Does Postpunk even actually exist?

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I say, no--not really.
And here's why:
http://blog.myspace.com/paulewagemann

― Paul Edward Wagemann (PaulEdwardWagemann), Monday, 10 July 2006 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

Can't read yr. (no doubt fascinating) blog, 'cuz the work machine is afraid of the "adult content" that might be found on that there MySpace site.

But anyway, the punk rock is where all jams are short and fast and buzzy, like the Ramones and Sex Pistols, jah? Chuck Berry plus Sonics plus jaded 70s decadence plus grubby-fingered "working class" rama-lama-fa-fa-fa? Jah?

Jah! Loudfastrules, O.K! We drink beer now! But no sex, please, we're on drugs.

And then the Post-Punk is where all the art school cunts come along and "see the possibilities." The Post-Punk is what happens when people who are "really much more interested in reggae right now" take over. Right?

Post the blog tho'. I'm curious...

― fuckfuckingfuckedfucker (fuckfuckingfuckedfucker), Monday, 10 July 2006 18:55 (eighteen years ago)

I've heard rumors of its existance...

― Rev. PappaWheelie (PappaWheelie 2), Monday, 10 July 2006 18:57 (eighteen years ago)

Yes. There's a load of books about it and everything.

Good luck with your self-publicising though.

― Toad Roundgrin (noodle vague), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:03 (eighteen years ago)

You misspelled "modernism" in the thread title.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:10 (eighteen years ago)

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Does PostPunk Really Exist?
The mailman dropped off a slip of paper at my door a couple days ago informing me that the Simon Reynolds book Rip it up and start Again, that I reserved at my local library was in. Within minutes I had my 6 month old son Jack strapped into his stroller and we were headed out the door to pick it up.
There are however a few biases I know I'll have as I read this book. The most obvious one is the fact that it is written from a totally British perspective. I have nothing against the Brits except that they think punk rock started and ended with the Sex Pistols, when in reality Malcolm McLaren fabricated the Sex Pistols in the mold of the New York Dolls (who he briefly managed) and Richard Hell (who he idolized). Punk, as any good Rockist knows, had actually been brewing in the dirty back alleys and seedy flophouses of America's industrial cities since at least the late 60s. So I've never considered the Sex Pistols as anything more than a snotty British rip-off. But to be fair, the Brits had been responsible for some very important improvements in American Rock inventions before. In fact, one way of looking at the history of Rock is as if it were a long distance tennis match between the US and the UK. The US started it off with a powerful overhand serve in the form of the good old fashioned, straight ahead Rock-n-Roll of Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc. The UK returned that serve with British Invasion in the early 60s that included a plethera of bands that were basically taking their own craftsmanship, applying it to the original Rock-n-Roll and improving on it. Since then there has been a sort of back and forth volley across the Atlantic, the most exciting of which was a Punk Rock forehand smash, which originated from The Stooges, the New York Dolls, the Dead Boys, The Dictators, etc. Malcolm McLaren was the vehicle in which punk arrived into the UK, but he befouled it into the Sex Pistols brand of 'BritPunk' which rather quickly became the impetis (according to Simon Reynolds anyway) for Postpunk. Reynolds perspective of PostPunk is largely reliant on Britpunk, and there emerges the first indication that at best PostPunk is predominantly a British phenomenon.
That brings me to my second bias against Reynold's book, which is that the music from the Postpunk era (1978-1984 according to Reynolds) is IMO some of the worst slop ever recorded. I became a teenager 75 days before Mtv first went on the air in August of 1981. I had been born and reared in a small farmer/factory town in Central Illinois to teenage parents for whom guitar rock was more than just music--it was an ethos. An ethos that I enthusiatically adopted as my own. So the last thing on earth I wanted playing as the soundtrack for my early teen years was a bunch of wimpy synthesizer dance shit. Yet that is exactly what I got, that and a bit of corporate rock and way too much hair metal. (It wasn't until I went off to college in 1986 that I discovered college rock radio and I could breath once again.)
So what was/is postpunk? Why isnt it called PostDisco or PostProgRock? Did Punk really make that much of an impact that it changed the face of Rock forever? Or is Postpunk just another over-intellectualized label made up by attention-whore Rock critics that has very little to do with the evolution of Rock.
To find the answer, I started by looking back at the mid 60s when Rock was considered the voice of the counter-culture. There was at that time a few bands (scattered garage bands plus bands like the Fugs, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, etc) that thought the counter-culture was bullshit and that Rock was becoming way too mainstream. By the 70s as Rock became even more mainstream, even more bands began rebelling against this tendency, bands like the NY Dolls, the Dead Boys, the Ramones, the Heartbreakers, Television, the Talking Heads, Devo, Pere Ubu, Kraftwerk, Modern Lovers, Blondie, etc.
Unfortuneatley most of these bands were all lumped into the Punk Rock catagory, when in fact there was an obvious distinction between Punk Rock (Ramones, NY Dolls, Stooges, Dead Boys, Sham 69, Sex Pistols) and what was becoming known as New Wave Rock (bands like the Talking heads, Televison, Blondie, the Cars, Pere Ubu, Kraftwerk, the b-52s). Although bands like X-ray spec blur the lines between the two (and although casual rock fans often carelessly lump the two together) the difference between the two genres is this: New Wave Rock was actually nothing more than Art Rock which came from a long line of artsy, more intellectual (academcially speaking) backgrounds, whereas Punk Rock was coming from a more nihilistc (often associated with a street level or destructive junkie) place.
Reynolds seems to suggest that this distinction really broke right after Punk Rock exploded then imploded all over the UK. What followed that implosion, according to Reynolds is Postpunk:
"It was a this point [the summer of '77] that the fragile unity that punk had forged between working-class kids and arty middle-class bohemians began to fracture. On one side were the populist 'real punks' (later to evolve into Oi and hardcore movements) who beleived that the music needed to stay acessible and unpretentious, to continue to fill its role as the angry voice of the streets. On the other side was the vanguard that came to be known as postpunk, who saw 1977 not as a return to raw rock'n'roll but as a chance to make a break with tradition. The postpunk vanguard...defined punk as an imperative to constant change. They dedicated themselves to fullfilling punk's uncompleted musical revolution..."
But if you notice that according to some of Reynold's own markers in which he is laying down to define Postpunk, we see that Postpunk was actually happening before Punk exploded and imploded in the Uk. Here's a quote:
"The entire postpunk period looks like an attempt to replay virtually every major modernist theme and technique via the medium of pop music."
Reynolds goes on to give about ten examples or so to show this. But the fact of the matter is that Art Rock had already been doing this before Punk ever imploded within the UK. Roxy Music, Bowie, Kraftwerk, The Velvet Underground, Can, Soft Machine along with Prog Rock bands like Pink Floyd (who once concieved of the idea of making an entire album out of kitchen utensils) had all already started covering this ground.
So I felt just about ready to dismiss Postpunk a s a fancy name for something that already existed. It was simply Art rock that was still evolving, and would have contineued to exist whether punk rock had ever existed or not. But I didnt want to come to this decision too hastily. For one thing that you can't help but acknowledge when it comes to the discussion of music is that music can evoke visceral gut reactions based on various associations. I was aware enough to realize that the music of the early 80s often evoked associations in ways that music prior to that time never did--and that is mainly because of music videos. (Teen movies with "new wave" soundtracks also cause associations). Music can conjure up associations with things, places, images, even people that were blatantly and obviously influenced by the music. For instance when ever Duran Duran comes on the radio, images of valley girls who wore neon colored leg warmers at shopping malls comes to my mind.
Is this fair? Does this cloud my objectivity? Perhaps, but also I realize that there may be a greater reason for this valley girl in leg warmer association than simply because of personal experience on my part. In the case of Duran Duran, this association has to in part be attributed to the fact that valley girls in leg warmers was the target audiance for Duran Duran. Their videos and albums were marketed for that demographic.
So in this case, that gut reaction I was having was actually due to something inside of me (that I imagine each of us have) that is akin to a bullshit detector. In this case, the bullshit detoectore, when upon hearing a terriblly weak song, produces a gut reactins that allows me to immediatley identify the song as Shit. Call it a Quality--or lack of quality-- Detector, if you want. And my Quality Detector immediatley flashes to the "Shit" setting nearly anytime a Duran Duran song comes on the radio.
None the less, I decided to re-examine the music that I had hated so much all those years ago so that I could settle this with myself once and for: was this music just a bunch of shit, or was it actually something of some merit.
I admit, that I am skeptic about the value in trying to define music genres in the first place. Other than the fact that its kinda fun why do people do it? Is it really that much of a useful devise? Does it allow people to actually put something into perspective through exploring the context of it? I mean, why do we need this new label: Postpunk.
One reason I immediatley came upon was that for the longest time what Reynolds was referring to as Postpunk had been simply referred to as 'Hits of the 80s' or"New Wave". Hits of the 80s was obvioulsy too broad of a term. And New Wave doesnt really seem very 'new' since anyone under 25 years old probablly wasnt even born yet when the music in question was made. Yet it seemed like every other kind of music of the 80s had a name; there was hardcore, hair metal, corporate rock, still some yacht rock being made, there was also ska and New Romanticism, rap and techno and so on. So what about this other music that didnt fit neatly into any other catagory? Did this music have some unifying factor that would allow it to merit its own genre? Reynolds seems to approach that question this way:
"They [the postpunkers] were totally confident that there were still places to go with rock, a whole new future to invent."
He goes on to explain that one manner in which postpunkers were taking Rock into a new future was that they challenged the standard Chuck Berry bluesy chords that a lot of Classic Rock was founded on. According to Reynolds the "post punk pantheon of guitar innovators" favored the compact, angular, clean and spikey sounding guitar (reminesent of David Byrne) that was often inspired by raggae or funk. This scrawnier sounding guitar then allowed for the bass to be more at the forefront of the music's soundscape.
That was one method, another method ofcouse was using new technology like the latest synthesizers and drum machines. But here Reynold's case doesnt sound as convincing, especially when he begins drawing comparsions between Postpunk and ProgRock? For instance:
"Postpunk also rebuilt bridges with rock's own past, vast swatched of which had been placed off-limits when punk declared 1976 to be Year Zero. Punk installed a myth that still persists to this day in some quarters, that the prepunk early seventies were a musical wasteland...In a sense, postpunk WAS progressive rock, but drastically streamlined and reinvigorated, and with a more austere sensibility (no ostentatious virtuosity)..."
So what does this mean? In a way this suggests that Postpunk was actually anti-rock, for even though both punk and postpunk had the aim of revolutionizing rock, their approach to do so were nearly opposites. Punk was sort of a cout de tat, while Postpunk was more along the lines of a civil rights movement. It was a continuation of ProgRock, only leaner and with new technology. Listen to Yes or Rush in the 80s--does it sound that much different than the bands Reynolds is calling Postpunk?
Reynolds tries to clarify this by saying:
"...it was a particular kind of 'art rock' that postpunk pledged allegiance to, not prog's attmept to merge amplified electric guitars with nineteenth-century classical instrumentaton and extended compositions, but the minimal-is-maximal lineage that runs from the Velvet Underground through Krautrock and the more intellectual Bowie/Roxy end of glam."
All of which just sounds like a fancy way of saying that Postpunk was Art Rock that had evolved. So I was no where near being convinced, when suddenly Reynolds begins trumpeting elements of PostPunk as being part of the 2nd British Invasion. This music that I found to be superficial dance music--which is fine for teenage girls or possibly when you get drunk at a wedding, I guess--is all the sudden being compared to the Who, the Beatles, the Kinks, etc. And that's pretty much were I have to say enough is enough.
At this point I was fully ready to dismiis this entire notion of Postpunk. I could see no major difference between New Wave Rock/Art Rock and Reynold's Postpunk, except that the name postpunk sounds more artsy-fartsy. Reynold's seems to be be aware of this notion when he writes:
"Some accused these experimentalists [of the postpunk vanguard] of merely lapsing back into the art rock elitism that punk originally aimed to destroy."
And if you look at the bands Reynolds glorifies as being the vanguard of Postpunk you will notice that a large number of them have art school backgrounds; Wire, Gang of Four, Cabaret Voltaire, the Raincoats, the Art of Noise, etc. So what Reynolds is labeling as Postpunk is actually less a reaction to Punk than it is an extension/evolution/continuation of the 'Art Rock' movement outlined by bands like the Velevet Underground, Roxy Music, Soft Machine Kraftwerk, Bowie, etc. And in reality you didnt need Punk Rock to have what Reynolds is calling PostPunk--these post punk bands would have existed anyway.
And by naming an entire genre as PostPunk is giving Punk Rock more credit than it is due--especially Brit Punk, which was just a reflection of the real punk that had been invented in North America. By the time punk exploded in the UK (Many punks site July 4, 1976 when the Ramones opened in the UK as the birthdate for brit Punk) there were already a number of small local Punk scenes scattered all over North America that were somewhat connected by zines, DIY record labels, and haphazrad regional tours in broken down vans to small time clubs that were punk-permissive. But the fact that Punk never exploded in N.America like it did in the UK kind of takes the air out of the argument that punk was a big enough phenomenon to warrant having a second genre named for it anywhere in the world except for possibly in the UK. Sure these small local N.American Punk scenes gained some momentum from the Punk explosion in the UK (sex pistols, clash, etc) but it still really never hit a national spotlight. Instead it sorta evolved into American Hardcore--which produced a few good bands, but which also became a bit clique-ish and ridiculas. And in fact by about 1983-84 it had been played out (I think the Repoman film is a good signal of that). In fact as a lot of hardcore musicians began to actually learn to play their instruments they sorta merged with speed metal, thrash, death metal or whatever that shit was called--but I had totally lost interest in it by that time...
So Punk Rock evolved into the hardcore stuff of the late 70's/early 80's while Art Rock continued as well. And as the tennis match btween the US and UK was coming to an end the States returned the volley with Grunge, a late 80s forehand smash that the Brits weakly attempted to return with a lameduck lob ball embarrassinly called Brit Pop (Oasis, Blur, etc). And perhaps this gives us the best insight as to the Brits insistance in trying to create their case for Postpunk. They've obviously lost the match, so now all they can do is go back and try to redifine it in their favor. OH! Those sneaky Brits!

But in the final analysis, PostPunk appears as nothing more than a bombastic attempt to differentiate between lame New Wave (the one-hit synth wonders) and the cool New Wave (the art rockers and the raggae influenced Brit bands). My conclusion is that Postpunk doesnt really exist other than as a Brit label for the UK's own brand of NewWave/Art Rock.

6:33 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

― Marmot 4-Tay: You are beautiful, and you are alone. (marmotwolof), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:10 (eighteen years ago)

My blog entry is pretty long--I'll bring up a few points however.

1~ punk wasn't big enough or interesting enough in 1978 North America to have spawned anything that could be called a postpunk...Punk was obviously big in the UK, but in the US it was basically a bunch of scattered local scenes somewhat connected by DIY labels, zines and regional econoline van tours. These scenes evolved into hardcore and then hardcore (with a few notable exceptions) got pretty boring pretty quick...

2~ all of the bands that are called Postpunk are bascially just a continuation of the Art Rock traditions of velvet underground, pere ube, kraftwerk, roxy music, david bowie, etc. Postpunk bands dont sound like Prog Rock bands but with shorter songs, newer technologys (synthesizers, drum machines) and no gratuious solos...

3~ many of the so-called postpunk bands existed BEFORE punk was big enough to have an influence. How can music be influenced by something that came AFTER it?

― Paul Edward Wagemann (PaulEdwardWagemann), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:18 (eighteen years ago)

My blog entry is pretty long--I'll bring up a few points however.

2~ all of the bands that are called Postpunk are bascially just a continuation of the Art Rock traditions of velvet underground, pere ube, kraftwerk, roxy music, david bowie, etc. Postpunk bands sound alot like Prog Rock bands but with shorter songs, newer technologys (synthesizers, drum machines) and no gratuious solos...

3~ many of the so-called postpunk bands existed BEFORE punk was big enough to have an influence. How can music be influenced by something that came AFTER it?

― Paul Edward Wagemann (PaulEdwardWagemann), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:19 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.jhu.edu/~phil/kant-hegelconference/kant.jpeg

LOL EXISTENCE IS NOT A PREDICATE

― Toad Roundgrin (noodle vague), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:21 (eighteen years ago)

"Enter the 1980s--a time when the need for Rockism was more dire than ever. Everywhere you looked you saw hairbands, synthesizers, drum machines, lip-synching, spandex wearing pretty boys and *gasp* choreography. Real Rock was deeply underground and DIY at this point. You could find it in the hardcore scene; Minor Threat, the MinuteMen. And you could find it on college radio; R.E.M, the Replacements, etc. In fact Rock was actually very strong, confident, and resilient through the 80s and by the end of the decade mainstream audiances would begin to take notice once again. Janes' Addiction, Sonic Youth and the Pixies signaled this reemergance, but it was the Seattle bands that blew the lid off of things. Here were an entire army of bands doing Rock pretty much the way it was supposed to be done."

yikes!!

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:22 (eighteen years ago)

The problem I have with your argument about the term is that it feels to me like you're treating it as though it were some sort of new bullshit contraption when in fact it has existed for a long time and, yes, has been a useful term. Your main premise, it seems, is that the *post-punk vanguard* was basically just an art rock evolution. The point is somewhat valid, but obviously you do need a term to distinguish Genesis from This Heat. "Post-punk" is generally a useful term because of the myriad ways in which the *post-punk* vanguard artists seemed to convey more of the spirit of punk rock - rawness, DIY approach, etc. (And also because the main post-punk Zeitgeist moment perhaps was a couple of years after the punk Zeitgeist moment - so the "post" tag is not just bullshit either.)

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:24 (eighteen years ago)

Punk should be renamed Post-Rockabilly.

― Toad Roundgrin (noodle vague), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:35 (eighteen years ago)

All in favor of henceforth referring to all Gang Of Four songs as "Hits of the 80s," say aye.

― Xii (Xii), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:38 (eighteen years ago)

My only real problem with the phrase "post-punk," as I've said before, is that nobody seems to have called the music that at the time. (If a word is needed to distinguish Genesis from This Heat, why not just use the word "new wave", like people did when bands like This Heat actually existed? Which is part of Paul's point, I guess. If Pere Ubu or the Voidoids or the Talking Heads or Wire, or Roxy Music or Faust for that matter, had come after punk rather than during or before punk, they'd probably be classified as "post-punk" now, too. So what exactly was it, again, that supposed post-punk did that the artier edges of new wave weren't already doing? I've never really understood that, and it's probably one of the few places that Paul and I see eye to eye.) (I.e, NO WAY were jane's addiction or the pixies or grunge an re-mergence of "real rock," not even close.)

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:40 (eighteen years ago)

It was probably more likely for someone to refer to an American group like Pere Ubu as new wave than an English group like This Heat, no? I don't think the parameters of "post-punk" are that unclear: late seventies UK/Euro art rock punk bands and whatever American bands from the time that seemed to fit in: No Wave and, I don't know, Pylon and stuff!

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:46 (eighteen years ago)

When you've got a label, and enough people understand its broad definition to make it meaningful, it can pull all sorts of shape-shifty magic. All sorts of books that predate Modernism as a chronological entity are described as Postmodernist. People will argue the toss about which label applies to which particular book, but the idea that those labels refer to something produced at a certain time is more or less gone. Labels in music are like that too. I mean, people can come out with the broadest definition of a genre like Metal, right Chuck? And examining the definitions of genres is an interesting way of making connections between different artists. But once a label's reached a level of core consensus between "specialists" - journos and fans for example - it's kinda futile trying to wish that label away.

― Toad Roundgrin (noodle vague), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:51 (eighteen years ago)

I made the joke about modernism because the term "postmodern" is a good way of getting at how "post-" movements can contain both the continuation of the thing that came before and an antagonism toward it -- both reverence and rejection.

I think it's pretty hard to deny that post-punk picked up a lot of the ethos of punk, both in sound and in process: the DIY aesthetics, the recording and instrumental set-ups, and the stance they took in relation to music as a whole. There's also a definite "art" ethos there, too. But between those two things, the bands wound up mostly unlike either punk rock or art rock (and if you asked most people, they'd probably put them closer to punk). The art ethos wasn't the grandness or psychedelia of art-rock and prog-rock; it was more modern and more conceptual, more in stances and attitudes and ideas than in sound.

I think you're right about the way the terms here -- "post-punk" and "new wave" and "New Pop" -- have often been used to fight over ideas about success and "credibility" as much as they have been to talk about music: there are distinctions we make between, say, 80s Scritti Politti and Duran Duran, or Echo and the Bunnymen and A Flock of Seagulls, that have traces of that hanging all around them. I'm not sure this really diminishes the value of the term "post-punk," though. (In Kogan's whole "Superword" terms, it would probably inflate the value -- i.e., "post-punk" must be meaningful if people are bothering to fight over its assignment, to draw lines over who's allowed to be in the club and who isn't.)

xpost
Per Chuck I think we run into a whole bunch of problems with terminology. So far as I understand it, "new wave" was actually first used around 1979, to refer to a bunch of bands we'd probably just call "punk" now -- because they were, haha, the "new wave" of punk. And then later there are issues surrounding "post-punk," which -- through the 1980s themselves -- people seemed to keep extending to mean more and more things. I seem to remember a time when people would talk about bands like the Smiths and Bunnymen as being "post-punk," obviously in a much looser way than we use the term now.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:51 (eighteen years ago)

(actually, in the early '80s, people were probably more likely to group bands like Pere Ubu and Wire and This Heat and Essential Logic together under an umbrella called "art-punk" than "post-punk"; I wonder why that term went by the wayside. And the Gang of Four and Delta 5 and Bush Tetras and Medium Medium might've been "punk-funk" just as often--which probably isn't especially accurate, but it's more descriptive than "post-punk" at least.) (Actually, come to think of it, one of the definitive pieces about the stuff back then, if I remember right, was a lead Greil Marcus review of the Gang of Four, Essential Logic, and the Raincoats; does anybody know what he called the stuff then? I'm not finding the review on line, but it's referenced somewhat humorously below) (is Pat Benatar post-punk??):

http://mailman.xmission.com/pipermail/zorn-list/2002-December/002896.html

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:53 (eighteen years ago)

Lead ROLLING STONE review by Marcus, that is.

Ha ha, from the Rolling Stone website archives:

Essential Logic Related

Projects
No Projects

Influences
No Influences

Contemporaries
No Contemporaries

Followers
No Followers

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:56 (eighteen years ago)

"Art punk" would surely solve the thread-starter's problem!

Just posting to take one thing back: some of the 1979 bands that got called a "new wave" of punk actually did represent a development toward what we'd currently call "new wave" -- e.g. Klark Kent and the Yachts and stuff. (I suppose you could also think of bands like the Buzzcocks as kind of a development toward those beginnings of new wave, too.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 July 2006 19:57 (eighteen years ago)

Punk was a legitimate social movement, with an explicitly defined set of sounds, aesthetics, politics, dress codes, etc. Bands and fans claimed to be "punk," and defended their ostensibly countercultural punk orthodoxy with a sometimes bewildering vigor.

In that sense punk "existed" with or without any critical commentary on the subject, and it still exists to this day.

Post-punk and new-wave are different. They're purely critical/marketing terms. Bands and fans didn't fly their post-punkness as an identity flag. There was no fixed and clearly understood post-punk sound or agenda.

In this sense, post-punk and new-wave didn't really "exist" in the same sense that punk did. (New-wave moreso, but still...)

That doesn't make the terms meaningless or useless, however, just a good deal more fluid and open to (re)interpretation.

P.S. Yeah, a lot of English "post-punk" bands were clearly just spiking Eno/Roxy/Velvets moves with punk venom and/or reggae bounce.

― fuckfuckingfuckedfucker (fuckfuckingfuckedfucker), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:02 (eighteen years ago)

[i](I.e, NO WAY were jane's addiction or the pixies or grunge an re-mergence of "real rock," not even close.) [/i]

Why not? If that wasn't real rock--then what was it?

And personally I do not see that much difference between Peter Gabriel era Genesis and the so-called PostPunk bands except for that PostPunk had nw technology at their disposal and their songs were sonically somewhat cleaner. I mean couldn't Peter Gabriel's solo stuff sound basically similar to some PostPunk?

― Paul Edward Wagemann (PaulEdwardWagemann), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:04 (eighteen years ago)

P.E.W., can we confirm that we're all talking about the same bands here? Because this statement seems bizarre to me. Which bands do you have in mind?

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

Bill Nelson is a better example of someone who managed to fit in with prog and post-punk.

― Soukesian (Soukesian), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:07 (eighteen years ago)

P.S., FFFF -- no sensible people have ever really gone around calling themselves "postmodern," either, but that's because "post-" terms don't really work that way: they're usually attempting to describe a condition or situation as much as a movement.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:11 (eighteen years ago)

the term "new wave" was used interchangeably with "punk" beginning around 1977. comparing the first wave of punk w/french cinema's new wave (also a critic-inspired movement...)

the first time I saw it was a poster for a Ramones/Sonic's Rendezvous Band gig at the Second Chance in Ann Arbor in spring 77. "The New Wave of Rock & Roll!" above picture of both bands looking leather-clad and long-hairy, not really anybody's current idea of new wave (esp. the biker-hippie protopunk SRB dudes)

less certain memory -- NME using the term postpunk in 79/80 to describe Rough Trade's Wanna Buy A Bridge compilation

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:12 (eighteen years ago)

P.P.S. On the difference between post-punk and new-wave.

New-wave was an American marketing term for the more pop and audience friendly "punky" bands of the era. Devo, Blondie, Talking Heads, The B-52s, The Cars, eventually the Go-Gos, etc. Eccentric, goofy, nerdy, "colorful" and most of all FUN. New-wave was all about good, clean (slightly subversive) American fun. Lotsa kitchy nods to 50s/60s culture and "Jetsons" futurism.

Post-punk, on the other hand, was an English critical term. A way to talk about the way that art-school bands were expanding out from the deafening cultural explosion of the U.K. movement. Post-punk bands tended to be much darker, drier and artier than their U.S. new-wave bretheren.

― fuckfuckingfuckedfucker (fuckfuckingfuckedfucker), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:12 (eighteen years ago)

In 1979 (basically, the year I started caring about music, and wearing a skinny tie), I thought of new wave as Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Squeeze, Graham Parker, the Fabulous Poodles, the Boomtown Rats, the Cars, the Knack, the Beat, 999, the B-52s, Dave Edmunds (!), etc. Gang of Four and the other Marcus bands came along a year later, same year as *Remain in Light* (and *Dirty Mind,* for that matter) (and *Second Edition*, and sure, Peter Gabriel's third album, which totally fit into this, at least as much as *Scary Monsters*) and they were definitely different, but it never would've occured to me that they *weren't* new wave: Just a different kind. (Well, Prince was a disco guy who *went* new wave. Grace Jones too! And Bowie and Gabriel and, um, Billy Joel were OLD guys going new wave, unless they were new wave already before new wave existed.) When Duran Duran and Depeche Mode and Spandau Ballet came along, they were "new romantic" or "techno-pop". But I've said this before.

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:13 (eighteen years ago)

>If that wasn't real rock--then what was it? <

nothing more than Art Rock which came from a long line of artsy, more intellectual (academcially speaking) backgrounds

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:17 (eighteen years ago)

I'd have to look it up, but I'm almost positive the term "post-punk" appears in Greil Marcus' RS article about Geoff Travis/Lora Logic/Go4. (Which was the article, btw, that introduced me to most of these strange bands in the first place.)

― mike a (mike a), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:19 (eighteen years ago)

I'm curious whether we can agree that post-punk is an OK term for the umbrella Reynolds creates with his book or

1) is the umbrella meaningless?

2) are there artists unfairly excluded from the shelter of this lovely umbrella?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:20 (eighteen years ago)

"Art punk" would surely solve the thread-starter's problem!

Youre right! I may have to edit this into my blog now...

nabisco, its been probablly 20 years since I've listend to Peter Gabriel, but if bands like Dexys Midngiht runners and Madness or later Talking Heads, Echo and the Bunnyman, the Cure, Joy Division, New order, Sioxsie & the Banshees are considered PostPunk, then to my ears I dont hear that much difference between them and Peter Gabriel...sonically...

― Paul Edward Wagemann (PaulEdwardWagemann), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:20 (eighteen years ago)

I still tend to think it's a fairly vague, arbitary term myself (though I haven't actually read Simon's book, and I eventually want to. I did skim it in the store a few weeks ago, for whatever that's worth. I was kinda hoping I'd get a copy in the mail, but no dice.)

>Post-punk, on the other hand, was an English critical term. <

...which, again, didn't come into use until years AFTER the music it put in that category, right? (we talked about this on another thread a few weeks ago, and that seemed to be the consensus, I believe.)

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:23 (eighteen years ago)

I'm curious whether we can agree that post-punk is an OK term for the umbrella Reynolds creates with his book or
1) is the umbrella meaningless?

2) are there artists unfairly excluded from the shelter of this lovely umbrella?

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:24 (eighteen years ago)

yes to both. he spread the umbrella so wide it broke, but at the same time there are ALWAYS worthy people who could've fit under it.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:24 (eighteen years ago)

People who Reynolds would possibly reject?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:27 (eighteen years ago)

that I'm not so sure about...his critera seemed a bit slippery, did he consider everyone mentioned in the book to be "postpunk"? personally I would've drawn the line at new pop -- not to restart that debate! -- or maybe devoted another book to it. and the US groups mentioned near the end -- what Xgau inelegantly tagged "amerindie" and Azzerad covered in his book -- didn't fit in my view.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:33 (eighteen years ago)

if bands like Dexys Midngiht runners and Madness or later Talking Heads, Echo and the Bunnyman, the Cure, Joy Division, New order, Sioxsie & the Banshees are considered PostPunk

We may have stumbled upon our problem, P.E.W. -- they aren't, necessarily, or at least not as much anymore. I said upthread that "post-punk" used to get applied in a much looser way, top include some of those bands. But these days "post-punk" has been narrowed down to something rather different, more along the lines of some of the bands mentioned upthread: Essential Logic, This Heat, Delta 5, Gang of Four, P.I.L., etc. People talk about the bands you've named in the context of post-punk (appropriately), and often consider them part of the big umbrella, but I think most people's sense of where the umbrella's center is -- where the pole sticks through -- isn't exactly on those acts.

I haven't read through Simon's book, but I get the sense that a lot of what he's doing is to talk about post-punk not as a movement, in which certain bands are included and certain ones aren't, but more as a condition or situation -- like I said upthread about "postmodernism." Therefore all of these acts, including new-wave and New Pop and whatever else, are all built from and responding to the condition of post-punk, and all in very different ways. That's not a matter of saying "these bands all sound alike and so here's a term for them" -- that's a matter of saying "certain things were going on in this particular moment, and here are the various reactions a whole bunch of different people had to that environment.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:36 (eighteen years ago)

"Punk was a legitimate social movement...Post-punk and new-wave are different. They're purely critical/marketing terms"

By the way, I don't entirely buy this dichotomy, since it implies "punk" was *not* a critical or marketing term, when it was both (wasn't it actually first used by Dave Marsh in *Creem*, to describe ? and the Mysterians, after which important punk bands such as Brownsville Station and the Tubes picked it up and made it their own, long before it turned into a "legitimate" culture? Or do I have that chronology slightly wrong?) Also, new wave *did* have its own dress code, at least in 1979! (See aforementioned skinny ties.) So at that moment, in my life, "new wave" WAS as real as "punk." Though sure, its turf has hardly been as vehemently defended in years since.

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:38 (eighteen years ago)

I've always heard/read that Billy Altman coined "punk" around 1970 in his college newspaper/fanzine and it quickly spread to Creem and Lenny Kaye et al

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:55 (eighteen years ago)

the term "postmodern" is a good way of getting at how "post-" movements can contain both the continuation of the thing that came before and an antagonism toward it -- both reverence and rejection.

Reynolds talks a good deal about "Postpunks" rejection of Punk, but I'm not so sure about it showing reverence for. Johnny Rotten basically said he hated punk. Alot of the bands in Ryenolds book (including the Talking Heads) found more exciting things going on in Disco that had gone on in punk. And as for the DIY labels--there had always been DIY labels, especially in regard to blues and jazz. So that was nothing new that punk introduced.
Also Punk music was often just a stripped down version of Rock, that was basically not much different from Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard, etc.

So my question is, what exactly about Punk was so revolutionary?

The safety pins through the noses?

― Paul Edward Wagemann (PaulEdwardWagemann), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:57 (eighteen years ago)

This is really an argument about sematics.

It's like what it meant when the Germs were called "hardcore" in 1980 vs. when hatebreed is called "hardcore" in 2000. But reversed. "Post-punk" narrowed it's sphere while "hardcore" broadened it.

A word describing a nebulous concept becomes bastardized after 20 years. Pick your battles.

― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:59 (eighteen years ago)

Not that I think there should have been a chapter on SST in Reynolds' book.

― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Monday, 10 July 2006 20:59 (eighteen years ago)

wow, Billy did that? He's a former editor of mine. Wow, that's fuckin' cool. Natural fit, since Billy is the real deal ...

― O'Connor (OConnorScribe), Monday, 10 July 2006 21:00 (eighteen years ago)

And as for the DIY labels--there had always been DIY labels, especially in regard to blues and jazz.

apart from Sun Ra's Saturn label, not sure what you're referring to?

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 10 July 2006 21:01 (eighteen years ago)

I think punk was more likely to sound like "Ballroom Blitz" than like Jerry Lee Lewis, but obviously Paul has something of a point.

xp about altman inventing "punk":

could be; that does sound kind of familiar. but either way, "punk" still starts out as a "critical term" (which, interestingly, was initally used to refer to music not apparently called "punk" when it actually existed. which might even mean that altman or marsh or kaye were the reynoldses of their day. they were revisionists, basically.)

― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 10 July 2006 21:02 (eighteen years ago)

Saying that DIY labels were "nothing new" negates the fact that there was, in fact, an explosion of DIY music making in England and subsequently elsewhere. This was a genuine phenomenon.

And as to your first point about about the rejection of punk, nabisco was otm earlier with this paragraph:

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 10 July 2006 21:06 (eighteen years ago)

I think it's funny how few people arguing about an attack on Simon Reynolds have actually read his (slightly dull) book.

― alext (alext), Monday, 10 July 2006 21:07 (eighteen years ago)

RIGHT ON xhuxk! punk rock was recherche (is that right?) a revisonist movement from the git-go. Joey Ramone wanted to relive the days of Alice Cooper and The Archies. And punk rock the music was largely inspired by the proto-punk writings of Bangs and the Creem crown... just like the french new wave of film sprang from the critical writing of Godard and Truffaut

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 10 July 2006 21:09 (eighteen years ago)

Reynolds talks a good deal about "Postpunks" rejection of Punk, but I'm not so sure about it showing reverence for.

They may not have mouthed their reverence, Paul, but most of the core of post-punk bands did loads of things that were enabled by punk -- they followed on its cues and borrowed its opportunities. If you're looking to late-period Talking Heads to figure that out, you might have some problems -- but look to the earliest core of these bands, and you'll see them taking punk as a kind of starting point, even a rudimentary blank slate onto which they could pile on the stuff they were "more interested in." (And that means not strictly sound but ethos, down to banal things like the labels and clubs they would work through.)

Actually, the more I think about this, the more it seems like you can't really believe in such a thing as "punk" without believing in such a thing as "post-punk." Which is to say that if you claim punk was a "significant social movement," then you're claiming things didn't just go back to normal right afterward -- it would hardly be significant if that were the case. And so you've outlined the conditions of post-punk: there has to be a moment in there where punk has changed things and new artists are emerging into whatever new world punk has changed things into.

(P.S. I think the real issue here is that Paul is thinking of a totally different set of bands as representing "post-punk" as everyone else is.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 July 2006 21:10 (eighteen years ago)

Skipping 104 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

much new pop came out of post-punk. The idea of selling out was initially seen as a subversive move. It was all bullshit, sure, but Human League, Scritti Politti, ABC etc all started out as extremely experimental post-punk bands. Even Cabaret Voltaire were aiming for the charts in the mid 80s.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 13 July 2006 13:55 (eighteen years ago)

Keep in mind that early Human League has more in common with Cabaret Voltaire and Joy Division than their later pop career would suggest. Their first single was "Being Boiled" / "Circus Of Death" for fuck's sake.

― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 13 July 2006 14:02 (eighteen years ago)

Dan, there were whole portions of the U.S. and no doubt the U.K. that couldn't get a whole lot of punk music. "Selling out" was a way of bringing art to a mass audience. It wasn't all about money. You can't "aim for the charts" all on your own, you know. Lot of shit bands "aimed for the charts" and went nowhere.

― barry gibb (edslanders), Thursday, 13 July 2006 14:10 (eighteen years ago)

See, that quiet-loud whisper-scream thing just seems to me like such a basic part of classic hard rock songwriting. Led Zeppelin's "What Is and What Should Never Be" ('69) is a good example but every other hard rock ballad did it to some degree ("More Than a Feeling," "Here I Go Again"), didn't they?

― Sundar (sundar), Thursday, 13 July 2006 14:17 (eighteen years ago)

>. The idea of selling out was initially seen as a subversive move. It was all bullshit, sure, but Human League, Scritti Politti, ABC etc all started out as extremely experimental post-punk bands. <

Critics always talk about the subversive intentions of these acts' pop moves, and it's no doubt true (I never read many interviews with them, but I can detect it in their packaging -- throw in Heaven 17 and the Eurythmics and carry it through Pet Shop Boys and Westworld; lots of them seemed to even be *singing* about marketing themselves, if you listened really close, lots of lines about money and shopping at Woolworth's etc, -- and you can trace that all back through M and/or X-Ray Spex if you want), but anyway, what I wonder is, did any significant number of pop listeners ever *hear* these bands as subversive? My guess is that the people buying these groups' hits mostly took them at face value. So I guess that's what Dan means by the subversive element being "bullshit," and if so, I gotta agree.

― xhuxk (xheddy), Thursday, 13 July 2006 14:21 (eighteen years ago)

I also say bullshit in that a lot of those bands end up just singing silly love songs (not that there's anything wrong with that!) and that a lof them lost the musical edge. I don't care if you wrote Circus of Death or Riot Squad, if you're music sounds like top 40 pop and your subject matter is no different then top 40 pop...I can't see how that's subversive. Other then saying, wow, that guy used to be in a really crazy band!

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 13 July 2006 14:27 (eighteen years ago)

As long as you admit it's superficial, and therefore don't try to draw any serious conclusions based on that kind of division

Well, people's "superficial" impressions of things do kinda tend to tell us a lot about both them and the thing.

Plus, Sundar, that KC album cover is fairly modernist, I'd say. (Not in quite the sense of, like, jazz records putting Greenberg-approved abstract expressionist art on the cover, but still.) But I think you're right about Joy Division's "arty" vibe not being hugely contemporary, in part because I don't think they were interested in stances and concepts like I was saying at the beginning which this side-topic started.

Ha, whereas the New Pop "we decided to go pop" angle was more like Jeff Koons! I think that tack mostly became bullshit after a second -- most people, especially in the U.S., took them as a new breed of pop bands, rather than taking it as some sort of subversive experiment. I think the reason that "subversive" logic was necessary, though, was that punk was kind of puritan about those matters, so some argument needed to be made for why punk could now stop being punk, or why it might be okay for the punk audience to move on into something else -- you can tell there's that logic to it, too, because for some group of fans and artists it seems like there was such a hangover on punk rawness that they eagerly ran to the complete opposite extreme. I don't think it was really about money or success, so much -- maybe a little bit about power, and the suddenly discovery that you could actually be a pop star, but mostly just about the thrill of running to the other end of the spectrum, which, post-punk, probably did feel pretty strange and subversive and exciting.

I mean, it's interesting that within very few years you could have bands going from difficult basement music to glossy chart hits -- lots of bands making that change, and quickly -- and it didn't at all feel like they were just following trends. (Haha: I get the feeling it was just really that boring to listen to punk all the time for a few years.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 13 July 2006 14:36 (eighteen years ago)

art-rock in 1974:

http://rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s8545.jpg

http://rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s38232.jpg

http://rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s10143.jpg

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Thursday, 13 July 2006 14:41 (eighteen years ago)

that KC album cover is fairly modernist, I'd say

Right. I posted it in response to this:

the art in art-rock, before punk, tended to evoke a pre-modernist type of art

― Sundar (sundar), Thursday, 13 July 2006 14:50 (eighteen years ago)

(But, really, isn't it more like a cartoon/pop-art take on Expressionist modernism? Which is pretty pomo or at least contemporary for the late 60s.)

― Sundar (sundar), Thursday, 13 July 2006 15:00 (eighteen years ago)

someone needs to pay chuck to write a book about new wave as an answer to rip it up.

― consigliere (consigliere), Thursday, 13 July 2006 15:26 (eighteen years ago)

I always thought of KC as something of a pomo band, esp. all the experiments w/ power trios.

― max (maxreax), Thursday, 13 July 2006 15:27 (eighteen years ago)

did any significant number of pop listeners ever *hear* these bands as subversive? My guess is that the people buying these groups' hits mostly took them at face value. So I guess that's what Dan means by the subversive element being "bullshit," and if so, I gotta agree.

-- xhuxk (fakemai...), July 13th, 2006.

I'm not going to argue that Human League were subversive (Culture Club maybe), but can't something still be subversive even when the majority audience takes the message at face value? "Puff The Magic Dragon" can be as subversive as "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" if part of the audience is experiencing the hidden (subverted?) meaning. Related topic: subvertising! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvertising

x-post to Dan - I was responding to ed slanders, not you (I think we were both making similar points).

― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 13 July 2006 16:46 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, don't a signficant portion of the audience have to hear it as "not-subversive" in order for it to qualify *as* subversive?

― J (Jay), Thursday, 13 July 2006 19:24 (eighteen years ago)

Seems as though subversive has shifted its meaning over the years? Used to mean someone who's out-and-out and rebellious but nowadays it does seem to connote that your rebellion is served w/ a hefty dose of subterfuge...

― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 13 July 2006 19:58 (eighteen years ago)

Subversive means less than nothing. It's a meaningless advertising tag like 'sun-ripened'.

― Soukesian (Soukesian), Thursday, 13 July 2006 20:11 (eighteen years ago)

is the story of Chic initially wanting to be a punk band, but deciding disco would have more staying power or (be more profitable) apocryphal? if not would that make them the first post punk band, the first new pop band, or both?

(cf. orange juice allegedly aiming for chic + vu and duran for chic + sex pistols. also is orange juice post punk or new pop? I assume PIL and Heaven 17/BEF were fluenced by CHIC too, is that right? and how about that robert wyatt cover of "at last i am free"? thats gotta blow Paul's mind!)

― consigliere (consigliere), Thursday, 13 July 2006 20:14 (eighteen years ago)

"is the story of Chic initially wanting to be a punk band, but deciding disco would have more staying power or (be more profitable) apocryphal?"

Apocryphal? I dunno. utterly implausible on a million levels, for sure.

Chic were a hip name to drop in Britain in the early 80s. That's it.

― Soukesian (Soukesian), Thursday, 13 July 2006 20:26 (eighteen years ago)

BTW Isn't the whole concept of "gothic" kind of a blatant referencing of the pre-Modern? At least the goths at my high school always went on about their roots in Romanticism.

― Sundar (sundar), Thursday, 13 July 2006 21:17 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, half the goth movement was Sisters of Mercy, Phantasmagoria-era Damned et al. To a lesser degree, Beneath The Shadows by TSOL and Fields of the Nephilim.
That was really just teh dark side of the New Romatic movement.

Then you have the Death Rock bands(TSOL's first-Dance With Me, Christian Death's first-Only Theatre of Pain) and the Batcave bands of the UK like Alien Sex Fiend.
They were much more closely tied with the harder side of the 'post-punk' movement.

All that label means to me is 'band which came after the first big surge of Punk into mainstrean culture and have some roots in it.'

― The GZeus (The GZeus), Thursday, 13 July 2006 21:56 (eighteen years ago)

like i said, early 4ad is where goth and postpunk smooch sloppily in the moonlight. xmal/birthdayparty/bauhaus/etc. basically a whole label devoted to siouxie's majik blend of noizegothpunk.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 13 July 2006 22:05 (eighteen years ago)

does simon reynolds devote a chapter to the banshees in his book? they were everything and then some.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 13 July 2006 22:07 (eighteen years ago)

>Subversive means less than nothing<

Yeah, I think the only possibly actual subversive pop acts of the past three decades were maybe the Village People and Queen. (I mean, what exactly were ABC and Scritti Politti and Eurythmics and people like that supposedly subverting *with*, again? That's never been especially clear to me. Was the idea something like "Sweet dreams are made of this who am to disagree I've traveled the world and the seven seas everybody's looking for something" was really just "We are all prostitutes everyone has their price and you too will learn to live the lie" in disguise? Something like that. Except with Dolly Parton going number one in 1980 with blatant Commie propaganda that went "It's a rich man's game no matter what they call it and you spend your life puttin' money in his wallet," I'm not sure how thinly veiled whatever-it-was that hardly anybody could decode from all those clever British folks was supposed to be so dangerous.) (Nothing against those British folks, all of whom I basically like. Though that new Scritti Politti album sure is a snooze and a half.)

― xhuxk (xheddy), Thursday, 13 July 2006 22:07 (eighteen years ago)

Breaking in the future just before the week is up
They can do it but it's going to take some money
Have what you desire if and when you see the fact
They will lead us to the land of milk and honey
Work all day or work all night it's all the same
If you want the pay
Some drive tankers
Some are bankers
Some are workers
Some are not
It is time for a party
Destination for the nation now!

Chorus:
Crushed by the wheels of industry
Crushed by the wheels of industry
Crushed by the wheels of industry
Crushed by the wheels
Crushed by the wheels of industry
Crushed by the wheels of industry
Crushed by the wheels of industry
Crushed by the wheels
Work now!

Call me in the morning just before the breakfast show
We'll watch TV and analyse the weather
Before we go to work we'll have planned the day ahead
We'll while away the working day together
Work all day or work all night it's all the same
If you want to play
Some are nurses
Some steal purses
Some are workers
Some are not
It is time for a party
Liberation for the nation now!

Chorus

There's a party going on
That's going to change the way we live
But how do we know we've even been invited
Now the invitation's waiting
And the table is reserved
So just play it cool and don't get excited
Work or day or work all night it's all the same
Will we ever change
It's vocation or vacation
Some are workers
Some are not
It is time for a party
Syncopation for the nation now!

Chorus

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 13 July 2006 22:30 (eighteen years ago)

(Everybody move to prove the groove)
Have you heard it on the news
About this fascist groove thang
Evil men with racist views
Spreading all across the land
Don't just sit there on your ass
Unlock that funky chaindance
Brothers, sisters shoot your best
We don't need this fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

History will repeat itself
Crisis point we're near the hour
Counterforce will do no good
Hot you ass I feel your power
Hitler proves that funky stuff
Is not for you and me girl
Europe's an unhappy land
They've had their fascist groove thang

Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan's president elect
Fascist god in motion
Generals tell him what to do
Stop your good time dancing
Train their guns on me and you
Fascist thang advancing

Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

Sisters, brothers lend a hand
Increase our population
Grab that groove thang by the throat
And throw it in the ocean
You're real tonight you move my soul
Let's cruise out of the dance war
Come out your house and dance your dance
Shake that fascist groove thang
(Shake it!)

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 13 July 2006 22:31 (eighteen years ago)

and heaven 17 were on solid gold! they corrupted a generation of Marilyn McCoo fans!

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 13 July 2006 22:33 (eighteen years ago)

In the political context of the 80s, how much 'subversive' impact could Heaven 17's couple of minor pop hits really be said to have had?

― Soukesian (Soukesian), Friday, 14 July 2006 06:08 (eighteen years ago)

I think Scott was joking!

Anyway, not sure why I didn't think to check this before, but here are some genre descriptions used in reviews in *The New Rolling Stone Record Guide* from 1983. This is sort of interesting, folks!:

ABC: "Well-crafted funk from the industrial wilds of Sheffield in England's extreme north" (this is some import album called *Tears are Not Enough*; I'd always thought *The Lexicon of Love* was their debut, but maybe not?)
Athletico Spizz 80: "POST-PUNK," "British punk/new wave"
Au Pairs: "honed down their primal thrash into an earnest drive of funk and rhythm"
Black Flag: "contemporary L.A. punk" influenced by "1977-style British hard-core punk anger"
Devo: "new wave" (and Dave Marsh really hates them by the way)
Echo and the Bunnymen: "consistent with the dark themes of POST-PUNK rock but championed a much more sophisticated and historically influenced music sense. Along with Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen spearheaded this movement", "soon called (aptly but desceptively) the New Pyschedelia"
Essential Logic: "lyrical obtuseness masquerading as beaknik expressionism"
The Fall: Says they "came out of POST-PUNK spate of experimentation in late-Seventies England"
Gang of Four: no real genre titles used per se', but it says they "sprang up around England's Leeds University community at the same time as such bands as Au Pairs, the Mekons, and Delta 5"
Heaven 17: "electro-pop"
Human Leage: Their "synthesizer-voice interplay has set the style for numerous POST-PUNK bands" (!!)
Mekons: "minimal funk rock then starting to crowd punk out of the British rock audience's limited attention span," "dance-oriented rock"
Lydia Lunch: "This 'punk-funk' screech is just so much avant-garde horseshit."
M: "fusion of new-wave sensibility with a disco beat"
Martha and the Muffins: "new wave"
Mi-Sex: "techno-pop"
New Musik: "rock-disco"
Pere Ubu: "American avant-garde/new-wave rock"
Public Image Ltd: No real genre names, though Dave Marsh does give them a long complimentary and fairly descriptive review until he says *Flowers of Romance* was a turn toward "stuffy art rock."
Raincoats: "British new wave," but "It's also interesting to hear a cat howl for the first time, but *only* the first time," ha ha.
Replacements: "good-humored Minneapolis hard-core punk band" ("hard-core always gets a hyphen in this book, just like "post-punk")
Teardrop Explodes: no genre names
Ultravox: "stark holocaust electro-dance music", "rock-disco with Euro-romantic trappings," "POST-PUNK electro-pop"

So, basically, "post-punk" DID exist in the early '80s, and it meant Atheltico Spizz 80, the Fall, the Human League, Ultravox, and maybe Echo and the Bunnymen, all of whom were British. (I'll look up other bands if/when I think of it. Scritti Polliti, Culture Club, Soft Cell, Cabaret Voltaire, the Contortions, Mars, Pylon, Joy Divison, DNA, the Pop Group, the Delta 5, and lots of other bands of various post-punk ilks are not in the book. And neither *No New York* nor *Wanna Buy a Bridge* is reviewed among the compilations in the back of the book, though *No Wave," an A&M album featuring the Police, Joe Jackson, Klark Kent, the Stranglers, and the Dickies, is, and its bands are identified as "new-wave.")

― xhuxk (xheddy), Friday, 14 July 2006 11:59 (eighteen years ago)

A&M marketing dept The Police = No Wave roffles

― Edward III (edward iii), Friday, 14 July 2006 12:06 (eighteen years ago)

(by the way, that's the *second* edition of the Rolling Stone guide, the blue one, updating the red one, which came out in 1979. I'd been thinking that the red one was the only truly worthwhile one, but the blue turns out to be very entertaining. There's even a longish roundup of Angel City albums!)

― xhuxk (xheddy), Friday, 14 July 2006 12:07 (eighteen years ago)

Also, I just remembered that yet another genre name that was attempted at the time but never seems to have caught on was "mutant pop," which was the subtitle of a British compilation featuring the Mekons, Gang of Four, the very early Human League, and a couple bands that nobody remembers. Here's a link to a picture of the thing:

http://postpunkjunk.com/?p=151

― xhuxk (xheddy), Friday, 14 July 2006 12:12 (eighteen years ago)

Did anyone really try to make that catch on back then? I only recall it as the title for that LP.

― Tim (Tim), Friday, 14 July 2006 12:19 (eighteen years ago)

I have no idea, to be honest. Maybe in Scotland? But it's kinda catchy (and more descriptive than "post-punk"), either way.

― xhuxk (xheddy), Friday, 14 July 2006 12:20 (eighteen years ago)

that mutant pop album is my wanna buy a bridge. er, in that i heard it first and loved it tonz.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 14 July 2006 12:23 (eighteen years ago)

Dave Marsh in *Rock and Roll Confidential Report,* in 1985: "...the forbidding expressionism of POSTPUNK singers like Lora Logic and Lydia Lunch, the disembodied vocalisms of Laurie Anderson, the didadacticism of the Raincoats and Au Pairs." (He is setting Cyndi Lauper and Madonna, who he prefers, up against all these artsy-farsties. Earlier in the book, he puts Lauper up against the "barely listenable records" of Au Pairs and Raincoats again, saying of the latter, "Their impact could only be felt when a performer with superior reach found a way of expressing such ideas that was radically different from POSTPUNK avant-gardism as that avant-garde was from pre-punk pop.") (So does that mean Lauper was "new pop"?)

― xhuxk (xheddy), Friday, 14 July 2006 12:38 (eighteen years ago)

xpost It was an important one for me, too. Though I prefer the UK cover (with the kids holding flying v guitars and stuff, those kids seemed amazingly glamourous to me at the time) to the grey US / Canada one, but then I suppose I would, wouldn't I?

I'm not sure I think "mutant pop" is any more descriptive than "post-punk" really. when I think about the contents of that LP (like, "Where Were You" or "Adult/Ery" for example) it makes more sense to me to say "it's something that came after punk" than to say "it's pop but all mutated". though I agree it has special powers.

I cut out the ad for "Mutant Pop" from Smash Hits and put it on the wall, by my bed. So maybe mutant pop does make more sense...

― Tim (Tim), Friday, 14 July 2006 12:46 (eighteen years ago)

Mutant Pop was just Bob Last having fun. It was a compilation of a bunch of Fast singles, an earlier variation of the same comp being the EMI First Years Plan comp, and much, much later, the Rigour Discipline and Disgust compilation CD. There's even plans in motion to get all that stuff back on CD, but hey, you can just download it for free off the internet!

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 14 July 2006 14:27 (eighteen years ago)

How odd, I would have sworn that "The First Years Plan" had "Mutant Pop" written on it somewhere.

Dan, it would be perfectly possible to argue that the term 'post punk' was just Paul Morley having fun. The only difference is that the latter caught on, innit?

― Tim (Tim), Friday, 14 July 2006 14:34 (eighteen years ago)

First Years Plan may say Mutant Pop, I don't have a copy! Did Morley come up with the term Post-Punk? Was it in an article for a magazine or a Frankie sleeve? There's a difference I think, for what it's worth. Bob Last deserves tons of credit though for that whole punk = business thing. I think Human League were doing it before they met him (see that demo tape stuff on the Future CD), but Bob sure ran with it. The best part being the sleeve of Heaven 17's Penthouse and Pavement LP, the members of the band looking like business men, giving meetings, shaking hands, all drawn in the best business marketing illustration style.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 14 July 2006 15:52 (eighteen years ago)

more genre designations '83 blue *New Rolling Stone Record Guide*:

April Wine: "a delightful teenage punk outfit" (!)
The Bizarros: "came from Akron, along with Devo, to spearhead the first wave of POST-PUNK American art-rock, for which they may be forgiven in some universe, but not in this somewhat harmonious one."
Cowboys International: "the use of dance-oriented drumming, cool synthesizers, and occasionally deadpan vocals presages the new romantic bands of 1981"
R.L. Crutchfield's Dark Day: "minimal pleasures"
Depeche Mode: their "electronic dance music is all robot-pop product."
Material: "avant-funk concept group" with "roots in the contemporary jazz avant-garde"
Original Mirrors" "hard-rocking post-new-wave" (!!!!!!!)
Spandau Ballet: "How did the new romantics become the new funk-salsa explosion in England?" (I have *no idea* what that's in reference to.)
Telex: "Eurodisco synthesizer pop"
Visage: "new romantic honky funk"
Was (Not Was): "pretentious honky funk in the early-Eighties art-rock mold"

"Post-new-wave" is a phrase deserving of revival for sure.

― xhuxk (xheddy), Friday, 14 July 2006 17:39 (eighteen years ago)

>>> First Years Plan may say Mutant Pop, I don't have a copy!

I do, but I couldn't find Mutant Pop on it anywhere. Could be missing an insert though.

― Colonel Poo (Colonel Poo), Friday, 14 July 2006 18:29 (eighteen years ago)

Nunk is the genre that deserves revival...

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 14 July 2006 20:24 (eighteen years ago)

There's even plans in motion to get all that stuff back on CD

when is this going to HAPPEN?

it's a bummer that file-sharing can kill the market potential for some reissues because both the fast product and pop:aural stuff deserve proper re-release w/ bob last receiving his due.

― Ben H (Ben H), Friday, 14 July 2006 20:41 (eighteen years ago)

Further research:

In a New West article dated December 3, 1979, Greil Marcus describes Gang of Four as "an almost unknown English punk group." In another article published two weeks later about Essential Logic, he writes "without a scene to support it or restrict it, punk also became selfconsciously experimental . . . . Punk became an avant-garde, a floating center not only of resistance to mainstream rock but of serious novelty." About five months later, he reviewed PIL's "Second Edition" in Rolling Stone, and wrote "PiL's music . . . . is, as Lydon claims, 'anti-rock 'n' roll'--territory staked out in opposition to what we now accept as rock 'n' roll--but it is also a version. Like disco, or especially the bass-led, out-of-reach rhythms of dub, PiL's sound is at once the rejection of a form and an attempt to follow certain implications hidden within that form to their necessary conclusions." Finally, about two months later, in a July 1980 Rolling Stone article about Rough Trade, he introduces the moniker "postpunk pop avant-garde":

"That was a line I'd thought up in California, after listening to the new music coming out of England." He specifically references Essential Logic, the Raincoats, Gang of Four, Scritti Politti, the Mekons, Delta 5, Au Pairs, and the Red Crayola (?).

So, I'd think that does it for you, Chuck.

― J (Jay), Friday, 14 July 2006 20:53 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I had a feeling it'd end up that way. Soon as I saw how often Marsh used it, knowing *he* sure didn't invent it (since he mostly hated the stuff), I knew it had to come from somewhere. And way up thread I nominated Greil for the job; figured it might well be him. My "nobody called postpunk postpunk then" claim is hereby retired (which still doesn't mean it was *widely* used then, obviously).

Next question: When did people stop calling proto-punk "proto-punk"?

― xhuxk (xheddy), Friday, 14 July 2006 20:58 (eighteen years ago)

Who am I, your research assistant? HAH

― J (Jay), Friday, 14 July 2006 21:01 (eighteen years ago)

The Red Crayola of that time of course was Mayo backed by members of the Swell Maps, Raincoats, Pere Ubu, Essential Logic etc...

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 14 July 2006 21:36 (eighteen years ago)

I thought it was pretty much understood that "post-punk" is, moreso even than most genre names, a term of convenience; that even though in many cases it's a misnomer (as in most of the music umbrella'ed is a continuation of "pre" punk strands, and at best has an "energy" and "anti-virtuosity" that owes something to "the spirit of '77" or whatever) most people know what you're talking about just the same.

Anyway, you've sold me that (Dinosaur) Rockism does in fact exist. I'd always been a skeptical.

― I.M. (I.M.), Friday, 14 July 2006 22:08 (eighteen years ago)

This is a little off track, but, that "No Wave" record with Klark Kent and the Stranglers and the Dickies is great! Weirdly enough it was the beginning of my real interest in new wave to any extent. How long till someone reissues it trying to cash in on the hipster cred of no-wave the genre? I'm thinking that Pete Best record, Best of the Beatles....

― Doctor Casino (Doctor Casino), Friday, 14 July 2006 22:58 (eighteen years ago)

>When did people stop calling proto-punk "proto-punk"?<

They did? What term has taken its place?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 14 July 2006 23:16 (eighteen years ago)

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