Its hard to be truly "punk" about anything these days.

I mean what are punk bands doing today thats defying trends or not conforming to the masses? Nothing really. Now you just have a lot of guys who think they are punk because they can write a song about how much they hate George W. Bush.

I'm not talking about the musical genre which is alive and well but just the meaning of the word, I'm not saying punk is dead for sure, and to be honest I don't care if it dies or not, it had its run and there was a lot of great music that came out of it, but lets move on and stop whining about "which bands killed punk".

there are still alot of punks around, there kinda adopting cultural trends( the homeless(yes they have a culture), gypsies, cajans)

I guess you have to give punk props to the Amish as well since they isolate themselves almost completely from the rest of modern society.

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/oct2006/amish2.jpg

Hardcore.

Personally I dont care if someone is a "sell out." If their music is good thats all that matters. It is frustrating when a band I like changes their sound though to appeal to the more main stream and signs a big contract. But it could be worse, they could make no money, have no fans, and stop making music completely.

^ true, it just makes it impossible to see them live because the fans get worse and they usually play at some ****ty arena or something like that.

I agree, it is wrong to call bands like Fall Out Boy and Good Charlotte "sellouts" because that assumes that they at any point had any goal other than what is purely commercial. Selling out means that at one point they traded in their values in order to make money/get fame/whatever, but essentially selling out has been their value and intent since day one, so they never had to sell out to do so.

[EDIT]: Hehe, just read the OP, we say the same thing. Tee hee.

Like I said, if you sign on to a label, you're selling your art for money, so that is selling out. Not as much as abandoning your principles but still, its the artistic equivalent of prostitution.

In the future people wont even have to sign on to a label to sell records, and not only that, they won't even have to sell records if all they want is people to listen to their music. In Rainbows is a sign of this.

I'm not sure if In Rainbows is a good indicator. People were going to take that whether or not it was good/bad or cheap/expensive.

wait do you mean any label at all because there are plenty of independent labels and I wouldn't call bands that sign on to them sellouts.