Punk
Punk is a term referring primarily to a youth subculture movement which emerged in the 1970s in New York City and London, England, although the term is used more loosely to denote many subsequent punk subcultures and subgenres. The original punk movement was a reaction to the commercial aspects of music and dissatisfaction with society as a whole, and as such it had a heavy focus on anarchism and rejection of authority.
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Origin of the term
Music critics had already applied the term "punk rock" as early as the middle 1960s to some garage rock bands, and applied it again in the early 1970s to Iggy and the Stooges and the New York Dolls. In this sense, "punk" was used as a slang term for inferior or amateur art, though Lester Bangs in particular applied it as a mark of approbation. When the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Black Flag, and countless notable others brought punk into its own as a distinct subculture and music style, the term stuck. However, a "punk" is also prison and street slang for somebody who is weaker who falls under the wing of a stronger person for protection, often a young homosexual who exchanges sexual favors for protection, and is also street slang for a young outlaw in general (as in "Go ahead make my day, punk"); it is possible the term was adopted with this meaning in mind as an anti-establishment statement. People who have been credited (or have credited themselves) with popularising the term "punk" include Lester Bangs, John Holmstrom and Caroline Coon, all involved in journalism, to some extent.
Aspects of the punk movement
Clothing and fashion
Typical punks wore ripped jeans or plaid trousers with boots, leather jackets, loose fitting or tight t-shirts. The best-known punk haircut is a mohawk, or mohican, in which hair at the sides of the head is completely shaved while the hair on top of the head was left alone, or hair was otherwise spiked up with gel and / or soap and/ or PVA glue. Facial piercings were also a popular part of the punk movement and one aspect of it which made getting through airport security very difficult for all parties involved. UK '77 punks were known for wearing safety pins, school blazers, bin bags, funny shaped sunglasses and swastikas.
One aspect of some of the more outrageous "costumes" was to enable disaffected British youths to remain on the dole, since no potential employer in their right mind would hire a creature so-attired. This was also often the subject of hysteria on daytime TV, including live debate programmes like Jenny Jones, where audience members lost their minds over seventeen-year-olds with piercings and funny hair. The issue with categorising any fashion (or any kind of music or behaviour, really) as "punk" is that different standards of punk developed in different areas, influenced by distorted reporting and second-hand information. This means that almost anything has been "punk" to somebody somewhere. Punk fashion was and is not limited to any of these aspects of dress. For example, well-respected punks like Poly Styrene of X Ray Spex and the band Rubella Ballet wore day-glo and the Buzzcocks and the Undertones wore jumpers and flares. Some punks, especially American hardcore punks, rejected punk "fashion" outright as the domain of posers, preferring to wear plain t-shirts and jeans with bandannas as an optional accessory. Anarcho-punk outfit Crass and their copycats similarly dressed as plainly as possible in black army surplus gear.
Music
Punk music, in which the punk movement was rooted, was characterised by a drum kit, bass guitar, electric distorted guitar, and vocalist, with fast paced songs and snarling, shouting lyrics speaking out against authority and other things of that nature. Songs typically consisted of a few chords being smashed out on guitar and were seldom longer than three minutes. Because punk identity includes clothes and attitude as well as music, much like hip-hop, different kinds of punk music could be classified by scene rather than subgenre, and they often overlap.
Politics
The New York bands often accredited with starting punk, such as The Ramones, did not tend to write political songs (until sometimes later in their careers), although their angst-filled and blackly humorous lyrics did explore controversial subjects such as solvent abuse, male prostitution, family dysfunction, Nazism, and casual violence. While other musicians such as Patti Smith and Richard Hell had more of a political bent, they were more concerned with artistic and literary intent than any political ideology. It was the Sex Pistols who most firmly associated the punk scene (at least in the UK) with nihilism and anarchy, most famously in the songs "Anarchy in the UK" (1976) and "God Save the Queen" (1977). At the same time, The Clash became known for their left wing political songs, which were arguably more coherent and focused than the Pistols' more destructive anti-establishment anthems. The Clash's manager, Bernie Rhodes, exhorted them not to write about love but to write about reality.
Though many of the more well-known punk bands espoused left-wing politics or anarchy, there were some exceptions. The simplicity of punk as a musical medium meant that many people could use it to express their views, including wingnuts. The British National Party, a white nationalist organisation in the UK, specifically targeted punks for recruitment the same way they targeted football fans, according to the 2016 documentary The Story of Skinhead. The "Oi!" subculture, a working-class oriented punk movement, also came to be associated with white nationalism, with originators Sham 69 eventually disbanding due to neo-Nazi gig invasions. Over the years, there have also been a number of punk bands (e.g. Skrewdriver, The Dentists, and the Ventz) which explicitly promoted neo-Nazi politics, hence the name "Nazi Punks".[1]
Despite the presence of racist punk bands, very few of the punk movement's defining bands were overtly racist. There were, however, troll bands such as Fear, the Angry Samoans, and the Dead Kennedys who wrote offensive and satirical songs and sometimes baited their audiences. Many of the defining bands of the 1970s punk scene in the UK (such as The Clash) had strong Reggae and Ska influences and close rapport with prominent Black artists, with whom they saw common cause. The Clash were notable for their vigorous anti-fascism: when Malcolm McLaren, manager of competing band the Sex Pistols, tried to get them to wear swastikas, their Jewish manager Bernie Rhodes was horrified and the Clash refused to participate. The Clash wrote songs such as "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" which decried racist violence, covered reggae standards and collaborated with reggae and dub producers. Malcolm McLaren was himself Jewish, as were Richard Hell and Mick Jones; Joe Strummer also had some distant Jewish heritage. Despite this, neo-Nazi punks still do their best to ignore or diminish the role Jewish people played in the creation of their favourite music, on both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, fans of "Nazi Punk" bands are often looked down upon by other punks, as shown by the Dead Kennedys song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" (1981), which has sold out several times. In the UK, the organisation Rock Against Racism was created in the late 70s specifically to prevent racism from taking root amongst punks; The Clash and X Ray Spex (whose lead singer, Poly Styrene, was mixed-race) were amongst the bands which played gigs alongside UK reggae bands. In the United States, modern anti-fascist activism began when anti-Nazi skinheads started carrying baseball bats, an idea that was later imported to Europe as SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) and developed into the antifa movement from there (the origin of the Antifa Super Soldiers currently being decried on Fox News).
Origins
The alleged origins of punk will always be controversial, mainly because there is no consensus on what punk is or who gets to decide what it is. Punk music is pretty definitely a derivative of rock n'roll, particularly heavy rock and glam rock. Some music historians trace punk's origin to late 1960s/early 1970s bands from the New York and Detroit scenes such as the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Iggy and the Stooges, Death, and the MC5, and many such bands have since been characterized as "protopunk." This was the time when the phrase punk began to be used in connection with a specific kind of fast, loud rock music, with the first scene beginning to form in New York around CBGB's, a low-rent music venue and bar. The early players were Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Ramones, Blondie and Patti Smith. That was the beginning of the music, but the integration of music, fashion and ideology really happened in the UK from 1975-1977, both due to the determined meddling of promoter Malcolm McLaren and due to UK tabloids picking up on a scandalous youth subculture during a slow news week. Early London punks were mostly fans of american rock (much like their Teddy-Boy predecessors), the stereotype being that they loved the Stooges and Lou Reed, but due to strong relationship with British Rastafarian and Caribbean youth, reggae and ska became just as important to the sound of bands like The Clash and The Slits. When punk began to spread, the music mutated further depending on what kind of music, literature and equipment was available. Genres which probably developed from punk (some of which are mentioned below ) include post-punk, second-wave ska, goth, deathrock, industrial, hardcore, grindcore, grunge, riot grrl, folk punk and greebo.
New Wave
Many bands emerged simultaneously with the arrival of early punk, sharing the punks' energy and DIY underground origins but not their nihilism or anger, and musically borrowing from a broad range of styles like glam, progressive rock, 1960s pop, funk, surf, and even disco and metal. At first, the press lumped them in with punk but they soon got their own description, "new wave". Such artists included Talking Heads, Devo, John Otway, the Fabulous Poodles, Blondie, the Dickies, the Brains, Television, Elvis Costello, and the Boomtown Rats. Some early British punks, most notably The Clash and Gang of Four, expanded their repertoire in response and likewise became more new wave than punk. New wave became a catch-all term inclusive of everything from the most obscure punk to some rather commercial rock outfits like the Cars and Tom Petty, and all points in between. Eventually, new wave became commercialized with the help of MTV, to the point that it was more or less synonymous with early 1980s pop, in such groups as Duran Duran, Human League, Missing Persons, Men At Work, the Fixx, and so on, to the chagrin of true punks. At that point, the term "new wave" fell out of favor as it was hardly "new" anymore, the less commercial new wave acts were re-framed as "alternative" and found a home on college radio, and punk once again arose as a separate scene re-affirming its anti-commercial roots.
Riot grrrl
Riot grrrl is a feminist-oriented sub-genre of punk which started in the early 1990s. This movement is often personified by the likes of bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Excuse 17. Riot grrrl sought to create a safer space for female punks who, at the time, were often shoved to the back of punk shows and subjected to various forms of sexism within the scene. This attempt to shift how women were treated in the punk scene was personified by Kathleen Hanna's regular call for "All girls to the front!" Common topics of riot grrrl music centered around addressing sexual and domestic assault, patriarchy, and female empowerment. [2] [3]
Post-punk
Post-punk is a more experimental form of music influenced by punk rock, but introducing elements of electronic, funk, dance, and art rock into the form. One of the more popular bands to play this style during its heyday was U2, though they ended up shifting away from it. British post-punk groups tended to focus on leftist politics (Gang of Four, The Pop Group) or gloom and existential angst (Joy Division, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Public Image Ltd), while American groups tended towards a more detached, mechanical approach (Pere Ubu, Suicide, early Devo).
Post Punk laid the groundwork for and fed into the alternative music scene of the 80's; introducing a range of experiments and genre-fusing that would heavily influence styles ranging from the epic gloom of goth rock, the clattering menace of industrial, the jazz-punk fusion of No Wave and the jagged guitars and rhythms of American indie rock.
Hardcore punk
“”Blood: Punk rock is passe. We play hoodlum rock. It's several cuts below punk rock.
Venus Flytrap: What's the difference? Blood: Well first of all, punk rock groups dress deplorably. And secondly, they don't usually physically attack their audiences. |
| —WKRP In Cincinnati interview with group The Scum of the Earth |
The quick demise of the original punk scene and the commercialization of new wave did not deter punk for long. In the early 1980s, new punk scenes arose, trying to be louder, faster, angrier, and more nihilistic than the original punk scene. Labelled "hardcore punk" or simply "hardcore" (no relation to the electronic music genre also called hardcore), these bands included Black Flag, Husker Du, the Dead Kennedys, Minutemen, Fear, the Angry Samoans, the Circle Jerks, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, Deadline etc. in the U.S., while the U.K. saw a new and explicitly political punk scene in such bands as the Exploited, GBH, UK Subs and Discharge as well as the anarcho-punk movement led by Crass. Sub-subcultures arose within the hardcore scene, such as the anti-drug and anti-alcohol straight edge movement.
Hardcore is today usually remembered as simply "punk" rather than as a distinct "hardcore punk" scene. While the scene shunned commercialization, related genres emerged by the late 1980s, influenced by both hardcore and metal, which were openly commercial. Thrash metal (Metallica, Megadeth) and grunge are two of the biggest examples. (See "Selling Out" below.)
There was also a splitting of punk during the 1990s into various obscure micro-sub-genres along with the related arguments over how many bands can fit on the head of a pin, much as is also the case with heavy metal: crust punk, metalcore, grindcore, vegan straight edge, riot grrrl, Celtic punk, noise, cowpunk, and dozens of others. A short-lived branch of 1980's punk rock was "Funnypunk", which mixed humor with the raucous music. Bands in this genre included Screeching Weasel and Adrenalin O.D. Most of the current underground punk scene is made up of bands playing a style of hardcore punk (usually "old school" hardcore, crust punk, powerviolence, and grindcore).
Street Punk
Street punk is a genre that got its start in the '80s in the UK, mainly influenced by the Oi! punk scene. It emerged around the same time as the hardcore punk scene in America, and although some bands took some influence from it, it was musically distinct. Though influenced by Oi!, street punk bands were darker and heavier but retained the melodic songwriting and the focus on writing catchy songs. The bands generally focused on a DIY and working-class ethic. Though some bands were political, many others stayed away from such topics. The lyrics were often darker and more violent. Prominent bands included The Exploited, GBH and The Varukers. This style directly led to the D-beat style of punk, which in turn was a major influence on crust punk, as well as several metal bands (especially in Sweden). In the 90s, a new street punk scene emerged in the States with bands such as The Casualties and Defiance who were influenced by the original bands and merged it with American hardcore, influencing a generation of new street punk bands. Many modern street punks are sometimes dismissed as being "fashion punks" by detractors for heavily emphasizing the "punk" looks of mohawks, spiked and studded jackets, etc., though it should be noted that the more outlandish looks started with the original scene.
Selling out
The mythology of the original punk movement is that it was an outcry against rules, regulations, privilege, and authority. As such, punk was originally an "underground" movement, in which bands played not for financial gain, but to register disgust with the established order. Punk bands that signed to major record companies rather than remaining independent or unsigned were regarded by many die-hard punk fans as "sell-outs". This has led to the claim today that the idea of punk and the punk movement is "dead", due to the lack of a strong underground punk movement reminiscent of the '70s. Some teenagers today can be seen sporting badges reading "Punk's Not Dead" on their shoulder bags, although die-hard punks would most likely disagree with this.
Some veteran punks (and numerous people you see commenting on YouTube videos of new age "punk" bands) from the original 1970s outfits reject the idea of punk today in bands that claim punk-ness but say and do everything which suggests otherwise. The best example today is the band Green Day, which gained mainstream popularity in 1994 with their album Dookie. After the group signed to a major record label, many original fans regarded them as sellouts, and after a new surge of popularity due to 2004's American Idiot, this view again came to light, particularly as they continued to claim to be "punk", despite expensive video shoots, starting themselves up before shows with eyeliner, and the actual music digressing from original punk themes, leading to John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of the Sex Pistols and PiL calling them a "wank outfit".[4]
In truth, punk was taken over by marketers almost right out of the gate. The Sex Pistols were assembled by visual artist and fashion designer Malcolm McLaren and his then-girlfriend and fellow fashion designer Vivienne Westwood
Fifteen years after the first punk wave, grunge became another example. While it had genuine roots in Seattle's underground rock scene, its purported anti-commercial stance, along with angst and "slacker" posturing in general (in the form of "I suck, everything's my fault, I'm a creep, nobody cares, I'm so depressed" type lyrics), was soon turned into a commercial selling point once the major labels jumped onto the "Seattle sound" and signed every band in the Pacific Northwest, which pretty much made it impossible for any genuine punk expression after that point to be seen as anything but posturing. A few artists couldn't handle the cognitive dissonance. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana infamously blew his brains out over it, while Eddie Vedder's commitment to principles eventually got him and his band, Pearl Jam, into a nasty fight with Ticketmaster over price gouging that essentially derailed their mainstream success for the rest of the '90s. Others, like Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, fell into downward spirals of drug addiction. The rest made a lot of money and paved the way for pop-punk bands like Green Day, post-grunge bands like Nickelback, and eventually outright pop acts like Avril Lavigne, Good Charlotte, and Simple Plan who dressed in punk fashion and played vaguely punk-sounding guitar music but otherwise had nothing in common with the genre. In a way, punk had come full circle since the days of the Sex Pistols.
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is generally considered a science fiction genre, although some have embraced it as a lifestyle. Typically, it focuses on the computer hacker (the malicious type) as the main protagonist/anti-hero. Oftentimes, a hero will have several computers and monitors and will use their computer skills to break passwords, rob banks, or blow things up with a keystroke, all of this in a setting where typically mega-corporations rule over the world more or less openly. For examples of cyberpunk, read pretty much anything by William Gibson (whose Neuromancer basically codified the genre) or Philip K. Dick, play role-playing games as Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. or Shadowrun -where it is mixed with fantasy-, or watch The Matrix, RoboCop (both the original film and its sequel), and Max Headroom among others.[note 1] The basic point of Cyberpunk is the use of information technology in an attempt to subvert "the system." It is also heavily associated with techno music and Japanese culture (or at least a Westernized image of it), the genre having come of age in the '80s, a time when synthesizers ruled pop music and it was thought that we'd all be working for the Japanese in twenty years. Few real-life crackers probably consider themselves cyberpunks. Some elements of cyberpunk can be seen and heard in the videos by the 1980s band Sigue Sigue Sputnik.[5]
Steampunk
Steampunk is an offshoot of cyberpunk that relies on the use of Victorian technology instead of computers, often drawing influence from the likes of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. While the term was coined in 1987 by writer K. W. Jeter
Modern steampunk works tend to be more interested in the style than the social satire. The genre has influenced more recent pop culture, including Tim Burton, Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Terry Gilliam, and Martin Scorsese's Hugo. Steampunk aficionados will often wear neo-Victorian clothing and combine it with modern punk aesthetics. Some will go so far as to build contraptions that actually work. Their calling card is a pair of brass goggles. Isambard Kingdom Brunel is not impressed. In fact, the steampunk esthetic has gone so mainstream at this point that Disneyland based its remodeling of Tomorrowland on it. Instead of Back to the Future, it's arguably Forward to the Past. Or something like that.
Otherpunk
Based on the steampunk analogy, a few other genres have emerged. The first was arguably "gothic-punk", the name given by White Wolf Game Studios to the supernatural dystopian setting of their World of Darkness properties. Recent years have seen the addition of dieselpunk (something of an art-deco aesthetic, based on the technology of the 20s through the 50s), atompunk (also known as "raygun gothic", a style embracing the aesthetic heavily featured in late '40s through early '60s sci-fi), steampunk (based on steam machines and in both Victorian fashion and aesthetics), cowpunk (similar to steampunk, but based on the American Old West), and clockpunk (that embraces gears and simple spring-powered machines with a Renaissance-Baroque fashion and aesthetics)
The Lie of "Punk"
While all said above is necessary to punk's developed cultural leanings, it was never part of the social or political revolution/revolt of which it claimed. The Sex Pistols are considered by some to be a manufactured band created for the purpose of commercial success, an admittedly brave one, but one completely unrelated to the countercultural values which it promoted and undoubtedly convinced people with. John Lydon himself confesses in "The Filth and the Fury" that they were after the money to escape the drudgery of working class life, not to ignite a working class movement as so many seem to believe. Over the years, subsequent punk movements/sub-cultures (anarcho-punk, crust punk, folk punk, etc) took punk's supposed ethics and truly followed them, but the original punk rock "scene" had little to do with what it claimed to represent.
Today the term exists largely as a marketing device, comically far from its legendary origins. Golf Punk magazine attempted to make hitting a small ball cool[7], while Scottish beer company Brewdog promotes its Punk IPA with manufactured controversy of which Malcolm Maclaren would be proud[8].
External links
- What is Transhumanism?
- The Cyberpunk Project—A project dedicated toward maintaining a cyberpunk database, library, and other information
- Cyberpunk World— Cyberpunk articles, books and news.
See also
Notes
- Or listen to that Billy Idol album. Just kidding.
References
- See Oi!
File:Wikipedia's W.svg at Wikipedia. - Riot grrrl manifesto
- The history of riot grrrls
- From this interview
- ...like this one, entitled "Love Missle F1-11"
- What the Hell is Steampunk?, Huffington Post
- Tim Southwell interview, Get Your Kit On, BBC
- BrewDog: How two men and a dog made a fortune from better beer, Emma Lunn, Yahoo Finance, 2013