Punk Sold Out?

WAHT

You know, this question is particularly self-explanatory. BOOKS/TEXTS/HISTORIES of the punk movement tracing it from being "edgy" to going mainstream.

SLC Punk

Yeah... I've seen that flick. It didn't do any history tracing.

josie and the pussycats

Someone needs to go back to 300 post thred starting school

You know, I don't think this is a bad question. You're all a bunch of well-read, intelligent fellows. After I figure out whether a history of the last two decades of punk music exists or not, we can make all the stupid jokes we'd like.

i don't know if i know of like a "big picture" book about 90s through now punk, one that you could compare to say "england's dreaming" or "please kill me"....um..i think there's a punk planet collected reader....

ip ban england

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412Nq-eRiyL._SL500_BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg
Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day

Thing is, punk has, to an extent, ALWAYS been mainstream, or at least high-profile. The widespread fame of the Pistols, the Clash, Ramones, etc. makes that clear enough. And the Hot-Topic-ization of punk can be traced back to the 1980s, as can be seen in the awful "punk rock" signifiers that pop up in a lot of 80s teen movies and such (I'm having trouble coming up with specific examples, brain's a bit foggy right now, but they're there).

As far as books expressly dealing with the rise of mall-punk culture, I dunno. A quick amazon.com search for "mallpunk" yielded me this:
http://www.amazon.com/So-Called-Punk-Distillers-Religion-How-Stage-Dived/dp/0312337817/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219099653&sr=8-2
It looks sort of silly though.

For a good book on the relationships on punk and pop in general, check out Greil Marcus' In The Fascist Bathroom. It's a little dated now, but it's got a lot of interesting stuff in it.

I saw a copy of please kill me recently and it looked like it had 500 more pages than it did the last time I saw it

Why focus on the last 20 years? Otherwise: Please Kill Me, Lipstick Traces, England’s Dreaming, American Hardcore, etc.

Contenderizer, it's because I'm doing some work on the mainstreamization of punk music. Particularly on how a "mainstream/selling out" impulse has always been implicit in the movement from the beginning.

And I was hoping there would be a history. Hopefully something that shows an evolution (whether it's right or not) from the Ramones into SoCal into Warped Tour/Hot Topic. Just facts + names ideally.

punk died when the first kid said "punks not dead".

Thanks, jeremy. Can I quote you on that?

Hebdige's "Subculture: The Meaning of Style" pretty much says it all and that was written in fucking 1977

er 79

I found a copy in the gutter! so appropriate. it now resides in my bathroom.

Some Product: Carri on Sex Pistols is an interview album, an often overlooked curiosity in the Sex Pistols' catalogue, though the record has been reissued on CD even after the group managed to win back control over their band name and recordings. The interviews are mostly presented in a collage style. Highlights include Sid Vicious telling the listener to "Buy my record and make me a millionaire!"

Come as You Are and Our Band Could Be Your Life might help you bridge the 70s and the 90s, if you haven't already read them, of course.

I've read them both. I wanted something a bit more cynical - something that directly speaks to the packaging and consumerism in contemporary "punk" culture.

I started reading this but couldn't finish it, maybe you'll have better luck

http://www.amazon.com/Punk-Productions-Unfinished-Interruptions-Testimony/dp/0791461882

That's almost perfect. Thanks for the heads up. It looks more about punk's successes and not its failures ("Punks continue to create aesthetics that cannot be readily commodified or rendered profitable by major record labels, and punks remain committed to transforming consumers into producers"), but it's a good place to begin.

maximumrocknroll letters columns, yesterday and today.

Was that Road to Nirvana book sort of like this? I never read it, just flipped through it once.

For anyone else who might be interested, Stacy Thompson's "Market Failure: Punk Economics, Early and Late," article was really useful for this. She quoted a lot of useful material on the topic.

Punk Selling out?

OK, try this for a concept.

The Bee Gees.

They were a pop act with some touches of psychedelia, back in the day. Their magnum opus, Odessa, I got recently, having heard rave reviews for decades. And Side 2 is great, the rest the usual irrititing warble.

My point is: Since their move into 'disco' could be regarded as selling out, inasmuch as their need to remain current/trendy seemed to involve a shift from pop/prog (which was popular when they made Odessa), and the SatNightFev style (popular in 1977), seemed to suggest that neither 'movement' was what they had an overriding yearning to perform. Therefore, Odessa gets tainted after-the-fact as being mere opportunism. If it wasn't for the fact that they are good at what they do, no-one would bother.

There are a great many punk acts who produced one great single/album, but couldn't change their style to remain 'current' so left their legacy intact, and a great many who moved blatantly, such that no-one thinks their early stuff is so great anymore (The Golinsky Brothers vs Leyton Buzzards anyone?)

that's all.