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The Clash vs. The Ramones

Whose better?

  • The Clash

    Votes: 27 67.5%
  • The Ramones

    Votes: 5 12.5%
  • The Pogues!

    Votes: 6 15.0%
  • The Sex Pistols

    Votes: 2 5.0%

  • Total voters
    40

pure_mercury

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Yeah, I was just pondering that last night after watching a Green Day interview. People call them next wave punk, and I can grudgingly agree with that. Especially after watching their drummer french kiss a taxidermied monkey head.

When they first gained popularity, however, I refused to call them any such thing, because in my mind, punk was a one time thing. It was relevant in the moment it was created, but not a sustainable force in the form that it originally took. It was a thinking man's rebellion against classism, and neglect of the poor man. What punk band in a developed nation has anything to complain about?! I get why punk is a thriving thing in places like China, where their music is forced underground, and these people are in fear of their lives. THAT is something to fight back against. Not contrived ire over mini malls and your girlfriend's annoying parents.


This is completely untrue. Punk is a "thinking man's rebellion against classism?" Since when? Does that describe The Ramones? Or Buzzcocks? Dead Milkmen? Blondie? How would they not be punk rockers? Are The Clash punk, even though Joe Strummer's dad was a diplomat and Mick Jones affected a fake South London accent? Agnostic Front wrote songs that were nationalist, flag-waving, and anti-welfare state; were they not hardcore? A good amount of punk attitude was nihilistic (at least as a pose) and the rebellion was at least as much against the pomposity of the prog and metal in the '70s as it was a social message. I would maintain that punk rock has been one of the most successful musical styles in terms of its evolution and diversity in the past thirty-five years, and one of the main reasons why is that it didn't stagnate as amateurish rabble-rousing, but influenced myriad genres and musicians with the back-to-basics sound and attitude.
 
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I think one of the problems here is that there is "punk the sound" and "punk the movement". Bands like the Ramones and the Dead Milkmen exhibit the former, but with no apparent political declaration of belonging to the latter. If someone calls them punk, it doesn't have anything to do with rabble rousing or classism. It's just meant as a style of music. This is the way in which bands like Green Day, Rancid and The Living End can be justly called punk.
 

pure_mercury

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I think one of the problems here is that there is "punk the sound" and "punk the movement". Bands like the Ramones and the Dead Milkmen exhibit the former, but with no apparent political declaration of belonging to the latter. If someone calls them punk, it doesn't have anything to do with rabble rousing or classism. It's just meant as a style of music. This is the way in which bands like Green Day, Rancid and The Living End can be justly called punk.

"Punk the movement" was not politically coherent. That's a false premise. It really was musical and stylistic as a movement, but, naturally, politicized young people found voices in a style that was explicitly confrontational as punk was during its first wave. How on Earth can someone try to maintain that The Ramones were not part of "punk the movement?" They were arguably the most important American punk rock band (depends on whether you count The Stooges, MC5, and Velvet Underground as protopunk). They predate the more political UK punkers, too.
 

matmos

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phil spektor said:
... The sound may be approximately the same different, but the approach is not at all similar.

Well said, Phil.

Agreed, though Eff. Arbitary classifications in popular culture are a feature of commercial rather than artistic licence.
 

swordpath

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You can say Punk rock is only a style, because it has a distinct sound and not all bands have used it for social/political propoganda, but it most definitely has a history of being used as a platform for speaking out against social issues and the sound was born within the movement of that struggle. There isn't really a wrong argument, like FM said. There's punk the sound and punk the movement. - Bands like Agnostic Front and Black Flag I consider punk although some will be technical and call them hardcore. punk, hardcore punk... It's roughly the same, just with a small twist.

The very essence of punk rock screams anti-establishment and social awareness. Though the two can be divided, it would be an error not to include the movement as significant with the origin of the sound.
 

pure_mercury

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You can say Punk rock is only a style, because it has a distinct sound and not all bands have used it for social/political propoganda, but it most definitely has a history of being used as a platform for speaking out against social issues and the sound was born within the movement of that struggle. There isn't really a wrong argument, like FM said. There's punk the sound and punk the movement. - Bands like Agnostic Front and Black Flag I consider punk although some will be technical and call them hardcore. punk, hardcore punk... It's roughly the same, just with a small twist.

The very essence of punk rock screams anti-establishment and social awareness. Though the two can be divided, it would be an error not to include the movement as significant with the origin of the sound.


"Having a history" of something is not the same as it being an inherent component of a movement. I don't think that the punk sound was "born within the movement" of a struggle, unless that struggle was a desire of kids who hated what was happening to rock in the mid-1970s to make music that they enjoyed. Punk rockers came to it from various walks of life, and they weren't all lashing out at some amorphous concept of society. We have to be careful not to miscontextualize retroactively.
 

MacGuffin

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This is completely untrue. Punk is a "thinking man's rebellion against classism?" Since when? Does that describe The Ramones? Or Buzzcocks? Dead Milkmen? Blondie? How would they not be punk rockers? Are The Clash punk, even though Joe Strummer's dad was a diplomat and Mick Jones affected a fake South London accent? Agnostic Front wrote songs that were nationalist, flag-waving, and anti-welfare state; were they not hardcore? A good amount of punk attitude was nihilistic (at least as a pose) and the rebellion was at least as much against the pomposity of the prog and metal in the '70s as it was a social message. I would maintain that punk rock has been one of the most successful musical styles in terms of its evolution and diversity in the past thirty-five years, and one of the main reasons why is that it didn't stagnate as amateurish rabble-rousing, but influenced myriad genres and musicians with the back-to-basics sound and attitude.

I agree.

All I wanted was a Pepsi.
 

Domino

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*doubles down* Call it!
 
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