Rush, 2112, The Priests, and the roots of "punk irony"

there's also the marxism of the r.i.o. crew. what effect they may have had on punk, particularly its american iterations, i can't say for sure. one of the major things that distinguishes something like "2112," "Cygnus X-1," or even "limelight" and "subdivisions" from "police truck," "california uber alles," or "we've got a bigger problem now" is the (rightly or wrongly (and i'd say wrongly)) perceived adolescent escapism of rush's lyrical imagery. for better or worse, dead kennedys etc. were real, for grown ups; rush was for soundtracking a kid's lord of the rings reading time or zelda questing. there's a pretty involved discussion of all this (if not rush v. dead kennedys exactly) in bill martin's books listening to the future and music of yes

there's also the marxism of the r.i.o. crew

sorry don't know what "r.i.o crew" means? explain?

rock in opposition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_in_opposition

Don't think this had any effect on US punk.

rock in opposition. it's a group of non-commercial european prog bands like henry cow, art zoyd, and univers zero that espoused socialism in the means of production of their music and its dissemination. the poster slogan at the festival that gave the movement its name was "groups the record companies don't want you to hear." r.i.o. and its diy ethic developed around the same time as punk was exploding, but (to over-simplify) they took their cue not from garage rock but avant-garde classical music. one of their peers who's still interested in dissecting power is robert wyatt. lots of his lyrics are pretty socialist. hope that helps

ah gotcha...yeah my guts says most of the punk kids probably weren't hip to that stuff back then. i could be wrong but i sorta doubt their prog knowledge went farther than yes and genesis.

also, i guess i've never really seen rush as a prog band per se. although they tend to get lumped in with prog. they also get lumped in w.metal and i don't think they metal either.

....but yeah to your other point, i mean obv rush was viewed much differently than punk was/is, and they came from a way different place, culturally...but still there's something that i can't help but see as similar to the parts of 2112 i was talking about and the punk songs i was talking about...

i just can't believe rush was the first to have that sort of song....like i keep thinking "eve of destruction" was, but then the lyrics don't really bear that out...

how about the doors? did morrison ever do something like that, sing from a "enemy's" point of view, position of power?

does zappa fit into your inquiry? or is that more satirical than ironic?

sure anyone fits....honestly my zappa knowledge isn't up to par...i own beat up copies of "weasels ripped my flesh" and "ship arriving to late to save a drowning witch" but i haven't listened to them much...

but yeah i could actually totally see zappa as being the sort of things that sorta misanthropic misfit teens in the US dug before they heard punk...any songs in particular?

joe's garage is a big massive concept album that dovetails with a lot of the oppressive overstate/anti-music industry lyrical themes in "2112" and d.k. songs like "mtv get off the air." there's a hilarious bit about a central scrutinizer, a psychically implanted panoptic device of some sort, that makes the main character morbidly self-conscious. the scrutinizer's voice is a lot like ren's in ren & stimpy

Phil Ochs hit this tone a lot (at least on Cops of the World, and Pretty Smart on My Part, which really emphasized the powertrip aspects, though there must have been more) but it seems to me he had more affinities with punk than direct influence on it.

this is some cool shit, He1ges0n, thanks for the food for thought.

does anyone remember the ex-cops? they used to open for gwar. i think they were all gwar roadies. anyway, they dressed like cops and sang songs about busting heads. pretty funny. and the music wasn't bad either.

my fave was always dead porker by nazi bitch & the jews. from the not so quiet on the western front comp. and you can listen to it here cuz the internet is so cool like that!

http://www.lastfm.com.br/music/Nazi+Bitch+and+the+Jews

what an amazing song. they don't make them like that anymore.

aLthough everyone knows what the greatest song on not so quiet... is. possibly the greatest song ever recorded with the exception of surfin' bird

http://www.lastfm.com.br/music/Bad+Posture

that reminds me, black flag roadies the nig-heist recorded songs exclusively from a vile perspective. as with the frogs, how ironic they were being is open to debate. but they're not about power so much as taboos, and in terms of the dead kennedys, are like "i kill children"

The Ex did this a lot on Too Many Cowboys.

"any songs in particular?"

Check the words from Zappa tune out from FREAK OUT! from 1965, lyrically it looks like something that could be off of Black Flag's DAMAGED. There is really a similar kind of sarcastic and pessimistic outlook all over the early Mother's records.

What will you do if we let you go home,
And the plastic's all melted,
And so is the chrome?
WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?

What will you do when the label comes off,
And the plastic's all melted,
And the chrome is too soft?

WAAAAHHHHHH!
I think I'm gonna die . . .
I think I'm gonna die . . .
I think I'm going to die . . .
I think I'm going to die . . .
I think I'm going to die . . .
I think I'm going to die . . .
I'm gonna die . . .
I think I'm going to die . . .
I think I'm gonna die . . .
I'm going to die . . .
I think I'm gonna die . . .
I think I'm gonna die . . .
I think I'm gonna die . . .
Going to die!

WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?

What will you do if the people you knew
Were the plastic that melted,
And the chromium too?
WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?

but yeah i could actually totally see zappa as being the sort of things that sorta misanthropic misfit teens in the US dug before they heard punk...any songs in particular?

Here's the thing. FZ heaped a lot of scorn on punk rock. So if you were a fan of the Mothers and then just so happened to buy some Black Flag or Maximum Rock 'n' Roll cannon fodder, it was more of an accident or a coincidence than the former inspiring an interest in the latter. Now you can make it up retroactively anyway you like. That doesn't make it real.

F'r instance, you could say the same thing about Ted Nugent or Foghat.

sarcastic

Isn't that the key, that these songs are steeped in the sarcasm that is teenagedom's native language? Instead of trying to identify a common source (other than maybe PARENTS, man) we could just chalk it up to kids being good at and enjoying mocking impersonations. Jello's "Shut up, be happy" monologue is maybe a more complex takedown than the Coasters' "Yakety Yak," but they appeal to the same sensibility.

I'm trying to remember how closely the Henrietta Collins album fits into this, but it's a very long time since I heard the songs.

'Taxman'?

Here's the thing. FZ heaped a lot of scorn on punk rock. So if you were a fan of the Mothers and then just so happened to buy some Black Flag or Maximum Rock 'n' Roll cannon fodder, it was more of an accident or a coincidence than the former inspiring an interest in the latter. Now you can make it up retroactively anyway you like. That doesn't make it real.

F'r instance, you could say the same thing about Ted Nugent or Foghat.

-- Gorge, Wednesday, June 25, 2008 5:06 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Link

gorge, i think you could TOTALLY say the same think about ted nugent or foghat...in fact i'm almost positive i read that rollins and mackaye were big nuge fans...

i wasn't trying to say zappa was allied with punk in anyway...nor was rush for that matter...

but yeah teenage tastes and changes in what sort of subculture tribe you identify with usually is very random and full of mistakes and chance....like wasn't captain sensible from the damned a Yes roadie?

i was just saying in the days before punk i would imagine all the punks listened to all sorts of random shit like foghat and zappa and zeppelin and rush (in the US especially) it's not like every kid was digging on "hip" shit like T-Rex or Velvets bootlegs, which is how the history is usually told....hardcore kids especially seemed to not come to punk from any sort of lineage, just they liked random metal shit and then all of a sudden heard something faster and easier to play....

like i said i'm just thinking out loud here, i don't have any big theory abt it....

"Taxman" seems like a great example, and def. a song all those kids would have known, everyone knows the beatles...

keith levine was steve howe's guitar tech, too

i need the check out those phil ochs songs.

i kept thinking that dylan might have done this but then i couldn't really think of any examples.

Yeah, I was thinking the same -- there's something about the whole I-accuse-everybody stance Dylan developed that doesn't lend itself to slipping into the persona of the enemy, though there's Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues.

ilm intertextuality-->
merle haggard "okie from muskogee"?
lynyrd skynyrd "sweet home, alabama"?
from this allegation. . . .

And the myths and legends surrounding Skynyrd & Young and racism are again addressed on the Drive By Truckers epic "Southern Rock Opera" song "Three Great Alabama Icons". From the song's lyrics:

"Speaking of course of the Three Great Alabama Icons
George Wallace, Bear Bryant and Ronnie Van Zant
Now Ronnie Van Zant wasn't from Alabama, he was from Florida
He was a huge Neil Young fan.

But in the tradition of Merle Haggard writin' Okie from Muskogee
to tell his dad's point of view about the hippies in Vietnam,
Ronnie felt that the other side of the story should be told.
And Neil Young always claimed that Sweet Home Alabama was one of his favorite songs.
And legend has it that he was an honorary pall bearer at Ronnie's funeral -
such is the Duality of the Southern Thing.

One that certainly exists, but few saw beyond the rebel flag…
And this applies not only to their critics and detractors, but also from their fans and followers.
So for a while, when Neil Young would come to town, he’d get death-threats down in Alabama…

on this site
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/jammin/lynyrd.htm
from this thread
Taking Sides: "Southern Man" by Neil Young vs. "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynrd Skynrd

yeah i never know what to believe w/r/t merle and okie...like i half believe him but then his explanation seems sort of made up after the fact to me...but who knows...i'm sure he smoked weed at the very least

same w/sweet home alabama

Crime, the first and only punk band, dressed like cops and released the best single ever in the history of rock in 1976:

http://i29.tinypic.com/i1wfud.jpg

http://www.trakmarx.com/2004_05/ied/Crime-2.gif

http://i30.tinypic.com/23ms6e.gif

crime is great.

but yeah they def. have that going esp. sort of playacting as cops...the ex-cops that skot was talking abt (the gwar thing) is sort of the same thing....they are "okay" though, i saw them once open for gwar

Way up top Matt raised a big question then for all these bands/songs is whether they're playing dress-up as "the enemy" just in order to prop up a target for ridicule, or because they're curious about what it would feel like to try on the other side's costume for a change, or both -- just how much identification/transference is going on here? The more ideological leftists I've mentioned (Ochs, the Ex, early Dylan) all went out of their way to make sure the audience knew that they were just standing in the strawmen's shoes. Are there others that seem more like they're doing drag in these roles, just for the thrill of it? All I can think of is Pink Floyd's "In The Flesh?" (at least as fleshed out by Geldof) and maybe Garth Brooks going rock as Chris Gaines.

Devo as Dove (the Band of Love): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_k8JAMGXiI&;feature=related

The Apostles deliberately didn't make it clear they were being ironic when they did songs like Rock Against Communism, Rights For Whites & Kill The Queers to see if people in the anarcho-punk scene would call them out on it.

Way up top Matt raised a big question then for all these bands/songs is whether they're playing dress-up as "the enemy" just in order to prop up a target for ridicule, or because they're curious about what it would feel like to try on the other side's costume for a change, or both -- just how much identification/transference is going on here? The more ideological leftists I've mentioned (Ochs, the Ex, early Dylan) all went out of their way to make sure the audience knew that they were just standing in the strawmen's shoes.

^^yeah that's what's interesting to me about this...because yeah obviously Dylan and Ochs and The Ex seem like they were way more tuned into a political scene and were very canny in general...

...whereas yeah the punks seem (and are) younger and way less sophisticated (that might not be the right term exactly)...but yeah with rush and dead kennedys i get the feeling that there's a certain amount of romance and fantasy projection going on (rush's right wing/rand shit muddies the waters a TON though)...

but for the punk, yeah they hate the cops, but it's hard not to sort of fantasize about power when you feel like you don't have any...

plus i mean it's not like american hardcore wasn't full of all sort of macho aggression just like the LAPD is/was

"Police Truck" always creeped me out for these reasons.

I would like more "punk irony" of this sort:
http://www.goddessintheirgarden.com/geddy%20&%20chickens.jpg

haha yeah i just went to rush like a month ago and they had that roaster over bit

Oh man we forgot Crucial Youth! Challenging Ian Mackaye as not truly straight edge because he swore. Definitely went over a lot of people's heads if I'm remembering the MRR letters column correctly.

There have been punk bands who "ironically" wear business suits, but I can't think of any that go further with the concept: it's just a costume, not a character. Unlike say The Upper Crust, who go all in quite admirably, though I think they're too tongue in cheek to really serve as a medium for audience power fantasies.

"nite klub" (1979) by the specials fits the bill.

Is this the in place to be
What am I doing here
Watching the girls go by
Spending money on...

Sleep all day, it's the only way
I'm a parasite, I creep about at night

etc

A couple sci-fi dystopias that celebrate the ultimate taboo/fantasy for punks -- being subsumed, controlled by machines. Quasi's "Our Happiness Is Guaranteed" is from the POV of those who go along quietly. Hazel O'Connor's "Eighth Day" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15Ij9Y--dIQ) is pretty much from the machine's perspective.

Similar but not sci-fi: X-Ray Spex, "Art-I-Ficial"

the kinks were punk as fuck:

Sunday afternoon theres something special
Its just like another world.
Jogging in the park is my excuse
To look at all the little girls.

Im not a flasher in a rain coat,
Im not a dirty old man,
Im not gonna snatch you from your mother,
Im an art lover.
Come to daddy,
Ah, come to daddy,
Come to daddy.

Pretty little legs, I want to draw them,
Like a degas ballerina.
Pure white skin, like porcelain,
Shes a work of art and I should know
Im an art lover.
Come to daddy,
And Ill give you some spangles.

Little girl dont notice me
Watching as she innocently plays.
She cant see me staring at her
Because Im always wearing shades.
She feeds the ducks, looks at the flowers.
I follow her around for hours and hours.
Id take her home, but that could never be,
Shes just a substitute
For whats been taken from me.
Ah, come to daddy, come on.

Sunday afternoon cant last forever,
Wish I could take you home.
So, come on, give us a smile
Before you vanish out of view.
Ive learned to appreciate you
The way art lovers do,
And I only want to look at you.

2112 is good valentines day music because it's about a dude (or maybe a chick, it could kinda go either way) who falls in love with MUSIC and use it to battle PRIESTS who have lots of COMPUTERS but in the end the priests HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL, they have ASSUMED CONTROL

it's not the priests who assume control!

ok, i am pretty sure it's not the priests who assume control

now trying to work out why i've always read it differently - indifferent outside alien force finally stamping out an enfeebled despotism, or rescuing revolutionary movement that comes too late

oh duuuuuuuuuuuh

this is why i read it that way:

"They left the planet long ago
The elder race still learn and grow
Their power grows with purpose strong
To claim the home where they belong
Home to tear the Temples down...
Home to change!"

altho also allowing that this is the dying narrator's revenge fantasy

actually i don't know (though it's obviously not the MUSICIANS), i listened to it last year and was v. surprised that i didn't even remember that it ends (like decent sci-fi) in DYSTOPIAN DESPAIR, think i woulda caught that from years of post-adolescent headphone blastin, guess the power of music overwhelmed their message

doobieborther wrote this on thread Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe (pt. 4) on board I Love Music on Apr 24, 2009

I brought out 2112 on a date once. Oh no, oh no, oh no... :' (

^^ proof of hypothesis

i didn't really know zappa when i started this thread, and he's a p good example too
though he makes it so much more obviously that he's rolling his eyes the whole time
part of punk irony is you get off on the power fantasy a little bit

but is that cause you like getting off or cause you like power

obv in 2112 what you get off on is being a music nerd alone even in death, that or the destruction of the world

i guess it was supposed to be the musically-inclined elder race of man there at the end, but i never got that as a kid. it just sounded scary, ATTENTION PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION, WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL. (did futurama ever riff on that? should have.)

i like the scariness tho - they might be liberators but they're pissed off and probably dangerous

and as i say, it's carefully placed in such a way that you can't be sure it isn't the imagination of the narrator

their epics tend to have unreliable narrators -- by-tor, cygnus, etc.

part of punk irony is you get off on the power fantasy a little bit

― sXe & the banshees (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, February 14, 2014 7:13 AM (29 minutes ago)

yeah, i don't think many (any?) of the non-punk examples really get at this. punk irony typically inhabits the oppressor's voice and delivers it with explosively violent force. there's inevitably something exultant in this, and such songs often walk a fine line between indulging a fantasy of power and condemning its misuse. though it isn't at all ironic, nomeansno's "dad" is a great (horrible) example of this sort of thing. the lyric doesn't wholly occupy the POV of the brutal, abusive father it depicts, but the music and delivery invest lines like "shut up, you bitch!" with an almost ecstatic first-person intensity. the song clearly recognizes the horror of what it describes, but indulges it to such an extreme degree that i literally couldn't listen to it as a not-quite-kid. it made me sick to my stomach. perhaps that's to its credit, but it was something of a college radio mini-hit, which never sat right with me. patti smith's "rock 'n' roll nigger" is similar. there's no irony, and i get where patti's coming from, but her violent & clearly celebratory repetition of the n-word cuts in more than one direction.

can't think of any pre-punk equivalents.

I think the priests have assumed control after the rebellion of our hero gets thwarted by his own suicide.

I could be wrong. I do know that in By-Tor the Snowdog is a total badass.

yeah, i don't think many (any?) of the non-punk examples really get at this. punk irony typically inhabits the oppressor's voice and delivers it with explosively violent force.

hence "roots of" in the thread title

I always thought about this when listening McCarthy, when they were singing from this conservative pov it was obv ironic but it seemed they had a more complex emotional relationship this stuff?

But with McCarthy this singing from the pov of 'the enemy' more about getting explore feelings of weakness and fear rather than fantasies of strength?