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Punk rock

CONSagainROMNEY said:
In their early days Green Day sorta cashed in on punk as a way to get somekind of cred among teens and young adults - the irony is that that kind of consumerism and exploitation seems to be in direct oppositon to one of the tenants that punk is SUPPOSED to hold dear.
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They didn't decide to market themselves for the future by hanging out with punk rockers to gain credibility. It is where they legitimately got their start. They cashed in on their talent to write and peform songs that evolved beyond basic punk music. So what?
 
CONSagainROMNEY said:
In their early days Green Day sorta cashed in on punk as a way to get somekind of cred among teens and young adults - the irony is that that kind of consumerism and exploitation seems to be in direct oppositon to one of the tenantsthat punk is SUPPOSED to hold dear.
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tenets - Noun: A principle or belief, esp. one of the main principles of a religion or philosophy.

tenants - Noun: A person or group that rents and occupies land, a house, an office, or the like, from another for a period of time; lessee.

And you have the gall to tell others to use spell check.
 
Since it looks like I have an unexpected hour to kill this morning and have some caffeine in me now, will attack the first article. Since I like videos, will break this up into a number of posts with a video each.

First we have to define our terms(and I can see this is going to be a problem already). This is something the blog writer did not do, and it contributes to the mess. So, definitions:

Punk: punk rock is music rooted in the DIY culture, that rejected and directly opposed heavily engineered, sentimental, overproduced 70's rock. The things every punk band has or had was that DIY attitude, plastering their hand made flyers for shows, recording on an 8 track, usually live, less time spent engineering and adding effects. Much of punk was centered around faster tempo, simple instrumentation, shouted lyrics, and this is what tends to be associated with punk, but there are enough examples of punk bands that did not fit that mold. Malcolm MClaren is often given credit for coining the term punk, but Iggy was called a "stooge punk" as early as 1970. The actual origin of the term is lost. Punk is generally credited as "officially" starting with The Ramones and The Sex Pistols, and since the cutoff between proto-punk and punk is arbitrary, that is as good a place to draw the line as any.

Proto-punk: punk bands before there was a punk scene, any band that played punk style music before Ramones and Pistols.

New Wave: Originally it was a marketing tool, since punk was not going to get radio play. Quickly taken over by the scene to refer to the second generation of punk bands. Later evolved into it's current form, referring to pop based music, usually with keyboards and other electronics, but with a punk ethos.

This is just to set the stage, these will be needed for my take on the blog, and since arguments over these terms are beginning, Note that these are how I use the terms, and they are not universal, though I think will be fairly generally accepted. Next post, the blog article.

 
jambalaya said:
They didn't decide to market themselves for the future by hanging out with punk rockers to gain credibility. It is where they legitimately got their start. They cashed in on their talent to write and peform songs that evolved beyond basic punk music. So what?
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So what - is that Green Day is the poster child for Punk poseurism. Honestly, I see teenagers walking around nowdays with their green hair, faux hawks and nose piercings and I dont see any "balls" behind these gestures. Green Day is one of those bands that contributed to the corporatization and consumerizaton of punk rock - something punk rock was supposed to be vehemntly against...today - as the original article points out - Punk is essentially meaningless.

@Redress - by your defintions, MC5 is proto-punk, not punk. The article mentions proto-punk. Why do you feel that it is necesary that the article's writer to name check every proto-punk band whenever using the term "proto-punk"?

patti smith "piss factory":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AQGTU15RBI
 
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winston53660 said:
Meh I've worked for SPIN and Rolling Stone. They were new wave:2razz:
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Like I said - - their music is new wave when viewed through the lens of history. The term "new wave" was not in common parlance in 1976 or 1977, though, as the term had not yet achieved wider recognition as distinguishing between types of music. It is more a case of music that arose from the punk scene being called punk and being called punk due to attitude more than actual music.

I'm saying that they were considered punk, not that they WERE punk.
 
Gardener said:
Like I said - - their music is new wave when viewed through the lens of history. The term "new wave" was not in common parlance in 1976 or 1977, though, as the term had not yet achieved wider recognition as distinguishing between types of music. It is more a case of music that arose from the punk scene being called punk and being called punk due to attitude more than actual music.

I'm saying that they were considered punk, not that they WERE punk.
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They were also one of the first if not the first band to incorporate hip hop in a commercially viable tune.
 
Point 1 from the blog: Fallacy 1: 1977 is Year Zero for punk.

Here is why he is wrong...

The start date for punk rock is entirely arbitrary. However, the first widely recognized bands playing what was called punk was the Pistols and Ramones, so starting with them is a fairly logical point. Where earlier bands like the Stooges, the Heartbreakers, The New York Dolls punk as ****? You betcha. However, they where not recognized as such and so the arbitrary dividing line between proto-punk and punk was made later. He can certainly call those earlier bands punk and I won't really argue, but punk broke in about 1976 as a movement.

 
jambalaya said:
They didn't decide to market themselves for the future by hanging out with punk rockers to gain credibility. It is where they legitimately got their start. They cashed in on their talent to write and peform songs that evolved beyond basic punk music. So what?
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Yep. I lived in Berkeley when they were still teenagers playing wherever they could, and they were definitely punk then. Folks in the bay area knew about them years before they hit the national scene.
 
Point 2: Fallacy 2: Punk is just as relevant today as it was 25 to 30 years ago.

Ummmm...punk was mostly irrelevant when it was happening. Hell, most punk bands did not care if they where relevant outside of their local scene. While there is no longer really much of a punk scene, any band doing punk is a punk band. This is just the author being a snotty brat.

 
Moving on: Fallacy 3: The Sex Pistols Nevermind the Bollocks and the Clash's London Calling are the two most important punk albums ever made.

So yeah, the idea the author has is that by the time a band makes an album, it is already lame. It is, once again, the author being a snot. Personally, I would say that London Calling is probably the most important punk album ever made. While he might have a point in that by the time London Calling came out, the Clash had moved on somewhat from their DIY roots, there are few if any more influential albums in the punk or underground scene, ever. While I recognize it's importance, it is not one of my personal favorite albums, in part for that reason(too produced).

 
Redress said:
[/FONT][/COLOR]Here is why he is wrong...

The start date for punk rock is entirely arbitrary. However, the first widely recognized bands playing what was called punk was the Pistols and Ramones, so starting with them is a fairly logical point.
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In general, I would say he is wrong among many fronts for viewing the scene from a vantage point 40 years after its origin rather than placing himself at that point OF its origin -- or at least near to it. Was he even there?

If 18 people call something punk in 1975, they were ahead of the curve. If 200 million people called something punk in 1977, they were referring to a phenomenon.
 
But Gardener, isnt that the misconception that the article is talking about? That just because something was not recognized in the popular mainstream media does NOT mean that it does not exist. DOes it? Do you realize the Great Depression was not called the Great Depression until many years after it ended? Does that mean that it wasn't really the Great Depression? The author of the article points that Classic Rock was not a term that came about until the 1980s, although MOST classic rock was performed and recorded in the 60s and 70s...


So Redress, you are arguing that the defintion of punk is more reliant on POPULAR use of the word rather than the actual action/style/attitude/music that is in evidence. Television - who you declare is punk - predates your 1976 year zero demarcation point (when punk broke as a movement). So does the Ramones, the Dictators, the Saints - but most people would agree that these bands are punk...
 
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And next: Fallacy 4: Hardcore punk is a response to economic hardship and government/corporate suppression.

The author's concept is that hardcore was basically the 70's version of today's emo. While there certainly was some of that, it was not widespread. Hardcore's lyrical sensibility drew from a middle class sensibility and a sense of hopelessness, leading to a great deal of anger.



Yes, I know, but the music choice makes sense to me...
 
Gardener said:
Like I said - - their music is new wave when viewed through the lens of history. The term "new wave" was not in common parlance in 1976 or 1977, though, as the term had not yet achieved wider recognition as distinguishing between types of music. It is more a case of music that arose from the punk scene being called punk and being called punk due to attitude more than actual music.

I'm saying that they were considered punk, not that they WERE punk.
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This is a point a lot of people don't get. Groups like Blondie and the Talking Heads started in a music scene, mostly the clubs in which they were playing and bands with which they were sharing bills, where punk and punk influenced music was prevelant. They were influenced by it, picked up on the energy and the attitude, and then evolved from there. Punk doesn't have a single, narrow definition. The Ramones and the Sex Pistols became the standard bearers for the popular definition of punk music. There were a lot of other bands much more hardcore and edgy but can they claim to being the true punk rockers?
 
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Picking up the pace...

Fallacy 5: Punk rock is a valid way to express your individuality and rebellious nature.

Yeah, Paul Todd is going to kick your ass. Seriously, conformity to the scene was a key element of the early punk movement. Once again the author proves he never got over his snotty youth stage.

Fallacy 6: Bands that sounded and acted like punk rock in the late 60s and early 70s were actually "proto-punk".

Meh. The label is not important, the music is. However, proto-punk works since for reasons explained earlier, punk is considered to have started with Ramones and Pistols.

Fallacy 7: The best way to really know what punk was like is to read books about it.

Punk as a musical style, the best way to learn is to listen. However, there are some great books on the scene that can get you started in the right direction.

 
winston53660 said:
They were also one of the first if not the first band to incorporate hip hop in a commercially viable tune.
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Is that what you call it? Men from Mars eating cars, bars and guitars?
 
Redress said:
Since it looks like I have an unexpected hour to kill this morning and have some caffeine in me now, will attack the first article. Since I like videos, will break this up into a number of posts with a video each.

First we have to define our terms(and I can see this is going to be a problem already). This is something the blog writer did not do, and it contributes to the mess. So, definitions:

Punk: punk rock is music rooted in the DIY culture, that rejected and directly opposed heavily engineered, sentimental, overproduced 70's rock. The things every punk band has or had was that DIY attitude, plastering their hand made flyers for shows, recording on an 8 track, usually live, less time spent engineering and adding effects. Much of punk was centered around faster tempo, simple instrumentation, shouted lyrics, and this is what tends to be associated with punk, but there are enough examples of punk bands that did not fit that mold. Malcolm MClaren is often given credit for coining the term punk, but Iggy was called a "stooge punk" as early as 1970. The actual origin of the term is lost. Punk is generally credited as "officially" starting with The Ramones and The Sex Pistols, and since the cutoff between proto-punk and punk is arbitrary, that is as good a place to draw the line as any.

Proto-punk: punk bands before there was a punk scene, any band that played punk style music before Ramones and Pistols.

New Wave: Originally it was a marketing tool, since punk was not going to get radio play. Quickly taken over by the scene to refer to the second generation of punk bands. Later evolved into it's current form, referring to pop based music, usually with keyboards and other electronics, but with a punk ethos.

This is just to set the stage, these will be needed for my take on the blog, and since arguments over these terms are beginning, Note that these are how I use the terms, and they are not universal, though I think will be fairly generally accepted. Next post, the blog article.

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Now I want to go home so I can watch the MC5 video...
 
winston53660 said:
No, Blondie was new wave not punk.
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Gardener said:
THeir music was new wave, but they were considered punk in 1977. I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.

Amazon.com: Blondie, from Punk to the Present: A Pictorial History (Musical Legacy Series, 1) (9781892477231): Allan Metz: Books
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Gardener is basically correct, though they where probably mostly referred to as the new wave of punk. I would not call them either new wave nor punk, but something else.
 
ChuckBerry said:
tenets - Noun: A principle or belief, esp. one of the main principles of a religion or philosophy.

tenants - Noun: A person or group that rents and occupies land, a house, an office, or the like, from another for a period of time; lessee.

And you have the gall to tell others to use spell check.
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Grammer nazi-not punk.
 
From the article in the orginal post:

From these beginnings it didnt take long for the mainstream Rock media (with a little help from Malcolm McLaren) to cling on to and co-opt the term "punk rock" so that by the mid 1970s the term "punk" had gone from meaning someone who was an outsider, junkie, homosexual criminal, to someone who was a snotty, Pop Poseur in the mold of the Sex Pistols and the rest of their BritPunk ilk.

But this fabricated brand of Punk Rock really had very little to do with the original punk rock of the late 60s/early 70s. The fact that mainstream "music critics" were not hip to punk culture until the mid 70s doesn't mean it didnt exist prior to that. It did exist, although nowdays it has been given the dismissive label of "Proto-punk" in a posthumous manner intended to be used as a marketing devise in much the same way the term "Classic Rock" was coined as a marketing device in the early 1980s when it first infiltrated the Mainstream Rock narrative (many years after most "Classic Rock" music had already been created).
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