Punk comes first from “no virtuosos”, anti-rockstar posturing, back to basics, and other anti social signals. This is the beginning. To define it you start from there and work forward. At one time there was punk and rock and the twain were divided, in high schools across america. Still later it also means lo-fi indie in spirit. Maybe it means loud and fast. Aggressive.
It’s a signifier for “street”, “aggressive”, and style-consciousness of a certain type, although punk started with no uniforms. A contradiction. It has internal contradictions too: Commercialism, sex, etc etc. How do you define it without talking about this?
All rock music can’t go back to punk, that is, if one is going to say punk was anything at all, for the word to have some meaning, beyond just self-regard about one’s music.
So now people live up to whatever part of the ethos they want to, to varying degrees, to suit their agenda.
Punk comes from a “DIY, make your own scene” spirit. A lack of ability was simply cited as one example of something that should not hold a true punk back. The fact that it pissed folks off didn’t hurt. But there are too many great players, and too much variety across the punk genre to claim that a lack of ability actually matters.
Punk can be simplistically reduced to a genre of music with a Ramones/Green Day feel. But folks who invest the time will always think of Punk as a DIY mindset much more than a music recipe book.
Agreed. Punk is (IMO), defined by DIY, whether it is ‘practised’ or refined or not is missing the point. I mostly play harsh noise. I consider that punk.
If it’s played too well it stops sounding “punk” to me. Why not just call it rock?
Punk was outsiders expressing themselves. It had nothing to do with hard rock supremacy for boys. It was the home for the other kids, the weird, the ones who didn’t fit in. By the time punk happened mainstream rock was in the domain of the jocks, bullies, and morons of all stripes. Do you have to have been there to tell the diff between the pistols and fucking nugent? Audiences could hear the corruscation then. Can they hear it today?
The energy to break out like that is punk, for bad and good and for all the hypocrisy, posing and phonies, that ensue later.
BTW I get calling yourself punk now. I’d do it if I felt like it made sense to me. I get having a philosophy about it. But I think that sometimes those philosophies are not that “rigorous” and the answer to that might be to define it like we are doing here.
Ok, I don’t mind. Just don’t tell me what “punk” means to me.
Do-it-yourself, as in self-taught, independent practice and production. So by definition, outside of mainstream, established music industry. What you seem to misunderstand is that there’s nothing precluding DIY (or “punk” for that matter) from being well done.
I record everything from my main mixer at below peak-level, so my recordings are clean. Does that mean that my production methods are too “clean” to be punk?
You remind me a bit of the band-mates of an exceptionally talented drummer-friend of mine. They took away his toms, because “toms aren’t punk!”
I consider Luigi Russolo “punk”.
For me, “punk” is more about an attitude towards music, expression and production than exactly how it gets expressed or produced. This need of yours to complicate this pretty straight forward definition with arbitrary rules also remind me of the old, tired and completely unnecessary debate on what constitutes art in the world of so-called “fine art”.
Plum: I’m not making any rules, if you read me again you will see. I’m saying why it exists in the first place.It is outsiders, basically. (Without making rules about it, you could probably say: conventional wisdom addicts, lickspittles, and unctuous overexplainers are probably not punk.) That’s why I have a feeling that, notwithstanding all the verbiage here, there is very little punk. This site has the effect of a CW enforcing machine. It is almost quaint to hear people on here pontificate about music they can’t place in context with the music it was made against. It’s like a cultural blender where you lose the details of everything.
I’m trying to say, if you’re a hard rock fan, that the music you love was probably one of the reasons punk was made. To say how much they fucking hated it. Can you deal with that? Does it inform your playing at all? I’m saying that if you’re a hard rock dominion fanboy, or a freeform freakout player, you can call what you do punk but it sounds ignorant.
Punk was not freeform music. It was a response to the boredom of prog and it’s rituals, and the pretense of metal. The freedom of punk was against the self indulgence. It was not in favor of it. How can you be punk and not know that?
You seem to think I said something about the quality of DIY. I didn’t. (I was a lo fi Guided By Voices fan in the 90s FWIW.) The actual issue is that people are people, and not doctrines. If you get high listening to the playback you might have an extra tolerance for a little boredom, and let it out. Pil is a good example. That’s not associated with recording budgets.
Punk was made of contradictions. Only a fool would argue punk doctrines in a proscriptive way. If you call yourself punk, why? What do you think punk is? “An attitude to the music” is very thin soup isn’t it?
While a variety of sub-genres of rock fit into whatever punk is… I think at the core you have to be unapologetic about whatever it is that your band is and at least have the illusion that you are sincere & passionate about the music you are making. I submit Misfits and The Replacements. Wildly different bands, both embraced as punk icons. Both unapologetic, sincere and passionate (in very different ways).
Oh, and it helps if your singer is like… not a great singer.
Hah, maybe your should reread your own posts. You seem confused after all your backpedaling. An origin of something (or the original intent behind a movement/genre/you name it) is not the sole defining characteristic of that something, by the way.
YMMV. Not much more to say, to be honest. When I regularly went to punk concerts, lots of metal heads would show up. Some metal bands would play. This summer I saw a hardcore punk band mixing it up with black metal. Heck, one time I saw a punk band playing exclusively on commodore’s!
Was, was, was! It still exists in various forms!
No, you said punk couldn’t sound “practiced”. That has been refuted several times.
I’ve told you what I think punk is. It’s a diverse genre of many different characteristics. Some which you have highlighted in this thread, and others you’ve called “not punk”.
My definition (emphasis on “my”) is in my first post in this thread. If you define something solely out of your perception of the origins of something, then yes, it is arbitrary.
All in all, it is as if you’re arguing all mushrooms have to be red and have white spots, or it ain’t a mushroom.
Rat Scabies considered toms as somewhat of a visual indicator of virtuosity. The more toms, the more accomplished the drummer. I’d like for someone to explain to me how he wasn’t a punk drummer.
Love the guy, but I’d still just call him a punk drummer with an evidently off-kilter view of toms - quite often it’s “the more the toms the more the wanker”, and by NO means an indicator of skill.
He had a floor tom and one more. He wasn’t completely out there. One of the craziest noise-drummers I’ve seen had around fifteen (maybe more) different crashes and cymbals that he threw, banged and flung in, on and around his drum set and his stands. He also had guitar pedals, a bunch of mics and some electronics with him. I’d call that pretty punk too.
A fair point. For me he’s Punk’s Keith Moon so my views are clearly skewed. But my point was “if X isn’t punk, then why does one of the punkest punks goo himself over X”. I should be more clear in my posts. Perhaps I should set my computer on fire while posting.
Given a choice between REAL angry young blue collar musicians and rich/middle class intellectual kids PRETENDING to be angry young punks, bet on this: critics will always prefer the pretenders.
Black Sabbath were genuine angry street kids. Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell were bored rich kids with intellectual pretensions. Which group did critics champion?
I have no idea what to do with this. I get your point: Sabbath had to create a whole genre of music (with plenty of others) to get a bit of critical approbation.
But Television’s Marquee Moon is simply an excellent album, end to end. I have no problem liking both them and Black Sabbath at this point as do most who know both. Not sure why this needs to be discussed in the already-exhausting topic.
I don’t know where you said what punk is but I bet it’s just as vague as this is, citing “somewhere else”
I never made any proscriptive statement for players. Punk just doesn’t sound practiced to me. Rock has become practiced. Why don’t you just admit you’re rock? Things are not going to be punk to someone else because you need or want them to be.
It isn’t punk to define it and argue on to some kind of thread victory.
That’s “rock.” You need to get comfortable with that. Everything you do and say sounds like rock to me.
Punks DNA is snotty, rude, satirical, outsider/underground/gay, and learning how to play. If it changed to something else and kept the name why is that interesting?
I told you why I think it means something. Why does it mean what you think it does?
He wasn’t completely out there. One of the craziest noise-drummers I’ve seen had around fifteen (maybe more) different crashes and cymbals that he threw, banged and flung in, on and around his drum set and his stands. He also had guitar pedals, a bunch of mics and some electronics with him. I’d call that pretty punk too.