Punk Rock
I’m not a guy who likes to be crabby… especially about music. If you like a certain kind of music then there isn’t a single person in the entire world who should attempt to tell you that you’re not supposed to. Simple as that.
I just want to say something, however, about today’s idea of "Punk Rock". Again, I’m not trying to dish on people or make them feel like somehow they don’t measure up. I just want to take a moment and comment on how today’s definition of "Punk Rock" is so much different than the punk rock of, say, 1976.
Punk Rock came at a time when disco had overtaken the airwaves and cocaine-based, empty, party music became the de-facto norm of pop culture. Punk came along plying something of the same role that twelve-tone-row did in the early twentieth century: To shake things up, to break patterns and, ultimately, to burn out like a Roman Candle after having woken everyone out of their slumber. It was not life-affirming, it was not meant to sell, it was no party music. Its intent was to create a sort of musical score for the doom of a generation without hope. It’s arguable what the greatest Punk quote of the short-lived era might have been, but to me it’s Johnny Rotten’s "Get pissed/Destroy", not as much sung as it was barfed up in The Sex Pistols’ "God Save The Queen". The record industry wanted nothing to do with Punk Rock and, if it weren’t for the flooding of cash which came from the pockets of a bitter generation who identified with punk’s nihilistic message, it would have never seen any sort of commercial presence. It wasn’t meant to. Early Punk was meant to eat itself in its own ugliness. Take Punk icons such as Sid Vicious, who was brought into the Sex Pistols despite being unable to actually play an instrument; he was given the job because the rest of the band liked the style with which he gave a chain-whipping to a reporter. During his two-year stint as a Sex Pistol, he was known for hitting fans in the audience over the head with a Fender Precision bass (which, if you know the instrument, could easily bust your head open). In ending his heroine-soaked tenure, he killed his junkie girlfriend and then himself. According to Rolling Stone, "it was a pathetic, punky footnote".
I don’t advocate this sort of Punk lifestyle as a philosophy, but I’m trying to make the point that Punk wasn’t cute, fun or sellable. It was meant to break with the past, bury the sixties, destroy the reign of disco and then eat itself. It was ugly, it was angry, it was without hope and joy. Parents were terrified their children might take to Punk Rock. Schools wanted to see it gone for good. That’s what Punk is. It’s meant to be the bitterest, ugliest pill and – in its purest form – it cannot sustain itself.
Does that sound like MTV sweethearts Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, Blink 182, Lit? Each good-looking, fun-time rock act piping up "I kissed a girl" lyrics with instruments in tune and verse-chorus-verse posturing steps forth with a smile, selling T shirts, posters and enjoying slicker-than-thou websites. Never shall they utter the F-bomb on television, never will they tell the youth of 2005 to fall on their own knives because there’s no point. Hell, Avril Lavigne, in a cheeky display of "nyah nyah"-ism, dropped her pants enough to show an inch of buttcrack with "MMVA" (Much Music Video Awards) written across the upper half of her bum. If there’s any symbol of "new Punk" to me, this would be it; where she chastely revealed a finger’s-width of crack in the interests of shilling Canada’s biggest music TV corporation, the punks of years past would have never made such a censorship-delimited display of corporate-kowtowing. Even today Johnny Rotten is probably the most un-interviewable man on the face of the Earth; he belligerently shows such contempt for MTV while being interviewed by MTV that they can rarely get ten consecutive seconds of his time before he storms out in a spiky rage. I don’t expect to see him using the top 1/10th of his butt as a corporate billboard in the near future.
I have nothing against Avril. I have nothing against most of the modern Punk acts. I love the music and I welcome the positive, if lightweight message of the genre. I just have trouble with hearing that this is "Punk" because, if it were, it would have eaten itself long before now.
December 30th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
Avril Lavigne: For people who aren’t hard core enough for Blink 182…
That’s my favorite quote of 2003.
Be that as it may, however, I have to argue a bit with you. Sort of. While agree with EVERYTHING you wrote, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a woman discussing hip-hop in an aural essay on NPR a few years back.
She went on about how in her day, her parents couldn’t stand her hippy music. It wasn’t music, they told her, but golly, and it had no quality. It should be banned, they told her. Clearly, they didn’t get it.
Today, however, she finds herself with kids who listen to hip-hop (she likely just called it rap). Now, she doesn’t think that rap is music. It has no quality. It’s just a bunch of profanity. Etc.
Then came the punch line: She said that, sure, her parent said that about her music, but that was different, because her music was good. Her parents just didn’t get it, but she knew with a certainty that she got rap just fine, and got that it was bad and should be banned.
I work overtime to not be that imbecilic person, and that includes being very careful to refrain from writing off change as inferior to what I knew when I was a youngster. You know what I mean?
You aren’t making an argument like that, of course, but it’s almost the flip side of the same coin. Today’s “punk” is safe, to be sure, but things change with time. If you listen to the Pistols, The Clash, or Fear today, it’s all rather tame compared to some of the things that we’ve all heard since those folks pioneered some musical boundaries for us back in the 1970s, and it’s easy to understand how a bunch of kids and/or record execs found it easy to lump these new acts under the “punk” label.
That what really made punks punks was not about the music is immaterial, because things change, labels get adapted and adopted, and the fringe inevitably gets subsumed by the mainstream.
The only thing we should really find curious about this whole process is that it took almost 30 years for it to happen.
Just food for thought, mate, and in the meanwhile, Blink 182 and Avril Lavigne can both rot in a nice, safe, fiery hell.
December 30th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
Small difference between what I said and what the NPR woman said: I wouldn’t say that Lavigne and Blink 182, etc. aren’t good music. I even like some of their stuff, myself. I’m not even saying that the punk values of yesteryear are good ones (I really don’t know if any art form based totally on destruction and nihilism is doing anyone any real good). I’m saying that if you start on a timeline where punk begins and follow the line labeled “punk” music, it may lead you to the new bands who wear the name. If, however, you start on that same timeline and follow the line which shows where the punk values go, you won’t end up in the same place. I get peeved when Lavine and Blink 182 or whoever put on the tough face and try to suggest they belong next to The Damned and The Sex Pistols in the annals of punk history because, baby, they’re two different animals.
December 30th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
No, I got that, and I definitely agree with your sentiments. I just thought my cautionary tale was apropos.
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