Our best posts

What has Punk Rock Ever Done For Us?

By:

27,679

Editor

Moderator

Three lorries with E, L and P painted on top. Progressive, Album Orientated Rock was moving out.

In suburbs and small towns, British youth was bored. Parents had moved out of the cities to give their children a better life; in 1976 the commuter trains filled with the same children, now teenagers, heading back to the cities to find FUN!

If you want history, look elsewhere. I’m going to correct some myths.

“Punk was a working class phenomenon.”
The daughters and sons of accountants, stockbrokers and even diplomats were the first Punks. Eddie and the Hot Rods lit the blue touch-paper; Patti Smith was the array of sparks in the dark sky. When The Ramones chanted Hey, ho, let’s go!, eighteen year olds thought, “I can do that”. So they did.

“Punks addressed working class concerns.”
You are thinking of the Second Wave of Punk. Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69, for example. His working class love of Greyhound racing, Football and drinking beer may have been exaggerated, but it spoke to the 1979 audience of jobless youths for whom boredom in a suburban bedroom would have been a luxury.
What Punks addressed, like middle class teenagers of any period, was themselves. White Riot asked for White Youth’s answer to the Notting Hill Carnival, notorious for violence and police brutality towards Black Youths. Anarchy in the UK sneered Your future dream is a shopping scheme. Oh, Johnny Rotten, had we only known you would be advertising Country Life Butter 30 years later.

“Punks had no money, so they made clothes out of bin bags and safety pins.”
It was about style, not poverty. Kids could leave school, sign on the dole and get a weekly cheque from the government. They lived in their suburban bedrooms Monday to Friday, and hit the city on Saturday. These Part Time Punks were the norm. Working class kids with jobs went to the Disco at weekends, in smart suits and tight dresses.

“Punks rejected the music of the past.”
In the corner of that suburban bedroom, behind the still cool LPs, you would find a triple Yes album, Genesis’ full catalogue, or (horror of horrors], Brain Salad Surgery.

“So are you saying Punk changed nothing?”
No. Punk changed everything.

White and black kids went to concerts together, bought the same records. Out of Punk and Reggae grew 2-Tone, Bob Marley’s Punky Reggae Party and The Clash’s cover of Police And Thieves.
A letter to the music press sowed the seeds of Rock Against Racism whose concerts encompassed Punk, Reggae, Poetry and political activism.
Without Punk there would be no Goths. Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Damned were the daddies.
Without Punk there would be no Madchester.
A generation, now middle aged, negotiated adolescence through The Clash, Steel Pulse and Crass. They passed on Punk’s political ideals to their children.
Punk revived the market for singles.
The early Punk era was one of the few periods when women artists were able to make music almost on their own terms.
Scratch the surface of the British establishment, you will find a Never Mind the Bollocks pin badge.

Now you know. There’s the myth, and there’s the truth. Believe whichever you please, but be aware which one you’re choosing. And most importantly, after all the myths, self-aggrandizing, and even the Broadway musicals, we have the music to thank for not having to listen to this all the time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P500LW2HNdE

View comments

Posted January 30th, 2013