Like Punk never happened

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OK, it's my Wife and it's my Life, but wd fings (music, my life) have been better if — when Lydon finished gurning and howling along the Coop — the others had all looked at each other and said, "You're rigtht, this'll totally never work. Let's go break into some cars in Brompton Gardens." [insert long smart essay on parallel reality a la Momus here]

mark s, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(ps I know ver Pistols didn't "start" punk, so don't go off on one abt THAT: de-invent the Ig, MC5, Patti, whoever it takes... What's the world like w/o it all).

mark s, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i still think that the influence of punk is overplayed. like music pre and post 76 are totally different. with the benefit of distance i think punk now looks more like a continuity than a schism (although i'm sure it felt different at the time)

this kind of 'punk changing' stuff, though. what about reggae, kraftwerk, disco, soul, james brown etc etc etc.

maybe disco rather than punk was more important? although there again, i think i'd rather emphasise continuity

gareth, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Rocket Records' stable would have gone onto be huge stars, that style all the bands had in mid-70s TV (big keyboards, thin-sounding guitars, fey Bowie-esque singers, go-go dancers and everybody looking glam while playing soft-rock), and John Waite would be the biggest star in the world!

tarden, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What I mean by "TV rock" - like Kris Kristofferson's character in "Star is Born", the kind of stuff he came out with.

tarden, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

gareth's right i think (about the pre-/post-punk gulf being overestimated) - especially for everywhere else in the world than the UK, punk wasn't exactly "something" that "happened", it was just a bunch of new cool import records to get, & only interesting to people that were already interested in you know, that kind of stuff. BIG FUCKIN SHIT about Punk, let's say it DIDN'T happen.

duane zarakov, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Punk's influence - to paraphrase Will Rogers when he was talking about American presidents - "They used to say that ANYBODY could make a record...now I'm beginning to believe it."

tarden, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Gareth, Duane - I can't agree. What looks like a ripple from the perspective of 25 years on, was a fucking tidal wave THEN! Punk's influence was maybe most felt in 78/79, when there had been enough of a shakedown for the no-hopers to disappear again, and more importantly, time for lots of cross-pollination to occur as funk, reggae, kraut and other influences were adopted.

Take some Rough Trade artists of say, late 1979 (I'm taking the compilation "Wanna Buy a Bridge? as a template). Cabaret Voltaire, The Slits, The Pop Group, The Swell Maps, Scritti Politti, Liliput, Essential Logic, Delta 5, Young Marble Giants, Raincoats, Televison Personalities...

None of these artists would have made a record (IMHO), or maybe even written a song, if not for Punk. The fact that they did has to be good - look how many women, for example, were involved in these bands. Also look at the influences - funk,noise,kraut,reggae - all in there somewhere.

Dr. C, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i realise it must have felt a tidal wave then, but i think its overall influence isn't as big as is often made out. the bands dr.c has listed (some good, some dull) aren't exactly huge are they? (essential logic?)

i think punk is fairly influential but not the defining influence its made out to be. and dr.c the funk/reggae influences you mention, isn't it that those musics influenced punk. so if punk hadn't existed, funk and reggae would still have carried on wouldn't they?

gareth, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Punk was the catalyst, though. I don't think that funk and reggae, left to their own devices, would have led to The Raincoats or Scritti Politti. I do agree that punk's influence on current music is close to zilch, but guitar-rock of the last 25 years would have been a terribly dreary thing without it.

Patrick, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm not suggesting that fem-agit-punk-reggae-funk (call it what you will) would ever have been a natural evolution of PRE-punk funk or reggae. So I agree with you there, Patrick. The point I'm trying to make is that the musicians catalysed into action by punk rapidly absorbed various forms of music to make NEW music that would otherwise never have existed, much of it sounding nothing like The Sex Pistols. That's why the influence of punk was huge - a schism not a continuity. How long did it last? Well, Patrick, I disagree that its influence on current music is close to zilch. Anyone who puts out a techno release on their own label, made in their own home, is continuing what was started during and after punk. Sure, today the technology makes it very easy to do this, but punk made it ALLOWED.

Was there a reciprocal influence BACK from say, some of The Rough Trade bands I listed above to reggae, for example? If the question is "Did Reggae begin to SOUND different to the way it would have sounded without punk?", then I'd guess the answer is no, not much initially. However, did other British youths form reggae groups who wouldn't have done? YES! Did reggae get listened to by a wider, different audience? YES! Did reggae get more coverage in the music press? YES! (I read about Matumbi, Aswad, Culture, U-Roy etc alongside Joy Division and The Swell Maps in Sounds and The NME). Hence punk's influence spread far wider than giving speed-fuelled oiks with cheap guitars a platform.

Dr. C, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Techno would probably have developed from the underground club music that was there before, though. The fact that there was already a tradition of small labels in the UK that got started with punk probably helped, but I'm pretty sure it would have happened with or without it.

Patrick, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No Green Day! Woohoo!

DG, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This question & Momus' question (about Pop never happening) make my mind seize up & take a personal day. Not because of the question - it's an interesting thing to think about - but because of what's implied in trying to excise the Sex Pistols, the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, etc., etc., etc. from the equation.

The way that popular music SEEMS to have progressed (and, mind you, this is a progression that's been established by historians & scholars, and is open to re-interpretation) would make me believe that "punk", in a sense, was inevitable. It has as much to do with the availability of the technology & the progress of the world as it does with a bunch of pissed-off art-school vagrants going blah blah blah to an E chord. If the Pistols or the Stooges or the Sonics or the Beatles or Elvis or Robert Johnson didn't happen, something ELSE would have happened that would be comparable to the supposed impact these folks had. The details would be changed, but the impact would be about the same, I think. But, of course, there's no way to actually say this unequivocally.

Maybe I'm taking the question too literally, instead of using it as a fun li'l intellectual exercise. I can say, without a doubt, that the personal impact of a non-punk world would've been tremendous. I'd probably be a bit more miserable, but have a LOT more $$$$. And less fun stuff to read.

David Raposa, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Where the influence of Punk has been overplayed is in the minds of the 35yr olds who bemoan the state of popular music of the pre-Punk explosion and say things like "thank God Punk came and cleared all that ('that' usually meaning the prog-rock dinosaurs) away."

I agree with whoever said Disco had the larger influence. It was Disco that *physically* displaced all the lumpen drudgery from the charts; that cleared the decks with a new sound. Disco was massive. It was bought by the working class, blacks and young people, and it's these people who would show Disco's influence on a wide range of music in the years to come.

Punk only managed to displace all the Genesis, Yes and Pink Floyd albums from the 6th Form common room record player. These students would use what they heard in the (traditional) Punk records to form the wall-of-noise guitar sound that would make up the 80's Indie bands. And thats it.

Disco begat Rap, Hip-Hop, Electro and Dance and the many off-shoots including today's general Chart-Pop sound

DavidM, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I daresay that it's true that disco (whatever it was exactly) was more influential than punk. But

>>> It was Disco that *physically* displaced all the lumpen drudgery from the charts; that cleared the decks with a new sound.

This seems to imply a) that pre-disco there was a load of lumpen drudgery in the charts, and b) post-disco there wasn't.

I don't think I'm convinced. Especially when this is followed by the claim that

>>> Disco begat Rap, Hip-Hop, Electro and Dance and the many off- shoots including today's general Chart-Pop sound.

Again, if you say so, I believe you. But to me, that music is... lumpen drudgery. Maybe one lump of drudgery has replaced another.

the pinefox, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It was Disco that *physically* displaced all the lumpen drudgery from the charts; that cleared the decks with a new sound.

Ever had a good look at what the US charts were like around, say, 1982 ? Nothing was displaced, believe me.

Patrick, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

In terms of record sales, yes, disco wins. Where I strongly disagree with David M is in his assertion that people who were into punk in the late 70's necessarily followed a linear "guitar-based" trajectory through the 80's. Just one example - Messrs Sumner and Hook (Stooges fans) saw the Pistols, formed Warsaw with Curtis, metamorphosed into Joy Division, then into New Order. In 1982 - "Blue Monday" - not exactly a 'wall-of-noise guitar sound'.

Dr. C, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I had a couple of experiences this week that bear on this question.

I was at an exhibition of Hipgnosis album sleeves in the Parco Gallery, Shibuya. Now, in this room punk really didn't happen. Storm Thorgerson's Daliesque images evolved slowly through the late 60s, the 70s, the 80s and 90s. The conceits got bigger and slicker -- a tethered pig at Battersea becomes a million beds on a beach. Dave Mason in a doorway becomes a man with bulbs all over his suit. The punk explosion is a muffled one, somewhere far offstage. (That's another show. Check the Visionaire Gallery.)

I looked at one rather elegant poster for the 1975 Knebworth Festival. A very Kraftwerky motorik image of a highway, scattered with drawings of odd little mechanical parts, and down below, on the sea, a castle. Artists advertised included Captain Beefheart. It was so 1975, so poignant, because I knew what was in store. That castle was for the chop, for starters. Germanic themes would be banished by punk, not returning until 1980 and New Order. (Five years hard labour for German motorik! Five years of council estate cliches! They sentenced me to twenty years of 'Boredom, boredom!') The castle theme wouldn't return until Ten Pole Tudor's 'Swords of a Thousand Men'.

The next day, I was in a cafe with Hitoshi Okamoto, the editor of a Japanese magazine called Relax. We were talking about the differences between western magazines and Japanese ones. 'In Relax you don't use stylists?' I asked. Okamoto said he didn't like stylists. 'In Shinto we say there is a god in everything,' he told me, 'so everything and everyone has a style you should respect. No need for stylists, who all think they're God!'

I told him his magazine had a much friendlier tone than a western magazine. Instead of cowing the reader into submission with images of aspirational opulence, Relax just presents cool things, photographed simply and freshly, and says 'Check it out!'

Why is that relaxed tone of friendliness less common in London style mags like The Face, Dazed, Sleaze Nation? Maybe it's because of punk. Flip through i-D and you'll see the real legacy of punk in the snotty attitude and sneery poses of the models. And, ironically, you'll see the real legacy of i-D (real people on the street, wearing what they've chosen themselves) in Japanese magazines, where they do just that: photograph people on the street.

The rot set in when punk's emphasis on amateurism got taken over by professionals. When bands who could play had to pretend they couldn't, just to be on the right side of punk. When that famous starey sneer got co-opted as just another meaningless rock and roll gesture (hello, Billy Idol!) rather than a way to stay sharp, aware and cynical.

Wanna know about punk? Just ask a stylist.

Momus, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

First, my opinion of John Lydon would be vastly improved if he had died in a plane crash shortly after the final mix down of Flowers of Romance. I love the first three PIL records, but you can get killed in certain sections of Detroit for admitting you owned a copy of "9"...

...left right left right...

second, punk's contribution has nothing to do with music, it is all about the business and promotional model it left behind. This is why punk is important, and why marginal western music was never the same after it. Punk mattered because it brought about the ability to put out your own records on your own terms, through indie labels with specialized distro, advertised in fanzines. That is why punk matters, because without the network it created and the ideas it generated, indie and what grew out of it would not exist in the same way.

The other thing that was not brought up was how the punk disaspora helps open the doors for indie electronic music. In 78-80 alot of material sneaked through the cracks of punk rock that is utterly influential today. Stuff like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, The Normal/mute records et al, Suicide, The Screamers, Kraftwerk anything covered by nu musick. All of that stuff saw the light of day because punk provided some kind of context and media outlet.

You cannot ignore what grew out of the space that punk created. The ideas that came out of that period utterly defined the future out music in general. Nick Momus would be a concervative, sexually repressed public school master in the real world if it were not for Stiff Records. :)

Mike Taylor, Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But you have to ask the question, if punk created this underground, this alternative route for bands with its own small distribution etc., and the mainstream has gone on a separate path since '77, is this fork in the road a good thing?

Consider this possibility: punk never breaks out in the seventies, and instead of a huge explosion, people just get tired of the mainstream music of the era and a gradual turnover occurred. Maybe the record industry would have gone through a contraction, and talented and musically-inclined young folk might have revitalized the pop music of the day instead of being wildly nihilistic and trying to tear the world apart. Chart pop today might not be so hideously shallow, and indie music might not be so insular and self-indulgent. I love punk and its antecedents, but sometimes I wonder if I would better enjoy this music if it didn't feel it *HAD* to be so anti- chart-pop. And I'm sure someone will make the argument that lots of punk/indie incorporates elements of chart pop, but it's not exactly free trade if you know what I mean.

Dave M., Tuesday, 12 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

whether or not you think punk rock as a thing that "happened" (as opposed to as a term for a type of rock music) was significant comes down to whether you think giving something a name & a bunch of rules & popularising it is a good thing or not. of course i'm talking from a pretty marginal viewpoint (well maybe not that marginal - the Sex`Pistols as a media event were pretty easy to miss if you lived in most parts of the world)here, but to me (here, now) it doen't seem like it meant much. there were people doing fanzines about beefheart & the velvets & krautrock & whatever in 1975 (they woulda been called hippies by peole who 3 years later were into genuinely radical music like generation x & shit), there were bands doing "punk" sounding & "post-punk" sounding music in like invercargill or brisbane or cleveland at the same time who woulda been called ditto by ditto...i'm sure the london 76-77 scene would 've been totally awesome if i'd've been there but i wasn't, so i can be real cold about it & go, Oh all that shit did in the long run was open another possible door for (sorry to keep picking on 'em) billy idol & adam ant & whoever. (yeah sorry to keep picking on such obvious examples [who i don't even particularly hate, the point is merely that the people who benefitted from it mostly were NOBODY EXACTLY RADICAL]...OK i think this thread can at this point merge with the one marcello carlin started about prog rock [go look])

duane zarakov, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(PS - & yeah of course disco was the the real important actual musical influence on everything of real POP signif. from that same time on,for better OR worse or both at the same time time - i can't see how anyone could argue otherwise - so FORGET PUNK already, it's SUCH a dead issue)

duane, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"When professionals took over..." Just out of curiosity, why is democratization of production such an unquestioned good thing? I don't see calls for a revolution in literature by printing works by illiterates. If covert professionalism is a bad thing then why do people prefer Dogme films to their neighbours home videos?

tarden, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tarden: I thought the point of Dogme was to make something that looked pretty much like your neighbour's home videos?

On the question about indie labels, I just can't accept your claim, Mike, that punk put them on the map. As someone pointed out in another thread, at the time the Pistols signed to them both A&M and Virgin were independent labels. Virgin was an indie born out of hippy, krautrock and prog (Gong, Faust, Mike Oldfield).

We shouldn't underestimate Chris Blackwell's contribution with Island, an indie focused on reggae. There were plenty of little indie labels before punk. Punk bands like the Pistols mostly ignored them and tried to sign to majors, to get their 'cash from chaos'. It was the squatty hippy bands like PragVec, Here And Now and Scritti Politti, anarchists who made the transition from pre-punk to post-punk, who signed to labels like Rough Trade, derided by the punks for its 'brown rice' politics.

These were the labels who pioneered the 'alternative' business structure. Thank Richard Branson!

Momus, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"point of Dogme" = making things look as BRILLIANT as your neighbour's home videos

mark s, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tarden - about that 'books by illiterates' thing - actually I just had the following train of thought: 1 - yeah, why doesn't literature have an 'outsider' canon like art does, thanks to the surrealists, Dubuffet, etc, who built up big collections of art by untrained people, crazy people, etc? there is even writing in these collections, but it's just not criticised and feted in the literary world like it is in the art world 2 - but this art has produced this modern movement of young artists doing the coolest thing by imitating naive art mercilessly. In my english class was this boy who would produce really bizarre answers to standard questions - like if you were given the exercise, use a noun in a sentence then turn it into an adjective in the next sentence, he would write:

I hate her because she is bold I despise her because she is bold

etc . . . except this is my own stupid example, his were much better . . . I kept his answers for a while but then I stopped because I thought I better not. But what I was thinking is, isn't it good that there's no recognition of illiterate writing? It's still secret. Except oops, I'm talking about it. Just keep this between us, ok.

ms, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I suppose the problem with reading a book by an illiterate person is that it would take hours, maybe days or weeks of crushing Sisyphean effort, to get anything out of it BEFORE even taking on figuring out what the artist's intention was, whereas with records by people who can't 'play', it's only 30 or 45 or 74 minutes, and you can do anything while the thing's on, sit and listen if you like or do something else if you don't. The fact that music lends itself so easily to utilitarianism (its most popular function) is what makes it such a debased art/craft.

tarden, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But then, supposed all art aspires to the condition of music, so entropy is the highest form of culture.

tarden, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'Wanna know about punk? Just ask a stylist.'

I did, but I interrupted some obsequies she was levelling at a photographer. Then she had to call the bookers to get some 'girls'. Then she had to call a publicist to see if it was okay to borrow the clothes.

Stylists are like those girls in school who always dissed the weird kids, their music, their clothes, everything...until they latched onto some guy who exhibited some of those same tastes and flourishes. Then, miraculously, all these things were acceptable to them. They're the main beneficiaries of the fash-economy boom precisely because they are compliant, even within a certain fashionable edginess, and will always do what the boss says.

These are not really creative people. These are swivelheads looking for a line to toe.

Too many things in the run-up to punk made it sure to happen: good omens like Bowie, Stonewall and the Situationists or bad atmospheres provided by Vietnam, Cold War, the energy crisis, Conservative politics, yada yada. If it had never happened I don't think we'd be necessarily listening to 30-minute guitar solos or great big space operas. If it had never happened, quite a few of my friends would be doomed to life as worker bees in small towns, elitists in larger ones or patients in sanatoriums. They would not be artists or musicians or writers.

Me, I'd probably be in a house in Primrose Hill writing my tenth play for my lover and muse to star in, procrastinating to the chagrin of an agent my work subsidised, ordering around architects, not really concerned with trying to make the world a more egalitarian place to live in, chuckling over those I'd left behind the moment I published my first book at 16. I'd probably be one of those Queen Bee women used to having my intellectual pick of the men at the expense of their mousy little wives, a former scapegoat whose idea of victory in life would lie in becoming the bully. I'd probably be more successful, but I'd be an utter shit.

Anyone else have any idea where they would be, and does it fill them with as much ambivalence as it does me?

suzy, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i thought of a good bk by a illiterate guy - forget the title but it's from about 1960 , by a english guy called frank norman - he writ it in jail, it's all in weird cockney crim slang - 'BETTER SCARPER, HERE COME 3 BOGIES IN AN ODD LOT' - shit what was it called? it was really good, anyway.

duane zarakov, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If it weren't for bands who said "We can't play but we are going to anyways" allot of people with far out ideas wouldn't have had the courage to say "THen I'm playing too!" .That is punk's positive influence on music. Ideas over skill. But what do we have to show for it now? Million dollar bands on MTV singing about their asses while 30 somethings pound the steering wheels of their Volkswagens to the beat. Sometimes I really wish punk never DID happen. Think of the Soft Boysm who were rejected at the time fro being too "soft" (natch) .Evevne Liz Fraser later said she regrets shunnin g Pink Floyd. Frankly, I like the Prophets and Minimoogs of Tony Banks and YES' keyboardist. I never think its good to say "All music x is rot." ANy musical style can be interesting depending on the creative input. But if punk never happened maybe something else would have. What if things went the opposite way and bands started trying to "out- ornate" each other? WHat if hair got longer and longer? WHAT IF BREAD HAD MADE A TRIPLE ALBUM!?!?!?!

-- Mike Hanley, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't mean to lead this thread further off course, but I do think everything sort of ties together in the end, or so I would hope... Anyway, one of the most fascinating books I've ever read was written by a complete illiterate, "as told by" Paul Bowles: "A Life Full Of Holes" by Driss ben Hamed Charhadi. It reads like something James Joyce's aboriginal grandson might have written if he'd never ventured north of the Tropic of Cancer. Strictly speaking, an illiterate could never write a book, though it seems an awful lot of them seem to... )

To contradict myself, I must say that of course many of our oldest books were "written" by illiterates--the prolific Anonymous, Homer, and anyone else who was rich or lucky enough to have a scribe write it down for them eventually. Jesus never wrote a single word that we know of, and I'm not sure about Buddha. The tradition for thousands of years was of course oral. And aural--just like punk.

There has been a sort of underground tradition of "outsider" writers, many who were artists or musicians as well. Their work might just as well have been scrawled on prison walls as in bloodied notebooks. Paul Childs, whose work was available in View magazine in the 1940's, is one of my favorites. He writes the way Teenage Jesus And The Jerks sounded. Wolfi and Darger were others. An anthology begs to be compiled. Someone out there, please!

Theories on punk:

a) Punk never happened. Certainly most people I went to high school with couldn't name any punk bands; college classmates might come up with one or two. This is not a put-down; it's just that most people weren't looking that way and haven't looked back. Many people around my age would consider Sting a punk rocker. The closest punk has come to them is perhaps a little more leather than there used to be in the fall collection and a fear that their children might want that new Blink 182 album, whatever they are.

b) Punk is always happening. Every time I see a 13-year-old with a mohawk, I smile but also think, "Surely they can do better than that!" (But then people of my age imitated our hippie older siblings and grew quite easily into that wasted Allman or Doobie Brothers look.) Punk happens every time someone discovers a Germs album in the fifty-cent bin, takes it home, and contemplates if Kim Darby's suicide was more aesthetically fitting than Ian Curtis's or Kurt Cobain's. Punk is happening not so much in Britain as in Bhutan, where television is brand-new and kids are wearing World Wrestling Federation T-shirts under their saffron robes. Punk in its guise as anarchy may have happened in Nepal, where a government official described the recent combination regi-/fratri-/matri-/patri-/sorori- /dei-/sui- cide as "Like those mass killings that happen all the time in American high schools." ("Titus Andronicus" therefore being no more or less newsworthy than Columbine.)

c) Punk happened a long time ago. See Greil Marcus, "Lipstick Kisses." Hundreds of years before Joey Ramone was born. Tour the Paris riots of '68. Lunch with the Diggers. Go back in time and stop the Situationists before they invent Malcolm McLaren. Punk is history, therefore it doesn't matter, does it?

d) Punk happened the wrong way. I mean, yet more electric guitars? Wouldn't it have been easier to program a synthesizer and wear Star Trek unitards instead of designer bondage wear? Weren't the Silver Apples more truly punk than The Seeds? Isn't the sound of a Moog short-circuiting more exciting than a Fender crashing into an amp? Is rage better expressed through satire than simple sarcasm? Aren't we ever going to get to the future?

e) Punk is yet to happen. Some day something will come along to truly change us all. It wasn't electronica, but it will probably be electronic. It ain't hip-hop, but it won't deny that influence. Maybe Elvis will arise from the grave. Anything is possible...

X. Y. Zedd, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Nicely turned.

the pinefox, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

d) Punk happened the wrong way. I mean, yet more electric guitars? Wouldn't it have been easier to program a synthesizer and wear Star Trek unitards instead of designer bondage wear? (X. Y. Zedd )

Not in the late 70's. Even quite basic synthesisers were relatively expensive in those days. And the average guitar-toting punk thought them effete. Gary Numan, the Human League and other synth-pop pioneers were on the receiving end of quite conservative criticism from the punk scene along the lines of 'it's not real music is it'.

David, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If punk never happened would we still have Add A to X?

-- Mike Hanley, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, the term 'punk' referred to the guy in prison on the end of the other guy's knob before it was a strain of angry guitar music, so I always found punk hatred of disco/synth etc wholly incongrous and ignorant.

Rule of thumb: any music form termed 'effete' is automatically at least 10 times more interesting, complex and stylish than anything produced by its critics!

suzy, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, that's certainly true with the example put forward by David. I suppose it was the kneejerk mentality of those who were essentially conservative in rock terms, who had jumped onto punk but instinctively didn't want to move on.

(uncanny. I read David's post while listening to and being frustrated with some Peter Howell demos for Doctor Who in 1980: the *exact* moment when chartpop overtook the Radiophonic Workshop in innovation terms.)

Robin Carmody, Wednesday, 13 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

David, you're right about punk attitudes toward synths, which really only got worse in the '80s. (Morrissey was famously quoted as saying all synthesizers should be thrown on a bonfire, but ended up using them himself by the time of "Last Of The International Playboys.") But I distinctly remember Elton John (Elton John!) advertising Radio Shack's (Radio Shack's!) new, very cheap mini-Moog in the mid-'70s. I wanted one so badly, but I couldn't afford it any more than the theremin I'd already ordered a brochure about. Turns out the kid next door, even poorer than me, somehow got hold of one, anyway--so, yes, it COULD have been done! (One might argue it WAS done by Suicide.) And besides, even I have programmed a sequencer when I can't play anything more than "Mary Had A Little Lamb."

Suzy, glad you pointed out (one of) the origins of "punk"--that's always been in the back of my mind, too. Although I must profess I claimed to hate disco in 1978. (This was before "Funkytown," of course.)

All right, I'll try to shut up and let the rest of you speak...

X. Y. Zedd, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

To those who claim 'punk' didn't have much influence in the US pre-'91 - I offer you Guns'n'Roses

tarden, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I always figured Guns and Roses were living proof that punk had no influence on anybody, and classic rock would never, ever die.

Dave M., Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i always thought g'n'r were supposed to be a composite of punk and classicrock?

gareth, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Duff McKagan was in the Wipers. Plus they covered the Damned. Their notorious "racist" song "One in a Million" is closer to Black Flag's "White Minority" than to Ted Nugent.

tarden, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You know, thinking about _Appetite for Destruction_, I can't help but conclude that punk rock influenced them as much as Nirvana or whomever you'd like at the plate.

If classic rock were actually epitomized by "Rocket Queen" & "Welcome to the Jungle", the world would be a much better place. (Though it's plain to see that the agressiveness that typified _Appetite..._ was a one-off deal. I blame Matt Sorum.)

David Raposa, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

So what if they covered the Damned? Metal bands cover the Sex Pistols all the time. And re:Duff, you'll note that there are a lot of techno musicians who start out playing in bands, but we don't call them punks. I'd say Guns and Roses are hard rock and heavy metal in an unwholesome marriage. They may have been vaguely influenced by the Misfits or something, but it's mostly wanky guitar solos and third rate social commentary (can we say Civil War, anyone?). None of what Guns and Roses did came from elements that weren't present in the culture outside of punk.

Dave M., Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'Third rate social commentary' was how Americans saw punk, anyway. And G'n'R 'heavy metal'? I didn't see any musclebound barbarians fighting off pterodactyls on their albums. Sure they weren't the Crass but they weren't Rainbow neither.

tarden, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Its funny G and R has been brought up. I just got AFD form the library the other day and cranked it up full blast in my headphoes. It was an impressive assault, but it was overall dull. Power is no substitue for substance. Thats also why I dont like most "hardcore" bands. What a sad mutation of punk into a sport.

-- Mike Hanley, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

GnR covered the UK Subs! THAT wasn't available in the "culture all around"...

mark s, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And "Civil War" is A FUCKING GREAT SONG AND VERY PUNK INDEED!!

Erm, excuse me. I don't intend this to be my *official* reply to my own thread.

mark s, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I love punk and its antecedents, but sometimes I wonder if I would better enjoy this music if it didn't feel it *HAD* to be so anti- chart-pop

It wasn't anti-pop, though. The impression that I get is that many of the early punk bands sincerely thought they were gonna be the next big thing, and certainly weren't hoping for mere cult status. And once it became clear that they would never have a shot at mainstream success (at least in the US), THEN it became anti-pop and turned into hardcore and indie-rock and whatever else. I personally like to blame Bob Seger, Foreigner and their listeners for this.

Patrick, Thursday, 14 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Vic Godard - "Everyone says they couldn't play, but we REALLY couldn't. In comparison to us, the Clash were like Eric Clapton. Compared to us, the Sex Pistols were like Yes."

tarden, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And yet (and thus) Subway Sect were the key and the core: "Step off the course of 20 years/and OUT of rock and roll"

THIS is where my official response begins. But no time NOW for full-on exploration.

Promises promises.

mark s, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Stroll, Mark, definitely stroll. Step would be quite different.

I still try to oppose all rock 'n' roll, but sometimes I've failed.

Tim, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And yet (and thus) Subway Sect were the key and the core: "Step off the course of 20 years/and OUT of rock and roll"

That would make them about as radical as, hmmm, Rod Stewart !

Patrick, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(Morrissey was famously quoted as saying all synthesizers should be thrown on a bonfire, but ended up using them himself by the time of "Last Of The International Playboys.")

um, were those real strings on smiths records then?

sundar subramanian, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Er, you're right, Morrissey was wrong.

X. Y. Zedd, Friday, 15 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Punk precedes even the Velvet Underground. The Monks glorious "Black Monk Time" from '66. Check out www.the-monks.com

John O'Toole, Sunday, 17 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

is this where someone says link wray or something?

gareth, Monday, 18 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

This is where someone says: "(ps I know ver Pistols didn't "start" punk, so don't go off on one abt THAT: de-invent the Ig, MC5, Patti, whoever it takes":

Tho de-inventing the Monks wd have made near-zero diff, I suspect: NOT because they're not grate (if they are grate), but because their presence has been ultra-slow burn low-key, to say the least.

A defn of punk which predates Elvis is of course OK: question wasw, How wd things be difft [the thing] had not occurred?

mark s, Monday, 18 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one year passes...
punk is about doing what YOU want to do.

nothing else. no stylistic limits, no specific genre, no particular class of person or amount of musicianship.

NO RULES.

you do what feels good to you.

thats punk.

and people would be doing it whether or not john lydon had sneered "god save the queen" onto vinyl or not.

alistair, Friday, 8 November 2002 16:14 (twenty-two years ago)

I think your question Mark, might hinge on the political impact stroke interests of whatever you might take punk to mean. Taking for granted the notion that the Pistols were by far the most visible exponent of the genre, I am wondering if another band would have been propelled to the forefront of punk had the pistols junked. And would they have operated along a similar trajectory?

The Pistols seemed to set the agenda, although clearly, the social political climate was ripe for just such discontent and antipathy, but without them, specifically without Lydon's vision, would a.n.other have attempted such brash and withering political attacks? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, whatthefuck? But looking at history, there are plenty of examples of individuals and groups who have deliberately set out to assault the superstructure of society and express vitriolic disgust at its apparatus. The Berlin Dadaists are prime examples, and punks of the finest order to boot. This could be taken to suggest that there is no shortage of people to queuing up to have a go. I mean there are always alternatives, but when the times are high, they seem to be less visible. And back in the late 70's, things was arguably pretty shit.

So deinventing the Pistols might not have neutered punk quite so acutely as one might first imagine, although the accomplishment with which they and McLaren played the media's need to give the swirling distaste and disatisfaction a face might have been sorely missed. I'm wondering who else could have played the game at that time quite so effectively or so articulately?

Roger Fascist (Roger Fascist), Friday, 8 November 2002 16:54 (twenty-two years ago)

It's fucking Friday! My mind is sufficiently blown for the day. How could it not have happened? That would be the same as anger having never happened. Someone was bound to sing/play with fury sooner or later. So if punk hadn't happened, we would all be drones wearing gray. (Not because of the absence of punk, but along with the absence of punk.)

dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 8 November 2002 18:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Punk was just a continuation of the underground rock scene that had been going on for a long time. But I think when Punk really got big, it introduced a lot of people to that scene, showing them they didnt need much talent to have a band/could do something different, etc,etc. Unfortunately, most people who were influenced by punk were idiots and thought they should just sound exactly like the Sex Pistols.

Also, remember that punk begot post-punk which begot a LOT of modern day electronic music; Id say more-so then Disco.

To close, someone mentioned Kraftwerk, and Id like to add: no matter how hard I try, I still cannot take them seriously.

David Allen, Friday, 8 November 2002 20:45 (twenty-two years ago)

''Unfortunately, most people who were influenced by punk were idiots and thought they should just sound exactly like the Sex Pistols.''

sex pistols' sound was a slight variant on rock blueprint. that menat that it didn't leave room for bands to do things that were wildly different anyway.

''Also, remember that punk begot post-punk which begot a LOT of modern day electronic music; Id say more-so then Disco.''

really?!

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 8 November 2002 21:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Haha david allen "Hippie destroyer" check out you near namesake a damn sight more ouTTHeRe than joe strRrumm0r haha

N0RM4N PH4Y, Friday, 8 November 2002 21:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Thing is: there were plenty of great music styles evolving before Punk came along, but they were almost exclusively (to put it bluntly, and I'll admit generalising a bit) black- Disco, Reggae, Funk, etc White music had great individual performers, but little in the way of a true "movement". So the question is, if you take away Punk would white kids have gotten MORE involved with these black styles (i.e. more "credible" young white Disco bands alongside Rod Stewart and White Cherry) or would they have just kept evolving their previous styles (singer/songwriter, Blues Rock, Prog?) Option #1 seems very interesting indeed, option #2 totally dystopian...

Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Saturday, 9 November 2002 00:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Unfortunately, most people who were influenced by punk were idiots and thought they should just sound exactly like the Sex Pistols

But that isn't true. Nobody wanted to sound like the Sex Pistols. I remember listening to 'Anarchy In The UK' when it was released and my friend and I couldn't make head or tail of it - it just sounded like mid tempo rock. The Damned, Clash and Buzzcocks were more what the next wave wanted to sound like - hence people like the Lurkers who thought the way to go was to make the Clash sound laid-back.

David (David), Saturday, 9 November 2002 00:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Also, remember that punk begot post-punk which begot a LOT of modern day electronic music; Id say more-so then Disco.

Obviously there are all sorts of interconnections along those lines, but in my view what happened, broadly, is that Disco led directly to House which in turn led to most of the dance music that came later; but paradoxically a lot of the people that were turned onto House and later dance musics did come from a post-punk, disco-hating background. People like that often still have difficulty with the Disco->House progression because it happened invisibly and underground so it appeared that House was something completely new when it surfaced. I think that murky transition period (early to mid '80s) is still not very well documented.


David (David), Saturday, 9 November 2002 01:02 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...
x. y. zedd's post on this thread is still magnificent.

cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 13 November 2004 20:36 (twenty years ago)

Wow, what a thread.

(Apropos of nothing, as Mr. Matos and I have long agreed on, Like Punk Never Happened by Dave Rimmer is an essential book.)

Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 13 November 2004 20:51 (twenty years ago)

you would have to go pretty far back in history to excise pre-punk-rock punk. A lot of conflicted/break-on-through/keep-it-all-hid/throwback/up-jumps-the-devil shit, way before minstrel, calypso, bandit ballads, etc. (nursery rhyme codes of the occupied strata). If only that meteor hadn't landed there (no, not that meteor, *that's* the one, I tell you). But popismo feeds on it all knock on wood

don, Saturday, 13 November 2004 21:07 (twenty years ago)


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