fortyfourbreaks said:
i really don't know about pop-punk now.. but 20-25 years ago i guess it made much more sense...From what i understand, correct me if i'm wrong....Hippies were the 70's. Their answer to the gov't was to make peace and were proponents for non-violence. This didn't work and war's continued on. so in the 80's punk arose and they took the opposite approach. Anarchy, violence, basically being a punk. essentially both groups wanted similar things of non-war, they just took different approaches?????
The punk music now is made almost purely for entertainment WHEN compared to the punk music of yesterday, where they played just because they felt like it. They were doing it even if they sucked and they werent there to play for mainstream america. It was frowned upon 2 decades ago, but now is turned to some pop-making hit machine. Don't mean disrespect, but this is how I was kinda taught what it was
Let me correct you. I have a large basis here, and I have the time
Technically, hippies were the late 60s and punk (in its original American form) began around 1973, and was mainly a happy-go-lucky surf/garage music revival. It was then exported to Britain, where the horrible economic situation at the time caused a
lot of civil unrest and the music became inherently political. It then crossed the Atlantic once again, and has continued progressing in its development ever since. Original punk, or even the original wave of British punk, is dead now. There are no bands still performing it. It met a bitter end at the close of the 1970s when post-punk began to form from the remains of the Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees (that's a generalization, but the best I can do to skim the topic, since post-punk is a really nebulous term and in most cases sounds
nothing like punk). Any band performing something similar today can still trace its influence back to other things than just these two types, therefore making them officially dead. American Hardcore is what continued the strain, which lifted quite literally the
tongue-in-cheek references of the Sex Pistols and similar bands and made them creed.
So you get the Dead Kennedys and such bands promoting total Anarchy. Emo and the so-called "Skate Punk" (i.e. early Punk-Metal and like styles) genres grew out of the influence of American Hardcore and more specifically tended to develop around certain metropolitan areas. Straight-edge can be deemed the same way, although it was more of a general sentiment about how the music should be used to promote a cleaner lifestyle for those who were into that music scene. Pop-punk, which really started its popularity around '92 or '93 with the introduction of Green Day and No Doubt, tended to be more influenced by the Punk-Ska Revival of the mid-80s (The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Operation Ivy, etc.), which in turn was mainly happy-go-lucky music that was inspired by the later works of The Clash (in their post-punk stage). This music had no political message to speak of until a couple years ago when the Hardcore and Emo scenes, both closely tied together in their formative years, became wildly popular in the underground. This prompted a lot of mainstream hitmakers to market bands with a decidedly Hardcore edge (Hardcore as a genre, not an adjective), which meant bringing in the ideals, including revived enthusiasm for Leftism and Anarchy for the sheer reason of rebellion, the main purpose the record companies wanted to capitalize on it (getting the stereotypically rebellious teenage and early 20s crowd to buy into a corporate sham for legitimate, heartfelt sentiment). Quite surprisingly, the Sex Pistols themselves were assembled by Malcolm McLaren, who was never even in the band, but acted as manager for them and as a medium for the record company.
Basically what I'm getting at is that hippies were against war, yes, they were taking the stance of peace and love, yes, but that wasn't the only reason. They didn't like the government, yes, but they were also into a lot of things that wouldn't be strictly an anti-war stance. That was only one facet. Punk, on the other hand, was something that was a type of music made for people who felt like social outcasts, and when it went to Britain, the working class and below tried using the music to voice their opposition to their government
allowing the economy to be the way it was. Punk had nothing to do with war, but eventually became just a genre of music tied to rebellion, even if that meant being anti-war just to spite the government (a somewhat ironic statement, considering how many of the early Punk bands were producing music with very violent tendencies).
FYI, Britain actually had a style of music that was originally from Britain, not America, developed at the same time and in the same social condition as Punk, voiced similar opinions, but rather than taking the stance of being violent towards "the Man" they turned the violence and despair inward at themselves, and experimented with various types of electronic equipment and tape samples for musical output and put on outlandish, shock-oriented stage shows. This style became popular in Germany within the span of a year, and was then brought to North America in the early 80s, where it grew in the same direction as the European front, eventually becoming more melodic but no less abrasive, to an extent. In the late 80s, one "band" made it more accessible by adding a more standard lyrical and musical structure to it while another band decided to take that version I just mentioned and its earlier incarnation and integrate full-on Metal into it. There were even bands that rejected the Metal and more rock-standard variences and made more dance-centered music, following what they believe is the natural progression of a style that originally had no guitars in it. This style of music became very popular in the mid-90s when Grunge declined after Kurt Cobain died. It was basically the alternative to the happy punk music being made at the time. The style, if you hadn't already guessed it, is Industrial. And it hasn't lost its bite, even after almost 30 years. The mainstream will hardly even touch it aside from a small group of pop-friendly artists that don't even get a lot of radio-time. However, don't confuse this with "Goth rock" since that is an entirely different style that grew out of post-punk (but I'm not getting into that here, it's not needed). The reason I mentioned this at all was the fact that Punk was shaped by a specific social climate, but it wasn't the only one to do so. But, Punk did go along a completely different path than its "twin", so to speak, seeing as how I've never heard any Industrial songs talking about stopping the war or getting rid of Bush or whoever is in power in whatever country the band is singing about (well, aside from KMFDM, which makes political statements as part of their image).
Believe me, I can ramble on for hours about this stuff, considering Post-punk, Industrial, other types of Electronic music and old-school alternative are my favorite types of music...But I'll step away now, having put in my 2¢.
