A type of anarchistic rock music, originating in the late 1970s with such UK groups as Generation X, The Buzzcocks, and The Sex Pistols. Their very loudly amplified performances were characterized by the public use of swear words, outrageous behaviour, and clothes and hairstyles which sought to challenge establishment values. Much of the music was derived directly or indirectly from New York bands such as The Ramones, Richard Hell, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and before them from Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls.
Punk rock is an anti-establishment rock music movement with origins in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia around 1974-1975, exemplified by bands such as the Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Damned, and The Clash. The cities of London, Sydney, New York City, Washington DC, Los Angeles and Berkeley have been key locales for punk bands, venues and audiences.
Characteristics
Punk bands often emulate the bare musical structures and arrangements of 1960s garage rock bands. This emphasis on accessibility exemplified punk's DIY aesthetic, and contrasted with the ostentatious musicianship of many of the mainstream rock bands popular in the years before the advent of punk. In 1976, the English punk fanzine Sideburns included drawings (later reproduced in Sniffin' Glue) of three chords, captioned: "This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Typical punk instrumentation includes a drum kit, one or two electric guitars, an electric bass and vocals.
In the early days of punk rock, musical virtuosity was often looked on with suspicion; complicated guitar solos were considered self-indulgent and unnecessary, although basic guitar breaks were still common, even in early punk songs. Bass guitar lines are often basic and used to carry the songs melody, although some punk bass players such as Mike Watt put greater emphasis on more technical bass parts. Punk vocals sometimes sound nasal, and are often shouted instead of sung in a conventional sense.
Most punk songs have a verse-chorus form and a 4/4 time signature. Punk songs are normally about two and a half minutes long, but can be merely a few seconds. Punk rock tends to have faster tempos than the rock bands who came before them. However, in hardcore punk the drumming is considerably faster and quite technical.
By the mid-1970s, punk lyrics began to involve confrontational frankness and commentaries on social and political issues.
History
Origins
The phrase punk rock (from punk, meaning a hoodlum or ruffian, or a worthless person) was originally applied to the untutored guitar-and-vocals-based rock of United States bands of the mid-1960s such as The Standells, The Sonics, and The Seeds—bands that are now often categorized as garage rock. In the liner notes of the 1972 anthology album Nuggets, Lenny Kaye uses the term punk-rock to refer to the 1960s garage rock bands, as well as some of the darker and more primitive practitioners of 1960s psychedelic rock. Smith's group, and her first album, Horses (released 1975), directly inspired many of the mid-1970s punk rockers.
Punk rock may have been influenced by the snotty attitude, on- and off-stage violence, and aggressive instrumentation, overt sexuality and political confrontation of artists such as The Who, the Rolling Stones, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, The Velvet Underground, Alice Cooper, The Stooges, the MC5, The Deviants, and the New York Dolls. Other likely influences include the English pub rock scene, and British glam rock and art rock acts of the early 1970s, including David Bowie, Gary Glitter and Roxy Music. Early punk rock also displays influences from other musical genres, including ska, funk, and rockabilly.
Punk rock served as a reaction against 1970s popular music such as disco music, heavy metal, progressive rock and arena rock. Punk also rejected the remnants of the 1960s hippie counterculture. The cultural critiques and strategies for revolutionary action of the European Situationist movement of the 1950s and 1960s influenced the vanguard of the British punk movement, particularly the Sex Pistols.
The British punk movement may have drawn upon the do-it-yourself attitude of the Skiffle music craze that emerged amid the post-World War II austerity in Britain. Punk rock in Britain coincided with the end of post-war consensus politics that preceded the rise of Thatcherism. This led many British punk bands to express an angry attitude based on social alienation.
Early emergence
The first ongoing music scene that was assigned the "punk" label appeared in New York in 1974-1976, centered around bands that played regularly at the clubs Max's Kansas City and CBGB. The "punk" title was applied to these groups by early 1976, when Punk Magazine first appeared, featuring these bands alongside articles on some of the immediate role models for the new groups, such as Lou Reed and Patti Smith (who were the cover subjects of the first and second issues, respectively).
During this same period, bands that would later be recognized as "punk" were formed independently in other locations, such as The Saints in Brisbane, Australia, The Modern Lovers in Boston, and The Stranglers and the Sex Pistols in London. The venues provided a showcase and meeting place for the emerging musicians (the 100 Club in London, CBGB in New York, and The Masque in Hollywood are among the best known early punk clubs).
While the London bands may have played a relatively minor role in determining the early punk sound, the London punk scene would come to define and epitomize the rebellious punk culture.
An oft-cited moment in punk rock's history is a July 4, 1976 concert by the Ramones (with The Stranglers) at the Roundhouse in London. Many of the future leaders of the UK punk rock scene were inspired by this show, and almost immediately afterward, the UK punk scene found its feet. The notoriety of punk rock in the UK was advanced by an infamous televised incident that was widely publicised in the tabloid press: on Thames Today, a London TV show, guitarist Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols was goaded into a verbal altercation by the host, Bill Grundy, swearing at him on live television in violation of then-accepted standards of propriety.
One of the first books about punk rock — The Boy Looked at Johnny by Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons (December 1977) — declared the punk movement to be already over: the subtitle was The Obituary of Rock and Roll.
In the UK, punk interacted with the Jamaican reggae and ska subcultures. By the end of the 1970s, punk had spawned the 2 Tone ska revival movement, including bands such as The Beat (The English Beat in U.S.), The Specials, Madness, and The Selecter.
Gradually, punk became more varied and less minimalist, with bands such as The Clash and The Police incorporating other underground musical influences like ska and rockabilly and even jazz into their music, but the message of the music remained the same; Punk rock dealt with topics like problems facing society, oppression of the lower classes, the threat of a nuclear war, and such. Punk rock was a message to society that all was not well and all were not equal.
Subgenres of punk
While it is thought that the style of punk from the 1970s had a decline in the 1980s, many sub-genres branched off playing their own interpretation of punk rock. See media help.
New Wave and its attendant subculture arose along with the earliest punk groups; indeed "punk" and "New Wave" were originally interchangeable terms. Soon after the term gained popularity, a division emerged between the two genres: music that tended more toward experimentation, lyrical complexity, or more polished production, notably bands such as Talking Heads, Television and Devo, were called "New Wave" rather than "punk". Combining elements of early punk music and fashion with a far more pop oriented and less "dangerous" style in the early 1980s, typified by artists such as The Cars, Blondie, Elvis Costello, The Police and even Duran Duran, New Wave became one of the most popular music movements of its time.
The United States saw the emergence of hardcore punk, which is known for fast, aggressive beats and, in many cases, politically or socially aware lyrics. In New York, there was a large hardcore punk movement led by bands such as Agnostic Front, The Cro-Mags, Murphy's Law, Sick of it All, and Gorilla Biscuits. Other styles emerged from this new genre including skate punk, emo and straight edge. the Banshees, and Public Image Ltd, with the latter two bands featuring veterans of the original British punk rock movement. is a subgenre of punk rock that sought to align punk with a working-class street-level following.
Bands sharing the Ramones' bubblegum pop influences formed their own brand of punk, sporting melodic songs and lyrics more often dealing with relationships and simple fun than most punk rock's nihilism and anti-establishment stance. Along with the Ramones, such bands as the Buzzcocks, The Rezillos and Generation X led the way to pop punk. See media help.
The underground punk movement in the United States and the United Kingdom produced countless bands that either evolved from a punk rock sound, or applied its spirit and DIY ethics to a completely different sound. By the end of the 1980s, these bands had largely eclipsed their punk forebearers and were termed alternative rock. The band cited punk as a key influence on their music. Although they sometimes labelled themselves as punk rock and championed many unknown punk icons (as did many other alternative rock bands), Nirvana's music was equally akin to other forms of garage rock, indie rock and heavy metal that had existed for decades. The resulting shift in popular taste was chronicled in the film 1991: The Year Punk Broke, which featured Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, and Sonic Youth.
Praise for previously obscure punk acts by the popular alternative rock artists helped lead to a punk rock resurgence in popular culture in the 1990s, especially in North America. While some bands signed to major labels (Green Day signed to Reprise Records in 1994), indie labels like Epitaph Records (started by Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion and the home of the skate punk sound of The Offspring, Pennywise, NOFX, and Rancid), also benefited from punk's resurgence. Examples of bands labelled as pop punk include blink-182, Simple Plan, Good Charlotte and Sum 41. The late 1990s also saw a ska punk revival, which continued into the 2000s with bands like Streetlight Manifesto, Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
Some in the punk community were wary of the music being co-opted by the mainstream. By the late 1990s, punk rock was so ingrained in Western culture that punk trappings were sometimes used to sell commercial bands as rebels. Some punk rockers complained that by signing to major labels and appearing on MTV, punk bands were buying into the system that punk was created to rebel against (although punk's earliest pioneers also released work on major labels).
Many of the popular indie rock bands of the 2000s have been heavily influenced by garage rock, protopunk and early punk rock.
User Comments Add a comment…