I realised today that I don'treally like punk music

C/D: "[band that existed when Joey Ramone was 10 and predated the term 'punk' by a good 15 years] were punk!"

You know the chronology of it well? People weren't calling Iggy Stooge a punk?

x-post: Matos, to me that's like someone saying Dylan wasn't a good singer

I got this vague memory of my first impressions of the Ramones. I remembered how different it seemed from all the metal bands back then. These punks weren't singing about how awesome they were and how they were going to kick ass, but mostly about how much they themselves sucked and what misfit, lazy idiots they were, how much they needed meds and lobotomies and how all their girlfriends were these suicidal psycho chicks and how much drugs they're going to do. I guess in it's own weird way it's more realistic than a lot of heavy metal, but I didn't exactly listen to metal for reality, anyway. My interest in punk started out as a laugh, but eventually I guess the cynical "laugh as your world falls apart" attitude rubbed off on me, as it seems to have on those old punks themselves. If they just started out to mock society and piss people off for a laugh, then why did they end up so serious and troubled?

x-posts to Matos

wow, i'm pissed up and it's 4am so maybe i oughtn't be typing.

I think I may be the only hardcore Pavement fan who reckons Slanted is on the whole a load of rub other than maybe Trigger Cut and Here (arguably the least punk tracks on the album).

Grunge wasn't a bad thing in most people's eyes in the 80's, so maybe it was kind of like that in the 70's, too. I know sometimes when I buy an album from the 70s or earlier, I sometimes find myself wondering if it was really a wise purchase. I tend to feel that I've heard it before and I didn't really need any more of it.

More likely that they never listened to the stuff to begin with. Come on.

It's not as if technical or conceptual music died completely after 1977, it's just it became really uncool and so acts like Dream Theater could never have become as big as Nirvana. It's also the reason Oasis won the battle over Blur - they were more punk, so they won.

It's like that joke in Family Guy

A: "I don't see any reason why we should go to war"
B: "Ah, but you are forgetting that anyone who doesn't want to go to war is gay."
C: "I wanna go to war"
A: "Hey, I never said I didn't want to go to war!"
D: "I said I wanted to go to war first!"

It's such an automatic excuse: Oh, so unless you respect these mohawk dudes then it means your into triple albums about trolls that eat maggot sandwiches and the inner meaning of ptolemiology.

Sure they did. And they got tired of it just like everyone else when they saw how pointless it was to try and stick a blazing fast solo in a song for no reason. Kurt Cobain and the dudes from Soundgarden had heard all the same shit I listened to growing up. They were all young boys once, too, glued to MTV just like every other kid. They watched Headbanger's Ball and 120 Minutes just like everyone else and every day after school they got to see Steve Vai doing "Yankee Rose," back-to-back with Megadeth's "Peace Sells" and Poison's "Every Rose," etc.

On the topic of Steve Vai, it's kind of funny that he offered to do some movie soundtrack with Perry Farrell. Perry Farrell's only response was "Wasn't he in White Snake?!" This proves (to me, at least) that Perry follows metal enough to know that shit. I didn't know about it until last week! And what is so different about Jane's Addiction, anyway? That shit is basically metal.

Maybe some grunge people were big metal heads previously - I dunno. I think it was just more punk w/ a bit of a retro Stooges/Blue Cheer/Sabbath or whatever thing.

Or broke...

well, then so was I... but, I not really. I practiced all the time. I just realized that I didn't need to be Yngwie fucking Malmsteen to make good music. (I never liked him, anyway.) I just wanted to make my own music ASAP, not waste time learning other people's music and, while I still respected Metallica and Megadeth, I knew my fingers wouldn't be able to do any of that shit for a long time, so I just kept plugging away at my own "style," which I thought was really important at the time. Besides, I knew what I thought were the only two scales, so I didn't think there was anything more to learn! Just practice, I figured. One day, it would all click. Haha.

I still see local punk bands grinding it out and coming up with great songs. I like punk when it gets down to the stripped rock feeling, which is what I like in the Sex Pistols or in The Clash. It's fun to listen to, y'know? Stimulates the lizard brain. I'm not wild that the term gets applied to any pop rock with distortion, but it's not like I'm the fuckin' genre police. And besides, if people like Avril Lavigne didn't care so much about calling themselves punk, it wouldn't be as much fun to see their fans freak out when you call 'em "emo."

Point of this being, of course, that all these 30 or 40 something Brooklyn indie twee pop stars associate their girly sensitive music more with punk than, say, hippies, despite the fact their music is closer to hippy or krautrock than punk. And kraut's always seemed more hippy or prog than punk to me.

You're under arrest!

Robert Plant says on disc two of "the Drum N' Bass Show" 5-21-77 just before The Battle of Evermore:

"This was the plan. You see, When we were teenagers in about 1971, just before we started punk rock, we used to do an acoustic set and if you've followed some of the rubbish in the papers... not the papers in Houston, of course, you'll find out that we're just about to start doing an acoustic set for you right now, so I hope you like it."

The man makes no sense. There is a bonus interview at the end of disc three where they're talking about the black object on the cover of Presence and who knows what the fuck that is all about.

The only punk songs that I really like are all hardcore. (probably this is mostly to do with the fact that I listened to too much grunge in high school) So I think I have a self limiting thing going on, I know the punk songs I like are very few & far between, so I tend to avoid it- as opposed to other genres like shoegazing or something, where I'm way more likely to give new stuff a few listens.

http://www.highhopes.com/28B.JPG

The secret to the early Velvets' sound was John Cale's deep understanding of trigonometry.

;-) (jks)

Television
Black Flag
Wire
Ramones
Minutemen
Misfits
Fugazi
Stooges
Buzzcocks
Undertones
The Fall

If you think all punk is poorly played, hyperfast three-chord anti-government screeds, you're listening to somebody's bad stereotype of punk. Or you're thinking of hardcore, which was punk's stylistic blind alley anyway.

If you pop on "Orgasm Addict" or "Holidays In The Sun" and you don't get an instant rush of timeless rock pleasure, you may be dead.

Of this list, the only bands I have any passing desire to ever listen to are Wire, the Minutemen and The Ramones, and they aren't high on my playlist.

Any argument that starts out "Why should I respect a music genre that is a bunch of undifferentiated crap" is immediately suspect if said genre is full of differentiation. Although I suspect the basis of this argument is "Somebody turned up their nose at my beloved ELO CDs - I'll attack back!" Okay, life sucks. Buy a helmet.

It's uncompromising, DIY stuff done for the love of doing it, not because these guys think they have a chance in hell of making any money doing it. I am drawn to it because it's pure music driven by nothing more than love.

Anything that has ever been considered punk by anybody? Bands that sound like the Ramones? The New York 1970s scene? Detroit in the 60s, England in the 70s, LA in the 80s? Bands that are snotty? What do you mean by punk?

OH THE DIVERSITY

OH THE DIVERSITY

Have you ever listened to these bands, Theorry? There's an awful lot of stylistic real estate between Minor Threat and Pere Ubu and the Theoretical Girls, yet all fall under the umbrella of Punk. It is the quintessence of diversity.

but if punk is as diverse as you say, then why not ashlee simpson?

hardcore is to punk what acorns are to oak trees, silly person.

but if punk is as diverse as you say, then why not ashlee simpson?

Just because a genre is diverse, that doesn't necessarily make it all-encompasing.

when is punk's cut-off point then? anyone who is inspired by punk, and anyone who inspired punk, is a punk?

Unless they are lying.

And yeah, if you think DEVO and the New York Dolls sound the same you're a fucking moron.

ps... always thought hardcore was short for... hardcore punk... but maybe Im just crazy

Are you being "controversial" here?

I was going to cite that too, but I've seen arguments to the contrary.

...y'know, unlike, say, Hip Hop.

Are you being "controversial" here?

No, here I believe I was "being a dick," but by the same token, I'd assert with a straight-face that there's more diversity under the banner of Punk than there is under the banner of Hip Hop.