"Why has nothing knocked punk rock off its pedestal?"

That's not what he's saying though.

 

I always think of him more as George Michael meets Oscar Wilde at a Robert Spencer event: Glam + wit + truth-telling = cultural IED

 

After reading only about the first 10 or so responses it's obvious that the only experience some of you have with punk is The Clash and the Sex Pistols. Look...it never went away, it wasn't a fad and it will be here forever. Just picking up any copy of Maximum Rock 'n' Roll zine from the last 35 years proves that. Just because a fluke album doesn't connect with the mainstream doesn't mean it's disappeared.

 

Oh I dunno ... I remember this weekend in July, 1972 ...

 

Not so. I still hear local punk bands all the time that are made up of sincere, angry kids.
Most of them are 20 y.o. or younger and not tainted by 'hipster irony' thank goodness.

 

Punk isn't a genre as much as an approach or an attitude. Punk died when they gave it a name.

 

Indeed, with blues, shape note and gospel pre dating jazz
But we were talking about rock genres, which there could be a case made for either late 60s fusion or late 70s fusion.

 

"What have you got?"

 

Well, for many young people in late 1970s Britain, the very idea of higher education would have been too foreign to even imagine... They would not even have been able to take any loans.

There is also less terrorism now than in the 1970s, even if today's media climate would suggest the opposite.

 

Well, but it kinda is. He's saying 'we were rebels, where are the true rebels?"

And then he generalizes about "kids these days": they're consumerist, victims of the internet, they care about nothing but their sneakers, etc.

There are plenty of politically rebellious young people out there. (They participate in organizations which I won't name for fear of politicizing the thread.) It's just not true that Justin Bieber is the ultimate "bad boy" now, as Letts wants to claim; any more than Rod Stewart singing "Tonight's the Night" was in 1977.

I think young people today are much more politically active, thanks in part to the internet, than they were in 1997 or 1987.

I'm of this guy's generation, and punk rock was a big part of my identity when I was young. But I try not to fit young people into slots (where is Joe Strummer, where is Johnny Rotten?) that existed when I was young.

It's not just the people who are different, the slots are different too.

 

After reading the article, while I respect Letts and appreciate his work, if he really cares then he's got to get involved - or at least aware - of all the DIY labels running these days. He makes some good points, but this stuff is being addressed at least stateside, and I can't help but think there's also stuff going on in the UK.

 

Because it got too stoned, stumbled and fell off by itself.

 

I think the iconoclastic spirit of punk re-emerges in various genres every few years. The early days of dubstep in the UK had a punk (or maybe post-punk) vibe via its relentless exploration of different, sometimes very abrasive sounds. Lately, the DIY approach and cheeky attitude of the PC Music folks reminded me of punk rock.

It doesn't take guitars and drums to reject what's come before and chart your own course.

 

For devotees of Robert Johnson, nothing has knocked him off the pedestal, either. This guy's probably projecting his own tastes.

 

I think Letts has plenty of solid insight in the piece, particularly about how hard it is to,metaphorically, get everyone in the same room at the same time. The history of disruptive music is usually told in moments of shared subversive moments -- Elvis on Ed Sullivan, the Beatles on Sullivan, Hendrix at Monterrey Pop, the Dolls on the Old Grey Whistle Test, the Pistols on the Bill Grundy Show.

That's impossible now, and even the most potentially disruptive acts are mostly playing to the choir.

As for punk -- you can only stay pissed off for so long. After that, you end up removing the anger and keeping the outer shell. That's how you end up with Blink 182 or The Offspring.

Punk was once an attitude, now it's a defined style of music and fashion. Nothing wrong with that (it's still my favorite music and fashion) , but if anyone expects punk to change the world, they're 40 years too late.

 

These ladies also beg to differ.

 

Setting aside its cultural impact, I can't see how anyone can dispute punk's influence on almost all rock based music that followed. The influence of bands like Joy Division, Gang of Four, Devo, the Minutemen, the Pixies, Husker Du, Nirvana et. al. are littered throughout the current indie rock landscape. OTOH, you'd have to look long and hard to find traces of Foreigner or Chicago or Supertramp or any of a hundred other bands that ruled the landscape before punk came toddling along.

I' also argue that punk was massively influential in bringing about the metal that has ruled that genre since the early 80's. The NWOBHM and bands like Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer have more in common with punk than they do with Ted Nugent or Mahogany Rush.

 

Quite.

The younger people inspired by punk are the same people who were part of the nascent acid house scene. Their younger siblings get into jungle and rave and so it continues. The spirit lives on.

 

There's a certain irony in that, these days, corporate rock/AOR-oriented acts tend to be on small labels with limited distribution. And a new band that sounded like Journey or whomever would probably have a harder time establishing themselves than a punk band, because the infrastructure just isn't there.

 

Yeah, I was going to bring this point up as well. While their music was generally seen as rebellious and of course very popular, the relationship between rappers and the establishment seem to be in direct opposition to what is considered by most to be the punk ethos. There's probably an entire book waiting to be written (if it hasn't already) about the commercial commodification of rap music and the artists' place in it.

Generally speaking (and I'm treading very carefully here, because obviously there are plenty of underground artists within the movement whose values run counter to this) there's been something of an arms race among rap artists to see who could become the most established within the establishment, to where we saw things like 50 Cent hawking Vitamin Water, or Wu-Tang promoting their own fashion line. Today I'd argue that the biggest artists like Jay-Z, Kanye and Drake are the establishment for all intents and purposes.

Also complicating things is the swing in generational mindset. The age of judging an artist on "selling out" is over, I think. My girlfriend, who's a bit younger than I and more into the current rap scene, tells me that artists are primarily concerned with "building their brand" these days. This would have been anathema to most punk artists from back in the day (at least outwardly, as who knows what their real motivations were).

However the good news is that there is some of that grassroots punk spirit alive on the streets, mainly coming out of the occupy/BLM/income equality scene. Some of the artists like Run the Jewels and Prophets of Rage even get radio play, so maybe it's not dead after all.

 

Your top twenty hits of 1976:

1. Silly Love Songs, Paul McCartney and Wings
2. Don't Go Breaking My Heart, Elton John and Kiki Dee
3. Disco Lady, Johnnie Taylor
4. December 1963 (Oh What a Night), The Four Seasons
5. Play That Funky Music, Wild Cherry
6. Kiss and Say Goodbye, The Manhattans
7. Love Machine, Pt. 1, The Miracles
8. 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, Paul Simon
9. Love Is Alive, Gary Wright
10. A Fifth of Beethoven, Walter Murphy and The Big Apple Band
11. Sara Smile, Daryl Hall and John Oates
12. Afternoon Delight, Starland Vocal Band
13. I Write the Songs, Barry Manilow
14. Fly Robin Fly, Silver Convention
15. Love Hangover, Diana Ross
16. Get Closer, Seals and Crofts
17. More, More, More, Andrea True Connection
18. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
19. Misty Blue, Dorothy Moore
20. Boogie Fever, The Sylvers

Man that raucous punk scene had it all over today's "tame youth culture"

 

I dunno; Prophets of Rage's tour has been a bust, and most of the "grassroots" groupings that get the lion's share of the press are 80% Astroturf. It's hard to know where the real "punk spirit" is these days, beyond the obvious places like local punk scenes.

 

Hey, at #5 we have white boys subversively playing funky music, and at #17 we have a porn starlet invading the staid, conservative pop charts! And Queen, throwing all the Man's pop-rock conventions to the wind and going nuts in the studio - that's kinda punk rock, right?