I guess she does have a point, though. I mean, they both seem to be/have been there to fill a place that needs a specific image with little talent.
Like I’ve said before, I wouldn’t have a problem with the girl, and probably wouldn’t know anything about her at all, except that she is just like every other “pop princess” out there, only in spiked bracelets and thick eyeliner. She and her fans seem to think that she’s a punk rock revolutionary. The next time I hear a little girl proclaim that “It’s great to finally have a female punk role model to look up to!!!” I’m going to scream.
Well, for someone that intent on making sure evryone has their label right, you know fuck all about emo. well, TGUK are emo, but please, Good Charlotte?
Hmm… I’m seeing an awful lot of upset in this thread. Has anyone noticed that Avril is a pop singer? She associates herself with punk as a marketing gimmick. It’s no secret. That’s why Jennifer Lopez does “Jenny From The Block” and it’s why Pepsi put Britney on their cans and it’s why Nike sponsered Michael Jordan. Someone wants to associate themselves with X to make themselves appear more like X.
But who gives a fuck? There has always been bubblegum pop, there always will be and who really cares? Are you suprised that there is an artist who seems a little manufactured in the charts? Is it so shocking? I can’t believe that anyone who listens to serious music even bothers complaining about her. Hey guess what, guys: It was big news back in the 60s when the Monkees didn’t play their own instruments. If you haven’t noticed by now you must have been living under a rock.
As shitty pop acts go, Avril’s kinda cool. She’s cute, she amuses endlessly with her attempts to come off as punk, and she says ‘aboot’. And your complaining about her?
I mean, hey “Bright Eyes isn’t worth the hype” or “Has anyone noticed that the latest crop of new rock bands are derivative and tired” I could understand, but I fail to see why anyone with an interest in non-pop music would be jumping up and down shrieking “oh calamity, Avril Lavigne will be the death of us all”.
That’s because the age and experience belongs to her producers and the songwriters who provide the music for her and create her sound.
She is a young vocalist with marketable charisma who seems to be able to sing on key better than Britney Spears. She’s also apparently quite driven and has always wanted to be a performer, so she has a knack for putting on a good show.
Sure, she’s a music industry creation.
Sure, her punk posturing is totally contrived.
Sure, she is a carefully packaged, market-researched product and a cynical ploy to make money.
Sure, she says dumb things sometimes.
Does any of this come as any surprise ? This is what the music industry do and have done for years. Everything in the last 20 has an element of it, no matter how anti-establishment the credentials presented. And she’s just a teen along for the ride. I’m sure she’s having fun, but she’s not the one in control.
She says dumb things sometimes cos that’s what teens do. Fortunately, most don’t get to do it on TV.
IMHO the music is bouncy, inoffensive and disposable and she’s kind of cute. It’s exactly what pop should be. No-one’s expecting her to be a figure-head for a social movement or to produce epoch-defining music.
Clearly, we need a list of female singers who are punk, now. Just to wash the taste out.
Joan Jett count? She’s got the three-chord talent, the attitude.
Oh, and forgive me, but what is wrong with Offspring? I rather like them. Their fir… their first popular album (There were two earlier, I didn’t like them as much), had some good tunes that really reminded me of the Lebanese style that Dick Dale brought to Surf Rock. Ixnay is full of good solid rock, especially “Cool To Hate”, and Americana was an interesting tour through 1970s popular rock stylings. I caught Simon and Garfunkle and reggae, as well as some other specific stylings I can’t recall at 9 AM on it. The most recent wasn’t as good, but “Want You Bad” is a darn good song.
Are they manufactured? Are they too musically educated to be punk? They’re certainly deeper than effing Blink 182.
I don’t know where you guys are from, but here in Indy punk rock is far from dead.
Check this out:
I despise Awful Lavigne. She mispronounced Bowie’s name and then laughed it off like she’d never heard of him. “Omigawd, like I didn’t know how to pronounce it. Like, I can’t believe I am nominated for grammy’s, what a rush, dood.”
My 2cents re: Punk. My only qualification for comment being involvement in the DC early and mid 80’s hardcore scene: 9:30, Rock Against Reagan (Racism) on the mall, etc. watching Fugazi, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Seven Seconds, Meatmen, and all the rest. Any errors or omissions should be promptly blamed on a few too many kicks to the head from stage-diving skinheads.
Is punk dead? Positively not. It is an attitude and a lifestyle and cannot be placed within the borders of a particular historical context (though the pedigree of today’s bands should be fully explored and appreciated by the youngins). However, the folks in this discussion a putting Punk and Hardcore in the same category. I would submit that they are appreciably different. Punk may be a parent of hardcore, but can encompass a number of sub-genres such as Mod, Goth, and some would even go so far as to say Ska. Is anyone doing anything in Hardcore that has not been done already and done better 20 years ago. Not that I have heard. Are there punks today? Certainly. I will not claim to know their names, as they are probably languishing in some forgotten club somewhere. And the last thing they probably do is call themselves “punk”. Generally, the sooner someone starts crying out about how very punk they are, they have joined the pathetic society of poseurs. Ms. Lavigne appears to fail this test and so sight unseen and music unheard, I can feel safe in the assertion that she is not punk. A good overview at:
Can women be punk? You bet your ass. Patti Smith for example. someone try to convince me that she was not punk please.
As far as Blink-182 and Green Day and such. I will admit that I like them. I don’t know if I would classify them as punk, but they are paying proper homage to the roots of punk (which I would say belongs solely in the UK with the Pistols and the Clash).
Now I will quitely return to lurking…(be gentle with me :D)
OK bdgr. Can I assume you are referring to the Ramones, or perhaps the Stooges or New York Dolls? THe Ramones I would say have the best claim of the Americans in the running, and the [url=http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=1:54:29|PM&sql=1the|Ramones]AMG site
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agrees with that:
I tend to have politics inextricably entwined with punk, and thus my assertion that the Pistols and Clash began it all. Without the politics, it’s all a lotta “Fuck You” instead of “Fuck the Establishment”. I don’t know who could posit a definition of punk that all would agree to, so perhaps the arguement is moot.
agrees with that:
I tend to have politics inextricably entwined with punk, and thus my assertion that the Pistols and Clash began it all. Without the politics, it’s all a lotta “Fuck You” instead of “Fuck the Establishment”. I don’t know who could posit a definition of punk that all would agree to, so perhaps the arguement is moot.
CTB **
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Yeah, them among others…Like I keep saying, the bands did not define punk. Punk itself, as a subculture, started in the US, the limeys took it a bit farther, then it revived itself over here…
The best definition of punk I ever read was in the punk testament of the boomer bible. Great book, that. Unfortuneatley I dont have a copy here at work with me, or I would quote some of it.
The gist of the whole punk thing, at least for me and mine, wasnt so much anti government, or anti establishment, but pretty much that society as a whole has become so screwed that the whole thing pretty much needs to be scrapped, we should start from scratch and just make a new one. The political thing was a result of that attitude…An offshoot, not the driving force(if there was one particular driving force…there wasnt).
A great deal of punk music, and punks themselves had nothing to do with politics…We considered political movements to be boring hippie crap, that didnt work anyway…I mean really, if you expected to change anything politically, would you wear a mohawk and bondage pants? Nobody is going to take you seriously and you didnt expect them to…We would have settled for being left the hell alone. Shocking people and mocking the goverment was good fun, but politics?..Boring.
Of course I can only speak from my own experiances…and I wasnt there from the start…
It sounds like punk was (and is?) whatever it needed to be for those of us who embraced it. I am not sure where you are posting from, so perhaps the political aspect was so prevalent in my memories because I grew up with the DC scene. Something about shouting out in a loud voice to the powers that be that “we know what you are up to” was cathartic and energizing. Of course the powers that were didn’t really give a shit, but back then it sure felt like they just might.
However it happened, I just glad it did.
There was some of that around here too, but if you had asked any of us who our biggest problems iwere it would have been:
[list=1]
[li]Skinheads, (of the Nazi variety anyway)[/li][li]Rednecks[/li][li]Cops[/li][li]Preppie Jocks[/li][/list=1]
And way down the list somewhere would be the government. In redneck USA, we had real, honest to god in your face people trying to kill us…Which may have something to do with it.
NOTE: Not all all cops were a problem, we had a few that we were relieved to see when something happened,and one who even stood up for us against other cops on a particularly bad night. I saw him the other day…nice guy…
You’re not looking hard enough. Microsoft has a two-page spread in this week’s ComputerWorld magazine touting VisualStudio.NET as their wonderful new way to “get out of DLL Hell” – “DLL Hell” being, of course, a miasma entirely of Microsoft’s making. Boiled down to its essence, the message of the ad is “Come buy our great new solution to problems that resulted from the design of stuff we already sold you.”
And it’s not just Microsoft. Consider the growth of anti-spam software, which is in its own way an attempt by the software industry to profit from offering a solution to a problem that arose from the way people used the software industry’s earlier products.
She’s a cutie. Of course she’s no authentic punk, or anything else for that matter. No one is anymore. Why should she know anything abou the Pistols? They broke up 7 years before she was born. Bowie stopped mattering around the same time. Actually, her total lack of respect for such “important” artists is the most punk thing about her.
I won’t argue that her music is anything other than bad, but that’s not what this thread is about. Since when did being a punk require a healthy respect for your elders and a firm grasp of history?