Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulysses
(Post 763532)
No offence to the OP, and I'm aware that I'm commenting on posts that are 4 years old, but reading that Stiff Little Fingers' 'Alternative Ulster' is proffered as being an example of Oi! had tea going down the wrong way and I thought I was going to choke.
I normally would be that bothered by something like that but the thread is entitled "The Punk Education Thread". How is this actually rationalised? How are Stiff Little Fingers an Oi! band? I've never in my life heard anyone describe SLF as an Oi! band and they certainly weren't when Oi! was first being written about in the likes of Sounds &c.
Also, for the record, the term 'street punk' is one of those things that seems to have been retroactively shoe-horned into history as it's not something that had any real currency in the early 1980s.
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+1... And add 'New Wave' to the comment about 'street punk'.
A few observations on posts so far before I make my main point:
The Who's 'My Generation' is most certainly NOT about the Irish, it was an anthem for the back end of the Mod scene. Try listening to the lyrics sometime. Also, as for it being sometimes referred to as 'the first punk single', I suspect you're confusing it with The Kinks 'You Really Got Me'. Take a listen to the record and you can see why the comparisons have been made. That said, neither really count as punk, if only by dint of historical mismatch.
Irish/Folk punk would probably originate with The Pogues. Again, do the legwork, check the dates, have a listen. Mention here also needs to be made of Chumbawumba and The Levellers, not as originators, but as bands of note. Often referred to as 'crusty rock' or 'crusty punk' in the UK.
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OK, got that out of my system, and I offer a brief, and probably wildely inaccurate history of psychobilly, but it's how I remember it.
In the way that there were punk records before there was a punk scene, there were psychobilly bands before there was a psychobilly scene. Bands like The Cramps (generally accepted as being the fathers of psycho), The Sonics, and (to an extent) country legend Johnny Cash are artists who are stil revered by large elements of the psychobilly scene today.
Finding its roots in both rockabilly and punk, early bands generally used an upright (slap) bass, drums and guitar to define the sound. Rhythm was as important as the tune, simple bass runs holding the tune together. Early, still surviving band The Meteors ran against this trend, using an electric bass guitar to similar effect, but as a generalisation it holds true.
Although its roots are deep in American music, it was originally a purely British creation, the first generation of bands - Guana Batz, Frenzy, Restless, The Sharks, The Caravans and (IIRC) Roache And The Sarnos - were all from the UK.
Although the earliest bands drew lyrical influence from horror films as much as anything else, there was often a dark humour in there, which lead to what was probably the first internal split in the scene. The humour came more to the front, leaving the horror behind, giving us bands such as King Kurt and The Highliners in the process. These bands kept the psychobilly image of long, bleached 'quiff' haircuts (In reality a mohican that stops at the crown of the head) but lightened the tone of the music. This is often referred to as 'sillybilly', although that was originally meant as an insult.
As this happened, the harder edged bands went off in the opposite direction and lyrically became darker although generally keeping to the bass - guitar - drums band set up where as the 'sillybilly' bands often added keyboards or brass to the sound.
The second generation of bands came from Europe. Notable names include Mad Sin and The Necromantix. This isn't to say that the UK scene had died, far from it - it was still churning out short lived bands on a regular basis, often sharing members across several groups. There were very few bands from the US, the most notable being The Reverand Horton Heat and The Misfits, two bands showing the opposite sides of the psychobilly world.
Around this time, the traditional psychobilly sound became increasingly weakened, adding elements more associated with punk, industrial, goth, and metal, to the extent that many of todays bands sound very little like the original bands.
That said, there are still a lot of 'traditional' bands around carrying the flag forward, although many are bands that have been around for 20 years or more, if only in name.
One thing that has come from psychobilly but has wide spread is the mosh pit. Originally known on the UK scene as the wrecking pit, the distinctive style of dancing (Known as wrecking, or occasionally moshing) involved pushing other dancers around while still moving to the beat. As an aside, while I was working as a DJ on the scooter scene around the time that early psychobilly was popular, I had the power cut to my decks on a couple of occasions by uninformed bar staff who thought a fight had broken out!
These days psychobilly is back to being a hugely underground music. There are many bands out there still, a lot of whom have survived the test of time - The Meteors, The Caravans, The Frantic Flintstones and Demented Are Go have all been around for many years and are still gigging now.
Lets rock.
