pure_mercury
Order Now!
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2008
- Messages
- 6,946
- MBTI Type
- ESFJ
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.