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

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i) punk means the music of the previous generation is obsolete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.