Punk is ***
 

the title says it all.

Objection!

^ says it all.

Are you going to continue to be an arse just because I closed your thread?

I would like this conversation to be had.

I sort of agree, while I like some punk it's by far the most overrated genre on this site per my tastes.

Punk to me, and this will sound appropriately ignorant to fans of the genre, is sort of like rock and roll without the skill or mass relate-ability.

Punk speaks to a small audience of people who don't like to follow the norm even when it is the best path.

Anyway, if anyone can better express my sentiments or has a considerate counterpoint, I'd like to keep this thread open.

I wish I could be three asterisks.


Either way, Punk is good, in small doses.

I don't know if I'd say punk only gets a three star rating, I'd give it four.

I would say punk, in all honesty, doesn't differ from rock and pop anymore. In the '70s, it was a rejection of "hip" and "fitting in." It was music to express individuality. That ended almost as soon as it began. I'd say "punk" now just refers to certain groups of bands that are agreed-upon, with extremely fuzzy boundaries, by whatever circle of discussion you're in. Any attempt to formalize what punk is, in terms of sound, basically devolves into "I know it when I hear it."

Whether a band is punk or not is really one of the most pointless and fruitless debates in music discussions. Punk is a lot like "dream pop" or "noise-rock"....it doesn't mean anything concrete, the labels are applied arbitrarily based on each person's feelings and it's really all just pop and rock.

Punk is Dead for many of the reasons that Minstrel listed. Punk was a rejection of pop ethos and a reaction to garbage like Led Zeppelin and disco and arena rock and later Peter Frampton. It was apolitical art for art's sake, it was bordering on dadist. Punk in its truely intended form probably never made it into the 80s.

^^ it sort of did, it mutated into post-punk --> no wave -- > industrial --> noise. but that's about as far as you can go, short of using the performance itself to smash through aesthetic boundaries, such as the audience/performer distinction.

i think punk is much more relatable than most forms of music simply because it doesn't constrict itself to a simple aesthetic form, which would isolate it, but instead attaches itself to freedom and rebellion. by this definition, punk very quickly ceased to be punk and became popular music, but as i pointed out the idea of punk (or the idea of dada) kept evolving until it hit a brick wall (and was then synthesized back into popular music, yay for contemporary music with nowhere left to go!).

also, when you say "don't like to follow the norm even though it's the best path..."

think of disco as the yellow brick road. shiny, glistening, easy to walk on, predictable, etc. punk is like taking the path that goes through a swamp. sure, it stinks, it's sludgy, hard to get through, but it's an experience, it's something real, and if you rid yourself of your preconceptions you will learn to enjoy it. is one path better than the other? they just appeal to different folks...

It is alot like rock n roll, but there were PLENTY of punk bands that were really good at their insruments:

Television (thats the big one)
The Only Ones
Talking Heads
Magazine
Pere Ubu
The Voidoids
etc..

Alot of these are also considered 'post-punk' but they all made worthwhile records between '75-'78, before 'post-punk' was really considered a genre.

And theres SO MUCH relateability and emotion in punk rock. "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones, "Time" by Richard Hell, "Ever Fallen in Love" by the Buzz ****s, "You Cant Put Your Arms Around a Memory" by Johnny Thunders, "I'm Straight" by The Modern Lovers, I relate to punk more than any other genre! Im not a rebel by any stretch either.

I agree with what your saying sort of, if youre referring to the whole sex pistols rip off side of it, where it was about bashing out chords and screaming about how your parents made you clean your room, but theres so much great stuff that goes far beyond that. Lets not forget, although technically Elvis Costello was 'pub-rock', he fit right into the punk scene at the time.