me stop liking pop for a while, but got me into actually caring about music.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

It hasn't affected me at all as far as I can tell, but it has affected modern music as the ideas are still held up as a sort of ideal for a rock band, so a lot of young ones revere and imitate them. The ideas are actually a little closer to my musical views than indie music as there isn't so much emphasis on musical talent as fun and innovation, but there's still the focus on guitars and masculinity which puts me off all rock music.