# What is Punk?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 8, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896 "2011-08-08T02:06:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 6
### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/101 "2011-08-12T12:04:20Z")
> [@Steophan](#):
>
> You are focusing purely on the music, and missing the point entirely.
I have no idea what point you are getting at, but anything that leads someone to conclude that Patti Smith wasn’t punk is a non-starter.
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### Author:  [@punch\_line\_loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/punch_line_loser)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/102 "2011-08-12T12:05:31Z")
I dunno man, I’m just not feeling it with that Clash song. Truth be told I’m not too into most of the “canonical” punk bands - if given the choice, I’ll probably listen to Gang of Four or Television over the Ramones pretty much any day of the week.
And **Steophan** , don’t misunderstand me. Of course the extramusical factors are important, but it’s foolish to equate originating a look associated with punk with originating the movement itself.
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### Author:  [@Suil\_Dubh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suil_Dubh)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/103 "2011-08-12T12:06:44Z")
> [@Steophan](#):
>
> You can’t discuss punk without discussing what it looks like - the image is at least as important as the music. I get that you don’t like that, and that you’re coming at the question from the point of view of a self-identified punk. But you need to try to look at it from the outside, as you would any other movement.
_shoots by on bicycle_
Don’t forget the British acceeent…
_rides away again_
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### Author:  [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/104 "2011-08-12T12:17:37Z")
> [@punch\_line\_loser](#):
>
> And **Steophan** , don’t misunderstand me. Of course the extramusical factors are important, but it’s foolish to equate originating a look associated with punk with originating the movement itself.
Your question in the OP asks “What is Punk?” Not “What music can be considered punk?” My answer is that punk is a musical and fashion movement that started in England in 1976. Patti Smith, The Ramones or Television were not part of this movement, although they may have inspired it.
To see a more extreme version of this difference, look at goth. Goth as a movement or identity, and Gothic Rock, have a pretty small overlap, far less than with punk, but in the same way Punk Rock is not identical with punk, the movement.
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### Author:  [@punch\_line\_loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/punch_line_loser)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/105 "2011-08-12T13:02:44Z")
> [@Steophan](#):
>
> Your question in the OP asks “What is Punk?” Not “What music can be considered punk?” My answer is that punk is a musical and fashion movement that started in England in 1976. Patti Smith, The Ramones or Television were not part of this movement, although they may have inspired it.
>
> To see a more extreme version of this difference, look at goth. Goth as a movement or identity, and Gothic Rock, have a pretty small overlap, far less than with punk, but in the same way Punk Rock is not identical with punk, the movement.
That’s also a really stupid assertion. Punk is a lot of things, but it is not, nor is it limited to, a “musical and fashion movement that started in England in 1976.” Neither the music nor the fashion originated in England, nor did it originate in 1976 - no evidence has been provided which refutes those facts, nor is there any convincing proof that supports them. So where the hell do you get a stupid idea like that? Your Goth connection doesn’t work because the Gothic aesthetic existed more than a century before Gothic rock developed, and like punk it is an aesthetic that began in one form (in this case literature) and eventually grew to encompass other things like fashion, music, even ideology.
Does anyone have thoughts about what punk means aside from disputes about dates and its superficial aspects?
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### Author:  [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/106 "2011-08-12T14:01:01Z")
> [@WordMan](#):
>
> I have no idea what point you are getting at, but anything that leads someone to conclude that Patti Smith wasn’t punk is a non-starter.
Did somebody’s middle school assign a summer project called “The Punk Movement”? Are we helping these whippersnappers with their homework?
The Bay City Rollers & Bruce Springsteen are Punk? Patti Smith isn’t?
C minus…
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/107 "2011-08-12T14:12:51Z")
Actually, I think I’ve got it. Steophan has confused New Wave with Punk.
Either that, or he’s off somewhere else. Given that he’s aware enough that he knows catalog numbers of records, I’m voting for maybe obsessive that doesn’t know the difference between a butterfly pinned on a board and one flying free. Records are the viral infection of punk, they’re a way to spread it. They’re not punk.
As far as Princess Black-Eye’s bike… get a Vespa, you mod!
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### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/108 "2011-08-12T14:27:24Z")
> [@Steophan](#):
>
> Your question in the OP asks “What is Punk?” Not “What music can be considered punk?” My answer is that punk is a musical and fashion movement that started in England in 1976.
Enjoy your answer. Are you really trying to frame that as “fact” or is this some provocative statement you like to make because you think it stirs the pot? It has no basis in reality.
**punch line** - hang on; two different things: you are more than welcome to say “it isn’t doing it for me” - your call. BUT, you didn’t comment on whether the song was “melodic and catchy” - more a question of songcraft than taste.
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### Author:  [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/109 "2011-08-12T15:07:05Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#):
>
> (I’m pretty sure Richard Hell, Kolak, but fuck uniforms. Uniforms are the opposite of punk.)
> [@punch\_line\_loser](#):
>
> **E-Sabbath** is right. Richard Hell (of the Voidoids, Malcolm McLaren’s acknowledged model for the Sex Pistols once he took over their management) was wearing distressed clothes long before the Sex Pistols even formed, and Suicide had already made it central to their image half a decade or more before.
Yes indeed it was Richard Hell. And I agree 100% with the point you are both making here. I have no more interest in establishing who was the first punk than you guys.
I was putting that info out there though because I knew at some point someone would make a misinformed statement like the following:
> [@Steophan](#):
>
> Your question in the OP asks “What is Punk?” Not “What music can be considered punk?” My answer is that punk is a musical and fashion movement that started in England in 1976.
**Steophan** , if punk is a “musical and fashion movement that started in England in 1976” how are you going to explain away someone like Richard Hell who was wearing that type of fashion and playing that type of music as far back as 1974? Is it because he isn’t British? What other type of qualifiers would you like to through in now to contort the facts to fit your argument?
Also, are you prepared to dismiss the fact the song Blank Generation was ranked as one of the all-time top ten punk songs in a 2006 poll of original British punk figures like Glen Matlock, Mark Perry and Geoff Travis? Oh, and my source for this tidbit is the _Rough Guide to Punk_. And McLaren has made statements showing Hell and the other New York were punk as far as he was concerned.
Odd, but I think I’ll take the opinions of the people who were there a bit more seriously.
So, basically what we have here is “Punk is a purely British phenomenon” = FAIL.
Damn but those facts can be pesky things.
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### Author:  [@Small\_Clanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Clanger)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/110 "2011-08-12T15:46:27Z")
I think we have a I say tomatoes you say _tomatoes_ problem here. There _was_ a distinct British (English mostly) movement that happened around 76/77 (I was there) it was over by ’78. Maybe we need a specific term for that? It was an explosion. Start of 1976, no punk bands, end of 1977 _thousands_ of them.
What an American means by ‘punk’ in 2011 couldn’t say. I can tell you what it means to an English person who was a teenager in 76/77.
It did not include any American bands at the time, the Ramones &c got included after the fact. It certainly didn’t include American lady poets. For a defining moment in (English) punk look up the _Bill Grundy Incident_, got the Pistols quite a high profile that did. Not much to do with music either.
> [@punch line loser](#):
>
> Neither the music nor the fashion originated in England
Some aspects of the style and music had some (indirect) roots in American bands, the Pistols definitely nicked attitude from the New York Dolls\* but they didn’t sound much like them. A lot of the fashion not only came specifically from England, but specifically from a bunch of Pistols fans from Bromley, a South-East London\*\* suburb. A lot of bands were inspired directly by the Pistols (a couple of gigs at the Manchester Free Trade Hall are sort of legendary) but again didn’t sound like _them_. Although a lot of bands sound like they owe something to the Ramones I think a lot of that is of necessity. If you only know one chord your guitar style options are pretty limited. There’s only so many ways to play fast three and a half chord rock, The Damned and Buzzcocks for example are doing that but they do it English-ly. Or in the case of the Undertones, Irish-ly.
I should add a note about the influence of a DJ\*\*\* called John Peel who switched from ‘old school’ prog-rock etc to ::cough:: “championing” early punk bands. English, Irish, Scottish bands. Local bands for local people, all very home grown.
Passing shot. I never personally thought of The Clash as punk (course they were) they were too competent and they played reggae for Pete’s sake. At the time you either went for one or the other, Clash or Pistols\*\*\*\*
- They had a spot on the BBC rock show _The Old Grey Whistle Test_ which probably helped to insirpe some English punk. Mostly because they were fucking awful.
\*\* Desperately unfashionable, then and now.
\*\*\* That’s massively understating it, Peel was an institution.
\*\*\*\* That is, my poser schoolmates did, at the time I preferred Pink Floyd.
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### Author:  [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/111 "2011-08-12T15:48:03Z")
> [@punch\_line\_loser](#):
>
> Does anyone have thoughts about what punk means aside from disputes about dates and its superficial aspects?
Others have touched on this but for me punk was/is at it’s heart about DIY. You can’t play an instrument very well or at all? Who cares. Definitely some rebellion in the mix as well. I don’t really see it as being uniform in sound or look. To get more specific than this is difficult for me. I guess I would have to use the words of Justice Potter Stewart and say I know it when I see it. Or hear it. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Small\_Clanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Clanger)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/112 "2011-08-12T15:57:39Z")
> [@punch line loser](#):
>
> Does anyone have thoughts about what punk means aside from disputes about dates and its superficial aspects?
[The 1976 English version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRNOUz7uefA), bonus French subtitles!
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### Author:  [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2011, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/113 "2011-08-12T22:18:42Z")
> [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](#):
>
> **Steophan** , if punk is a “musical and fashion movement that started in England in 1976” how are you going to explain away someone like Richard Hell who was wearing that type of fashion and playing that type of music as far back as 1974? Is it because he isn’t British? What other type of qualifiers would you like to through in now to contort the facts to fit your argument?
No, it’s because one individual is not a movement. If there was a movement in NYC in 1974, that was called punk, and had the characteristics of what we now call punk, I’d be fine with that.
Look, I’m not trying to claim that the Damned and the Pistols suddenly came up with this magical new thing out of nowhere in the autumn of '76. What I’m saying is that the movement that was, and to some extent still is\*, punk began then.
To claim that someone is “punk” just because they influenced Punk is just as wrong as claiming that Lord Byron or Bram Stoker were goths because they influenced Goth. Whether the difference is two years or two hundred is irrelevant.
\*Two of the pubs I drink in regularly are punk pubs, and one has punk gigs regularly. These include plenty of '77 veterans. If there’s a punk scene anywhere in America that traces back to before the English bands, I’d like to hear about it. The only American punk scenes now that I know of are hardcore following from Black Flag and Minor Threat, and the pop-punk stuff that is only superficially punk.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/114 "2011-08-13T01:48:41Z")
There was a movement in NYC in 1974, that, by the end of 1975, was called punk. And had the characteristics of what we now called punk.
It has LEGS, baby.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2011, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/115 "2011-08-13T02:53:07Z")
I don’t give a shit about this debate, but the first few references to punk rock on Google I could find are in American publications. [Here’s one from Feb. 1973](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=s8VKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=CSMNAAAAIBAJ&pg=6272,3444698&dq=punk-rock&hl=en) where Don McLean admits to liking “punk rock,” which suggests to me that it was a known style around then.
Incidentally, with the Bruce Springsteen stuff mentioned upthread, while I can’t link to the words directly, [if you look at these Google search results](http://www.google.com/#q=%22punk+rock%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hOVFTuLtCsOssAKGkdmSCA&ved=0CB8QpwUoCw&source=lnt&tbs=cdr:1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F1970%2Ccd_max%3A1%2F1%2F1975&tbm=nws&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=ee687a1d1f2246e4&biw=1578&bih=962), you can find some lines from a New York Times article in 1972 that describes Bruce Springsteen as “both Dylanesque and punk rock.”
Just throwing it out there. Y’all go ahead and continue arguing about what is and isn’t punk rock, where it did or did not start, etc.
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### Author:  [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2011, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/116 "2011-08-13T03:47:40Z")
Shit, we had this debate in 1980-81. Joe Shithead of DOA is credited with coining the term “Hardcore” or at least popularizing it with DOA’s seminal albumn “Hardcore 81.” If one said “hardcore” or “American hardcore” then it clearly meant something akin to the LA sound or the DC sound, and the look and feel was markedly different from the English punk scene. Punk was still a generic term in the US, and definately in the media. But most in the scene used “hardcore” to refer to the obviously (North) American look and feel.
You can argue until the cows come home about the roots of punk, or the influencers, or where it started. I think it’s more like fire, spontaneously combusted in quite a few spots at different times. To me, it will always be the big north American scene in the early 1980’s and that scene, whatever it was, morphed to something different around 1985-86. Breakup of seminal bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat certainly hearalded the change. YMMV.
Anyone else like the Subhumans? (Note: while the Canadian Subhumans were good, and several went to jail for a bombing, the English Subhumans were great. From the Cradle to the Grave possibly one of the best “punk” albumns ever. A show featuring Scream (DC), Subhumans (UK) and The Dicks (Texan transplants in SF) in SF circa 1984 absolutely shredded. 😉
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### Author:  [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-punk/591896/117 "2011-08-13T04:09:29Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#):
>
> Anyone else like the Subhumans? (Note: while the Canadian Subhumans were good, and several went to jail for a bombing, the English Subhumans were great. From the Cradle to the Grave possibly one of the best “punk” albumns ever. A show featuring Scream (DC), Subhumans (UK) and The Dicks (Texan transplants in SF) in SF circa 1984 absolutely shredded. 😉
I’ve seen the Subhumans once, and Citizen Fish a couple of times. Much more recently than your gig, but they’re still damn good.
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