Republican is the new punk rock? Yes, that's about right
By which I mean, punk is dead and so is movement conservatism. Seriously, what is it with rightwingers trying to identify themselves with "punks" and their opponenents with "hippies"? Why would anyone want to do this to themselves?
Look around you at the world of popular culture. There are still lots and lots of surviving subcultures which are recognisably "hippy". There are next to none which are recognisably "punk". The hippies managed to cope with the rise in popularity of electronic dance music (which punk rockers rather spectacularly didn't). They inserted a lot of their main political issues and ersatz spirituality right into the mainstream. They even saved the fucking whale.
What happened to punks? Not a lot. Thrash metal, Green Day and that's about it basically. The only punk band that had any sort of longevity was the Cure. Michael Gove should be saying that the Tory Party are truly Goths at heart.
That is a strange one, by the way. If you'd been hanging around doing Paul Morley's job in say 1985, and you had to pick one out of New Romantic, Two-tone, Goth and glam metal to still be alive and relevant in 2009, who the hell would have picked Goth?
Update: Actually, while we're on the subject, now that five years' passing has somewhat diminished the emotional impact of the "Hurt" video, can we get a bit of reality with respect to Johnny Cash please? The simple fact that Rick Rubin says someone's cool does not actually make it the case. Cash made a small number of good country records (a very small number, and even "Live at San Quentin" has a hell of a lot of filler on it), and five or six very good tracks, spread across three albums, toward the end of his life. But he spent most of his career producing a vast amount of rubbish, of which this is entirely typical. Even the famous early country albums are country and western, not rock and roll and certainly not punk rock - if you don't like cowboy songs, you'll hate them. It's heretical to say it, but there was a most unimaginable amount of shit produced in Nashville between 1955 and 1958, much greater than the volume of execrable house music produced between 1988 and 1991.
"There are next to none which are recognisably "punk""
ReplyDeleteWhoa, this is absolutely false unless you're gonna insist on some very narrow definition of punk which must necessarily involve safety pins and endless variations on the Wattie Buchan chik.
There is in fact a very thriving scene that can be loosely called punk it's just that you don't know about it. Maybe it's not called "punk" all the time but most of the people who are involved with it would be quite happy to acknowledge their punk roots and even be called that themselves. I think what you mean is that ... well, you just don't know about it cuz you're now an old fart like me (I stopped paying attention to it about ten years ago but still keep in touch with friends who are into it).
Maybe what you mean is that there's no surviving subculture of punks that's mainstream enough to be recognized by old farts.
Back in the undergrad days, which weren't that long ago we had about 2 or 3 "punk" bands a week play our basement , most of them touring the country in a beat up van a la Black Flag. That's still going on as Facebook all too often informs me.
If you're talking about the political/social influence, where do you think all those annoying vegan people come from? Way more of them are graduates of the 'punk movement' than of the hippy movement.
Um. Operation Ivy? (And that's way way old school by now)
Oh yeah and for all the shit one can give to Green Day they're actually very good songwriters, and also super nice people. They were nice enough to play our basement way back when nobody knew who they were.
There is in fact a very thriving scene that can be loosely called punk it's just that you don't know about it.
ReplyDeleteKnow about it mate? I live in Camden Town. I walk past All Ages Records, London's biggest surviving punk'n'hardcore shop, in order to get a bacon sandwich of a Sunday morning. I walk past the Dublin Castle taking my kids to the park. I am as well placed as one can be to judge the ongoing health of the hardcore scene and I say: not great. The kids are into all this "rapping" stuff these days.
Maybe what you mean is that there's no surviving subculture of punks that's mainstream enough to be recognized by old farts.
Well yes, but there's loads of hippy subcultures that are - this is my point. One might simply take the (I think) Greil Marcus line that youth cultures are defined by their drug of choice and note that while methamphetamine is not exactly defunct, cannabis is a much more mainstream choice.
If you're talking about the political/social influence, where do you think all those annoying vegan people come from?
via Crass, who started out playing punk rock but who quickly grew long hair, lived in a commune and generally both walked and quacked like ducks (actually writing an essay called "The Last of the Hippies", just to clear things up).
Um. Operation Ivy?
I know nothing about this band except that the first three words of its Wikipedia article are "Operation Ivy was".
I actually agree with you about Green Day as a band; I think they're really pretty good. But history's moved on (and given that the festival bubble is surely going to pop this year, I suspect that it will be the more marginal punk and hardcore bands that go to the wall, not the hippies).
I'm not at all sure Goth is alive, is it? At least, I saw a video of the Cure the other day and the bloated figure at the microphone looked likely to drop dead any minute. Indeed, I assumed it was archive footage.
ReplyDeleteAbbie Hoffman used to go on about "hippy capitalism", as it happens, and there's quite a loot to be written about the role of pop music in spreading the values of capitalism among young people of working-class origin. I doubt whether any other social phenomenon is even close in spreading the message of get on, get famous, make money, get what you want, do what you want if you can get away with it an screw the losers and the left-behinds. Incidentally the internal world of rock 'n' roll is about as ruthless and nasty as can be, absolutely chock full of liggers, liars, scroungers, cheats, thugs, criminals, tax evaders, drug pushers and other assorted trash. Perhaps one should separate the hippies (a good thing, on the whole) and the bands associated with them, in their behaviour if not in their music. I don't know that even the punks were worse, though not of course for the want of trying.
I'm not at all sure Goth is alive, is it?
ReplyDeleteOh yeah ... "Emo" is recognisably Goth, to the extent of generating massive amounts of narcissistic analysis of the tiny differences between the two. I suppose Radek might want to make a case that a band like My Chemical Romance owes as much sonically to punk rock (via grunge) as it does to anything else, but culturally they're goths, not punks in the sense which Michael Gove thinks he is.
Actually when you think about it, it isn't very surprising that a movement which idolised failure, despised success and intentionally rejected any compromise with the mainstream, didn't last.
Incidentally the internal world of rock 'n' roll is about as ruthless and nasty as can be, absolutely chock full of liggers, liars, scroungers, cheats, thugs, criminals, tax evaders, drug pushers and other assorted trash.
ReplyDeleteThis incidentally, is one of the reasons why I actually (slightly contrarianly) thought that Guy Hands' takeover of EMI might be a good idea - to have what is essentially a venture capital business run by people who actually recognise that that's what they're doing could produce a better deal for musicians...
Would venture capital businesses be significantly different in their operation, values and personnel?
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, people who think they're in trendy industries (for want of a better word) tend to be far dodgier in their business ethics than those in more staid sectors. (For the purposes of 'trendy', I include banks, BTW). The only FD I've ever personally heard openly gloat about crushing a competitor worked for [Large Newspaper Conglomerate], for example. (And revealingly, it was because he was losing less money than them).
ReplyDeleteOh that reminds me, I forgot "pimps" in the list above. Which brings me on to pop music "journalism".
ReplyDeleteNow I think the problem with the question regarding Paul Morley is that it seems to me to assume that there would have been some sort of obligation on the part of Mr Morley to try and deliver an accurate and insightful answer.
In fact, however, both in this specific instance and regarding the profession in general, the actual purpose of the answer would have been to make as provocative and self-serving a point as possible while trying at the same time to display the maximum of reading that you reckon you've done - not in the sense of having learned anything, of course, but in the sense of having literary names and references to drop.
Paul Morley should have a contest against Jon Savage one day. It'd be like Ali v Foreman, except without the talent.
Ah, 'serious' music journalism. Along with comic book writers (M___e and G___n, for example), there always comes that bitter pang of disillusionment (usually in the early 20s) when you actually learn about/read the things namedropped, and realise the shallowness of their references.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Steven Wells is still a guilty pleasure.
Could go either way; they don't have so many drugs to deal with, but they're not really people people. I suspect that the correct proverb to use for Hands/EMI was Warren Buffett's aphorism that when a manager with a good reputation takes on a company with a bad reputation, it is usually the company's reputation that survives.
ReplyDelete(in the alternative, the anonymous banker quoted in an FT article explaining why he no longer does deals with football clubs - "I can deal with idiots, no problem. I can handle crooks, no problem. But these people are idiots who think they're crooks").
I hate pretty much all pop/rock writing, but Morley is indisputably a genius.
ReplyDeleteLittle-known fact: were you aware that he's actually from Manchester?
ReplyDeleteI dunno, I suspect rapping may be on its way out as well. This is based on my Four-Phase Model of modern music trends (which is applicable to everything since the waltz and probably further back if I knew anything about it):
ReplyDeletePhase I. Menace to Society. The trend T is decried as causing moral slackness, promiscuity, accidie, littering, murder and general disrespect. Cf: the waltz when first introduced was regarded as indecent because you held on to your partner all the time. See also Young Elvis, early punk, Public Enemy.
Phase II. Mainstream. T becomes immensely popular and profitable. This is Elvis circa 1956, the Beatles circa Revolver, London's Calling and so on.
Phase III. Bloated Excess. Literally in the case of Elvis; artistically in the case of Yellow Submarine; financially in the sense of P. Diddy.
Phase IV. Ridicule. The Elvis impersonator, punks hanging around Piccadilly Circus to have their photos taken for the tourists. This Is Spinal Tap.
Rap is currently in Phase III, but I predict that soon we will be looking at pictures of highly groomed men in huge fur coats and pink fluffy trilby hats and thinking "what on earth did people see in that?"
I wasn't!
ReplyDeleteajay> You forgot Phase V- 'semi-ironic revival by tiresomely earnest hipsters thirty or forty years down the line'
ReplyDelete(I've never quite been able to get on with hippety-hop, but as they say 'white middle class men with a fondness for 20th century classical shouldn't cast accusations of repetitive tuneless music based around quotations from works by other musicians')
Morley is indisputably a genius.
ReplyDeleteYou mean because he's got away with it for so long?
I should note that this model is testable: we will see the first film taking the piss out of rap within the next 5-7 years or so.
ReplyDelete'white middle class men with a fondness for 20th century classical shouldn't cast accusations of repetitive tuneless music based around quotations from works by other musicians'
ReplyDeleteLike the joke about what Philip Glass sings at birthday parties:
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
On the subject of the festival bubble bursting. Glastonbury has sold out five months early, with no headliners announced. Not bad, given the circs and that last year they barely sold out at all.
ReplyDeleteI thought the Glass joke was rendered thus:
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday you to
Happy Birthday you to
Happy Birthday you to
Happy Birthday you to
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
That's the Steve Reich version, I think.
ReplyDeleteWhew, you were being serious. I really was afraid that I was missing the joke or something.
ReplyDelete"I am as well placed as one can be to judge the ongoing health of the hardcore scene and I say: not great."
No, no, you're talking about something else. The scene I'm talking about is really something that you can't just notice casually. Which doesn't mean it's not fairly big. We're talking thousands of small shows in a thousands of small towns by thousands of unknown bands every week. I'm not sure what your measuring stick is. But at least for some definition of punk and "thriving" it's there.
Like I said I've been out of the loop since, well, since I started grad school and didn't have time for it anymore. But in my hey day it was definietly very happening and I see no indications that it still isn't today.
Of course the music's changed but if it didn't that'd be stupid. While punks tend to endless and pointless argue about what is and what isn't punk the whole thing is tied together by the DIY spirit which is also why it's not really known to outsiders.
Again, if you just mean that it's not 'mainstream popular' in the same way that rap is then sure, but hey, it's punk rock, it's not supposed to be.
"Well yes, but there's loads of hippy subcultures that are"
That's because most hippy subcultures are composed of old farts. Hard to call them 'youth subcultures' really though there are some imagination deprived young people out there that try to ape it.
"that youth cultures are defined by their drug of choice"
Hey, punk's all about not fitting into your definitions! And seriously Greil Marcus didn't have half a clue of what he was talking about. I mean I guess you could say the drug of choice of sXe kids was sXe but that's just saying that the kids are really into what the kids are really into.
"via Crass, who started out playing punk rock but who quickly grew long hair"
Well Crass were sort of hippies even in their punk rock days but they were still part of the punk subculture rather than the hippie culture. Never knew a real hippy who's even heard of them, while plenty of drug shooting, meat eating punks did (even if they didn't care for all the politics).
Also Steve Ignorant went on to do lots of other "punk" stuff afterwords with Conflict and Schwartzeneggar and whatever it is he's got going on right now (Conflict might still be officially around). Again, playing small shows in lots of small towns. And that's the way we like it.
I brought up OpIvy simply because if you haven't heard of THEM then you're just not in a position to judge. Rancid's still around thought that's not really what I'm talking about.
If you ever see something called a "Cometbus" get your hands on it.
"I suppose Radek might want to make a case that a band like My Chemical Romance owes as much sonically to punk rock (via grunge"
You can draw a straight line from punk rock to the present stuff they call emo, though I'd be very happy if the Goths took credit here.
Basically you got your Rites of Spring and Embrace (later Fugazi), followed by the "DC Sound", then you got the mellowing of the NY sound, then you got it spreading to West Coast and the whole screamo thing (Gravity Records, San Diego, etc.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxfdzi3X58Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX2ERBGyvyI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clDJrGGCOf4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EXUZmK43xs&feature=related
(there's a ton of these on youtube)
and at that point I sort of loose interest but basically it split into two parts, with one becoming noisier, more discordant and screamier and the other turning into this "Emo" thing that's all popular and mainstream these days and that gets kids beat up in Mexico. (Though there were some really good detours on the way there, like Jawbreaker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aWOBcUPjQk) But this is where it came from.
Basically, more than half that stuff that John Holbo posts about on CT and that the hipsters listen to is like the underground 'punk' stuff watered down, with a ten year lag (I'm pretty sure I've already said it to his face, i.e. over there, so I think it's ok for me to say it here)
"it isn't very surprising that a movement which idolised failure, despised success and intentionally rejected any compromise with the mainstream, didn't last."
But it did last, just not in the mainstream.
And all of this is not even bringing up the hardcore thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKWyMoiPmv8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIFo_Baa0aQ&feature=related
or the weird metal punk thing (including grindcore and all them other 'cores):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66jxxBbFLPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0gkB9DUoqU
Sorry for all the youtube spam but like I said the sheer volume of these clips shows that it's out there (and the dates do reflect the period that I know most about) and also note that all of these are like shows in somebody's basement which is why outside folks never notice that it's going on.
Hmm, of course you could argue that Goth is a descendant of punk (in its Siouxie Sioux variant) anyway and it's hard (imho) not to notice lots of punk survivals/incorporations in fashion to this day.
ReplyDeleteI see your specimen Cash piece of rubbish starts with a Guy Clark song, which might be rubbish (I've not heard it) but stands a good chance of not being.
The rightwing punk identification is a standard bit of no-bullshit bullshit. Michael Gove was 10 in 1977 btw.
The scene I'm talking about is really something that you can't just notice casually... We're talking thousands of small shows in a thousands of small towns by thousands of unknown bands every week...But at least for some definition of punk and "thriving" it's there.
ReplyDeleteIt's not really "thriving" if it's all but imperceptible and consists entirely of unknown bands which don't get any attention, is it? By that standard, the Gilbert & Sullivan movement is a roaring success. Though it'll be a long time before the Tories ally themselves with that - G&S were a bit too keen on reform of the House of Lords.
If you like punk to be unsuccessful and unknown, then good for you - it is. But that doesn't mean it's thriving.
"It's not really "thriving" if it's all but imperceptible and consists entirely of unknown bands which don't get any attention, is it?"
ReplyDeleteNo, it can be both unknown (by most people) and thriving in the sense of lots and lots of people doing lots and lots of inventive stuff in it. There's lots and lots of people in the world so there's some room there.
"Unsuccessful" is a matter of definition. By its own standards punk is pretty successful.
And though it may be imperceptible it is very influential as, for one, the stuff on emo shows. It's like the Velvet Underground principle - only a thousand people bought their album (initially) but each one of those people started a band. Or something smart and witty like that.
A bunch of oldsters prognosticating on the state of modern punk is not the most edifying discussion. I hardly think passing a record shop or a gig venue counts as a real insight into the scene.
ReplyDeleteI still buy some stuff, mostly from the US, and the punk and post-punk scene is more diverse and rich than ever before. Bands like Clutch, QoTSA, Mastodon, Mars Volta, Tool do pretty well and are all post-punk variants. Plus, there's are 100s of good bands knocking about who you'd only find out about by getting to the odd local gig - not a Ticketmaster job - which very few of us probably do these days.
Hmm, not sure I'd call Mastodon "punk" though for a metal band they are pretty popular with the "punks"
ReplyDeletePunk is dead. It just hasn't stopped moving yet.
ReplyDeleteIn which case, only head shots count.
ReplyDelete"Punk's Dead and You're Next" - someone wrote that on the walls of the toilet in the Sir George Robey [If you don't know where that is then, etc] more than 20 years ago. No comment necessary.
ReplyDeleteChris Williams
PS giftrap is 'viotater' which is a Tenpole Tudor EP title if ever I heard one.
PPS Chumbawamba went from punk to dance and bloody brilliant they are too.
PPPS Blyth Power have gone from punk to folk, and BBTAT, 'n all.
"Chumbawamba"
ReplyDeletePlease, seriously.
No, he's right about Chumbawamba on both counts. I think they took that Emma Goldman quote really seriously.
ReplyDeleteI think they took that Emma Goldman quote really seriously.
ReplyDeleteIn the sense that you can't dance to them, and they're not revolutionary?
Agree with the point that "punk is dead" is seriously overlooking hardcore. See, for example:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.avclub.com/articles/fucked-up,6809/
well, weren't the prodigy at least a bit punk and very dance... and there is still a bit of that sruff knocking about... also, if you listen to the slits cover of heard it on the grapvine it could be recorded today (le tigre/chicks on speed)
ReplyDeleteNot that I actually disagree with you or anything!
I could be totally confused, but I've always kind of thought of Emo as kind of what happened when the goth girl and the punk boy settled down and lived together for a couple of years (they didn't get married of course!).
ReplyDeleteI see strong elements of both in Emo depending on the band, and of course we love the bands who are obviously emo but claim they aren't (AFI and 30 Seconds from Mars strike me as clear examples of that group). I'll admit that Goth has more popular direct descendants than punk (I know you'll shudder but Evanescence leaps to mind), but isn't Tool recognizeably punk-like? And what about Industrial? It seems to have survived somewhat too. (Or is there some sort of punk-Industrial hate that I don't know about?)
Oh wow. The dangers of discussing & debating the nomenclature of genres of music & the subcultures that follow them. And yet I wade in...
ReplyDeleteIt's my experience that "punk" is effectively dead (again) but has had a more substantial influence, at least in the US than credited by the author. I would definitely say that "Emo" definitely owes more to punk than goth. And by emo I don't mean what might have existed in someone's backyard one weekend in DC in 1985 but as the subculture has existed in public since about 2001. Most people involved in emo have a background in (older) or affinity for (younger) mid 90's pop-punk music and related culture. This is especially true of many of the major bands & performers of the genre, who quite literally wear their influences on their sleeves.
The biggest indicator of modern emos pedigree is probably the fact since the beginning of the decade (and earlier) it's most closely related, interwalked(?) and associated sister genre isn't any kind of death rock or goth, which doesn't really exist anymore outside an ever aging audience at certain club events, but modern "Metallic" hardcore.
If this is a primarily British or at least Anglospheric audience I'm a bit puzzled. Many of my music enthusiast friends, the majority of whom now listen to electro, disco & "bloghouse" almost exclusively, seem to be of the opinion that the problem with the U.S. was that we refused to let go of punk as a major foundation as opposed to the British who decided after awhile it was all rubbish & started dancing their hearts out to the Pet Shop Boys.
As far as the danceable punk genre goes, add the Make-Up to the list, though it depends on your definition of 'danceable'.
ReplyDeletethere was a most unimaginable amount of shit produced in Nashville between 1955 and 1958
ReplyDeleteBut Johnny Cash didn't produce any of it, as he was making largely OK, though too many, records in Memphis for Sun.
Some good stuff came out of Nashville, didn't Wanda Jackson record there?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Bradley
Wanda Jackson was specifically on my mind when writing that sentence; I have a double album of her greatest hits, and there are 40 of them and 32 of them are mindbogglingly awful.
ReplyDeleteGood spot btw on Memphis vs Nashville - I mentally checked it via the apparently historically inaccurate "Nashville Cats" by Lovin' Spoonful.
I thought all the punks were in Tottenham now? Last time I hung out with them was at the Stoke Newington festival, a lot had drifted in from south of the river, and there wasn't much talk of Camden. No offense dd but Camden's not really so cutting edge anymore.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do think punk bled into hardcore and turned fascist, then kind of faded. But there was some really nice English hardcore/punk crossover stuff in the 90s.
I would also suggest that Punk adapted to dance music well - the long and successful story of vibe tribe in Australia, for example, and the success of "doofs" and "raves" generally has more punk to it than a lot of people realised.
But yeah, ultimately, how many punx does it take to change a lightbulb? Irrelevant, because punk never changed anything...
The mostly-great Ray Lowry had this theory that punk was basically rock'n'roll mk II - short hair, three chords, two-minute songs, wallop. I guess if you took that argument far enough you could argue that Gene Vincent was punk, but Johnny Cash? Admittedly he wasn't a hippie - but neither was George Formby, and I don't see anyone claiming him for punk.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, punk was much nastier than rock'n'roll, much more cynical and much more ironic - part of the point was that it had all been done by then. The idea of progressive rock had been to progress - to make music that was more complex, more challenging, more multi-layered than what you'd been listening to the previous year. That worked for a while (well, it worked for me), but things ground to a halt around 1976; I remember this string of huge, awful live albums, Yessongs and Welcome back my friends and Frampton Comes Alive. The point of punk was to stop all that and do something different: something that would be quick, noisy and amateurish, but different. The Desperate Bicycles were very punk; ATV were very punk. (The Fugees were pretty damn punk, come to think of it.)
Punk to me was never a style - to some extent it was (and is) an attitude, but primarily it was a period, and necessarily a very brief one. YNS! mentioned Wattie Buchan. I remember reading about the Exploited in 1980, and thinking then that they were essentially a punk re-enactment society.
Michael Gove was 10 in 1977 btw.
ReplyDeleteAnd probably looked the same then as he does now, I'd bet.
Oh, come on, you're just defining punk as narrowly as possible here. Successful punkism in modern music -- well, everybody at the Lesser Free Trade Hall gig; so -- Buzzcocks, the Smiths, Morrisey, the Fall. (And basically post-punk in general including stuff like Franz Ferdinand.) And through Shelley and New Order a lot of synths and drums music has a pretty punk lineage.
ReplyDeleteAlso punk ethos in postrock -- Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor.
And indie's just reheated New Wave most of the time, and when it isn't it is reheated post-punk.
Punk considered as Slaughter and the Dogs opening for the Pistols is dead, but punk considered as what people who listened to that went on to do is very much alive.
I thought I was going to have to choke on a sentence that began "long and successful" and ended "in Australia", but then one comes along that begins "successful" and ends with "The Fall". I mean really. Out of the four bands you name in that sentence, two of them split up nearly twenty years ago and a further one is The Fall.
ReplyDeletepunk considered as what people who listened to that went on to do
which was, in the majority of cases, give up on punk rock and do something else less boring instead.
And note, from the linked posts, that Michael Gove and that Republican bloke are explicitly comparing themselves to "Slaughter and the Dogs opening for the Pistols" (or in America, the Ramones playing at CBGBs). They're not saying that Republicanism is post-punk, New Wave, Franz Ferdinand or Krautrock. They're saying it's punk rock, which is dead.
CapCab: whether or not you like those Johnny Cash albums is going to depend on whether you like country. Personally I dont but there you go (which is OK; lots of country fans can't stand punk rock, because they are not the same thing).
Actually, I quite like Country-Punk fusion .... and then when you thrash around looking for antecedents you end up with rockabilly, basically.
ReplyDeleteeverybody at the Lesser Free Trade Hall gig; so -- Buzzcocks, the Smiths, Morrisey, the Fall
ReplyDeleteEh? Morrissey was in the audience at the Free Trade Hall. Maybe Smith was too, but he wasn't on stage. At that stage, John the Postman was better known than either of them. Non-mythologically, "everybody at the Lesser Free Trade Hall gig" equals Buzzcocks - with, er, Slaughter and the Dogs opening.
(Captcha: skinge. Kind of speed-grunge with a ska beat, big skinhead following...).
Out of the four bands you name in that sentence, two of them split up nearly twenty years ago and a further one is The Fall.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but isn't the problem here that you're defining success in terms of a band not only doing commercially well long-term but keeping together?
I think there's quite a lot of music from 1976-8 which still stands up (and that's not nostalgia: I was too young for it). Of course there's a lot of crap, because that's what happens when people start practically from scratch, but because there was so much of it and so much passion went into it, there's a lot of really memorable and original stuff. Like this, for instance - what a voice. Of course they didn't last and maybe they only had a couple of decent songs in them, but so what?
The idea of progressive rock had been to progress - to make music that was more complex, more challenging, more multi-layered than what you'd been listening to the previous year. That worked for a while
No
isn't the problem here that you're defining success in terms of a band not only doing commercially well long-term but keeping together?
ReplyDeleteI'm perfectly happy to admit that Buzzcocks, The Smiths and even The Fall are successful in lots of ways, but what I thought we were talking about was "relevance in 2009". The tango was incredibly popular in 1911 and had more than a few wonderful tunes, but it's gone, over, past tense, like vaudeville, punk rock and neoconservatism.
The tango's over? I wouldn't state that with any confidence.
ReplyDeleteActually I wouldn't state that any of these things are "over". All of them, evcen vaudeville, have a lasting influence, which quality I'd rate rather more highly than "relevance". Relevance, like fashion, is passing.
All of them, even vaudeville, have a lasting influence, which quality I'd rate rather more highly than "relevance".
ReplyDeleteWell, no doubt. But, you know, the mediaeval Scholastic movement had a lasting influence. So did the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. So did Charles I. They're still dead.
I am now going to stir some shit by announcing that, while the modern Tory party are not necessarily punk, much of the modern conservative movement in the UK and US is intensely punk. Punk was, in its essence, a movement of blind reaction - reaction against the hippies, reaction against prog rock, reaction against the music industry (Malcolm MacLaren, for example). That's why it got involved with the NF and the skinhead movement - reaction against the sixties ideal of racial tolerance.
Similarly, a lot of conservative thought is based on nothing more than "this will really piss off the liberals, ho ho" rather than any actual objective.
That's why (as we are told ad infinitum) Johnny Ramone was a Reagan Republican - because it pissed well-meaning people off. If Sid Vicious were alive today he would support the Iraq War.
thank God Ajay gets it, I was beginning to think it was me that was losing my marbles there. Yes absolutely. There is no more punk rock (and therefore no more irrelevant) figure in the modern world than Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher.
ReplyDeleteI've rarely seen such a ridiculous argument. Pop culture 'movements' rarely last for more than a few years in a pure form but can stay influential and even fashionable for decades afterwards. Punk is still influential. Hippy is still influential. Even Prog Rock is still influential. Johnny Cash influences some people. But none have a great deal of power in their most fundamental styles. Punk musicians now dress in 'baggy', New Romantics in tracksuits. The real 'indie' fashion at the moment can be witnessed by the masses attending festivals. A mix of the hippy fashion style and can't be arsed attitude with the most banal and unthreatening music. This is because 'indie' music is bigger business than ever before and less compromising bands are driven more into the 'underground'.
ReplyDeleteThe Cure were never punk.
Igor Belanov
The Cure were never punk.
ReplyDeletePerhaps strange, given your thesis about the decades-long influence of punk, that none of it managed to rub off on the Cure, despite their lead singer having been in Siouxsie & the Banshees?
Question: You can have left-wing punks, fascist punks, apparently Tory punks although I find this hard to believe, anarchist punks (notably in West Yorkshire), various subgenre punks (new wave, oi, hardcore), straightedge punks, punks so soaked in speed, glue, and cider that they can barely spell their names, wife-murdering punks, feminist punks, distinct versions from London, Manchester, New York and Los Angeles, a variety of cheap European imitations.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean that it's interestingly protean, or that it's just content-free attitudinising?
Come to think of it, the same question has just as much force with regard to the Decent Left.
"Perhaps strange, given your thesis about the decades-long influence of punk, that none of it managed to rub off on the Cure, despite their lead singer having been in Siouxsie & the Banshees?"
ReplyDeleteI hadn't realised theses were so easy. It was my understanding that Smith joined Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1982 after The Cure's 'Pornography' album, a time when I would be quite agreed that 'pure' Punk was dead. Perhaps I should have made it clear that I meant The Cure were never 'pure' Punk. Nor for that matter did they exhibit many Punk facets in their music, unlike many New Wave bands.
Igor Belanov
Does this mean that it's interestingly protean, or that it's just content-free attitudinising?
ReplyDeleteThat would be "b", I think - punk is a catchall term for any sort of youth-based in-your-face reactionary movement that seeks simply to oppose the existing power structure rather than ignore it, supplant it, persuade it from without or change it from within, and isn't averse to a bit of aggro.
you know, the mediaeval Scholastic movement had a lasting influence. So did the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. So did Charles I. They're still dead.
ReplyDeleteSo is Mozart. So what?
Punk was, in its essence, a movement of blind reaction
No it wasn't. Some elements of it were. But as a general claim, that simply won't stand up.
There is no more punk rock (and therefore no more irrelevant) figure in the modern world than Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher.
ReplyDeleteTalking of inmfluential, this claim seems to me to be influenced by the style of pop music journalism...
Specifically, he's the Julie Burchill of his day, and surely you're not going to deny that Julie Burchill is punk rock (little-known fact! Did you know, she had working class parents? Apparently true!).
ReplyDeleteIn all honesty, punk rock made a lot more sense as a journalistic movement than a musical one (cf, past discussions of The Fall, PIL and other bands who are far better experienced by reading reviews of their albums in the NME than by listening to them).
Not really. None of its journalism (or any other pop music journalism) was remotely memorable, whereas a certain amount of the music was and is.
ReplyDeleteActually I was thinking Paul Morley might be the Prog Rock of pop music journalism (i.e. thinks he's a genius figure when he isn't, but has read a couple of books he'd like to let you know about). Prog Rock, for the reason given in this paragraph, wsa shit. Punk, because it was about rediscovering the virtures of rock 'n' roll - you play it yourself and you write it youself - was not.
Punk, because it was about rediscovering the virtures of rock 'n' roll - you play it yourself and you write it youself - was not.
ReplyDeleteI think that kind of supports DD's argument, really. I can appreciate the intellectual goals behind serialism, and to some degree agree with the motives and goals, but that doesn't mean the music itself is actually enjoyable to listen to. (With the exception of Messiaen - which kind of makes the point that music is perhaps the most contextless of arts, not being a great fan of Catholic blood-and-guts mysticism.)
and yet and yet, the Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin reunions were wildly praised, while the Sex Pistols reunion was rather a bad joke. (PS: guess who disagrees with you? John Lydon, who likes both Hawkwind and Jethro Tull). Also, how does any Clash album other than the first one not fit into your template of "trying to do things you're not really musically good enough to pull off"? You're now absolutely defining punk as "Slaughter and the Dogs opening for the Sex Pistols".
ReplyDeleteI can appreciate the intellectual goals behind serialism, and to some degree agree with the motives and goals, but that doesn't mean the music itself is actually enjoyable to listen to
ReplyDeleteYes but hang on, that's a completely barmy comparison. Serialism took classical music away from accessibility and towards self-indulgent doodling, it's the opposite direction to punk.
and yet and yet, the Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin reunions were wildly praised, while the Sex Pistols reunion was rather a bad joke
I'm not sure what this is supposed to demonstrate...
"trying to do things you're not really musically good enough to pull off"?
nor this - apart from the fact that the quote marks appear to enclose a phrase which I don't think is a quote....
You're now absolutely defining punk as "Slaughter and the Dogs opening for the Sex Pistols".
...and I would have said not so much "absolutely" as "no, not remotely, indeed what on earth are you on about?"
(additional notes:
1. I have never to my knowledge heard a Slaughter and the Dogs record ;
2. I have not in this thread commented on the vitrtues of the Clash, who I don't particularly like ;
3. I'm not actually sure I've commented on the virtues of anybody, except one record by X-Ray Spex.)
What I was trying to get at was that the idea of punk (as promulgated by the journalism) is a bit more interesting than the actual music...
ReplyDeleteWell it depends whether you mean "the music in the main" or "the many, many individual gems that were produced". If anybody wants a defintion of punk, I'd offer simply "do it yourself": it's the virtue of punk and it's the virtue of rock 'n' roll. And as I say above, it absolutely ensures that loads of shite gets produced, but it also ensures the production of aforesaid gems.
ReplyDelete...or, as Sir Thomas Beecham said about Wagner, punk is better than it sounds.
ReplyDeleteWell, you can cut out the first three and a three-quarter hours of Tristan und Isolde and content yourself with the Liebestod: but you'll miss a lot more if you do than if you don't.
ReplyDeleteI like Wagner's music just as much as the next man[1], but his inability to edit down was one of his main weaknesses. At some point, for example, the contradiction between 'comic opera' and 'four hours long' really should have occured to him.
ReplyDelete[1] And it is usually a man.
Of course, it completely misses the point to say that lots of punk isn't worth listening too - of course it's not, that's what you et if just encourage people to pick up instruments and play. But as I say, you get enough people to do it, something exceptional's going to happen sooner or later. That's the way rock 'n' roll works.
ReplyDeleteThere's an alternative way of doing music, very different: you educate and train an elite with previously-demonstrated aptitude, and they go on to become professional musicians and composers. That's classical music and that's what I almost exclusively listen to these days. What I don't listen to is people who thought they could turn the first thing into the second thing without actually having either the education or the aptitude. Yes, they oculd play their instruments, but they couldn't fucking compose.
That's another swing at Prog, though. But of course hippy and punk aren't diametric opposites at all, whatever punks thought at the time - understandably, perhaps, since hippy was getting pretty tired by then especially in its musical output. Lydon likes Hawkwind? Well, so do I. I might even have been to see them more than he has.
When discussing the death/life or influence of punk/hardcore whatever, I think it's worth taking into consideration that, at least in the U.S. at this point, the majority of "white people music" acts either have a background in punk music or closely related sub-genre
ReplyDelete(Hardcore), have a musical lineage that can often easily & clearly be traced back to "punk rock", or still use punk as an active influence.
To name a few big selling acts, the music of My Chemical Romance, particularly of their first record owes most of it's stylings to 90's North American pop-punk & power-pop, more Greenday than Bauhaus (which it's not at all really). And despite an affinity for morbid imagery and the color black, their sense of fashion hides no secrets. Those Black Flag tattoos, assorted Misfits T-shirts and Merchandise and affinity for wearing Devilocks aren't random aesthetic choices.
Fall Out Boy may have progressed to the point where they can cover Michael Jackson in a non-ironic fashion, but the roots of the bandmembers, particularly that Pete Wentz character still lie in the Chicago Hardcore scene. This was especially notable when a number of the bands lyrics were found to be "heavily influenced" if not outright plagiarized from a semi-obscure hardcore punk band "American Nightmare", not a usual mining source for your average top selling pop/rock act. A recent Blender magazine piece on them that asked them what some of their all time favorite songs/artists were in their lives was like a playlist at crucialedge.com or something.
Even The Jonas Brothers, Disney heroes and now super-produced pop sensations drew their primary sound from late 90's, early 2000's pop punk acts like Blink-182, Offspring,New Found Glory, A Simple Plan etc. And their early music was a very slick, filtered & watered down (that's saying something) imitation of that sound. This goes all the way to their regular guitar rock covering of A-Ha's "Take On Me", which was ironically covered by more 90's pop-punk acts than I care to remember.
A-Ha's "Take On Me", which was ironically covered by more 90's pop-punk acts than I care to remember.
ReplyDeleteCan we at least now actually admit that this is a bloody good song, and doesn't need any kind of irritating 'irony card' to accept this point?
When discussing the death/life or influence of punk/hardcore whatever, I think it's worth taking into consideration that, at least in the U.S. at this point, the majority of "white people music" acts...
ReplyDeleteI found the problem!
Prog Rock, for the reason given in this paragraph, wsa shit. Punk, because it was about rediscovering the virtures of rock 'n' roll - you play it yourself and you write it youself - was not.
ReplyDeleteEh, but lots of proggers also wrote and played their own material, no?
Richard J's example of serialism is quite apt: serialism was certainly "punk" to the extent that it was a reaction against what it perceived as an exhausted and decadent tradition.
A-Ha's "Take On Me", which was ironically covered by more 90's pop-punk acts than I care to remember.
Can we at least now actually admit that this is a bloody good song, and doesn't need any kind of irritating 'irony card' to accept this point?
The tragedy of A-ha, as I once wrote, is that Morten Harket is so ridiculously beautiful that people just assumed the music couldn't be up to much.
ReplyDeleteEh? Morrissey was in the audience at the Free Trade Hall. Maybe Smith was too, but he wasn't on stage. At that stage, John the Postman was better known than either of them. Non-mythologically, "everybody at the Lesser Free Trade Hall gig" equals Buzzcocks - with, er, Slaughter and the Dogs opening.
Er, yeah -- when one says `at the Lesser Free Trade Hall gig', one means both playing and in the audience, same as how both Hendrix and some hippies were at Woodstock.
But, seriously, every indie act on the go today derives pretty directly from punk (which is why the Fall are so important); punk-Pistols is dead and gone, but look at Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, etc., etc. Post-punk, yeah, but if we were being equally hard on hippie...?
Punk was, in its essence, a movement of blind reaction - reaction against the hippies, reaction against prog rock, reaction against the music industry (Malcolm MacLaren, for example). That's why it got involved with the NF and the skinhead movement - reaction against the sixties ideal of racial tolerance.
I think this is a bit shallow, and ignores the fact that punk had strong stylistic links to the European SDS-types (RAF etc.) and also quite a hatred of skinheads. Rock Against Racism and all that.
(And, by the way, New Order split up last year? Morrisey's still on the go. Big Audio Dynamite did some interesting stuff with sampling. Punk wasn't a narrow phenomenon the way you want it to be.)
Punk wasn't a narrow phenomenon the way you want it to be.
ReplyDeleteThat's the key question, isn't it? Much as I love BAD (well, the first album), they weren't punk in any shape or form; ditto the Smiths; ditto Joy Division, let alone New Order. Joy Division and the Clash are perfect examples of Daniel's point - after a while they gave up on punk rock and did something else less boring instead.
But I think punk was integral to their practice -- even if it isn't on an immediately obvious mohawk-and-safety-pins level.
ReplyDeleteWhich is to say that punk was important in the exact same way the Analytical Cubism was; even though most painters didn't end up producing Picasso/Braque 1911 paintings, they relied on those innovations.
I think this is a bit shallow, and ignores the fact that punk had strong stylistic links to the European SDS-types (RAF etc.) and also quite a hatred of skinheads. Rock Against Racism and all that.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that punk was connected to people like RAF actually rather reinforces the point that punk was a movement of blind reaction against whatever happened to be around. If RAF wasn't anti-establishment, who was?
When punk existed in an environment with hippies, it became anti-hippie. When punk existed in an environment with West Indian and Pakistani immigrants, it became racist. When it existed in an environment with a squishy centre-right CDU government, it became hard left.
As pointed out above, punk covered such a wide spectrum of cultural and political attitudes that it doesn't make any sense to view it as anything other than generalised blind antipathy to whatever the established power structure happened to be at that particular time and place.
But surely then when punk existed in an environment with a bunch of lefty students, it shouldn't end up producing the Clash*? And when it exists in middle America, it shouldn't produce the Reaganite elements of the Ramones?
ReplyDeleteAnd I think you ignore the musical aspect a bit -- i.e, punk was anti-hippie in the way that Jeremiah was anti-Israel.
Sure, there's an element of whadda you got? about punk, but that's hardly unique to punk.
Certainly you can't claim Pete Shelley was inspired by simple blind antipathy, or even Weller.
Bringing up Joe "my old man's a diplomat, he wears a bowler hat" Strummer might not be the best counterargument to Ajay's point.
ReplyDeleteThe Ramones weren't a Middle American band - they were from New York.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right about Buzzcocks, but remember that Howard DeVoto left the band and scene very early on, for more or less precisely the reasons Ajay identifies (and also left it in order to compose avant-garde music without a licence!)
From New York suburbs, as the wee booklet in the Best Of tells it. (But I don't trust them either way, tbh.)
ReplyDeleteYou mean the DeVoto who went on to some of the most interesting and influential punk-derived music, right?
This may be the point -- I see a lot of the `and then they did other non-punk stuff that was good' as pretty directly tied to the punk stuff; I think that the punk diyness and revivalism was pretty important, as was the general ethos, more so than the specific noises. Process over result. But you disagree?
Yes; I think it's very indicative that DeVoto had to leave that scene and recruit a bunch of art students and musos in order to produce the music he wanted to.
ReplyDeleteI think punk's lasting contribution to music is the phrase "over-produced", which I personally regard as a really effective indicator of someone who doesn't know what he's talking about. Really bad and thoughtless production seems to be pretty much constitutive of hardcore as well, and a preference for the glorious big idea over the nitpicking work of sorting out the details is a sort of ideological kinship with neoconservatism.
I like this idea actually (I also like being Paul Morley). The true sound of neoconservatism is a nasty, hissy transistor amplifier and a badly miked snare drum.
God there's some dreadfully ignorant bollocks being talked here. I'm guessing that Keir and ajay were not even born in 1977 if they can seriously discuss "stylistic links" between the RAF and punk.
ReplyDelete"European SDS-type". What the fuck is that supposed to refer to? Presumably to the (purely German) Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (disbanded 1970). Is there an assertion of a stylistic link between the 68 generation and punk? Nope. They were militant hippies, if anything.
Joe Stummer wore a RAF t-shirt once and got in a bit of trouble for it. But I am pretty sure that swastikas were more frequently seen.
ReplyDeleteWhen punk existed in an environment with West Indian and Pakistani immigrants, it became racist.
ReplyDeleteOr alternatively you got The Slits and The Au Pairs.
I'm guessing that Keir and ajay were not even born in 1977 if they can seriously discuss "stylistic links" between the RAF and punk.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I think the RAF started out as authentically punk, but they sold out when they changed their name from the Royal Flying Corps. For more, see my forthcoming article "Never Mind The Biggles."
Captain Cab: "European SDS" is I presume a reference to the European equivalents of the US left-wing group, the Students for a Democratic Society.
And the Clash wore combats etc. in attempt to ape the style of the RAF; of course the RAF didn't reciprocate.
ReplyDelete(Buzzcocks didn't wear combats; this was about the time they took up the Mondrian jerseys, and it was all a bit of a squabble inside punk.)
Ajay's right about the referent of European SDS -- the problem being the Europeans didn't have the same sorts of hippies as the Americans, in particular, your average European had a much better grasp of left politics, and so punk-as-a-reaction against hippy doesn't work so well conceptually.
(And the Jam were hardly blind reaction; they were fucking Mod revivalists!)
Yes; I think it's very indicative that DeVoto had to leave that scene and recruit a bunch of art students and musos in order to produce the music he wanted to.
I see the argument, but I think you undervalue the role of punk in the origins of the music he wanted to make. (And the way punk let people just go off and grab some guys and the start playing.)
I should probably have mentioned right up top that my standard for "dead" in terms of cultural items is "more dead than Scottish Gaelic"
ReplyDeleteBut the Clash didn't always wear combats. (first album cover: Strummer is wearing a tie. Drainpipes, ties, and jackets - that's pretty much what the Buzzcocks wore when I saw them in 1978. The Clash also had a gangster phase.
ReplyDeleteEuropean SDS be damned, what about London SS?
Oh, and I found a Buddy Holly album on my iPod yesterday. Not one duff track. Take that Cash!
Buddy holly really does give you some perspective on a lot of the other rockabilly also rans who are considered to be legends today.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, based on the central argument given above for punk not being dead, isn't it also the case that U2 were formed with a big old DIY aesthetic and heavily influenced by punk? But doesn't this really show there's something wrong with the argument - unless someone's prepared to bite the bullet and say yes, the spirit of punk is alive today in the form of Bono.
Yeah, yeah, shuddup with those facts.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to keep falling back to a more defensible Theory of Punk: politically punk could be kind of stupid -- and yet this was utterly unoriginal to punk (cf. whadda ya got.) Musically punk did some interesting stuff, and especially provided a springboard for more interesting stuff (Nick Cave, f'rinstance.)
But I can't completely accept punk as dumb reaction; it fails to explain ever fallen in love with someone (you shouldn't have), Teenage Kicks, Alternative Ulster, etc.
Unfortunately punk might have to own U2 -- covering the Skids with Green Day? By the safety pin rule*, easy.
ReplyDelete*analogous to the maple syrup rule.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Davies! I'm going to see the Only Ones tonight, because I really like them. I'll ask them if punk's dead.
ReplyDeleteThe whole DIY thing, though, isn't that a bit hippy too?
ReplyDeleteEspecially its relationship with the technology - four-tracks, mixers, and by the time you're making your own fuzzbox you're essentially into geek culture, which is appallingly hippy in a historical view (Computer Lib and all that, y'know).
1976 was also the year the Altair was launched, Apple was founded, and the IBM PC group started work not long after than. And the first newsgroups (over UUCP) began in 1977; you can't tell me USENET wasn't/isn't, in the odd interstices between vast slabs of spam, hippy as hell.
(Can we get to 100? Can we?)
And the way punk let people just go off and grab some guys and then start playing
ReplyDeleteMmm...jazz. nice
Quite. I don't know what to make of the idea that "just getting some guys together and playing music" is somehow an intrinsically punk concept.
ReplyDeleteIndeed; it's not as if you had to get a licence from the Prog Police before the Punk Dawn.
ReplyDeleteActually, that's a real neocon/decent parallel - it's pretty fundamental to those styles of politics that they constantly declare their immense courage in voicing opinions that nobody has ever been prevented from having and are actually quite conservative, the Harrysphere refuses to believe there are any other forms of political debate on the 'net...
the Prog Police
ReplyDelete"Step away from that Moog, son, before somebody gets hurt."
I've got a bit of Yes on the ipod right now and I have to say I don't agree with Justin that they weren't any good at composition. "Yours is No Disgrace" is a really natty little tune.
ReplyDelete100! And on his own blog, too. It's heartwarming. He had to admit to liking Yes to get it in, which took the shine off it a tad, but we can live with that.
ReplyDeleteI think that Gove's claim is another manifestation of the primacy of 'feels' over 'is'. Like Dave from PR claiming to enjoy _Eton Rifles_, it's an attempt to create a preposition-free buzz about certain things. "Punk . . . rebel . . . new". cf: "9/11 . . . trrists . . . Saddam".
It's a strategy designed solely to massage the hindbrain, to use the 'langauge' of images, so that they can get their sweaty hands on the command-line interface, the better to keep their pads in Dorset viable. Gits.
Chris Williams
PS Wordclouds can fuck off 'n all. Just cos nerds do it, doesn't mean it's not evil.
PPS Someone is trying to communicate with us through the gitraps: 'immunati', I ask you.
An "intellectual" claiming to be punk is like the guy down the pub who claims to have once been in the SAS. The guy's a loser, move on.
ReplyDeleteU2 started off as sort of punk. When I saw them first (I saw them a second time, alas) in winter 1980/81 people pogo-ed and spat. The stage was about knee-high. Bono did not seem to appreciate this.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, I had a mate whose undoubtedly punk band were called 'The Electric Company' (after a track on 'Boy') for a while.
How come this discussion has lasted this long and no one has yet mentioned Sham 69, whose comedy hit gave the name of a favourite blog round here. (Its url, anyway. Though, "liberty if it means anything, means we're all going down the pub" has a certain ring to it.) Actually, Sham define a certain sort of punk: bands who not have been signed had it not been for the Pistols. And let's not forget that that quite a lot of punk (Jilted John, Plastic Bertrand, Devo, most of the Damned) was essentially comedy.
Is Gordon Ramsay a punk? He swears a lot.
Tory punks? That's McFly, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteThe Only Ones were brilliant in Manchester the other night. Word to the wise -
ReplyDeletea) don't be fooled by the acoustic "Another girl" in the middle; they will do it properly later on
b) Perrett does, however, seem to have got bored with "The Beast" (or at least its closing lines) which is a shame. It now goes
I tried to show you your whole life in black and white,
You can lead a horse to water, but
[turns rock-star drawl up to 11]
You can't... make it... see the light...
[mumbles]
...there's no cure
c) I'm afraid they will do new material. Fortunately some of it's quite good.
The Only Ones were never punk, though, and never claimed to be. Their songs were loud, but they had guitar solos and lines like "Why do I go through these deep emotional traumas?" They did a good line in inarticulacy on the first album - but then, Ultravox! looked good in leather on theirs. In both cases it was a stylistic choice, a performance (there's an essay, or at least a blog post, to be written about the way songs like "The whole of the law" and "It's the truth" show off their own limitations). There's a recent interview where one of the band reminisces about being hip in 1976/7 while not actually being part of the scene - lots of punk writers tying themselves in knots ("...but it works when the Only Ones do it!")
Quite. I don't know what to make of the idea that "just getting some guys together and playing music" is somehow an intrinsically punk concept.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't; it's just that in that specific place and time it was punk that provided the impetus to go off and do it.
(Same as you can't seriously think home computing is intrinsically hippie -- rather, in a specific time and place, hippie ideas gave that spur.)
I don't believe that. You know the thing about there being so many molecules in a single breath (Avogadro's number etc), that every time you breathe in, you breathe a molecule from George Washington's dying breath? There are a lot of ideas around at any one time. Hope computing is pure technological determinism. If there were some "hippie" ideas around to justify - well and good. But it was an affordable toy for one thing (that wasn't affordable to some other people) and it actually did stuff. Shorter me: any relevant hippie ideas were reverse engineered to fit.
ReplyDelete... it's just that in that specific place and time it was punk that provided the impetus to go off and do it. But people had been doing that for ages. Punk didn't inspire people to have sex or experiment with mind-altering substances, or, for that matter, get together with like-minded individuals and try to make your mark. 'Punk' is just a label. It was a media creation, not a real thing.
Punk didn't inspire people to have sex or experiment with mind-altering substances, or, for that matter, get together with like-minded individuals and try to make your mark
ReplyDeleteExcept it clearly did -- how else do you explain Buzzcocks, the Clash, Joy Division, the Fall, etc.,?
(And, er, punk wasn't a real thing --- ? Um, what? In as much as the novel is a real thing, punk was a real thing, surely?)
"Mmm...jazz. nice"
ReplyDeleteYeah, way back when. Way back when when jazz was punk and not the crap it is now. But the whole idea of "now start your own band" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcgKyruRqr4) has to get reinvented once every generation. And it does, which is why Daniel's wrong in his opening shot.
Also, I'll take the credit for generating one of the longest D2D threads ever. Ya welcome.
But people had been doing that for ages
ReplyDeleteBut not in such numbers and not with such passion.
Look, there's a very obvious comparison with blogs. Blogs don't mark the first point in time when it was possible for people to say what they wanted and have other people read them. Nor does the mere fact of having something to say mean most of what's said is worth saying, nor that it's said in a style worth reading. Nevertheless....well, you see the point.
As for "over-produced"....ah, this isn't an over-produced blog, really, is it?
Eh, but lots of proggers also wrote and played their own material, no?
So they did. But they thought they were doing something great and more lasting than that, and partly as a result, they didn't.
unless someone's prepared to bite the bullet and say yes, the spirit of punk is alive today in the form of Bono
This line of thinking is wearing the tie of Bad Argument Club and it's entitled to and all. Unless we're obliged to say that because punk has influenced many good things in music, all things that were influenced by punk are good. I think that will cause us to fail our Logic class, no?
"Yours is No Disgrace" is a really natty little tune.
No.
Hereabouts I'm with Keir - pre-punk it certainly wasn't impossible to get some mates together and play music, but it was impossible to do that and feel you were on the same planet as the people whose albums you were buying.
ReplyDeleteJohn Peel had a story about how, in the mid-70s, it was essentially impossible for a new band to get anywhere - he remembered being in a meeting with some band & saying to them (and sincerely believing it) "well, it sounds good, but you're an unknown quantity - none of you have been in any other bands..." Hence the slightly desperate buzz around 'new' bands like Ace; hence Rock Family Trees, come to that.
Viewed from the outside, the impression was that getting anywhere in music from a standing start would mean Honing your Craft and Building a Following by slogging away in pubs and students' unions for years, before you scored that coveted Blodwyn Pig support slot and an album deal with Vertigo. Hence not all that many people wanted to do it. (Sounds used to review every single that had come out that week, & give a paragraph to each one.)
If new bands with lots of enthusiasm, no track record and not much discernible musicianship start getting in the charts and appearing on TV, that immediately changes people's assumptions about what making music is, & what making a career in music might be like. So a lot of people came out of the garages and the pub back rooms, and a lot more people stopped posing in front of mirrors and started learning chords.
"Yours is No Disgrace" is a really natty little tune.
ReplyDeleteNo.
Au contraire. I put it to you that the whole of the Yes album is actually pretty damn fine, occasional wince-making lyrics apart. I would further like to point out that this judgment is made with knobs on and no returns.
"well, it sounds good, but you're an unknown quantity - none of you have been in any other bands..."
ReplyDeleteThing is, though, if you talk to record company people - or for that matter publishers, when authors make a similar complaint - they'll say no, I swear to you that we spend all day every day trying to find the Next Big Thing.
Now I'm not sure that this is true - or at least, while it may be true for them personally, I think the labels (or publishers) will often draw back and say, ah, we're not sure....and once they start not being sure you know from experience you can forget it. (I'm reminded of the guy I used to wrote football pieces for, who said that he enterered into an agreement with publishers to publish and promote new football writers - but nothing came of it, because they turned out to "only want books that looked like books that had already been published". Or there's the running gag from The Player, it's X meets Y.)
Still, I think that labels aren'ty going to ignore some new band or scene if they think it's got a following. What they will do is ignore a band if they haven't got a following, no matter how much talent they've got. And if you can't get heard (or published) then you can't show anybody what talent you've got.
The labels will say well, they're under no obligation to give anybody a contract if they don't want, and I think they're right. But what happened with punk is that they all got scared they were missing out, and for a while, perhaps quite a while, that trumped their fear of spening money on unknowns and getting nothing back. Hurrah for that.
Viewed from the outside, the impression was that getting anywhere in music from a standing start would mean Honing your Craft and Building a Following by slogging away in pubs and students' unions for years
Actually I don't care very much about that. Part of my gripe about rock 'n' roll is the aspect of people wanting to make it Now, rather than people wanting to make music because they have to make it and then, if it should happen they're really good at it, they make well make a lot of money. That's the on-the-make thing which pervades the genre and which I loathe. At least in sport, people don't usually get the lorryloads until they've shown they're close to the best at what they do. (And I'm damned if I'm ever going to accept the argument that because somebody made a lot of money that means the market said they were the best so that means they were the best.)
The Beatles, for instance, plugged away for years before they made it. Good. And they probably would have plugged away for years more, together or in other bands, because that was what they wanted and needed to do. "A man makes art because he has to. Why was that made?"
I guess given this blog, it's not surprising that almost the entire discussion above centers around British punk. And in fact, reading over the comments I must say that Daniel has me partly convinced. Yeah punk is dead. In Britain. And it's been that way for awhile
ReplyDeleteBut punk was always mostly an American thing, Americans invented it and Americans were always the best at it (ignoring non-Western countries, which had the quality but usually not the quantity). And it was in US that punk evolved, as any half way decent genre must, and why it's still thriving in US while British people spend their time nostalgically discussing very good, but by now overplayed and worn out bands.
I think this difference in perspective accounts for much of the disagreement here.
Mmm...jazz. nice
ReplyDeleteIndeed; it's not as if you had to get a licence from the Prog Police before the Punk Dawn.
There's a lot of bad faith argument going on here (on Daniel's part as well) and the line of argument seems to have drifted from "punk is dead/had no lasting influence" to "Punk Never Existed/Had no reason to exist"...the movement of alleged blind reaction had nothing to react to.
The best counter to this line of argument is that there's a lot of smart & talented people, most of whom have nothing to do with "punk" nowadays, could honestly give a toss about punk, were only involved with it for a miniscule amount of time or may not have had anything to do with it at all really who, when asked could probably give you a very enthusiastic & intelligent answer about punk's influence, what it meant, what it meant to them, why it came about, & why they thought it was necessary. Some of these people's names have been mentioned in this very thread, the ones that allegedly had to shed the oppressive shackles of punk to make the kind of free art they always wanted to. Much of this might be rubbish and full of worn out platitudes but that would make it exactly no different than the vaunted 60's counterculture. Yes this includes people like Bono, but it also includes many many people who aren't Bono. It's not like there's a lack of lesser mortals/modern embarassments who can't trace some influence back to the counterculture/hippie-dom.
And as for hippies, what of them? Is this supposed to be two diametrically opposed tribes/worldviews or something? Yes "punks" are supposed to stereotypically hate/oppose "hippies". I watched Sid & Nancy too, but it's not like the arch of musical culture went from Jefferson Airplane directly to The Buzzocks. By the time punk came around, despising/ridiculing hippies & hippie music already had a well worn pedigree. Most of the teens who ever went gaga when the Sex Pistols came on the scene already knew they loved David Bowie & hated Edgar Winter. Punk didn't make them do it.
Well, I very much enjoyed the Only Ones gig, but I fear that the spirit of punk rock was somewhat compromised by the fact that while everyone was cheering for an encore, I suddenly realised the way to solve a particular problem of hedge fund risk-adjusted performance measurement that had been bugging me for a couple of weeks.
ReplyDeleteMost of the teens who ever went gaga when the Sex Pistols came on the scene already knew they loved David Bowie & hated Edgar Winter.
ReplyDeleteMmm... yes and no. It's true that full-on beads-and-Afghan hippies were already deeply unfashionable by the mid-seventies. But round about the end of 1976 'hippie' suddenly got redefined as 'the clothes and music which were more or less universal until about three weeks ago'. The letters pages of Sounds regularly featured what were essentially conversion narratives - "Up till last week I was a hippie - I wore brushed denim, I listened to Peter Frampton and I went to one or two concerts a year. Then a friend dragged me along to see the Adverts..." (Which is actually agreeing with your first point.)
Viewed from the outside, the impression was that getting anywhere in music from a standing start would mean Honing your Craft and Building a Following by slogging away in pubs and students' unions for years.
ReplyDeleteBut the Clash sort of did that. Strummer and Jones were known musicians. In a small way, perhaps, but they'd gigged before, and they formed a band of gigging veterans. They weren't just musicians; they were guys who'd worked crowds.
OTOH, I don't really buy this thing about the need in record companies' eyes for previous band experience. U2 were at school together, as were REM. (And those are the bands you'd need to cite to prove that punk made a certain sort of music-making possible.) But so were Genesis. Richard Thompson's guitar-playing when he was 18 pretty much got Fairport Convention signed by itself.
If I wanted to be even more inflamatory, the Pistols weren't a proper band like the Clash were. They were the product of pop Svengali: Malcolm McLaren (he brought in Johnny Rotten. Citation). The true inheritors of this aren't, say, Franz Ferdinand, but Take That. Though bands had had personnel decisions made by managers before. Citation.
But punk was always mostly an American thing, Americans invented it and Americans were always the best at it ...
Well sort of. It depends who you count as American punk. If you leave out Talking Heads and Blondie (as I would), you can see that US punk was less musical that its British equivalent. US punk sounds very metallic; the Clash aimed higher.
Mmm... yes and no. It's true that full-on beads-and-Afghan hippies were already deeply unfashionable by the mid-seventies.
I'd say that they were never fashionable. Some people wore them, but most didn't. You really won't find many BBC plays from that time with people dressed like that.
And the problem with the letters pages in the music papers is that a lot of them were made up. 'Gasbag' in the NME used to be brilliantly funny, but I don't believe that some student prankster wrote in every week as 'Professor A J Bartlett-Pear' in a sort of ersartz Indian English asking for news of the "Beatles Band". Much too like Danny Baker. And all the hate mail for Paul Morley? Dare I suggest that Morley really was that self-indulgent?
But punk was always mostly an American thing, Americans invented it and Americans were always the best at it
ReplyDeleteWell if you say so ....
ReplyDeleteIf I wanted to be even more inflamatory, the Pistols weren't a proper band like the Clash were. They were the product of pop Svengali: Malcolm McLaren (he brought in Johnny Rotten. Citation). The true inheritors of this aren't, say, Franz Ferdinand, but Take That. Though bands had had personnel decisions made by managers before.
So the myth was more important than the reality -- there's a reason you think you have to tell me the Pistols were manufactured, with citations and all.
(See also the Greeks weren't brilliant philosopher-democrats, the Roman Republic wasn't populated by Stoic saints, etc., etc.,)
I wouldn't be so convinced that hippy couture was unfashionable by the mid-Eigties. If you look at photos of the early Eighties, you'll see a lot more long hair and untidy clothes than you might expect. The revolution didn't sweep the nation just like that.
ReplyDelete