Tangential note - the noted musicologist and social critic Billy Idol once observed, "Black people sang mournful songs about how they weren't permitted to do anything, and it's still true. But whites took that out of the blues and made it positive."
I imagine that in his adroit fashion, he was restating the old 'r'n'r = sanitised black music' axiom. Of course tho, it starts to look more complicated up close! When Chuck Berry invented r'n'r, HIS (original) version was an ongoing social critique textually and texturally, but r'n'r(which in Berry's hands was about gadgets and freedom and protest and wit and tailfins and bombshelters and cheeseburgers and rural poverty and all about USA etc) was reduced to songs about KID PROBLEMS (and kid epiphanies. "Back in the USA" sung by Berry != sung by anybody else, not even the MC5!). In the manner of those Soviet physicists in the cold war, once Berry invented the process 'they' decided he shouldn't be running around loose, and to the salt mines he went! So r'n'r was about silly bullshit and trying to Stalinise poor ol' Chuck out of history (Keith Richards = Citizen Smith), but samisdat gets around, and in 1977 Berry was vindicated, like Mandela or Havel. R'n'r could be about REAL stuff again! Or even if it wasn't real, in fact even if it was a bit naive and dumb (which it was less of the time than people admit), songs could be about machines and being pissed off and could be sly and satirical and nihilistic again! (The Berry-esque guitar was less a pastiche than a tip of the hat.) Much like Jimi Hendrix invented heavy metal as almost an afterthought, then absentmindedly left it lying around where some white boys eagerly grabbed it, except they took the acid out and stuck Seconal in, so they actually made it LESS 'positive'. ('Feed-bop' - Hendrix/T Nugent = Bird/Diz? Sorry, too charitable. Ted Nugent = Henry Ford?)
Or, like the Bad Brains invented hardcore by the simple method of taking the most non-Berryesque music imaginable (i.e., white-boy prog shit and birds of fire) and compressing it to Berry proportions. (Schism between modern forms of 'rawk' music is usually framed in terms of boy-metal and girl-metal, the former encompassing hardcore.) (Now this is the weird part, the white boys jumped on hardcore like they did with Hendrix, and this time took ALL the drugs out of it! Brains/Berry = sXe/Eddie Cochran? Pat Boone?)

(Then again, extending the 'Bird' metaphor, and transplanting everybody else too into alternate universe where 'what is commonly thought of as jazz' is switched with the pop/EZ overlap (in its less 'popular' manifestations, and the gap between what is 'pop' and what is actually popular is a thread for somebody else), trace it back to Arthur Lee on the basis of using non-rock textures and sonic/aesthetic sensibility in a NON-PROGRAMMATIC context (which is where Brian Wilson doesn't make it) (Lee's discovery/invention also had a 'hot' and 'cool' period!) So, if Arthur Lee = (whatever New Orleans guy would be the singularity in the Big Bang jazz-universe theory [I realise 'Big Bang' theory is too close to 'Great Man theory' for some people to stomach which is why the 'steady-state' theory seemed to have gained wider currency but I can't talk about that right now because the batteries in the voicebox have died)/ (Louis Armstrong?), then Combustible Edison (or Primal Scream?) = Al Jolson, Stereolab = Art Pepper, Eminem = Bix Beiderbecke and Neil Hannon = Jim Davidson

fkn genius thread dq

all fag shit. heavy metal crap. what talking about edison fucking light bulbs. fucking louie armstrong. this i love music not michael fucking parkinson show.

Punk is more appealing than hardcore for the same reason that Che sells more t-shirts than Fidel. In the popular mythology anyway, punk was a ragtag revolutionary movement. Hardcore is a dogmatic post- revolutionary society, full of thoughtcrimes and denounciations of counter-revolutionaries. same old story.

Punk is Viet Cong. Hardcore is Khmer Rouge. Punk is Dada. Hardcore is Soviet-style Social Realism. Punk is storming the Bastille. Hardcore is the guillotine.

There's a lot more boring punk than boring hardcore, and I refuse to denounce any movement that's given us Rudimentary Peni, Melt-Banana, Gerty Farish, Minor Threat, Fat Day, In/Humanity, early Black Flag, and Sick Of It All's "My Life." I'm willing to put up with some photocopied skulls for that.

Fritz, your string of comparisons is very apt. There's a lot more boring punk than boring hardcore
No, there's not.

who could draw any parallels between the minutemen and the khmer rouge (or the guillotine for that matter)? the minutemen are decidely hardcore. i don't even think that applies to bad brains.

the humourlessness of early ian mackaye or the eternal humourlessness of hank rollins (among others) do support this point, however.

'punk' itself has not changed much since 1977, and these filthy, spotty, mohawked youths still clamour for a genre that has not progressed or altered its ethos (same tired fashion, same aesthetics) at all. hardcore continues to progress and update itself, taking on influences and dishing them out. even the deplorably mindless routine of most mid-nineties 'skate punk' is rooted in hardcore (with the exception of probably rancid and a few other semi-evolved groups of hominids).

most of the bands you're bringing up were pre-hardcore as orthodoxy and very consciously challenged the punk-rock rule books of their era: minutemen as an earnest "fucking corndog" reaction to LA, minor threat's anti-fun stance, black flag in their longhaired guit-wank stage.

Combustible Edison (or Primal Scream?) = Al Jolson, Stereolab = Art Pepper, Eminem = Bix Beiderbecke and Neil Hannon = Jim Davidson

This alone will have my head spinning for days. I thank you!

All the best knuckleheads evolved into fags, anyway. Well, maybe not the Bad Brains.

bad brains are closet cases.

I Like "Damaged". Is that punk, or hardcore? whatever that is, as well as Dead Kennedy's "Frankenchrist" and minor threat's complete dicography CD....whaaaatever, anyway.

Come year end that should win an award for best new answer. I forgot what the question was reading it.

I like hardcore pornography better than punk rock.

One thing about Douglas's answer is the variety of bands that he sticks in the hardcore label...wasn't Gerty Farish based on hyperactive Casio playing? Any genre containing both that and Rudimentary Peni has a lot of room left for vitality. While I can't say I enjoyed all of that Troubleman Unlimited comp., and I guess it's not all hardcore stuff, as a sort of state of the union type record, it does make feel pretty bullish about hardcore. What modern punk bands do the same?

i've always seen american hardcore as an amalgam of punk and skinhead culture (of the non-skrewdriver-influenced variety) more than as a pure evolvement of punk.

Hardcore sold out (thus it is better).

HARDCORE IS ALOT BETTING MUSICLY THAN PUNK, PUNKS THESE DAYS ARE A BUNCH OF STUPID KIDS, HARDCORE IS ALOT MORE COMPLEX THAN PUNK IT ALSO HAS DIFFERENT SOUNDS LIKE METALCORE AND STUFF, PUNK JUST HAS ALL THE SAME SOUNDS. ANYWAY PUNK TODALY SOLD OUT. AND ALSO BREAK DOWNS ARE FUCKING SWEET. HARDCORE ALWAYS (SXE)

HARDCORE IS ALOT BETTER MUSICLY THAN PUNK, PUNKS THESE DAYS ARE A BUNCH OF STUPID KIDS, HARDCORE IS ALOT MORE COMPLEX THAN PUNK IT ALSO HAS DIFFERENT SOUNDS LIKE METALCORE AND STUFF, PUNK JUST HAS ALL THE SAME SOUNDS. ANYWAY PUNK TODALY SOLD OUT. AND ALSO BREAK DOWNS ARE FUCKING SWEET. HARDCORE ALWAYS (SXE)

MOSH BRO

Love'em both, but "Punk" has aged better than "Hardcore." "Hardcore" seems very rooted in its heyday (early to mid 80's).

By this I mean that certain bits of music made by, say, the Damned, the Stranglers, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Buzzcocks, etc. still sounds fresh and exciting, whereas certain bits of music made by, say, Agnostic Front, T.S.O.L, 7 Seconds, the Cro-Mags, the Circle Jerks, Sacharine Trust, Suicidal Tendencies, etc. sounds pretty dated.

"There's a lot more boring punk than boring hardcore"

Sooooo, soooooooo, sooooooooooooooooooooo untrue.

Always hated Hardcore with a passion. In fact, I discovered it before real punk, and left such a sour taste that I couldn't even listen to real punk without feeling sick. Hardcore had energy going for it... that's about it. There could be no innovation because if anybody deferred from the hard, fast rules THEY SOLD OUT. Also, hardcore were the ones that really started getting into the hypocritcal, moronic, anarchistic politics. And to the person who said hardcore moved on and gained influences, etc.... who was probably referring to Fugazi, Q and not U, Husker Du, Nation of Ulysses, etc. Those are hardcore like Joy Division is punk.

Punk, at least original NY Punk, knew no bounds. In fact, the only thing all the bands had in common was D.I.Y. ethics. You can tell me a group like Television, The Ramones, Blondie, Richard Hell, The Talking Heads, et.all is less diverse then Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Germs, and Dead Kennedy's (and those were the better hardcore bands).

sigh.