Punk Attitude

[mogrooves]

For all its "revolutionary" hype--overthrowing the ancien regime, and all that--punk struck me as a fundamentally conservative (if not reactionary) impulse, an act of musical historicism self-consciously intended to restore--ten years after the fact--"real" rock 'n roll as they knew it, namely mid-60s garage rock. (Not for nothing was Lenny Kaye's Nuggets comp the foundational text of "punk"). In short, punk's remit was to carry on the Rock Tradition, not to overthrow it.....

...being the only kid in my school in the early 70's who liked Steppenwolf, The James Gang, etc, while others brought in the Carpenters (who I actually respect more now, but hated then), Bread, or the top 40 radio stuff of the day for us to listen to.

LOL. Where, in God's name, did you go to school?! Were the Brady bunch students there, too?

[Blah_Blah_Woof_Woof]

Punk as a lifestyle is overemphasized. In England, a few thousand geezers ride scooters and it's the new Mod Movement. This is without even making a dent on the US market. A few hundred people with spikey hair wearing trashbags and t-shirts with stenciled words on them becomes New Wave. Many of the fans joined bands or worked in Malcolm McClaren's shop Sex. Like I said earlier, I never saw the punk scene as being that negative. Many were just happy to belong to a group that accepted them- Ugly kids and nerds who felt rejected by the jocks and the social crowd.

I listen to all kinds of music. In the late 70's I read Trouser Press and worked in used record stores. I'd go see the Sex Pistols, Gentle Giant, Tony Williams, Santana, Southside Johnny and Nico in the same month. I wore a skinny tie but had shoulder-length hair. I was a substance omnivore. Sure, punks, when a microphone was shoved in their faces, would deride Rod, Bonham and Keith Moon as buffoons acting as if they were royalty. This rivalry was stoked by their agents, just as Andrew Loog Oldham promoted the Beatles vs. Stones thing to make Mick and Keith look like bad boys. And the DIY ethic is overdone. Many bands were already existing; some came out of the English pub rock scene and gravitated to Stiff Records for a recording contract.

I think much that is said about punk or rap is out of ignorance. When rap started I was working in a distributor warehouse in Oakland. N.W.A., Ice-T and Public Enemy were blasting from the speakers. I gradually found bands like De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest that I liked. Over time, I just didn't have the energy to follow it. If I was to comment on current rap, it would be out of ignorance. So I won't.

[GuitarGeek]

It would have been awesome if David Gilmour had gone around wearing a "I hate the Sex Pistols" shirt back in the day!

Apparently, Gilmour was asked about that whole thing, and responded that at least Johnny Rotten picked a target with substance, and that he'd have never gotten so much mileage out of a "I hate Yes" t-shirt.

The funny thing is, 20 years later, a lot of those "oh so rebellious" punks had become conformists, and I couldn't tell if they knew it or not. I remember the Pistols did their reunion tour, the first one, in the mid 90's. MTV aired this...well, I wouldn't really call it an interview, but there's a moment where Rotten is screaming at the MTV guy that "EVERY ONE OF MY LYRICS IS A NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF THE ESTABLISHMENT". I'm thinking, "Does he actually realize he's now part of the establishment he claims he's attempting to bury?!".

Then another interview I remember a few years later, when Rotten appeared on I think Craig Kilborn's show, and Kilborn asks him if the Pistols were influenced by Iggy And The Stooges. His response was something like, "Oh, we never heard their music, but they had long hair, so we assumed they were the enemy". What?! What does the length of your hair have to do with anything?

I still can't make up my mind if he's really that dim witted and myopic, or if the whole thing is just a pose (maybe he was a poseur from day one).

[spacefreak]

That's a masterpiece to my ears. And a great record!

The more distorted punk is, the better it sounds.

[Blah_Blah_Woof_Woof]

OF course the Pistols knew the Stooges: They performed No Fun live. Who cares if it's a pose? Dylan's been yanking people's chains for fifty years.

[Bucka001]

LOL. Where, in God's name, did you go to school?! Were the Brady bunch students there, too?

I actually laughed out loud there! Yeah... but I'm only exaggerating a little! The girls used to bring in their records and we had to take turns. And they'd never even heard of Steppenwolf, James Gang, Nugent, etc. Popular tunes at the time were Seasons in the Sun, Come & Get Your Love, Midnight At The Oasis, etc. All lame, and miles away from any harder edged stuff that I loved because of my exposure to it thanks to my older brother (ten years my senior).

But, to your question, not all of the Bradys went there, but I did date Jan for a while and took her to the end of semester dance...

[Edit: When we were bringing records into school in '74 / '75, I was in fifth grade... so it makes sense that my classmates would only know lame chart hits... and, while I did date Jan, it was Marcia who I eventually hooked up with because it turned out that she was into Hawkwind...)

[Trane]

Punk attitude is the #1 reason I don't like punk. I've never looked to rock music for rebellion, it's just another form of music. And I was never an angry kid or teen. I have great parents and grew up in a nice town. Not sure what I was supposed to rebel against. That being said, I've always admired the energy and agression of punk music. Just not the execution of it.

The attitude is what made punk valid... For a while it almost made perfect sense for me too... Luckily, despite my self-destruction facet (relativeluy benign, but still), my luck was that I was relatively good in school (I even sabotaged my grades to hang out with the hoods and bums), because if I hadn't been, I'd probably have gone awry... I didn't see much future for me...

I thought 'punk attitude" is basically the DIY ethic.

It's interesting to again see the difference between US and UK crowds....

Hippies in the US (the Haight-Ashbury thing) were dirty, wore rags and were broke and hungry (and often ill-healthed) >> somewhat a far cry from the "beautiful people that was announced.
The UK hippies wore expensive trendy/design clothes, bought hallucinogenics that were probably not given away as they were in the US) and attended expensive clubs (yes doorfees were fairly cheap, but were drinks as well??

The 70's US punks were broke (and theur shows unattended) and couldbn't care less about fashion
In London, everyone ran to Westwood and McLaren fashion shop.

I think there's more to rebel against and get angry about now than that 'punk generation' ever had....

Duuuude, you seen those few archives footages about later-70's UK??? (the streets littered and constant riots).... the place was fast becoming third world... Yup, UK wasup shit's creek tback then,... a far cry from the now-cool North American continent... The English society was completely blocked by the crisis and constant strikes... Although I absolutely loathed that bitch Maggie, it's little wonder that she came to power and did what she did to break the infernal downward spiral...

So yes, there is plenty to rebel against (Monsanto and their fucking GMOs anyone??), but the crowds are still anesthesized playing their bloody video games

but pure punk is largely a singles-only genre for me

And yet, in that BBC album rockumentary, they said that Never Mind The Bollocks was the ultimate concept album...

It's all about historical events reading perspectives

[Trane]

I can't argue with that statement. I wish I had the exact quotes, but I saw an interview with Steve Harris from Iron Maiden. The guy absolutley hated the 70's punk scene. He had some rather amusing comments about it, and wasn't willing to give an inch when the interviewer suggested maybe punk had a bit of an influence or role in the early sound of Maiden.

May I subject that the interviewer was onto something... Maiden's first singer Di Anno was very punky

I kind of agree that a lot of big fans of punk at the time weren't really people who had a great love of music. They seemed more taken in by the statement and lifestyle - the music was just what it was all sort of hung on. I guess I do put most punk in the same category as most rap - music that is more an accessory for a lifestyle than anything else!

Yup, but then again, just like with prog and glam, 90% of our sibblings and classmates were just "going with the flow", accepting the shit that was dealy-t to them, because it was presented as trendy... Which it became, since the herds just followed

Exactly. That's why it's so hilarious imagining anybody getting nostalgic about punk in 20 years -- if anything, everyone must wonder "WTF did we ever see in THAT?"

But then again, if not nostalgic, I found this Rockumentary quite interesting and it makes quite a bit of sense... Not that much I could disagree with on first vuiew

I find it very easy to wax nostalgic about the late 70's punk: The Ramones, Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, Clash, the Jam, Avengers, Dead Kennedys, Germs, Iggy, New York Dolls, Dead Boys, Elvis Costello.

One band I thought they shouldn't have skipped over was The Damed (they do mention them a bit, but mostly when the film is occupied with the 80's) and the Mont De Marsan punk festival in Aug 76, which gelled the UK punk movement. Two more bands were shunned: Police and Stranglers... probably because too proggy musicians in them.

The Punk resurgence was all about young people wanting to wear the Punk fashions of the 80s, walk around with stupid colored hair, talk about anarchy, etc.

But then again, a lot of music genres always with their own dressing codes (Mods and Riockers, anyone)... In the 90's, emos and those rasta-dreaded-kids were legions...

After watching this as much as I could. It appears to me that Punk rock was all about trying to stand out in any way possible. I hate to say it, but talk about trying to not sell out as an attempt to grab attention. THe middle finger becomes meaningless after the thousandth time its used.

and while being very successful at it, they sucked at it too.

Actually I quite enjoyed the whole rockumentary (despite its shortcuts and slants) and will probbly view it again in the near future, because most of it made sense (of course this has to do with my own life experiences... So yeah, it was about kids trying to catch their share of sunlight..; As one chick sai, going out and try to go at it was probably the best thing that happened to them... It was some kind of enterpreurial stunt, but is that worse than trying to land a shift factory job or a 9-5 desk job??

While the 60's and 70's periods didn't teach me all that mucjh,... and neither did the 90's, I must say that I'd been oblivious to the hardcore punk genre (outside Black Flag, that is).

I think Rollins is an intelligent dude (but then again I knew that for the better part of the last two decades) and he's relatively entertaining and has a good sense of historical perspectives...

[Banquo]

It's interesting to again see the difference between US and UK crowds....

Hippies in the US (the Haight-Ashbury thing) were dirty, wore rags and were broke and hungry (and often ill-healthed) >> somewhat a far cry from the "beautiful people that was announced.
The UK hippies wore expensive trendy/design clothes, bought hallucinogenics that were probably not given away as they were in the US) and attended expensive clubs (yes doorfees were fairly cheap, but were drinks as well??

The 70's US punks were broke (and their shows unattended) and couldbn't care less about fashion.
In London, everyone ran to Westwood and McLaren fashion shop.

Oh, brother!

[Trane]

For all its "revolutionary" hype--overthrowing the ancien regime, and all that--punk struck me as a fundamentally conservative (if not reactionary) impulse, an act of musical historicism self-consciously intended to restore--ten years after the fact--"real" rock 'n roll as they knew it, namely mid-60s garage rock.

But actually, a lot of these kids were more righties than lefties, in the UK... They hated the state of their country, which was blocked by the extremes (left and/or right), and controlled "more or less, because governed is too striong a word) by the labour party... If ou're to read Jonathan Coe's Rotter Club, you'll find that the situation was competely blocked. So most of these kids welcomed the changes and in their eyes, they helped in the process... and some did indeed become the establishment

LOL. Where, in God's name, did you go to school?! Were the Brady bunch students there, too?

Don't laugh too hard...

In Toronto; we had two french-speaking schools, diametrically different... One (mine) was open, modern and sometimes groundbreaking.. we had teachers that dealt with avant-garde issues in terms of environmental issues, and stuff..

But the other school was private and preppy, and if a certazn kind of "pop culture" was allowed, it was indeed Partridge Family over our Lemmy and Hawkwind... Every time I met someone from that school, they'd throw themselves on my record collection, while I wouldn't take a second peak in theirs.

Punk as a lifestyle is overemphasized. In England, a few thousand geezers ride scooters and it's the new Mod Movement. This is without even making a dent on the US market. A few hundred people with spikey hair wearing trashbags and t-shirts with stenciled words on them becomes New Wave. Many of the fans joined bands or worked in Malcolm McClaren's shop Sex. Like I said earlier, I never saw the punk scene as being that negative. Many were just happy to belong to a group that accepted them- Ugly kids and nerds who felt rejected by the jocks and the social crowd.

Hey, it was all about hype in the UK.. As pointed out in the film, the US punk went largely unnoticed, until the UK kicked in

But then again, there were three Brutish (no spelling mistake) weekly music papers that had to find something to print... Punk is largely a NME invention, that MM and Sounds were green with jealousy of not being first on the bball

I think much that is said about punk or rap is out of ignorance. When rap started I was working in a distributor warehouse in Oakland. N.W.A., Ice-T and Public Enemy were blasting from the speakers. I gradually found bands like De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest that I liked. Over time, I just didn't have the energy to follow it. If I was to comment on current rap, it would be out of ignorance. So I won't.

Well, I will admit that I (wrongly) did throw the baby with the bath waters for decades.

The funny thing is, 20 years later, a lot of those "oh so rebellious" punks had become conformists, and I couldn't tell if they knew it or not. I remember the Pistols did their reunion tour, the first one, in the mid 90's. MTV aired this...well, I wouldn't really call it an interview, but there's a moment where Rotten is screaming at the MTV guy that "EVERY ONE OF MY LYRICS IS A NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF THE ESTABLISHMENT". I'm thinking, "Does he actually realize he's now part of the establishment he claims he's attempting to bury?!".

Then another interview I remember a few years later, when Rotten appeared on I think Craig Kilborn's show, and Kilborn asks him if the Pistols were influenced by Iggy And The Stooges. His response was something like, "Oh, we never heard their music, but they had long hair, so we assumed they were the enemy". What?! What does the length of your hair have to do with anything?.

Don't take Rotten for an idiot... the man is lucid enough, not to say totally cynic as well... when reforming the Pistols, he yells on stage out that it's only to make money

Just like Rollins said: among the punk intelligentsia, there were some of the most closed-minded people he ever met... Grow your hair, and you turned in a hippie

[Trane]

Oh, brother!

Ok, don't hold yourself back... let me have it full blast

[Banquo]

Ok, don't hold yourself back... let me have it full blast.

You're making a generalization.

[Trane]

You're making a generalization.

Of course (or most probably) I am.... but how can I/we do otherwise in such a vague area...

[Banquo]

Of course (or most probably) I am.... but how can I/we do otherwise in such a vague area...

If it's so "vague", then why is your description so detailed?

[GuitarGeek]

Just like Rollins said: among the punk intelligentsia, there were some of the most closed-minded people he ever met... Grow your hair, and you turned in a hippie

Ironic coming from a guy who appeared on one of those VH-1 I Love The 80's shows, and basically kvetched about the neo-hippie fashion trends of the late 80's. I still don't think anyone associated with "punk" has any business criticizing anyone else's fashion tastes.

And speaking of Rollins, would someone tell him it's ok for him to smile. To this day, every photo you see of the guy, he looks like he's about to punch someone. Whatever it is you're still angry about (if he was ever actually "angry" about anything), GET OVER IT!!!!

[JKL2000]

^Quite. For instance, when asked for his opinion on them John Lydon criticises The Rolling Stones and The Who on a UK TV interview I've seen- it seems to me all the established rock bands of the day were for the firing line, which is just what happens as a new generation comes along. It became about 'getting rid of prog' specificially because certain critics didn't like prog IMHO, and it suited their own interests to write it that way.

The film 'The Song Remains The Same' is a classic example of rock hubris of the time, that's for sure!

The Who is prog.

[JKL2000]

For all its "revolutionary" hype--overthrowing the ancien regime, and all that--punk struck me as a fundamentally conservative (if not reactionary) impulse, an act of musical historicism self-consciously intended to restore--ten years after the fact--"real" rock 'n roll as they knew it, namely mid-60s garage rock. (Not for nothing was Lenny Kaye's Nuggets comp the foundational text of "punk"). In short, punk's remit was to carry on the Rock Tradition, not to overthrow it.....



LOL. Where, in God's name, did you go to school?! Were the Brady bunch students there, too?

Milquetoast High

[Trane]

And speaking of Rollins, would someone tell him it's ok for him to smile. To this day, every photo you see of the guy, he looks like he's about to punch someone. Whatever it is you're still angry about (if he was ever actually "angry" about anything), GET OVER IT!!!!

Well, he doesn't have a naturally smiling face, but he's got a certain kind of humour.

The Who is prog.

Between Tommy and Quadrophenia, certainly in my book...

[JJ88]

The Damed Police and Stranglers...

The former never took themselves seriously enough...though 'Damned Damned Damned' is one of the few great British punk albums IMHO.

The latter two were too popular with the public, they often get glossed over.

[Bucka001]

Milquetoast High

Yeah, our team mascot was a guy in cupcake costume. Our team was the Milquetoast High Cupcakes.

[scags]

In the late 70's, early 80's, I would see the same people at punk shows that I would at Gabriel or Crimson. It attracted a lot of the same people, who were bored with the mainstream and hated the hippie bands.

[PeterG]

I've never really been a punk fan, not in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and not now, apart from the odd catchy song here & there.



The Sex Pistols and The Clash are on my top 20 list of most overrated British bands of all time, alongside, for example, The Rolling Stones, Stone Roses, Manic Street Preachers, Coldplay, Oasis, Style Council, Babyshambles.

[rcarlberg]

The Who is prog.

Late '70s punk had lots of attitude and energy, but the garage band movement from the '60s was warmer.

[glawster2002]

Being a teenager in England in the 1970s I must admit I find this thread is hysterical reading.

There is a fundamental difference between the US definition of Punk and the British one. The British Punk scene did have its origins in America, Malcolm McLaren managed the New York Dolls for a time, but the way it developed was completely different. It started taking off in the mid-'70s, 74 - 75 from the London pub scene. Bands like The Damned, Ian Dury & The Blockheads (who were originally called Kilburn and the High Roads), The Stranglers, for example, all played the pub circuit, and they gained a following and the BBC Radio DJ John Peel starting getting them in for sessions to be played on his show.

Punk as a UK movement was pretty much dead as soon as it started, by the end of 1977 certainly, if not before, but during its short life it had a seismic impact on the UK music scene. Much of what followed had its roots in the impact Punk had, even today.

and for the record, as the myth is obviously still deeply believed as it has been repeated here over 30 years later, John Lydon has publicly stated on many occasions he doesn't, and never has, hated Pink Floyd at all. Ever! He is a massive Floyd fan, especially the Syd Barrett years. He was doing an early Sex Pistols publicity photo-shoot and happened to be wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt. Malcolm wanted to create a reaction so John wrote "I Hate" across the t-shirt, which was interpreted by the media, and continues to so do so by some, as "Johnny Rotten Hates Pink Floyd", the whole media myth that Punk "killed" Prog stems from that, whereas Punk in the UK was more a reaction against the bland middle-of-the-road chat music of the mid-70s.

Peter Hook from Joy Division, and New Order, was a massive Hawkwind fan and he once said he used to go to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester to watch these bands in awe thinking he could never play well enough to be in a band like that. He said that all changed when he saw the Sex Pistols in the same venue and thought if they can do it then so can I. That was the UK Punk "attitude", no one is going to do it for you, you have to do it yourself.

[Cats On Glue]

I know what punk & disco did to the industry, it was faster cheaper music that could be churned out in a day and marketed in cheap cardboard. No music degrees or graphic designers or mastering engineers required. The labels fired all their talent and went into production full-bore, selling cookie-cutter records by people who were happy to work for free.

it all looks easy till you try it. just because the musicians involved had a different style of playing then what we were used to coming out of the 70s, doesn't mean they were not good musicians. sseing bands such asdead kennedys or fear is a mind blowing musical experience.