Do We Really Need A Post-Punk Canon?

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Reading the last couple issues of UNCUT I was struck by two things. One was their top 100 post-punk singles, and how underwhelmed I was by the list, even though it was a list where 85% of the records being talked about were absolutely brilliant. The other was a 5-star review of a record by Hammill On Trial, who I had never heard of, but who Allan Jones compared to (from memory) Television, the VU, the Stooges, Patti Smith etc. I like some or all of most of those bands' stuff, but this implication of derived cool through influence really turned me off. (The free track with the CD was average).

It's pretty obvious that the canonisation process has spread to the post-punk 70s and 80s. I'm not judging one way or the other yet, but what does anyone think of this? A good thing? A bad thing? Something to resist? Something to ignore? Any ideas?

― Tom Ewing, Sunday, 11 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was a bit shocked that the Pixies were featured in Mojo, surely a worrying sign that the band now are becoming part of the dreaded VU/Dylan/Young canon, something I could well do without. Resistance seems futile, better to just ignore the process.

― Omar, Sunday, 11 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I love canons and lists ! They're how I discovered a hell of a lot of what I listen to. As far as post-punk goes, it's not like you can hear any of that music on the radio and I sure wasn't lucky enough to personally know anyone who could have pointed me to the good stuff. Now I'm discovering great records and artists that didn't make the canons and lists. They're a starting point - you don't have to worship the lists (I doubt anyone does). You just take what you need and leave the rest. If it wasn't for them, I'd probably be listening to Bryan Adams and wondering why music is so dull these days. It's easy to be all smug about this, and feel that it is beneath us, when we read for the 5000th time that The Velvet Underground & Nico and Marquee Moon are classics. But to my 15 year-old self, that was news - I'd only vaguely heard of both bands before, and there is no way I would have eventually known of them through the usual channels (radio, TV, friends). And both albums just knocked me out - the VU one instantly, the Television one after a few listens - and are among my favorites to this day. So I'm glad that Rolling Stone magazine published that best-albums-of-the-last-20-years list. Sure, Crosby Stills & Nash and Dark Side Of The Moon might have been on it, but nobody's forcing me to pay attention to those, are they ?

― Patrick, Sunday, 11 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was about to make that point too. It's all very well to despise canons documenting a period of time you either lived through or discovered the hard way, but from a practical perspective it's hella helpful when you're trying to discover an area of music twenty years after the fact. With only a couple of exceptions the artists I've discovered (Wire, Joy Division, The Fall, Pere Ubu etc.) have generally made their presence known to me through their canonisation process. New additions will only help me and others of my general age bracket.

― Tim, Sunday, 11 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I actually love canons and list as much as the next guy. Of course they help you find a way through history. NME had some great lists in the first half of the 90s (best debut, best album, etc.) that were a bit more daring than Rolling Stone & co. For instance I love the way British canons *will* Screamadelica, Happy Mondays and Jesus & Mary Chain into history. I also suspect there have been counter-canons in the 90s, the most influential and interesting being the afro-futurism canon. And still I find other counter-canons like in dance music somewhat suspect, not because of the quality of the records ("Acid Trax" is of course better than 'White Light/White Heat') but somehow canonisation feels like museumification, therefor admitting something is practically useless. But that's just a feeling ;)

― Omar, Monday, 12 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

We have no choice in this. Canons will be created whether we like it or not. Generally they're helpful as long as you don't restrict yourself to a diet of 'canonised only' material. I treat them as signposts which are helpful for general navigation around a genre. It's usually more interesting to discover what's lurking in the nearby bushes though.

― Dr. C, Monday, 12 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Surely Tom you mean a Post Punk Cannon - via which large piece of iron can be fired into the the torsos of the collected members of Wire and Magazine leaving amusing perfectly circular holes in their bodies. It would go nicely with my Prog-Rock Musket and my British Invasion Machette.

― Tanya Headon, Monday, 12 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tom, I see what you mean about the Uncut post-punk singles list being rather uninspiring to actually read, however brilliant most of the singles were. The ethos behind the list was sound, to anthologise and celebrate the singles of 1976 onwards, and to avoid having the echoes of the 60s clog up the top end (admittedly an all-time poll in Uncut would probably not be as overwhelmingly 60s-dominated as a similar poll in Q or Mojo, but that would be a decidedly hollow victory). But there was a certain lack of spark in David Stubbs's descriptions of each single, as though he was going through the motions, repeating himself in terms of ideas. And, fine and surprising and intriguing as the selection was for the most part, it got a little predictable in the Top 20 or so.

But I'd pretty much endorse what Tim said. These canons can be useful, especially if you're discovering a period in music you didn't yourself experience, as long as you don't use them as your sole basis for what you listen to.

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 12 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This is not meant to sound as obtuse as it may look to you: perhaps because I don't read magazines, I don't quite understand the question. Unlike some folk I don't think of the VU or the Stooges as 'punk'. And when does 'post-punk' stop?

More generally, in a sense 'canonization' might just be a synonym for 'valuation'. Anyone who loves, say, the Jam has presumably long had this or that Jam record in a personal (post-punk?) canon.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 13 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

five months pass...

Let's ask this question again, in light of The Strokes.

― Tom, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

A canon is neither good or bad. I am currently becoming interested again in Doo Wop, without extensive research which time will not permit, a canon is likely to prove very helpful, at least initially. With musics i know about or grew up with, canons stultify yes of course, but interestingly, i find, the canons (eg rave?) reflect someting very different to what actually happened on the ground

― gareth, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom I think your initial point is very sympathetic - I find the automatic listing of influences you get with these self-consciously cool retro bands to be irritating insofar as they allow the critic to sidestep actually becoming enthusiastic about the music in question and merely concentrate on their enthusiasm from thirty years ago. That said, I was listening to The Strokes at a music store listening post and found it surprisingly enjoyable, if perhaps not worth spending money on.

― Tim, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ahem...I had the same thing re: The Strokes. Heard a couple of tracks and thought something along the lines of "Blimey, that's not bad at all." Maybe even thinking about -cough- a vinyl purchase if there's a slow period in music land. Still, there is something depressingly join-da-dotsah about them. And why do they all insist on dressing like Patti Smith? (says he who studies Horses before he puts on a suit ;) Surly wearing some spacesuits would give the music just that something different?

― Omar, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm not saying The Strokes are bad - I've always said they seem to be an OK band.

I would say though that once you have a post-punk canon fully in place, all you are going to get in the mainstream is bands like The Strokes.

― Tom, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom E said: >>> I would say though that once you have a post-punk canon fully in place, all you are going to get in the mainstream is bands like The Strokes.

Which is an astounding claim. What about all your favourite stuff that fills the charts? That's mainstream and does not, I daresay, sound much like the Strokes (whom I have only ever heard on TotP).

Omar said: >>> if there's a slow period in music land.

If?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I took him to mean, all you would get in the mainstream that has some kind of postpunk lineage, pinefox.

― Josh, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom (or Josh, if you're still channelling his spirit), do you mean stylistically, or simply that any new band will have a self-conscious and deliberately constructed retro-active sound? I'm assuming the latter - I'm thinking the obvious fall-out from The Strokes will be bands saying "Okay, well why don't we just mix Pere Ubu with The Fall?" etc.

― Tim, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hello? I mean, The Strokes are a bubblegum proto-punk band if anything.

― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah. Mind you, if a band came along that were as good as Pere Ubu and The Fall and somehow combined their respective sounds I'd probably mess myself. Not that that's likely to happen, unless someone find a way of cloning MES and David Thomas.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, actually I was thinking after I made that example that it was far too interesting to be applicable.

― Tim, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

five months pass...

Here is a post-punk canon thread.

― DeRayMi, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was incredibly wrong on this thread about the Strokes.

I think what I was getting at is the problems canon-building holds for discussion of the music, whether canonised or uncanonised.

― Tom, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

three years pass...

revive!

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 18:08 (twenty years ago)

or: "let's ask this question again, in the context of simon reynolds"

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 18:09 (twenty years ago)

In light of the 1981 box!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 18:21 (twenty years ago)

yeah that's interesting actually! bcz one impulse at play in pt. one of "rip it up" is certainly marking out x "true post-punk classics" (which fairly lots of would have been available out of, e.g., that lunatic's 'Great Rock And Roll Discography') whereas the box certainly suggests a different kind of pluralism

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 18:45 (twenty years ago)

i mean a common bit of rhetoric around post punk is ANYONE AND THEIR MOTHER COULD CONVINCE THEIR MOTHERS THAT THEIR RECORD MATTERED but it seems a bit like the corollorary is "... but only john lydon, green gartside, and the gang of four circa their first album actually did..."

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 18:47 (twenty years ago)

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