Comments on: Punk Rock

by: Anntbo

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 10:55:23 +0000

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by: Bryan Chaffin

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 17:25:40 +0000

No, I got that, and I definitely agree with your sentiments. I just thought my cautionary tale was apropos.

by: Corey Tamas

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 09:08:29 +0000

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.

by: Bryan Chaffin

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 08:59:49 +0000

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.