What are the philosophical origins of punk?

Exactly. Anyone who says otherwise either 1) is trying to compensate after the fact [re: Malcolm McLaren] or 2) may indeed have some philosophy to dish, but has come to the dance way too late.

I'd prefer he S. Trife us.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674535812/metasoul

...but I like the thread itself so far.

If you just used the word "bullshit" you'd avoid the unsightly mixed metaphor.

...except Greg Lake.

Ah, ressentiment! Sounds like a perfect example of the Godwin/Proudhon/Bakunin/Kropotkin school of 19th century anarchism then...or early Christianity even!

So then what's the Gravity's Rainbow of rock writing?

let me get my part in then:

there was a big chiken,
who didn't like finger lickin,
but did taxes all the time with quicken,
no frickin way!

m.

The Aesthetics of Rock -- Richard Meltzer

A loud, fast-moving style of rock music characterized by aggressive and deliberately outrageous lyrics and performance. Also attrib.


"1971 D. MARSH in Creem May 43/3 He's [sc. Rudi Martinez is] doing the knee-drop, and the splits and every other James Brown move. He's the only one in punk-rock who's still got 'em and he's makin' a comeback." (Rudi Martinez is the guy from ? and the Mysterians)

You can say what you want about Marsh, but, populist that he is, he understands the 'punk' in this archetypal sense, which is:
n., Chiefly U.S.:

b. A person of no account, a worthless fellow; a young hooligan or petty criminal. Also gen., as a term of contempt or abuse.


1917 [see MUTT c]. 1928 M. C. SHARPE Chicago May xxxi. 287/1 Punk, apprentice thief. 1930 D. HAMMETT Maltese Falcon xviii. 216 We've absolutely got to give them a victim... Let's give them the punk... He actually did shoot both of them..didn't he? 1930 Sat. Even. Post 26 July 146/2 ‘Listen to me, you big punk!’ he growled ominously. ‘What do you think we area lot of fools?’ 1933 E. HEMINGWAY Winner take Nothing 94 This fellow was just a punk..a nobody. 1939 C. R. COOPER Designs in Scarlet ii. 18 Punks like himsixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. Ibid. iii. 37 ‘The punks’, as youthful offenders are often called. 1940 Sun (Baltimore) 29 Mar. 17/4 This happens to be the Bomber's tenth defense. Most of them bums or punks? 1949 Chicago Tribune 10 Dec. 10 This punk must have robbed a bank or got paid off for settin' a forest fire! 1953 W. BURROUGHS Junkie iv. 50 Two young punks got off a train carrying a lush between them. 1959 H. NIELSEN Fifth Caller xiv. 207, I was a punk then... Fourteen years old and just a little punk... Then I began to fill out. I ain't a punk no more. 1963 T. PYNCHON V. vi. 145 There was nothing so special about the gang, punks are punks. 1964 V. S. NAIPAUL Area of Darkness ix. 245, I went back to the hotel. The telephone rang. ‘Hallo, punk.’ 1967 Boston Sunday Herald 30 Apr. 1.16/3 Berke has no sympathy for the ‘punks’ who act up in school, assault teachers or destroy property. 1976 ‘D. HALLIDAY’ Dolly & Nanny Bird ix. 113 Punks give their kids a punk childhood which leads to the next generation of punks. 1978 J. UPDIKE Coup vi. 246 ‘Uh think you've come to the wrong place. Hasn't he?’..‘You bet the punk has.’

I grew up hearing older people use the word 'punk' all the time - AND NOT IN REFERENCE TO MUSIC. The sixties stuff represented this attitude completely. It's just something that's intuitively picked up on and passed on to the next group of kids, which is what the seventies people were really doing. It's not something you can just buy or 'get' by reading about it. But the term has been so co-opted that present and future 'punks' probably have to be called something else - probably whatever words authority figures are using on them as a term of abuse. Whatever it's called, this character still exists and will exist until some serious social transformation happens in society.

It just irritates me that the real cultural / historical context gets left out. "Punk" doesn't mean anything and can't be exciting unless it speaks to this tendency in (some, a lot of) young people.

As to first musical use of the term, I've seen all of the following either credited or take credit: Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Mike Saunders, Legs McNeil. But I finally finished Ed Sanders' Fug You after months of intermittent reading, and he says he was the first:

(Quoting a review by Robb Baker dated March 22, 1970) "Sanders does this particularly well in his first solo album for Reprise records, Sanders' Truckstop, which he describes as 'punk rock--redneck sentimentality--my own past updated to present day reality.'"