Did punk rock really "need" to happen?

>>74358694
leftists ruining everything, as usual

I was 14 back then (yes I'm old, I know). A lot of people like to say punk rock killed off prog, but that's at best a half-truth. The real enemy wasn't so much prog as it was the crushing dullness of stadium/AOR rock. Prog groups weren't what you heard on the radio in 1977--no, what you did hear instead was a whole lot of Eagles, Foreigner, Boston, and Fleetwood Mac. They were the industry giants of the day.

None of it or very little spoke to the kids. I mean, Fleetwood Mac singing about doing coke and cheating on your spouse? What's a 15 year old supposed to do with that? Bands like the Ramones actually seemed to reflect the real world in ways you could relate to, and without needing a $3,000,000 album budget.

I don't like prog, and its elaborateness (and what I considered to be dippy lyrics about hobbits and trolls) were alienating to me back then. But it was mainstream rock that felt like the enemy.

>>74359048
Let's get real here. Punk was never as big as you think. When the Sex Pistols were a thing, Paul McCartney's "Mull of Kintyre" was #1 on the charts for weeks. I bet if you went through your parents' record collection, you're more likely to find Wings albums than you would The Clash.

By the time punk broke, 60s rockers were rich 35 year old fatcats living in a mansion in the south of France surrounded by hookers and bags of cocaine. They'd stopped having any connection with the kids for some time.l

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>>74358694
>>74359048
>>74359726

Fallen for the Malcolm Maclaren propaganda.

Maclaren copied punk from NYC bands and launched the Sex Pistols to make money and promote his shop. To support this he coined the phrase that he was "giving noise back to the kids". All commercially calculated (see The Great Rock and Roll Swindle).

But kids believed it... as if 14 and 15 yr olds were the natural producers or consumers of the "best music". Musically punk bands were dire.

The stadium bands continued to fill stadiums and make money. Punk was limited in its audience, and it was post punk that made money and reached the masses. Johnny Rotten was beaten up in the toilets.

Meh

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Daily reminder that American bands were doing post-punk while the English were still recycling Chuck Berry riffs (who was, by the way, an American).

See also: Television, Devo, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, etc.

>>74359048
>None of it or very little spoke to the kids. I mean, Fleetwood Mac singing about doing coke and cheating on your spouse? What's a 15 year old supposed to do with that? Bands like the Ramones actually seemed to reflect the real world in ways you could relate to, and without needing a $3,000,000 album budget.

I think in England it was a little different because of demographics. The birthrate in the UK shot up in the late 1950s, so there was a sizable youth audience who wanted music that spoke to them. However, the birthrate in the United States started dropping at that time, meaning you had a huge baby boomer audience who favored albums like Rumours that were aimed at young adults and less for punk bands who targeted teenagers, of which there were fewer.

Also the economic and social situation in the UK in the late Seventies was quite dire. The US had a slow economy and inflation problems, but it was much worse here. Bad economy, striking unions, rubbish piling up in the streets, breadlines, IRA terrorism.

>>74359867
>Daily reminder that American bands were doing post-punk while the English were still recycling Chuck Berry riffs (who was, by the way, an American)
Since when did Zeppelin, Sabbath, et al sound anything like Chuck Berry?

>>74359901
I was referring to the British punks (Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks) who were recycling American music while their American peers were, in '77, inventing the sound of the entire next decade.
Also:
>Zeppelin
>Sabbath
Done better by Americans ten years before them, too. I really don't understand why everyone gives the Japanese shit for being an island of imitators but the inbred yokels on freezing Albion get a pass for their general lack of imagination and unrelenting theft.

>>74359901
>Since when did Zeppelin, Sabbath, et al sound anything like Chuck Berry?

They wouldn't have been anything without Jimi Hendrix, who was also American.

>>74359894
The US was a lot bigger place than Britain as well. There was a vast stretch of suburban and rural America who connected with REO Speedwagon and Tom Petty a lot more than Lou Reed, New York Dolls, or other critics' pets.

>>74360018
My dad grew up in NYC in the 70s and he said even there, most of his peers didn't listen to punk rock. They were into classic rock/metal, R&B, and disco mostly. Only a few daddy issues weirdos and of course the critics like Christgau were into punk.

>>74358694
It was just a natural progression of music. People wanted rock that was harder and faster, so that's what they made. And then after that they made thrash metal, and then grindcore, and so on.

>>74360070
>Most people have bad taste.
Same as it ever was (did you see where my hand was)

>>74359830
Finally. Someone who knows what happened and doesn't sugarcoat it.

My mum grew up dirt poor in the working class neighbourhoods of Liverpool. She had very little money for nice clothing, fancy haircuts, or George Harrison triple albums, and when punk rock happened, she dyed her hair green and made customised outfits with straps and safety pins. Punk records were also much more affordable to working class types because of their low budget, stripped production especially given the state of England's economy at the time. It gave her and her peers a youth culture of their own and spoke to what they were feeling.

Today she works as a chemist and the one obvious trace of her teenager years is her dyed hair, she's had it dyed pretty much since she was 14. She also still enjoys Blondie and Stiff Little Fingers.

>>74358694
It's rather accurate. And it wasn't just overindulgent "Prog" rock either. The radio was filled with bland, boring, shallow, mindless music at the time that was killing the true spirit of rock and roll. Imagine turning on your radio and listening to nothing but James Taylor, The Carpenters, Seals, and Crofts, The Captain and Tenille, ABBA, not to mention what all the great bands from the 1960s had become, and don't even get me started on how awful disco was/is.

Although The Jam were not a "Punk" band, they were accepted by the punks in the early days, and the album you posted certainly carried the spirit of punk, what it stood for, and what it was trying to say, even if they DID get dismissed as a second rate Who rip off. In The City is STILL a great power pop album weather you're a punk or not.

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>>74358694

ITT - anons who know little of popular music history, and turn it into some USA vs UK squabble.

Modern pop music developed in the US in the 50's and owed its development to many factors , including economic boom. Development of equipment was a big factor going forward i.e. the electric guitar and amplifiers.

By the mid-60's the Beatles were the biggest band in the world and the Rolling Stones were the second biggest. The US at that time had Dylan and the Doors. Psychedelic drugs were an important factor - see Sgt Peppers.


>>74359937

Cream (Eric Clapton) and The Who (Pete Townshend) were already established before Hendrix appeared, and Hendrix had to come to Britain to launch his sound.

>>74359867
English punk (Maclaren) borrowed from the US proto punk scene, esp. The Ramones but produced something new. Post punk followed almost immediately in both the US and the UK. Television, Talking Heads, Patti Smith were all going before punk became a separate phenomenon.

>>74359929
Sour grapes much?

By the early 80's Springsteen and Dire Straits were the "mainstream" big bands, and the real revolution comes with the thrash metal bands. (See also ZZ Top, Van Halen, Aerosmith etc.)

Punk is overrated as a musical movement, but did produce change in music and attitude.

tl:dr - read some books about musical history

>>74359048
It wasn't just prog that was the problem, it was that all of the 60s generation like the Stones and The Who were tired and out of gas by the late 70s. Glam rock was no longer a thing and David Bowie turned towards soul/funk. The charts were full of MOR rubbish like Wings and Bonnie Tyler.

>>74359048
>>74360311

The album charts told a different story. Also disco (driven by displaced sub-cultures at the time like gays and blacks) was big until racist white dj's in America and the UK did their best to kill it off. "Disco sucks"

Yes it was a breath of fresh air and energy that gave a much-needed slapping to twats like Mick Jagger who were flying around on a private jet surrounded by cocaine and strippers.

>>74359048
This poster gets it.

>>74359492
That might've been true once upon a time, but I think kids today would find old Black Flag and Dead Kennedys records in their parents collection. Let's face it. Punk is now Dad Rock. Deal with it.

>>74359726
This anon also gets it.

>>74359830
While there is some truth in what you say, which can be backed by historical fact, (Your pic is a good example) some of the best early British punk was influenced by past Glam/Glitter like Gary Glitter, Ziggy era Bowie, early Queen, The Sweet, Slade, and spirit of 69 skinhead bands like Fresh, World War 3, and Hustler, mixed in with some more artsy stuff, like Eno era Roxy Music. Of course some of the early Mod/Powerpop played a role too. OP's posting of the first Jam album is a good example as well as early Small Faces, and, dare I say Beatles and Rolling Stones, no matter how much The Clash tried to deny this.

>74359894
The U.S. was in a similar situation. Don't be fooled into thinking different. Let's not forget when New York was on the verge of bankruptcy, President Ford told the state to "Drop dead"! There was a very legitimate need for punk at the time, and it couldn't have come at a better moment for us.

>>74359901
Are you kidding me?
Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath basically stole from The Blues, although BS had more of a jazzy side to their music. Black Sabbath even used to cover Carl Perkins' Blue Suede Shoes when they started out. And how about The Wizard?

>>74360394
I agree, punk did have a pretty big reverberating effect. The 1979 releases by AOR/arena rock bands like the Eagles and REO Speedwagon (maybe Fleetwood Mac's Tusk as well?) also show a clear attempt to "answer" punk bands.

Punk was also one of the reasons (aside from Rob Halford's personal fetishes) for Judas Priest adopting leather and studs instead of the glam robes they had in the very early days.

>>74359894

See >>74360431 for a response. I accidentally "Green text" it

>>74359048
i also think that narrative about prog and punk is way off
prog even overlaps a bit with punk via the stranglers, the police and even henry cow who were themselves proto-punk in some ways

>>74360311
>It wasn't just prog that was the problem
Didn't Camel have a whole suite of nonsense about hobbits and social tensions between elves and dwarves and magic and all that crap? They were prog, right? And Rush (if they count) had songs about that kind of stuff too. I am sure there is more.

More generally, the medievalism and fascination with kings and queens and lords and ladies and dragons and fantasy that appear in lots of prog just put me off. Like this kind of stuff:

The dance of the puppets
The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun.
The purple piper plays his tune,
The choir softly sing;
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue,
For the court of the crimson king.

I really didn't know anything about purple pipers and jousting tournaments. I never met a lord or a lady. I grew up in San Jose California for God's sake. It all seemed utterly ridiculous. If I wanted faux medievalism I'd rather turn to Victorian poetry.

But prog wasn't the only offender. Led Zeppelin and later metal had a lot of such nonsense in it too.

I remember a quotation from Jello Biafra in which he said something like, "metal songs are about lots of imaginary scary stuff like Satan and demons and dark magic etc. Our songs are about real scary stuff like Pol Pot and police brutality."

So the remote, medieval, fantasy, sci-fi aspect of prog always seemed like a joke to me.

>>74360495
most of that stuff was political allegory though
and if you think about it, it's no more fantasist than saying 'i am an antichrist'

just whatever literary tool helps you express yourself, y'know

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>>74360485
While there is some validity to what you say, I don't 100% agree with you.

Most prig at the time, like Yes, and Emerson, Lake, And Palmer went on too long to hold a teenager's attention span, and a lot of the music was just too complicated for a teenager with raging hormones who just wanted to pick up a guitar and rock out. Punk fit the bill nicely, as it was simple, easy to play, and you didn't have to go to some music conservatory, and study boring music theory before you could pick up an instrument and play your heart out.

Of course you are right about there being an over lapping or crossover between prig and punk, but it didn't happen very often. I mean, if Hawkwind had cut down their songs to mage three and a half minute, the early punks might've jumped on that, since, if you listen closely, their songs are very easy to play, but who really wants to hear a ten minute version of Brain Storm unless you're completely stoned on some good pot, or tripping out on some good psychedelics. (Of course the punks did gravitate towards short songs like Silver Machine)

Also a good example of how punk and prig crossed paths and was good is Gong. Pictured here is a fine example that is mandatory listening for fans of both genres! (Tell me Opium For The People isn't punk as fuck! I DARE YOU!)

I think that punk, disco, rap, new wave, synth-pop, post punk all were getting big around 76-80. So in 5 years, music fans found all these new genres and styles which should prove to a point that whatever music was out in the early 70's wasn't enough to satisfy everyone.

Not necessarily prog rock or regular rock, but the other genres too got pushed to back: reggae had just gotten big but by the early 80's it was off the charts. Folk had been nonexistent as a major genre for a decade by then since Dylan went electric- folk never recovered and these new genres buried it. Traditional pop was also dead, guys like Tom Jones and B.J. Thomas were the last fling of that. Country was also in the toilet by the mid-70s and jazz was also at death's door. So it wasn't just prog that had become stale.

>>74360569
Correct. As a 15 year old, you could imagine yourself being Johnny Rotten. You couldn't imagine yourself being Keith Emerson.

>>74360569
>gong, hawkwind
yeah exactly, and then motorhead of course

from what i could gleam from watching old interviews it seemed like most of the (uk) punks had a problem with concert ticket prices, and that was the main factor, and when things are bad economically then you need to figure out a new way to appeal to people
and of course then mclaren (and even a few punks) still managed to get rich, and the cycle continued

Guys like Bono and Henry Rollins were teenagers right when punk broke, it was what made them want to play in a band.

The grunge generation were still kids at the time (Kurt Cobain was in the 4th grade when the Ramones came out) so they were not old enough to have experienced the scene firsthand, but they still loved the music and image of punk and made something unique and original out of it.

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>>74360311
>>74360495

Points taken, (though KC had moved a long way from that lyric by the time of punk/post punk)

It wasn't that punk swept away prog rock. From the end of the 70's into the 80's popular music was fragmenting. New genres were emerging - disco, hip hop, metal, electronica (house, techno and garage) and post punk. Post punk became Indie in the UK.


>>74358694
In short OP, punk didn't "need to happen".

Punk was just one development of many taking place at the time, but grabbed the sensational headlines. As other anons have pointed out, the prog rock that emerged from the 60's was running out of steam (band members getting old) as much as "kids taking over".

.

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>>74360610
>and of course then mclaren (and even a few punks) still managed to get rich, and the cycle continued

None of the punks made anywhere close to Mick Jagger money, but the more successful ones aren't exactly eating out of dumpsters.

>>74360677
funny that you used jagger as an example because he used the same trick punk did of appealing to the fans' need to vicariously experience drug addiction
and also he was middle class, as a lot of punks quietly were

>>74360703
>and also he was middle class, as a lot of punks quietly were
Whereas bands like Sabbath and AC/DC who had working class origins, oh no they were worse than Hitler according to people like Christgay.

>>74360721
right, fucking exactly

It's been 40 years since punk and 25 since grunge and nothing new and revolutionary has come along in the music world, all we have is Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.

>>74360721
Music critics are all upper middle class hipsters/beatniks. No shit they prefer artists that are more like themselves.

>>74360736
i take it you don't listen to electronic music

>>74360736

I take it you don't listen to hip hop either

>>74360703
>>74360721

Not only were many punk and post punk bands middle class, they were also art school students.

It seemed to me that the real thing punk rock did was slap the complacent ex-60s hippies and singer-songwriters like James Taylor and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. And of course the Beatles. What 15 year old wanted to hear George Harrison doing 15 minute songs about Indian mysticism?

>>74360789
lol does that make them worse
idk, i just find all that bleating about class war a bit shallow
don't really care if someone's an art student - never did brian eno any harm

no prog was in the right place at the right time, it had had its day, brilliant in its time but gone as far as it could go and getting very silly. Rick Wakeman for example was totally in the crosshairs as he now freely admits, but Rod Stewart was too as well as all the manufactured chinnychap garbage

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>>74360796
>It seemed to me that the real thing punk rock did was slap the complacent ex-60s hippies and singer-songwriters like James Taylor

Listen to JT--he picks up the tempos on this album versus his previous efforts since like every other "establishment" artist at the time, he was having to respond to punk.

See earlier comment about bands like REO Speedwagon also putting out albums that were an obvious reply to punk bands.

>>74360834
Ninety-nine percent correct. Ballroom Blitz, Teenage Rampage and Blockbuster being the exception.

>>74360849
Except those singles all came out in 1973, back when the hippie generation still ruled the rock world. The Who had just come out with Quadrophenia, the Rolling Stones were the biggest band on the planet, Sabbath, Purple, and Bowie were all at their peak. Within 2-1/2 years, things had changed dramatically. Also let's not put Sweet on a pedestal, they were generally seen as a cheap teenybopper outfit, despite the odd harder single or heavy B-side (which only 12 year old girls were buying). Real rock fans laughed at Sweet while buying their Zep, Sabbath, Jethro Tull, Stones, Rory albums (the real thing).

>>74360796
idk about this, the press like to promote this idea that 15 year olds don't like muh epic jamz but in my experience they're exactly the audience for that kind of thing
maybe not as big as a demographic as a pop audience but still probably more 15 year olds listen to prog now than 25 year olds do, in a lot of ways prog is quite childish music (still love it though)

I dunno, as much as we'd like to all believe punk rock started a revolution, it wasn't quite true. If you looked at the Top of the Pops charts for 1982, they were nearly as awful as the 1976 charts. And of course the fact that "Start Me Up" and "Ebony and Ivory" were being played to death on the radio in the early 80s proves that the dinosaur 60s rockers weren't exactly killed off by punk either.

The first wave of punk was over by early 1978; at that time punk bands were giving way to New Wave and post-punk, it was inevitable since the record industry pushed bands towards a more commercial, accessible format. But for that short time in '77, it was a groundswell and there were fantastic punk singles coming out almost every week.

It did need to happen yes. Listen to a compilation album from 1975-76 and it's fucking dire.

It needed it culturally, in fashion and in music. It was time to get rid of your long hair and bell bottoms and get rid of The Who and Paul McCartney.

>>74361019
you can't get rid of paul mccartney
doesn't matter how many punk records you release, he still manages to land a mull of kintyre every couple of years

>>74360796

You're really just claiming to be special and you've swallowed the hype. There was lots of music to listen to besides the 60's generation, and lots of that generation was still producing good music.

Consider that 1975, the supposed start year for punk had these #1 albums both sides of the Atlantic:

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Queen - A Night at the Opera
Bob Dylan - Blood On the Tracks
Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti

The next year 1976 saw #1's for Earth Wind and Fire, George Benson, and Stevie Wonder. Bob Marley was becoming huge.

Black Sabbath and Ozzie were going strong. Lots of new types of music were developing.

There was room for punk, and in South Cal the hardcore scene developed (punk was over in the UK by then). The known post punk bands on the East Coast were already started.

Now you've reached your middle age you could drop the snotty 15 year old claiming to be taking over act. That was always hype.

Punk rock was very much a product of the media/hype machine which was based in NYC. Out in the Midwest at the time, only super weirdos/societal outcasts listened to punk records and you generally had to go to indie record shops to get them, because K-Mart sure wasn't going to stock that shit.

The punk bands were _very_ good at marketing themselves and getting on the cover of Rolling Stone and Creem and making themselves seem bigger than they were and by the time punk got anywhere in the US, it had evolved into New Wave and to a lesser extent the British pub rock that spawned Graham Parker and Dire Straits. The Stooges and MC5 were a forgotten joke until revisionist history decades later. I guarantee you the average teenager in 1978 was a lot more likely to have Ted Nugent or Foreigner on his record shelf than the Ramones.

By the early 80s, when Black Flag appeared, then punk started to become a force to be reckoned with.

>>74361029
Nobody can get rid of the Rolling Stones either, but...

>>74361116
maybe if we could get them to collab they would cancel each other out
like matter and antimatter colliding

>>74360367
Kys Nazi faggot

>>74360880
Ok but I'd say the decay started as early as 1972, by 74 it was well advanced which is why that year was the lowest point of the entire decade for music releases.

>>74361086
>The punk bands were _very_ good at marketing themselves and getting on the cover of Rolling Stone and Creem
It's funny because all those magazines had their mouths firmly clamped onto Bob Dylan and The Who's nuts just a few months before punk broke.

>>74359830
>le ebil malcom mclaren is the meanie who did everything for monney!!!
You are the real 14 years old. It's amazing how many bands are, in the shadows, formed/ influenced by managers but nobody ever fucking talks about it. Face it mclaren was no different from your average 70s manager, the pistols wrote all their music and as long this is true the rest doesnt matter. And yes the pistols stole from the ramones... as literally fucking everyone lmao

>>74361166
I dunno; if you read columns in RSM or anything that Bangs and Christgau wrote in the mid-70s, those guys were very much looking for something new and were giving poor reviews to the albums that the Stones, Who, and whatnot had out at the time.

>>74361187
not they guy you're replying to but mclaren's bands all ended up hating his fucking guts which makes him at least slightly different to other managers
not all of them obviously, but most

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>>74361140

Why u mad anon? Calling me a nazi faggot for pointing out racist behaviour about music?

Search Disco Demolition Night. Rock fans tried to kill disco, and to some extent they succeeded. Shamfur dispray,

punk and post-punk fans are the most insufferable ppl in music. can't stand both

>>74360268
The prog versus punk feud is overstated anyway; besides, Zeppelin and the Stones were a much bigger symbol of rock star decadence than Pink Floyd.

Prog was already done by the mid-70s, albums like The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Tales From Topographic Oceans were the genre's swansong and there was no further place to take it. Most of those bands were seeking a change in direction at that time.

Besides, as >>74360992 said, the better punk groups quickly moved out of that three chord garage rock sound into a more professional, commercial format.

>>74361227
Fucking nazi faggots like you trying to single out a group of people you don't like and do your best to redefine words. You probably want national healthcare too fucking nazi fag.

>>74361200
A lot of 70s band hated the guts of their managers. I mean they were gateways to scams, hard drugs and shit like that

>>74360721
Right. From what I've seen, most (like 80%) of punk rock enthusiasts were artfags. Maybe it was different in the UK, but in the US punk has always been a rather gentrified genre of music. Goobers in Tennessee or Texas didn't listen to punk rock, they listened to REO Speedwagon, ZZ Top, Aerosmith, and Ted Nugent. It was mostly hipsters studying art or English literature in college.

>>74361147
I could agree that the rot was setting in by 1974, but there was still a lot of great stuff coming out in 72-73.

Manassas
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Exile In Main Street
Rory Gallagher Live In Europe
Rio Grande Mud
Roxy Music
Sailin' Shoes
Waka/Jawaka, The Grand Wazoo
Never A Dull Moment
The Slider
Superfly
On The Corner
Clear Spot
Into The Purple Valley, Boomer's Story
Ennismore
Can't Buy A Thrill
School's Out
Machine Head
Eat A Peach
+ Lou Reed starts to put his solo career into action

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>>74361248

Maybe you need to take your identity politics to /pol/

Do you have anything to say about music?

>>74361252
yeah fair enough, and he definitely wasn't the first
i think a lot of it is the punk ethos (which was constructed) was all about being real and not being into money and all that
but obviously like any other music scene back then, there were money men involved, and so they get more shit for it, because it's so contradictory

>>74361329
I meant more than pop was starting to go south in 1972. Rock wasn't affected for another two years.

i enjoy threads like this one bc i enjoy thinking about rolling stones/NYT music critics shitposting on 4chan

Yes it did seem a bit interesting how punk rock was working class music in Britain but it belonged to elitist liberal arts majors in the US.

klosterman if you are in this thread i still remember you promising to 'get me back' for that half gram in Iowa City

you owe me $40 you motherfuck

As someone born in the early 80s, I appreciate punk more so for its influence than the actual music itself. While I'd rather listen to Never Mind the Bollocks than anything by, say, Boston or Rush, I only have a handful of punk albums and it's rare that I play them. I think the DIY culture/ethos to which punk contributed in the US is more enduring and valuable than the individual artists or songs.

That said, the punk aesthetic/sound is surprisingly resilient, unlike most of the conventional 70s AOR which comes off as campy and dated as fuck. Local venues have a seemingly endless supply of punk-type acts on tour. Punk has obviously managed to perpetuate itself across several generations, albeit as a generally niche product. There are plenty of movements in pop music that can't say the same.

>>74359894
I kind of agree. Fleetwood Mac appealed to an older boomer audience with money, less so the teenagers in the late 70s. It's no different than how in the 50s during the height of rock-and-roll, traditional pop and jazz records were still significantly outselling Little Richard.

>>74360227
Yes.Punk rock was affordable to the working class. It was made BY the working class kids from the streets of big and small cities around the world.And punk also start to change.There were Sex Pistols, The Clash but then we started to see also groups like Agnostic Front,Exploited,Amebix etc.
Punk isn't a one style genre,oh no!

>>74361637
Even during the late 60s, The Sound of Music and anything Tom Jones put out were bigger sellers than Disraeli Wheels or Surrealistic Pillow.

>>74361964
Indeed.

Corporate rock still sucks

>>74360136
Pretty much. By now, I'm enclined to say that it's a fact.

Also, I laughed at that reference. Nice.

Kinda similar to what happened with Grunge. There was a huge load of party/hair rock that just talked about doing cocaine and falling in love, but it never really spoke to most kids of Gen x who weren't living such glamorous lives and in fact were more nihilistic. Sure, it can also be defined as whining leftis shitting up and panting like usual, but you can't say it didn't do much to rock as a whole.

>>74362792
The country was in a recession in the early 90s--nobody wanted to see some faggot in LA bragging about his hot tub and his Playboy centerfold girlfriend.

>>74360721
Critics didn't like Black Sabbath because they were upper middle class hipsters who wanted lyrics about hope and changing the world, not doom. As for AC/DC, probably because critics are all unattractive nerds who can't get laid, so cockrock is intimidating to them.

>>74359830
^This. The Sex Pistols were literally a boyband created by Malcolm McLaren. He just plucked some teenagers off the street, dressed them in leather and studs from his bondage gear shop, and told them to act all edgy and shocking. Somehow it worked and kids bought into it.

I think you fellas are forggetting something. The impact that punk had WORLDWIDE, even though none of the original bands from the 70's experienced worldwide fame in their time (that would only happen with pop punk in the mid 90's and early 00's), by the 80's every country was experiencing a punk movement, some bigger, like in Brazil and Argentina, but every country had one.

>>74360992
In Britain, yes, the first wave of punk rock passed quickly and gave way to New Wave and post-punk. In the US, which is a much much bigger country, punk rock was mostly a regional thing confined to the urban areas of the West Coast and Northeast and it stuck around longer. The punk movement in the US lasted roughly to the mid-1980s, then gave way to hardcore.

What's prog lol

>>74363514
It's true that the demographics of punk fans in the US and Britain were different, and that it lasted much longer over here than over there, but even so the British and American music scenes were still in close contact with each other, and the music critics like Christgau were equally big on both British and American punk bands. And of course Malcolm McLaren had been involved with the punk scenes on both sides of the Atlantic. Plus American groups like the Ramones, Blondie, and Devo toured in the UK and found (in many cases) a bigger audience than in their home market.

Plenty of artists from this side of the Atlantic made albums that were in reaction to punk rock, including Neil Young (Rust Never Sleeps) and even some of the AOR rock groups like REO Speedwagon (Nine Lives).

Punk became formalized and lost its DIY ethos early on. In the New York scene in 1975, you could see Blondie, Television, Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, and others playing a wide range of musical styles, each offering something different and unique. By the time the Sex Pistols were a thing, punk magazines were already appearing and "rules" being laid down on what was "appropriate" punk rock (ie. fast, loud, and sloppy).

>>74363514
Yes. In the US, punk rock was a gentrified music scene for bohemians, art students, film students, and bored suburban kids. They disliked AOR rock because it was too bombastic, prog because it was pretentious and overwrought, and they were too white to appreciate funk, soul, and disco. So they looked back to the first decade of rock-and-roll, from 1955 to 65, for inspiration. It was both fresh and completely retro at the same time, and it caught the attention of people burned out on the excesses of Led Zeppelin and KISS.

In Britain, punk rock was the voice of nihilistic working class kids who wanted to protest the bad economy, lack of jobs, and (later on) Thatcherism.

>>74363763
>In Britain, punk rock was the voice of nihilistic working class kids who wanted to protest the bad economy, lack of jobs, and (later on) Thatcherism
This could describe Britpop aswell...

My dad said he was at a party in 1978 and the guy renting the house had a big stereo system rigged up. Anyway, most of the music he had on there was the usual AOR stuff like Robin Trower, Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, ELO, Scorpions...think he said Judas Priest--Stained Class was in there too. One day he said someone put on The Clash S/T. Some people liked it, others didn't. Then he put on Devo and it got mixed reactions. It took another year or so before Americans were able to digest punk/New Wave.

>>74363596
>Plenty of artists from this side of the Atlantic made albums that were in reaction to punk rock, including Neil Young (Rust Never Sleeps) and even some of the AOR rock groups like REO Speedwagon (Nine Lives).
It was a pretty big ripple effect. Like I said earlier, a lot of 1979 releases like Head Games, Tusk, and The Long Run had clear signs of punk influence. Judas Priest donned leather and studs and adopted a grittier, more urban sound on Hell Bent For Leather in place of the sci-fi/fantasy of the first three albums. Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town was definitively influenced by the punk movement. Billy Joel flirted with New Wave on Glass Houses.

>>74363861
My dad had this priceless story to tell as well.

>1979
>get off the ferry from Seattle
>sees this teen girl with her grandparents (who were maybe in their 60s?)
>they're asking her what she was doing in Seattle
>says she'd just come back from seeing Journey and how exciting and awesome it was
>they're like "The fuck is a Journey?"
>she says "OMG you don't know about Journey?"

>>74360992
Actually the term New Wave was originally used to describe any punk bank who had musicianship beyond three chords. Later on it got transferred to skinny tie bands playing synth-heavy power pop.

>>74364117
My cousin said he knew the shit was finished when the clothing store he worked at in the early 80s started having a New Wave section. He said he'd go and play out-of-print records over the sound system, which got him in trouble with the management (wtf are you doing? you're supposed to be playing the latest Duran Duran hit).

>>74363652
>>74364144
And incidentally, the early 80s New York scene was a lot different from the late 70s scene. By 1982, everything in the Big Apple was no wave, Danceteria, and proto hip-hop. By that time, punk rock had moved onto the emergent West Coast and Washington DC hardcore scenes. If the Ramones kind of defined NYC in the late 70s, Grandmaster Flash defined NYC in the early 80s.

>>74363400
Brazil's punk movement is notable that it's not until halfway through that the punk bands manage to get out, but by then they had shifted into post-punk; Brazil's rock scene in the 80s is just a huge stream of post-punk, taking a ton of different influences.

File: iilMKxB.jpg (45KB, 452x700px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 452x700px

I really appreciate this thread. ty for the good discussion!!
I've been listening to a lot more punk and post punk and new wave.
this thread is very interesting for me
thanks!

>>74364437
And people say we don't have music discussion on /mu/...

>>74359830
That's actually hardly even true. McLaren is only credited as "creating the Sex Pistols" and all that because he wouldn't shut up himself about having been the one to do it, but the fact is that he was no more involved in "creating" them as Brian Epstein was with The Beatles or Peter Grant with Zeppelin or whatever. McLaren wasn't even a very good manager on balance. He alienated the band by making poor business decisions (touring the South of the USA, pumping all their money into a movie project). The band consistently went against him; the whole Grundy incident scared the life out of him, for example. The reason McLaren is considered as "making" the Pistols is because after they broke up he controlled the rights to their stuff and pumped out a ton of stuff under the Pistols' "brand" and would take any opportunity to talk about how he was the mastermind. A good manager never does that.

>>74364272
By that time also, the Ramones and Blondie were kind of "elder statesmen" and nobody really was interested in whatever new albums they had out.

>>74360495
Satan is real t-bh.

Don't forget the Stones' Some Girls which was their "answer" to punk rock.

>>74365096
Maybe a little. Jagger and Richards said that the album drew inspiration from all over the place, including disco, punk, and a bunch of other stuff. Actually, Shattered is the only track on Some Girls that could be described as punk-like.

>>74365136
What's your point? Shattered has some punk elements but so does Street Fighting Man. You can cherry pick your songs on Some Girls and say it has punk influences, but it was not a punk album. My contention and I got many likes earlier in this thread, was that disco had more influences here than punk. If you want to argue equal, fine. I still don't hear it. But, thanks for the conversation.

>>74365192
Not at all. My point was that SG had New York punk influences all over it, and also if you looked at the outfits the Stones wore during the 78 tour. Of course it's not a "punk" album, but it was very very rooted in late 70s New York and the music scene in the city at that time. And no, you hear none of that in Street Fighting Man, a song written 10 years earlier in a much different time and place. We don't agree on this one. Disco was a huge phenomenon of course. And remains a huge influence on pop music. But that has nothing to do with what punk was is or isn't, or with the punk influence or NYC influence on Some Girls.

>>74365325
A totally different time and place but the same attitude? Or not? Certainly more important social issues in 68 than 78........or don't you agree with that either? SFM is certainly a punk attitude at its time.

So you are essentially again saying disco had no part in Some Girls and it wasn't huge in NYC at the time? So Studio 54 is a figment of my imagination and that wasn't huge there right?

We will agree to disagree. Thanks for the conversation.

>>74360367

Yeah, "Disco Sucks" was such a forced meme.

>>74365400
It's not a question of more or less important. It's just two different things, 1968 and 1978 were ten years and a million miles apart in terms of politics and culture. And of course Studio 54 was one big scene and disco was huge and everyone from all walks of life mingled there, and it gave way to Danceteria in the early 80s, after Studio 54 turned into an elitist hangout for celebrities that ordinary people couldn't get into anymore. I don't hear it's impact on Some Girls so much outside of Miss You, but obviously it's one of the big NYC parts of that record.

>>74365508
Let's see what Mick Jagger himself said about Street Fighting Man. He said the song was inspired by Tariq Ali after he attended an anti-Vietnam rally in London outside the US embassy where police tried to contain a crowd of 25,000 demonstrators. The song also partially drew inspiration from student rioters in Paris, right before the May 68 protests.

It was a direct inspiration because Britain in the 60s was a pretty tranquil place without a lot of protest activity going on. The kids rebelled out of boredom more than anything else. This was a lot unlike Paris or the United States at that time.

In general, I think whenever a major musical wave happens, it's because the music sounds fresh. The fact is, the sound of hard rock hadn't changed much at all from the late 60s to the mid 70s, and what's worse is that it had gotten more controlled and formulaic with AOR bands like Foghat. So ground level, genuine, stripped down rock of the punk movement must have sounded really fresh and exciting. It's obvious that the whole idea of punk killing prog is an oversimplification, especially given that most of the early punk bands seem to have loved "krautrock" bands like Can, Neu!, and Faust. We know that Black Flag was hugely inspired by the Grateful Dead and Black Sabbath, and that the Germs loved Yes and Queen. But I do think that, since rock music had gotten so stale by the mid 70s, it was inevitable that it would be replaced by a fresh new sound. The thing that made punk special, and the reason it's stuck around so long, is that it was not only fresh, but explicitly valued things like self-expression, simplicity, and rawness, which were largely lacking in popular music at the time. Again, there are tons of exceptions - major hard rock bands of the time, like Thin Lizzy and Bruce Springsteen, certainly valued all those qualities. Likewise, there were punk bands at the time, like Generation X, that were very calculated, produced pop products. But if we're going to assess what happened with punk and why, we can only speak in terms of trends and generalities. It's also worth considering that punk meant different things to different people. To bands like Generation X and The Clash it was a return to the simplicity of 50s rock. To Crass it was a grassroots folk movement. To the no wave crowd it was a minimalist art thing.

>>74365587
What do 60s antiwar rallies have to do with the late 70s New York punk scene?

>>74365604
Excuse me for my wall of text. I may have gotten carried away.

>>74365612
>>74365508
You saying punk rock wasn't political!?

Friendly reminder that punk rock was already a thing during the 60s

>>74365631
Not in NYC it wasn't. Maybe in the San Francisco scene punk bands were more political, but I fail to see where the politics are in "Blitzkrieg Bop" or "Heart of Glass", and none of that stuff had anything at all to do with late 60s politics.

>>74365658
Like I said, are you going to argue that calling the Queen a fascist wasn't a political statement?

>>74365647
Barely. Sure, there were snotty garage rock bands like ? & The Mysterians, who were taking the British invasion sounds and making them simpler and more raw. But what we think of as punk isn't just garage rock - it incorporated elements of glam rock, the Beat movement, and NY art rock.

>>74365681
The focus was on New York punk which really didn't have politics. New York Dolls, Ramones, Blondie, none of those guys did political songs (well ok the Ramones did some political stuff later on in the 80s, but that's not during the 1975-79 time period being discussed here).

As I said, Some Girls was 100% totally about late 70s New York from the sounds of the album to the singing style Jagger uses. For example, when he's talking about how people are asking what's the matter with him for walking in Central Park (the implication being that Central Park was a dangerous place full of muggers in the 70s).

>>74365647
Punk rock started with Gene Vincent. Yeah it needed to happen then.

As for the 70s British version, if that's what it took to get The Clash, then yeah that needed to happen also.

However, it can just as easily be pointed out that the Brits got the idea from America courtesy of the Ramones' 1976 UK tour.

>>74365708
Not the person you're talking to. You're right it wasn't a thing in the early NY scene, but punk was really shaped on a global level by the London scene that popularized it. Pretty much as soon as it got to London, they used the stripped down sound to deliver their discontent with society. There were apolitical bands, but a lot of the first wavers, like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Crass, and Angelic Upstarts were very focused on using it as a political vehicle, which defined the music for a lot of people. That only intensified with later scenes like anarcho-punk in England, and DC hardcore in the US.

Also, when discussing the NY scene I don't think Blondie is a good band to point to, because they were really considered a second string band in the CBGB scene. They defied everyone's expectations with how successful they got, but that scene was really defined by hard rock bands like the Ramones, The Dictators, and Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers on one side, and then post-Beat art punk bands like Television, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, and Patti Smith on the other.

>>74365753
You're right that SG is very much an album of that particular time and place and very influenced by the New York music scene of the day. Miss You is a great disco number that was acceptable to rawk fans who normally wouldn't be caught dead listening to disco. The punk attitude is all over the album and the Stones also sounded reinvigorated after the torpor they fell into during the mid-70s. You could tell they totally absorbed all of that 70s New York scene and wove it into their own unique style. It was also amusing how FM stations would play the title track which had four letter words in it because they forgot that was in the song.

>>74365832
Finally someone who knows the shit about punk. Too easy to say its shiet leeeel without even fucking listening to 5 bands

>>74365681
And of course it was banned from airplay by the BBC.

>>74360736
I take it you're 14

>>74365900
The BBC bans a lot of things. They banned Lola for mentioning Coca-Cola. When GSTQ was in the top 10 of the UK charts, some publications would literally blank it out from their chart displays.

>>74358694
by the mid 70s bands like Pink Floyd and such costed a lot of money to the record companies and Britain economy was fucked. Punk bands were cheap.

>>74361019
My dad said he knew some people who were wearing bell bottoms as late as 1980.

>>74365934
Nothing ever changes. When Margaret Thatcher kicked it, "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead" went to #7 for a week but was also airbrushed off the chart.

>>74364809

Well, Maclaren's claim was that he was after signing money of £1 million without needing to make any music.

He did previously manage the New York Dolls for a few months in the States, and tried to get his new thing up there, dressing them in red leather. It didn't work and he returned to London.

>>74361194
If I'm correct, a big part of the punk movement was discarding the past completely. "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones!"

>>74366053
Not at all, if anything punk rock was decidedly backward-thinking, it sought a return to the 50s and early to mid 60s when rock consisted of simple three chord singles with often humourous lyrics, back before there were albums consisting of 20 minute drum solos and space odysseys.

Down here in Australia was a long way from New York or London, but of course we read a lot of the same music magazines like NME and Melody Maker (although it took an average of six weeks for a new issue to make it down here), so people knew about the Sex Pistols and whatnot.

The change happened almost overnight. One week, the magazines were sucking on the dicks of Pete Townshend and Mick Jagger and the next week were ridiculing them as dinosaurs.

The notion that punk rock had to kill off the excesses of prog is silly. Albums like Tales From Topographic Oceans were already the subject of derision by music critics.

I have mentioned before that even here in faraway Perth we had an active punk scene. Some of these bands influenced by the UK punk scene others influenced by the US scene. Many of the musicians are still going today. A few have managed to make an impact at the international level.

Yes in the UK, punk was all over the media and the Sex Pistols were banned from the BBC. It was a huge event. Not like in the US where you never ever heard about punk rock unless you read music magazines that covered indie label releases or were active in the scene.

As someone else said, you had to go to independent record stores to find punk records, you certainly weren't going to find those at K-Mart next to the Bee Gees and Fleetwood Mac albums.

>>74359929
Wow. So bitter. Did an Englishman steal your girlfrie- actually, sorry I wasn't thinking. Never mind.

>>74366234
It's a bit hard to grasp how much smaller Britain is against the US and how word about music gets around faster. Everyone and their mother knew about the Clash and the Sex Pistols but how many people in San Francisco had ever heard of the Dictators or some other New York punk band like that?

>>74366311
It's also hard to grasp the impact punk had in the UK unless you study the charts at the time and observe how fast it kicked out MOR pap.

>>74366336
We've covered this already. The biggest selling albums are usually not what edgy, groundbreaking artists are putting out. I told you, back in the 50s that Frank Sinatra and Perry Como sold vastly more records than Little Richard. In the 60s, Tom Jones sold vastly more records than Cream. In the 70s, Fleetwood Mac and the Carpenters sold vastly more records than Iggy Pop.

No, the biggest chart hits/sellers are generally always bland mompop.

>>74366410
Well punk initially became news after the Bill Grundy show, on the front page of every tabloid newspaper, so not so much the music papers.

Top of the Pops was once a week and by far the biggest and most important music show on TV in that an appearance could establish a career almost. Think the first Bowie appearance. Basically everyone seemed to watch it, and if you managed to get on it was almost a given your record would jump up the charts. Taste was immaterial to them, so if it made the top 40 they put it on, so thankfully punk bands started to appear - the Jam first maybe with In The City, then bands like The Adverts, Boomtown Rats, Banshees, Magazine, Rezillos etc were on quite early. These bands had great pop singles and energy, added bonus your mum and dad thought they were weird, so it was great for kids getting into music to be exposed to punk on the BBC's most mainstream popular music show.

Old Grey Whistle Test was once a week in seasons. They initially were very reluctant to feature any punk groups, thanks to the old hippie Bob Harris not being a fan, but they started to show them in '78 and then it was fairly often, some shows would almost be all this new stuff (they repeated a show a few years back that had the Banshees, John Cooper Clark and a feature on The Cars).

>>74366478
OGWT was definitely stuck in the 60s and behind the times, long hair and the Beatles still ruled there and they were slow to catch onto punk rock. I forgot about the Adverts they were def. early but the Jam, Siouxse, Magazine, Rezillos, and Rats were on later. I think Siouxse and the Rats didn't get on the programme until 78, but The Jam were on in 77 for sure, and a little after Generation X, the Stranglers, and the Adverts.

Going back to punk's taking off, a lot of the stuff (IMO) has held up quite well. Mostly the NYC and British stuff. Especially for me The Ramones, but also the Buzzcocks, Blondie, The Jam. Sex Pistols album is a great listen. So I'm certainly glad it did happen.

It was more complicated than punk vs prog, the mid-70s rock scene was a stale, bloated shitshow and had lost touch with the garage aesthetic that had begun to disappear in the late 60s. The big groups like the Rolling Stones were mired in drug addiction and decadence and the West Coast scene had become very stagnant compared to the acid/Haight-Ashbury days 7-8 years earlier. From Jefferson Airplane to Journey in a decade. Bleh.

While the British punk scene was very important, the New York scene was equally so. During the 60s, NYC had had a hugely important music scene but it became quite weak during the early 70s. Then by mid-decade, Blondie, Ramones, the Dictators, and Television had happened, and it seemed like the city was at the forefront of something big.

>>74366727
The Dictators are one of those bands nobody seems to remember. I think if they'd broke two years later, they'd be better known. But they were slightly ahead of their time.

>>74366780
The Dictators had that kind of New Wave aesthetic going and their music was pretty punk rock, and they even had a bit of that KISS glam thing going (remember that KISS and the Dictators were contemporaries who both came up in the same New York scene). They had their hands extended a little too much into different things and were not charismatic or good looking enough to make it big. They didn't have a real gimmick like KISS or the Ramones, or an attractive/appealing vocalist like Debbie Harry (nor were their songs as good as any of those other bands). But they were still pretty important for the development of punk rock.

The music world in the US was way bigger than just prog or corporate rock. Punk didn't kill anything. Yes had a huge tour of the US in 1978. KISS were filling football stadiums. Van Halen were getting big.

As someone else said, even the dinosaurs 60s rockers still had major hit singles into the early 80s. And the corporate rock bands like Journey and Foreigner went on like nothing had happened.

>>74366924
Rocks by Aerosmith is to me nastier than any punk record out there.

Actually, it's kind of interesting that punk broke out the year that some of the bigger bands were already going back to roots. Presence, for example, by Zep eschewed all keyboards, even acoustic guitar and was basically a mature version of their first records. Rocks was straight blues rock.

>>74366961
Don't agree. Rocks is absolutely boring compared to the Pistols, Ramones, or Clash. Nowhere near as edgy as the New York Dolls or Stooges.

>>74359830
This kind of statement is basically the "John Lennon beat his wife" of talking about punk history. You think it makes you sound smart, but no one gives a shit.

Musical trends are never organic. Elvis was a white trash truck driver until RCA records realized girls loved him and they could market him as a teen idol. The Beatles were a bunch of Scouser hooligans until Brian Epstein cleaned them up to make them pop stars. Black Sabbath were a generic British blues band until the members realized they needed a gimmick and settled on "scary music" because people liked horror movies.

Pop music is always driven by marketing. Of course that was the case with punk. If no one had marketed it, it wouldn't have spread, just like any other musical movement. Having marketing behind something doesn't make it less relevant, or meaningful to the people who started following it.

>>74367300
Also Kurt Cobain was just some hick kid in flannel from a rural town in Washington until Geffen decided that he was good looking and suitable for MTV.

>>74367544
>>74367544
Not exactly, but Kurt did actively work to become a huge pop star. He refused to work because he wanted to focus on being a musician, somewhat to the detriment of his local popularity (Nirvana was never that big of a band in Seattle itself before Nevermind), sent letters and demos to every major label, and was open with them about wanting to be the biggest band in the world.

The reason grunge got big was mostly because of MTV. If you look at the big selling records of 1990 and 1991 in America, it's a really weird mix of things that are mostly adult-oriented. Grunge was an opportunity to market something at angry teenagers.

>>74361042
>Black Sabbath and Ozzie were going strong

In 1976-77? LOLno, they were washed up drug addicts at that point.

>>74359492
Wings is unironically better than any punk band too.

>>74361140
>>74361248
>LIEbruhls r the real nazis!

fuck up cuck faggot

>>74360311
>The charts were full of MOR rubbish like Wings and Bonnie Tyler.
Speaking to the other anon's comment about how none of it connected with the kids, this is true. Most of those artists sounded like they were 50 years old, even the ones in their 20s. It was definitely not stuff that a 14 year old could relate to.

theres a serious lack of shit;posting in this thread

>>74369113
Welcome to MOR. It's stuff aimed at 40 year old housewives doing the dishes.

>>74358694
No, by the time garage rock became punk, it became about acting like a fag that hates society instead of making fun music.