For some, Punk is an idea, for others it’s a sound, and for others it’s defined by political opposition to the established regimes.
For myself, Punk is an idea. You’ve got an idea, and the normal ways of expressing yourself or achieving that idea don’t fit at all. In order to make your point, you’ve got to cross some lines by blowing right past them. To borrow an idea from Breaking Bad: half measures won’t do, you gotta destroy that boundary for it to mean anything to the world. I do realize that by my definition the first Punks were probably the early to mid 20th century visual artists, or perhaps Stravinsky. So it goes. History isn’t neat and tidy.
In the case of Punk Rock Music, your idea has to be musical. Lots of people expressed unpopular ideas, political and social, long before anyone called anyone a Punk Rocker. A good political example of a political non-punk might be Woody Guthrie. I love his music dearly. He wrote beautiful, impassioned songs about ideas that meant a lot to him, but I wouldn’t call him a Punk Folkie. Musically, his work isn’t very adventurous.
Sometimes, your time as a Punk is temporary. The grunge bands’ first few albums were punk, IMHO. To play that way at that time was crossing a line. People just didn’t glorify Blue Cheer and The Stooges at that time. After it became established as a popular form, they weren’t even pushing any boundaries. They were still making good Rock 'n Roll records, but they weren’t really quite Punk to me.
Conversely, you could be a punk forever. Mark Mothersbaugh said that when he started, he pitied all of the Rock bands. Devo was playing something new, and it would replace Rock. Devo has never stopped pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a Rock Band, and they’ll forever be honorary Punk Rockers as long as Devo isn’t a genre. (Hmm, Aphex Twin and Dan Deacon may make that a genre of three. I’ve never thought of that before!)
Real punk rock is a specific type of music, what you would have heard at The Cuckoos Nest in the OC. The music has since been diluted. Its really not that different from the thread about the restaurant that exploits rap,white middle class folks who want to imagine they are rebelling against the system while at the same time embracing it. .
Punk was a specific type of music; politically and socially aware. Most of what Americans consider Punk is power pop that has as much to do with punk as New Kids on the Block have to do with rap’
I agree with your post in that thread, ** WordMan**. However, I personally feel that if Punk Rock is a concept that is based around a certain point and time, it’s useful to historians, but not very useful to me as an artist. What I create is still going to have what I consider a Punk ethos at its core: If it doesn’t push the edges of something, it’s not worth doing. Others had this idea before me, and didn’t call it “Punk”, I live after its advent, so I do.
So, punk rock can only exist in your mind when it involves a specific area in a specific time madsircool? What would that mean to me as a musician? (I’ll remind you that The Ramones did play there) I think that Scratch Acid will take the Punk Rock Pepsi Challenge with anything you have to offer, music by the Butthole Surfers and Crust probably makes it look pretty damn pedestrian by comparison.
For me it was a time and a place - for me very late 76 into 77.
A completely exhilarating experience seeing the music press turned on its head inside 6 weeks, indeed the whole musical world totally redefined, every aspect of contemporary music scared to death of its seemingly overnight irrelevance; it was a total cultural blitzkrieg.
Utterly brilliant, hyper-energised days for teenagers; a great time to be alive - really alive, changing-your-world alive. What defines it: Never Mind the Bollocks, released October 77.
I agree with BrokenBriton’s concept, but not the time and place. The place was New York, and the time was late 1975 through 1976. What defines it: fast, loud, simple, maybe a little stupid.
Except the NY version didn’t meaningfully impact the dominant culture; people talk about the New York Dolls, etc, but for most of the US it was just a freak show.
That’s cool, but only some bands were stupid, like, say The Ramones. Talking Heads and Television, otoh, were definitely not.
Here’s my initial post from that other thread, for easy access (I know you’ve read this years ago Crotalus…)
[QUOTE=me]
It depends on how you define Punk:
if you define Punk as the “music, art and social movement that started in the early 70’s in New York (with influences from other cities like Detroit and Cleveland, and then moved to London, etc.) that got its name from Punk magazine” - then HELL YEAH Blondie is punk!! Back then punk was NOT a music style - it was a mindset. Bands like Suicide, Blondie, Television, The Ramones, Talking Heads, The Dictators, The Dead Boys, etc. all sounded very different - and that was the point. They were friends hanging out in a cool scene, bringing different styles of music to the big Punk mixing pot. In this context, saying Blondie isn’t punk would be like saying Ben Franklin isn’t a Founding Father because he never became President.
if you define Punk the way it is viewed now - strictly as a music style defined by simple, powerful songs, hard n’ fast guitars, a snotty delivery and a predictable wardrobe, well, then no Blondie isn’t punk. When they got signed, they worked with top producers, who used better production approaches vs. say the Ramones who produced their first album for a few hundred bucks in a few days. Blondie’s smoother production, using a strictly music definition, is more New Wave.
“New Wave” as a phrase, came in to favor as a way of saying “punk-ish, but without any of that pesky danger that freaks out parents and record companies.” I suspect that Blondie saw what the Ramones were going through in the fallout from the Sex Pistols (“punk” became an ostracized idea at the time, and since the Ramones were clearly labeled punk, they got written off. Johnny Ramone indicated that he felt their career took a massive hit when the London punks scared everyone. I have no doubt that Blondie saw this and chose a less controversial path - not knowing that “punk” would be defined in a very specific way that might not include them down the road…)
My $.02…oh, and Biggirl, I have said this on a few threads: if you are the least bit interested in Punk or just excellent music writing, I can’t recommend Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk by McNeil (the guy who coined the term Punk) and McCain strongly enough. Great read.
Disclaimer: I have not followed Punk since Sid died.
However, in my unsupported opinion, Punk is a mindset and an attitude of rebellion against the mindless, “middle-class” status quo. Punk Rock is a genre of music which expresses this attitude. I have no idea who exemplifies Punk Rock at this time, as I am not the target demographic for rebellion, but I do not believe any “successful” group can be authentic Punk. Any group that the mainstream has heard of is likely to be too enmeshed in the commercial world to be legitimately outsiders.
Never Mind the Bollocks defines Musical Punk for me, too (I’m aware of the pre-dating NY scene and I don’t care). It’s a historic artefact, but that doesn’t preclude any modern torchbearers.
Punk, the Idea, is rebellion and a DIY aesthetic, combined.
I definitely think there is punk that is more power poppy stuff, and that there is punk that is very serious and wears its politics and social commentary on its sleeve. Both can exist within the same umbrella term for the genre. The idea that the Ramones are not punk, no matter how bubblegummy they can be, sounds like historical revisionism to me. To me, punk rock is more-or-less an extension of 60s-era garage rock. I was born in the mid-70s, so I wasn’t around for it, but was there anyone at the time who didn’t consider the Ramones to be “punk”?
Most punks I knew would have considered such a limiting definition extremely un-punk. Don’t know when you grew up, but punk was always more about DIY and freedom from traditional music industry ideas of what constituted pop or rock than rigid adherence to form/lyrical content when I was in the scene (early-late 80s). Sounds to me like you’re talking about hardcore, some of which was great, and a lot of which was boring precisely because it was so rigid in its “rules”. I can tell you people who were power pop fans (Big Star, Marshall Crenshaw, Shoes, The dBs) at the time didn’t consider the Ramones or the Buzzcocks part of that movement, despite the non-political lyrics (actually, the Ramones had plenty of politics thrown into their songs, usually in a way that was more clever and overt). Even among hardcore/post-hardcore '80s bands, most reasonable people would have considered The Descendents or Husker Du punk, despite lyrics dealing mostly with relationships. If you weren’t around at the time, it’s hard to understand that just the act of playing or being interested in such music was seen as an attack on the status quo (I got beat up a few times for the way I dressed).
In short, I completely disagree with your definition.
Punk is an attitude - one that is basically “We don’t give a fuck what you think, here’s our music”. That attitude encompasses The Shaggs, The Stooges, The Ramones, Buzzcocks, The Birthday Party and The Cocteau Twins (and many others - see Aphex Twin etc). Look at Television: they were in one of the cities where the whole “punk” thing happened, at the right time and place and what did they do - beautiful duelling guitar solos. Punk as fuck.
Punk Rock is a myth term made by the media, and repeated by those who follow the media. Did the Pistol’s and Clash ever call themselves punk ? I think they found the term pretty useless, you can check that on google.
By this “definition” early Pink Floyd (and many other '60s psychedelic bands, who were transgressing all sorts of both musical, social, and political barriers) were punk, and the Ramones and the Sex Pistols (who were not in the least “musically adventurous”) were not. I don’t think so.
And as MrDibble pointed out, modern punk usually has a DIY element as well. I left that off. Not to mention, that I disagree strongly with your idea of who is musically adventurous.
The Ramones were probably the first band who stripped all the unnecessary parts from rock, and blasted through 30 songs in 30 minutes. They were the first rock band who acted like their show was going set a land speed record, and they were gonna floor it and try. That was enough of an innovation that they were hated by many of their contemporaries.
Pink Floyd is a good example of a temporary punk band. They were pretty darn punk for the first few records. By the time they’re releasing their rock operas, not so much. After 1972 or so, there’s not much musical adventure going on there. In contrast, their very punk rock contemporaries, The Red Krayola never stopped being Punk Rockers as far as I can tell.
The Shaggs as a Punk Rock band, Baron Greenback? Ok, I’ll go with it, as long as we agree that they were rebelling against either the entire concept that they should be playing music, or their dad. I think you can make an easy case for either. He had made them form a band on the advice of a palm reader, and they were never even interested in being musicians. I believe they broke up immediately after his death.
IMHO being a punk is call out the status quo and attempt to break it. You can use music, poetry, art, really anything. Punk Rock is that in the veneer of Rock, loud, bombastic and obnoxious. IOW “rage against the dying of the light”
Woody Guthrie was a punk, read the lyrics to “this land is your land”
Merle Haggard is a punk, “Working mans blues” is “working on a clampdown” for a different audience
Pop Punk is not punk at all, IMHO it has the veneer of “punk sound” without the meaning
IMHO the Sex Pistols were not Punks because they were a marketing device to sell Malcolm McLaren’s(sp?) clothes from his shop but John Lydon and PIL are.