Punk Today

[CJ.23]

Hi chaps and chapesses, I was listening to some 'contemporary punk' today, you know Sum 41, Avril Lavigne, etc etc. Why is it punk? Punk was radical, political subvesrive and dangerous. Listen to the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Damned, Clash, Dead Kennedys, any of the great punk bands of '76-80. They nearly all deal with strongly political motifs, even the Sex Pistols; they advocate extreme sexual, religious or phiolosophical positions. Bodies by The Pistols begins 'She was a girl from Birmingham, she just had an abortion, she was a ******* animal' and Anarchy in the UK begins famously 'I am an Antichrist; I am an Anarchist'. the Buzzcocks sang about gay sex in Manchester, the clash espoused Socialism and Revolution, and the Dead Kennedys managed to get banned in more countries than any band to date with their biting anarchist satire which is still frightening today. They were certainly not bands you wanted young Christians to listen to. Yet a lot of my younger Christian friends profess to be punks - so I gob at them, (spitting on people, the definitive punk greeting) and they seem upset.

Now I should perhaops be pleased that todays punk fashions have nothing to do with this, but they are so anodyne, so anaemic, so weak. It's boy meets girl, rock n roll themes done to fairly good riffs but which don't seem in any way musically related to either the three cord thrash or reggae influence of Punk.

What do you chaps think?
cj x

 

[Ginsu]

I agree. This Nu-punk stuff has really tooken away the original meaning and style of punk. You say punk, they think Blink182. Have you ever heard the Misfits sing about girlfriends at school? haha I doubt it. This 'teen punk' a really silly phase and I hope it dies quickly.

 

[nadroj1985]

Most movements in music are more uncompromising in the beginning, and then they begin to become more mainstream as they slowly become more popular. Punk is no exception. It is a shame, though. Punk was really something in the 70s.

 

[KenobiKid]

. Punk is no exception. It is a shame, though. Punk was really something in the 70s.

That's all I can say.

 

[oldrooster]

Social Distortion is still something, they have never compromised....

 

[adams apple]

I imagine it's just a case of Mtv etc, bending the meaning of a word to fit their watered down ****

 

[Qyöt27]

Funny enough, looking at music transitional history, it's perfectly clear why this happened. I'm gonna paraphrase a few articles I read on www.allmusic.com and interject some of my own experience into it as well.

According to allmusic, some of the British Punk bands weren't being 'serious', so to speak, with their political views. It was done for shock or to be tongue-in-cheek. It was still biting social commentary, however.

So then you get the California Hardcore bands that pop up in the wake of British Punk's crash at the close of the 70s. Dead Kennedys notably, and others like them, took the tongue-in-cheek social commentary of those particular British Punk bands and made them literal. Of course, just like Post-punk arose when punk bands moved on or former members of punk bands started experimenting with sound, Post-Hardcore arose in a similar fashion in the mid 80s. Whether or not Post-Hardcore crossbred with the Third Wave Ska Revival or not I don't know, but Emo came out of Post-Hardcore. Emo and Third Wave Ska, in turn, influenced what came to be called Pop-punk, which came about in either the late 80s or early 90s. Since that time, mainstream punk (which only five to ten years earlier would have been a complete oxymoron) has basically been constructed of the softer post-hardcore/emo/third wave ska sound and decidedly emo-leaning lyrics, even if it's not outwardly or remotely emo in nature.

One thing I am happy about now, though, is that just like British punk gave way to Post-punk at the end of the 70s, our wave of contemporary Pop-punk is giving way to Neo Post-punk (Electric Six, Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, Snow Patrol, Hot Hot Heat, Interpol, and even the way that Blink 182 was experimenting with their sounds and bringing in Robert Smith from The Cure to help out on their newest album is showing that).

 

[xpunkskaterx]

real punk is minor threat and misfits stuff. ya

 

[cygnusx1]

The only 'Punk' band I ever really liked is the Manic Street Preachers'

OK they are no longer Punk,but their brand of Punk ,punk ROCK is head and shoulders above the rest,IMO.

They started off their careers by listening to Clash records.

They managed to combine Punk with Rock,and even good songwriting skills.

 

[CJ.23]

Actually you can't beat New Model Army. If you like the Manics, you may well like NMA, and all Punk fans shoudl give them a try. Note however their musical style has varied REALLY widely from album to album and song to song.

cj x

 

[absolutely_lost_86]

well 4 starters avril lavigne is not\ punk, yeh sex pistols r aw2esome. sum punk bands 2day r still good, like blink 182 and the offspring

 

[GodOwnsMe]

lol dan (abs_lost) stupid !! don't u know BLINK SOLD OUT? hehe i usta post on their msg board n like all the "real" hardcore punx (not tryin to make fun of anybody sry, but this was kinda hillarious) were of tht opinion

 

[xpunkskaterx]

well 4 starters avril lavigne is not\ punk, yeh sex pistols r aw2esome. sum punk bands 2day r still good, like blink 182 and the offspring

blink 182 was never punk. Maybe pop-punk, but never real punk

 

[freezexbrand]

yes thats right blink 182 and that canadian chik are not punk. punk is still alive and well, they still have the whole anti gov anarchist ways, and still shock with thier antics, you just have to look a little hard punk really hasnt changed since it's roots, it's just got a little harder and the whole pop punk thing is just stupid and isnt punk whatso ever

 

[nadroj1985]

Bah, ask 5 people what "real" punk is, and you'll get 5 different answers. I think you can find punk outside of rock music. Miles Davis was a punk. But when you stretch the definition that much, you realize that it doesn't have much meaning anymore. Setting music into different genres is a shoddy business, and becomes even shoddier when you start saying some things are "real" <insert genre here> and some are not. It doesn't matter anyway. Music is music. It doesn't need other qualifications.

 

[freezexbrand]

you ask what real punk is to the kids i hang out with and you'll get the same answer, and if you ask kids across the country that are in the actual scene that knows what real punk is (because ther eis such a thing) then you will also get the same answer. the music goes along with the movment it self, its a way for the punks to vent themselves. (all relative to street and 77 punk music the origanl real stuff)

 

[nadroj1985]

Ah, but why do you get to define what "real punk" is? You have your own definition of it, sure, but what makes yours any more valuable than someone else's? I'm not trying to antagonize here, just so we're clear; I'm just trying to make the point that people try to define music in a lot of different ways, and the only use of these classifications is convenience.

Because when you really think about it, who cares which bands are "real punk," anyway? Listen to the music you like. Don't worry about the labels that are placed on it. They don't have to have any effect on the way that music impacts you.

 

[freezexbrand]

but you see the thing is that punk started as a rebelion and thats what the music was about, it was about getting the anguish and anger and oppression out of your system and just letting loose, so that was the base (along woth other factors of course) of punk, and thats what the musci represented. the music plays a huge part in the scene and when people call something "punk" that isnt it shames the name. it's not just a label it s way of life, and just like any other person out there, we dont want to be misrepresented, thats all im trying to say

 

[nadroj1985]

I see what you mean about being misrepresented. I just don't really identify, I suppose, with the label. The thing is, any movement in popular music is bound to either die out or become mainstream. Either way, it will change to something it wasn't originally. The problem with identifying with a label like "punk" is that the meaning of that movement will inevitably change as time passes. Then, you're left with two options: drop the label, or change with it. The latter was never very appealing to me.

 

[Qyöt27]

I see what you mean about being misrepresented. I just don't really identify, I suppose, with the label. The thing is, any movement in popular music is bound to either die out or become mainstream. Either way, it will change to something it wasn't originally. The problem with identifying with a label like "punk" is that the meaning of that movement will inevitably change as time passes. Then, you're left with two options: drop the label, or change with it. The latter was never very appealing to me.

I think more or less there's probably also a third option: rethink the label. I mean, I don't see 'punk' as a genre; I see it as a category within Rock, just like Electronic music is another category within (and sometimes not within) Rock. But inside of that general Punk category, you get dozens of different variations of style and theme that have developed over time. While some of those variations are very much tied to a certain timeframe and will eventually fizzle out, leaving behind a great deal of influence on the next wave, there are others which still persist. I would find it very hard to argue the continued existence of British Punk the way it was played in the 70s, with absolutely no external influence from Hardcore, Emo, or Third Wave Ska bands (all of which gradually progressed from British Punk in one way or another). But on the other hand, you can still find scores of California Hardcore and Punk Metal bands, and both of those have been around since the early 80s.

Culturally (or rather, counter-culturally), I think that sometimes a subculture can get fully assimilated, and sometimes it can't (the Goth-Industrial subculture is a good example in America; while it got somewhat popular in the 90s, it never fully went mainstream, and save for a few artists, went back to its own territory; and it shows no signs of dying out any time soon). The only reason Punk has fit so easily into the mainstream now is because they had to sand the edges off; the majority of bands performing punk music as a whole aren't so ready to do that, for several reasons, so there'll still be a dedicated following, and it won't ever get fully assimilated (at least, not for a long time, given the waves of other genres that'll inevitably come along, and how much time it really would take the mainstream to drop their pretensions to accept non-compromised punk with open arms, once punk comes back around to being mainstream again).

While I wouldn't say that the mainstream's acceptance of watered-down pop-punk is because of Green Day, I would say it had a lot to do with Nirvana, despite the fact that Nirvana wasn't even a punk band. The watered-down pop-punk culture dominating practically everywhere nowadays has more to do with MTV and music than it does about any sort of statement (even if the bands do support political and social causes). Nirvana unleashed 'alternative' music on the mainstream, and after the mainstream was sick of Grunge, they turned their scopes on Pop-punk, which until that time was still a viable part of the underground. It just contained more mainstream-friendly execution than most other forms. Mainstream gets ahold of it, waters it down, makes scores of fans for it by the end of the 90s and the beginning of this decade, and effectively creates it's own watered down culture in and of itself.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the entirety of punk culture has been watered down, though. I just think that unless we suddenly get a surge of Neo Post-punk, the amount of classic punks will drop substantially. There'll still be a thriving underground, but it'll be driven further underground than it already is because of how much damage MTV will have caused before it takes its fangs out.