"Pop" Punk: What bands are/were good? What band killed it?

Best "pop"/Punk bands: The Ramones & Buzzcocks (both somewhat obviously, I feel), ****THE DICKIES****, the Rezillos, the Undertones, and the astutely afore-mentioned Descendents.

Who killed it? Ummmmm....well, I'd blame Green Day for reviving it on a large scale, but I'd say Blink-182 really stuck the knife in, paving the way for clowns like Sum-41, Good Charlotte and all that other shit.

But I still blame Pennywise!

Snuff were good for a few great songs, Leatherface has a nice voice, and Pansy Division is really funny. Other than that, I find myself pretty indifferent to the whole spectrum between Jawbreaker and Blink-182, with one big exception: Dillinger Four are the current standard bearers, and if pop-punk demands something less than hooks, they transcend with a must-see live show and great voices.

They're fucking horrible now.

Pinnacle of the genre, IMO. And the Dickies had some great singles as well.

I don't hate Green Day that much, and my hate of Blink 182 really has more to do with the image and the band members themselves than the music.

whateve next: punk food?!

What's next then, to answer frowny bad-pop-loving Julio? Post-"Pop"-Punk?

As far as actual chart-punk pop-punk, I have to admit that I really really like this idea. I think at least a majority of ILM agrees that the gestures and sounds of punk no longer carry any revolutionary or rebellious impact, and I think it's (a) condescending to imagine that the kids listening to Blink 182 don't realize this just as well, and (b) weird to imagine that simply because that's the case the sounds of punk should simply go away. It seems to me that the original social import of it has vanished and that we're left with just a sound -- an accessible, enjoyably poppy sound -- and the logical result seems to be this mainstreaming, that bands like Blink 182 or Sum 41 will pick up punk as just another available part of the pop pallette and use it to pen peppy hooky little smash hits.

I mean, I think it's ruder to the idea of punk to try and preserve it as this historical thing that can only mean what it was originally meant to mean (as if what that was can even be identified). It's finally succeeded, musically speaking: it's made its impact on the sound of everything, become a viable sonic part of what popular music in the broadest sense is allowed to be. That's a great thing, as far as I'm concerned. (Especially because it means all the people who think they have some sort of "punk spirit" will have to go out and actually have a "punk spirit" -- namely, by finding something else to play.)

*round of applause*

i don't like this idea at all. strip away what's good about punk, (basically its confrontational aspect) and you are left with fuck all. might as well listen (or should i say watch) christina and the like.

I also feel the riffs are devoid of any 'electricity'. My way of saying that the guitars lose something during the production stage.

Thing is, though, if you don't like it, there are so many other "authentic" punk bands to listen to. I think pop-punk as a genre suffers because too many people (including the bands themselves, sometimes) compare it to OLD SCHOOL PUNK WITH A VALUE SYSTEM MAN rather than just fast hooky melodic music with guitars. By drawing the parallel, you're disappointed. What happens when you remove the parallel?

how can you remove the parallel. these bands came from that. it's kind of strange to not compare it to the older stuff.

but even if you tried I'd still say it's too 'well' produced. the guitars don't do it. the riffage from band to band is too same-ish as well.

I'm not much of an admirer of a lot of old punk as well. at least from a recorded perspective. but some of the stuff is very good.

The big Blink/Sum/Foo bands abuse compression to the point where the producers should be taken out and shot... making something that should be raw and electric into something "smooth" and radio-friendly... I think that's why the Strokes/Hives/White Stripes sound 'refreshing' or whatnot.

And there's something wrong with your claim that the only good thing about punk was that it was "confrontational": (a) why would you like something whose only positive quality wasn't a musical one? (b) Blink 182 et al rile you up enough that they seem to be "confronting" something as well. The "necessary comparison" your positing to old punk is just as problematic: if the verdict everyone comes to is "oh, this new stuff isn't real punk" then there's no longer any point in making the comparison, and the new stuff needs to be thought about as good/bad on its own. I mean, your three reasons for dismissing it so far are (a) it's not old punk, (b) it's pop on the order of Cristina Aguilera, and (c) the production isn't very rock. What I'm saying is that all three of these are the point, they're what I find interesting about it, and my guess is that a 1978 Buzzcocks fan would have been equally fascinated if not outright impressed by the idea that one day punk would become a part of the pop vocabulary in this way.

The way you guys describe it, these bands are creating a kind of music that never even existed before -- punk in a chart-pop style so removed from punk that punks don't even like it! We should be celebrating them as pioneers.

because there's enough great music out there and i think it's interesting that ppl weren't too bothered abt 'performances' and 'songwriting'.

''Julio: the "might as well listen to Cristina" argument is exactly my point -- why can't the sound of punk be used for exactly the same chart-topping purposes as the sound of any other genre?''

OK but I wouldn't listen to christina.

''(c) the production isn't very rock.''

see andy's answer.

''I mean, your three reasons for dismissing it so far are (a) it's not old punk''

as to the rest of yr argument: to compare or not too. I think for me comparisons are important for me (especially in 'rock') and what it comes down to is that I would like to see blasts of electric guitar rock in the charts and am not prepared to settle for blink 182. i don't want it to get back to the good ol' days of punk. i like the spirit in which a lot of those recs were made and i like to see that carry on (I wouldn't know what sound exactly but that's up to the bands, and it doesn't to involve guitars) and it would be nice if they disrupted the current flow of the charts really.

i can see yr argument but it's just I don't like that argument.

you could say the record companies and the rpoducers are pioneers for expliting that sound and making it get into the charts, not the bands themselves.

you are prob right: ppl will celebrate this in 10 years. compilations will come out and so on...

The record companies were the ones who caught a whiff of "punk" and reappropriated it to create "new wave" -- and you could say the new wave bands were pioneers because that stuff has a TREMENDOUS influence on contemporary music. New wave was maligned in the '70s for trying to mimic punk without BEING punk, but today that music doesn't really carry the same political baggage it used to -- it's just cute synthy retro whatever that the kids can dance to.

Nabisco: Huh?

"Mom, can I get my allowance early? I wanna go buy the new Sum 41, even if it isn't about revolution the way the Clash used to be. No, punk sounds don't have to be rebellious anymore. No, I don't want to listen to your Crucifucks records again. Please, I mowed the lawn and raked, could you just stop condescending to me?"

Not a big deal. anyone could catch the whiff of ''punk'' if they watch the sales figures from the indepedent sector.

Pil, say, were great because they were a good band. same goes for a lot of others too (and some not so: all under this new wave umbrella). the companies marketed the stuff whereas with nu-punk its more than merely putting posters of a band everywhere.

It was a big deal in the '70s. People like Seymour Stein were really taking a chance. The music industry was pretty conservative back then.

I'm talking music, here, not lyrics or videos.

Julio I don't think you're following my argument. My argument is that Blink 182 don't have to be thought of as a settlement or a substitute for what you "really" want -- they can be taken on their own terms and found to providing something perfectly reasonable within them. That sentence above says exactly what you've been saying all through the thread: "but it's not (punk)/(rock)." It's not: why necessarily does that make it bad?

Pete: go up to a random sampling young Blink-182 fans and feed them Julio's line that punk used to be about confrontation and revolution and that today's chart-punk just doesn't compare properly to it. My guess, especially given Blink-182's usual antics, is that the responses you got would go pretty much like what you outlined above -- i.e., "whatever, shut up about how great everything was back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and let me get on enjoying my favorite pop song." (Even the opposite response -- i.e., "you're wrong, this stuff is all about the rebellion of my soul etc." -- would imply that wa-hey, someone's being confronted with something, only it isn't you anymore.)

"Kids listening to Blink 182 realize just as well as the majority of ILM that the gestures and sounds of punk no longer carry any revolutionary or rebellious impact."

I find that idea absurd. But maybe I shouldn't...

The music's OK. Usually the singles are good. But pop punk kids are the worst.

If I approached those mildly nonconformist Blink-182 fans, as you suggest, they might well tell me to go back to the dinosaurs. What they would never tell me is: "Come on, mister, the sounds of punk no longer carry any revolutionary or rebellious impact." I don't think Blink-182 fans know "the sounds of punk" from The Sound of Music--or the Clash, for that matter. And I don't think it's "condescending" to say so.

The reason for my joke was that it's a poor tack of rock argument to say: "If you don't like Band A, you must be condescending to Band A's audience." Some of my best friends are Band A fans. I just think I've been bugged by that schtick for longer than they have, and reserve the right to be indifferent to certain kinds of songwriting that bore me...

also Pete: the point isn't that it condescends to fans of Band A to say you don't like Band A -- it condescends to fans of Band A to pretend they're somehow being fooled, being snookered, being sold an unsatisfactory watered-down imitation of what they really want. because they're not: they want Blink-182. my original statement was coming more from the other direction -- i.e. not your direction but theirs: even when they do adopt the rhetoric of punk-as-rebellion I don't think a clear demonstration of Whatever 1977 Band as "more genuinely rebellious" than 2002 Pop Band would make any difference to them.

and note it's stretching the truth in the first place to even limit this discussion to kids who think they're punks: these are bands that do just fine for themselves on things like TRL, meaning there's a significant portion of their fan base that just likes the singles and doesn't even give a toss to attach themselves to it as a genre in the first place.

For the record, I liked the soundtrack to American Pie and didn't feel any need to compare it to the rock of my adolescence. But this thread did seem like the moment to say that there's no comparison at all. The new stuff is boring compared to the music that influenced it, it just is.

In a similar way, I'm happy to hear kids are rebelling in any small way they can, Avril ties and all. But that's not quite the same as punks getting beat up for how they looked. I.e., fuck pop relativism. (Unless pop relativism = lending me your record collection.)

Brock, Pansy Division got mentioned by some damn blowhard already... ;)

I was watching the new Andrew W.K. video ("We Want Fun") tonight and wondering whether trash culture = mass culture or whether it's just media-glorified fringe culture. (I'm in NYC, which is pretty alien from the rest of the U.S., so I have no idea.) So is Avril's skate-punk thing part of that trash culture as well? And is "real" skate-punk part of trash culture as well, and is the trash aesthetic fringe, mainstream, or what?

A question that I don't know the answer to: Am I right in my impression that NYC exported pre-punk as music to the UK, and only when it came back as politicized punk to the rest of the states that it had a (different) political element to it?

but you call it pop punk when it seems to me to have nothing to do with punk when the name implies it does.

bah! it always comes down to whether you like the recs/idea or not. I see the idea of pop punk as JUST WRONG!!! That's why i don't like it...anyway, carry on.

I don't really know any of Blink 182's singles other than All The Small Things, but it's also completely great. And Ash of course are fantastic.

. But they are great, and Watermark and Aside are cracking punk-pop tunes, no doubt.
Neat videos too, or just odd enough that I like them. Their online somewhere, I think at http://launch.yahoo.com

no but i have some SKA demons heh.

I don't like the pistols as much as he seems to (but then again he was around at the time). and i haven't read too much of what he writes on it becuz i've only read his writing on improv for the wire.

but if he's all for electricity and against this shit then hey, that's bloody good!

Clarke, since I have no idea what's inside the mind of the average, or even above average, Blink fan, I'm gonna shut up and go to bed.

Whatever you do, PLEASE don't email me.