Poll: Ya dig punk music?

I went with "I don't like it".
It was the mid 60s garage band thing all over again.
The difference is the 60s guys knew they weren't very good and wanted to get better, and many of them did.
The punk guys seemed to think that actually getting good at music would be an act of treason.

 

Love punk although much of what tries to pass as punk (aka The Offspring, Green Day, etc) the last couple decades leaves me cold. But I can still crack open an album or CD in the garage while I'm working and listen to some ear bleeding Exploited, Dead Kennedy's, Misfits, Fear, Discharge, X, Dead Boys and the first two albums by The Damned any time. Back in my early 20's at the beginning of the 80's when SoCal punk was making their little inroads into the club scene while the big boys like AC/DC, Van Halen and Judas Priest where pitching tents at the Inglwood Forum. I'd bounce back and forth between the bands and shows like a ping pong ball. As long as there was power and energy, it didn't matter if it was Eddie Van Halen shredded at the Forum with 20k worth of the loudest fans you'll ever hear or being in a garage size club with a quartet of clowns bashing away on instruments they're not sure or care they're playing correctly.

A typical week and summer of '82 would something like this.....

Friday night, see backyard party in someone's little house off PCH in Huntington Beach - HEY! it's a young Social Distortion cranking out some tunes and no the cops are busting up the party.... No problem, jump in the car and do an hour drive up the the LA Sports Arena to see U2(!) open for The J Geils Band(!!!). Urpp, strange... bedfellows.. Next day, sleep much of it off, this the week you put in for Summer break, right? RIGHT?!? Ahhhh, eff it, who's playing at The CooKoo's Nest in Costa Mesa? FEAR!!! Let's go, maybe we can get in a flight with the cowboys from the next door BBQ bar called Zubies. Foods good annyway (burp... blAAARRRGGG!!!) OK, lies go see Fear!!! Fear is like some kind of primal self loathing ritual where Lee Ving insults anyone he can lay his stoner eyes on inbetween fun thrashers like "I Love Living In The City." Next night it's the annual Motothead show at the Concrete ****house, The Santa Monica Civic. It's like being in a giant spinning hamper full ashtrays, spittle, clove cigarettes and cheest body scrapings from people that never learned the fine art of TAKING A DECENT SHOWER!!! Next day's a big one. Van Halen's playing at the Forum for the Fair Warning tour. We're sitting behind Valary Bertinelli's "One Day At A Time" co-star... ehhh,......... Cokey McCraterface and her drug dealer buddy. WE bug them for free coke and whatever else that can do us long term damage only to drive them off before VH came on. Speaking on VH, they have the most bitchin looking speaker cabinets on stage stacked 30 feet high pointed all angles it's like the sonic visual cue of a doctor coming in to give you a rabies shoot with a needle the size of a ball point pen. You know it's gonna leave a mark. Two hours later, deaf as Pete Townsend's guitar tech we stagger back home, remembering we're gonna see some band called Tubes warn up for a new tour in a local bar. Halfway home, my car's cassette player eats the mixtape right at the Damned's I Feel Alright.

It's no coincidence the three "Decline and Fall of Western Civilization" movies are being released as one package in a couple months. I practically lived the first two movies almost concurrently.

 

Very nicely put, and agree with the conclusion re: virtuosity vs musicality.

 

Too many bands to remember at once. Artists such as New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, The Nerves, Stiv Bators, The Ramones, MC5 and of course, The Dictators!

 

Most of Jason & The Scorchers' popular studio albums failed to capture their high energy live sound as a band.

 

I enjoyed some...

 

I have a fond memory of doing a sound check with Jason & The Scorchers at Maxwell's. Jason had a cordless microphone at a time when they were kind of undependable, but it allowed him to run around the back room during sound check (as well as during the show, of course). The lead guitarist was sulking because we both kept telling him as gently as possible that he had to turn down a bit. "I might as well not be plugged-in at all!" he'd pout. The rhythm section were good soldiers.

We got through it and Jason came over and thanked me for being so patient and shook my hand. He really impressed me as a gentleman and a stand-up guy.

 

No, I must disagree with this analogy which has been banded about in recent years. The Pistols were an important game changer in music history, whereas The Monkees were vacuous teatime entertainment for kids. I cannot think of a worse comparison.

 

Really loved it too. Except for the gobbin', and the constant smell of violence. And the odd Punk group that attract the wrong sort of supporters (yes, I'm talking about you, Sham 69. Not your fault, I know). Oh, and I could definitely have lived without a lot of the crap Johnny Rotten said in the press etc.

But I love that Punk couldn't be held back. I loved that it asked all teenagers to pick sides. I love that it upset middle-aged middle-England and 'serious' musicians. I love that it didn't hang around too long. I love that it left us 'Down In The Tube Station At Midnight', 'Safe European Home', 'Anarchy In The UK', 'Hangin' Around' and 'New Rose'. I LOVE that it punched disco and the bland bunch firmly on the nose. Blood was spilled but I guess in every war... etc etc.... I really love that it raised awareness in political issues (only if it was to point out noisily how crap that current batch of politicos were). And I love that the Americans tried to join in (bless). And finally I love that as much as I'd want it to, it CAN'T come back. That would just be silly.

 

I really LOVE punk, but love post-punk which came out of it, EVEN MORE!

 

I went for 'I like it very much' - thinking that's closest.

I love the Sex Pistols and never get bored hearing them. Then there's bands like The Damned and The Clash that were fantastic; maybe I like their post-punk albums a little more at times. But surely it's all about attitude and whether it's rock music or whatever is incidental? For me, the Buzzcocks were also one of the best (their records sounding a lot more polished than onstage) and perhaps some of the very early Stranglers could fit in here (even up to the No More Heroes album, as some of that stuff is really in-your-face-aggressive and no wonder my elder brother wouldn't let me hear the full album when I was little...) they're still a favourite band of mine, at any rate.

That's the UK covered to an extent but what of the US? I hear that people class the Stooges and MC5 as punk and although I'm generally unconcerned about genres, I can see that and would be inclined to agree that it sounds about right... incidentally the Stooges Fun House is one of my favourite all time albums. MC5s Kick Out The Jams is a great, somewhat chaotic album and one I like to spin periodically. Spinning a few years on, like a bit of New York Dolls but only have a few tracks scattered across comps and The Ramones, the same. One day I WILL get round to buying at least a 'best of' apiece by them. Then much later on, the things I was hearing post-Nirvana, I mostly couldn't relate to as punk at all - though I did like some stuff from Green Day and particularly Sublime with their use of ska... my avatar & username, for those who don't know are the best known UK ska 'revivalists' from the late 70s onward anyway - so that makes sense!

So yes, there's a lot I like and if I were to look at my music collection, I think I'd surprise myself at what I have - not easy to define what punk is sometimes though.

 

Growing up in a major city has many benefits with total exposure to all musical styles if you want it.
In my case New Wave and Punk was a natural outgrowth of my love for The 60's UK invasion bands .
Was fortunate to see and follow many many bands in small and large venues and am was able to be always diversified in my music tastes and am still able to listen to all music from The Jam, Kitty Wells,The Dead,Talking Heads,Dr.Feelgood, The Pogjues, Duke Ellington etc all back to back within an hour.
It is never all or nothing but remains a AND b for me...Never felt comfortable with taking on an attitude but see it all linked.

 

A nun or a priest?

I hate country but like some cow-punk.
I listen to some traditional Irish music, but not as much as celtic punk.

 

I love The Pogues..................one of my all-time favorite groups and think they did a masterful job in combining both genres.
I'm not as crazy about the Dropkick Murphys and some of the others who followed afterwards. Maybe it just seems that The Pogues felt more Irish first with the punk attidude kicked in....while others feel like punk tunes first with Irish melodies thrown in.

 

I really love this band:

Television Personalities

Walkin' down the kings road,
I see so many faces
They come from many places
They come down for the day
They walk around together
And try and look trendy
I think it's a shame
That they all look the same
(Chorus):
Here they come
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
The part time punks!
Here they come
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
The part time punks!
Then they go to Rough Trade
To buy Siouxsie and the Banshees

They heard John Peel play it
Just the other night
They'd like to buy the O Level single
or Read about Seymour
But they're not pressed in red
So they buy The Lurkers instead
Here they come
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
The part time punks!
Here they come
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
The part time punks!
They play their records very loud
And pogo in the bedroom
In front of the mirror
But only when their mums gone out
They pay 5 pence fares on the buses
And they never use toothpaste
But they got two fifty to go and see The Clash.
Tonight!
Here they come
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
The part time punks!
Here they come
la la la la la la
la la la la la la
The part time punks!
The part time punks!
The part time punks!
The part time punks!

 

Sorry, like i said many times on here, my vision is not what it once was. To the forum spelling teacher, IT'S Cadillac.
Your lucky I'm on probation here cgw....

 

Totally. If you really wanted that kind of pure punk experience in the 60's, you pretty much had to go with the Banana Splits. It's common knowledge that they wanted to call themselves the Banana Spliffs but Don Kirshner reigned them in also. At least they played their own instruments!

Punk as F***!

 

I put I like it a little, but the more proper choice would have been "I like some of it and some of it I don't like".

 

Of course, we're speaking in general terms here. There's no genre where I like everything. I consider myself to be a pretty big fan of both psychedelia and prog, but there are plenty of bands who can be categorized in those genres that I don't care for at all.

 

Don't listen to it as much as when I was younger. (Git off my lawn.... ) I voted I like it very much.

 

Good to see 25% of posters love the same music I love the most.

 

I like it a little. I tend to like individual punk artists and not bands. Stooges and Mc5 are arguable exceptions (arguable because some won't call them "punk", and sometimes I'm not sure they're "punk" either).

For example, I really, really like the Sex Pistols NMTB. When I think "punk", I think that album. I also really, really like the Clash's London Calling, but I have little interest in anything else they did. I like the Dead Boys' Young, Loud and Snotty, but mainly because I like Stiv Bators. I own a copy of the Dictators' Blood Brothers album and I like it but it's not a fave.

A bunch of artists that I really like got kinda rolled into the whole "punk/new wave" category but actually are only tangentially related - among them are Patti Smith, Television, and Talking Heads.

Some of the legendary punk bands I really have no interest in, such as The Damned, X-Ray Spex, and The Ramones. They're just not my thing at all.

 

I really love it! Some people drink tea with gloves, I prefer pure adrenaline!

Some great punk tunes:

Bad Brains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc6juj61rrw
This band could have been huge. They were going to tour with U2 and sign with Island, but scrapped the whole deal due to Island Records' perceived poor treatment of Bob Marley.


Rezillos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2krmvOCBJI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UtuLTV8Bak
always had a crush on vocalist Faye Fife. Fans of the Dickies should know these guys (Rezillos were around first however)

the Cheifs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILXfeI3gUDI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGQ_n4XozkY
A Los Angeles band that was just as good as Black Flag, but didn't last as long or tour.

Shrapnel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-6sLToqGQc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tak4EAAkSY
Dave Wyndorf from Monster Magnet's first band. They formed in 1977. Became the house band at CBGB's for a year or so.

 

I'm now having massive flashbacks to some youngster on myspace's clash forum about a decade ago, spouting this as an insult, they'd obviously read somewhere, attacking the Sex Pistols as "manufactured". (Was seriously weird being @24 and seeing people younger than me coming out with 3rd/4th hand received opinions about what and wasn't really punk.)
& responding with a instinctive thing about how yeah, basically Malcolm McLaren wanted (and tried to pretend they were) his equivalent to The Monkees, with him controlling everything, but just like the real Monkees, they refused to follow his script and took over the show. (Apologies to whoever/ whichever people off forums/fanzines/music press/books I was probably rehashing.).

I voted 'I like it very much' because (just like every other genre) there's bands/songs/albums that I adore/love or just like, some I have to be in the right mood to appreciate, and a lot that are just dull, terrible (but not even accidentally entertainingly), or good but done before better. (and there's far too many mid-00's bands that claim(ed) to be pop-punk but turned out to sound like bad power-pop).

Been burnt out on it for a bit because I was full on obsessed with the whole thing (Joe Strummer/The Clash was my Autistic special interest for a while and it kind of went sideways into punk & it's offshoots + the ideology/ideologies) ).

 

It does seem in these threads that, whenever punk is mentioned, the focus seems to be on the UK scene primarily. Nothing against the Clash or Sex Pistols, but punk didn't begin and end with them. Any love for So. Cal Bands of the 80's?
Black Flag
Jodie Fosters Army
Fear
Circle Jerks
Red Kross
Delinquents
Millions of Dead Cops
Suicidal Tendencies
etc. etc. etc?