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

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i agree abt "music they loved", i just think they shd be a bit less triumphalist abt "music they loved which has also coincidentally gone down as history's winnahs", since i know (from my own and everyone else's experiences) that they earlier loved all the things they later hated! so they shd tell us abt that too!

i'm not sure that academic feminism was an issue at all - this is 15-yr-olds we're talkin abt for starters, plus AF didn't get online as something to shy away from till the early 80s really

it was more that it was accessibly DIY feminism -- as in "haha TAMPAX!" type behaviour, which agreeably freaked everyone out plus having a (mild but clear) element of social-political energy to it... you didn't have to join consciousness-raising groups or be active in any way more tedious than how you looked and acted as you walked down the street

(i wz v.quiet and shy and watchful -- my punkiness wz all internal)

[perfectputsch.livejournal.com]

well i was reading up on feminism when i was 15 - largely prompted by Bikini Kill and Hole records (which i got off a 60 year old, weirdly lol). but its interesting because a lot of girls i know wouldnt want to read up on feminism particularly, or even actively distance themselves from it because they think it means being a lesbian or wearing buttons up to the collar, or it'll just put boys off or something. but when they're listening to a lot of music by girls right now, be it Shystie or Kathleen Hanna, they're getting real feminist ideas almost without knowing it, like its slipped in their soup and its still affecting the way they think and encouraging them to stand up for themselves.

i suppose girl punk, or girl rock or whatever, is a sort of feminism that said everything without having to write it down and persuade someone to read it - like you said be active in a way that wasnt tedious. i suppose the image of a girl onstage doing her thing and wearing something outrageous paints a thousand words and is maybe a better form of expression than some essay in a journal no one outside academia will read.

so i think musical expression is a good vehicle feminism for that reason - coz young girls (and boys) dont necessarily want to read books but will get all their cues from female bands and want all the records they can get their hands on. its a good way of communicating a message.