Jason's Punk History Page 1






          INTRODUCTION          

Punk has often been called the "cutting edge" of modern rock & roll; it has clearly been the most fully developed subculture of youth rebellion in America since the late 1970s. Punk is really a state of mind, an attitude, a world-view. It is from the earlier sense of the word "Punk" as "a young outlaw, a juvenile delinquent, a young hooligan or troublemaker" that this term came to be applied to a musical genre, starting in New York at the end of 1975 and spreading around the world since then. But the history of Punk includes much more than music; there have also been punk art, punk film, punk video, punk comics, punk athletics, punk fashion, punk politics, and even punk comedians.



Chapter 1: CBGB's: The Birth Place Of Punk Rock
New York City club/bar CBGB's is known to true punks as the birthplace of punk, and since 1973, when Hilly Kristal agreed to let Tom Verlaine and his band Televisio


CHAPTER 2: PUNK ROCK

Musically, Punk tends to be fast, loud, raw, and extremely energetic, simply structured, at its best when performed live, and typically featuring bands with a singer, one or two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. However, there are many variants on this description and exceptions are not uncommon. Lyrics tend to be very important though they often cannot be deciphered without a text. Places to perform are small clubs, rented halls, private parties, and occasionally theaters; all-ages shows are common, featuring 3 to 6 bands for $5 or so.

Punk rock is divided into several subgenres: HARDCORE, dominant through the 1980s, American in origin, extremely fast and accompanied by slam-dancing, with lyrics often shouted; CLASSICAL, more melodic and not quite as speedy, characteristic of the "first wave" of the 1970s in the USA and England; OI!, British in origin but now widespread in America, melodic and featuring choral chanting; THRASH/SPEEDCORE, with definite influences from heavy metal and growling vocals; ART/INDUSTRIAL/NOISE, experimental and diverse; and others. FUNNY PUNK, humorous or satirical bands such as The Dead Milkmen , was once common, but is now harder to find.

The "classic" punk dance is the POGO, characterized by jumping up and down to the beat, but Hardcore brought SLAMMING, a much- misunderstood phenomenon — perhaps describable as a mixture of football, circular folk dancing, Sufi whirling dervishes, drunken brawling, spinning, amusement park bumper cars, and going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. It has since been picked up by other musical genres. Diving head-first from the stage into the mass of tightly-packed bodies, STAGE-DIVING, is usually part of it. Not for the faint of heart, but tremendously exhilirating, the wildest, freest form of dancing in America. The ignorant misuse it as an excuse to fight, but if anyone falls down, everyone around him stops and helps him back up. Stage-diving is a true "leap of faith" and to be caught is to know what community support is. You have to see it to believe it!

Punk is basically grass-roots minimalist and anti-elitist: "Anyone can play in a punk band." Bands produce cassettes, records, and CDs, selling them by themselves locally or through small independent record companies and distributors. Some go on to "major label" companies (which most Punks consider "selling out" and no longer punk) but Punk is generally set against the commercial music business and commercial radio with its homogenized corporate bands, avoidance of controversy and social criticism, and lowest-common-denominator values.
Punk already has a considerable history. It arose at New York City's small but legendary club, CBGB's, at the end of 1975; spread to England and California in 1976, to Canada, Australia, and other parts of America in 1977, and grew internationally in the 1980s until it is now found all over Europe, South America, Japan, and many other countries. Many of its values and features have diffused into other musical genres, from synthesizer electro-pop to rap, and many bands with punk roots have attained worldwide fame.



CHAPTER 3: THE PUNK SUBCULTURE

Disdaining commercial media, American Punk has developed its own totally uncensored media network, featuring university radio stations and many hundreds of non-commercial publications, PUNKZINES. These range in circulation from a hundred to nearly 20,000 (with a much higher readership due to pass-ons); most are locally oriented but some are national or international. They rely on unpaid fans as staff. "Do it yourself!" is a punk slogan; everyone with something to say is encouraged to express himself and put out music or a zine, even if it is handwritten and photocopied. Zines tend to include cartoons, photos of bands, drawings, collages, politics, articles critical of society, gossip and news as well as music reviews, interviews, and "scene reports"; some are literary as well and many carry poetry and editorials. A growing number of punk books have also been published. In recent years, the punk presence has also been growing on the Internet.

Punk fashion, such as it is (and many Punks are anti-fashion) is characterized by the color black, leather jackets, studs, chains, heavy work boots, and short or unusual (such as mohawk, spiked, and skinhead) haircuts. Sometimes the hair is dyed unusual colors. Band stickers and punk slogans distinguish punk leather jackets from those of other subcultures. Appearances, however, are diverse, not uniform: clothes do not make a Punk.

As a subculture, Punk vibrates around a fascinating, creative, dynamic tension between the values of community and of individualism. It is a society of non-conformists, encouraged to "Think for yourself!" but support each other. It is a very colorful collection of alienated youths (and some longer in a body) with often conflicting viewpoints, struggling to strengthen their common bonds and preserve their differences at the same time. Punk is relentlessly realistic, yet idealistic to the bone. It is a home for self-chosen misfits and other social outcast(e)s which must constantly deal with the few who would abuse its great freedom. The transmitters of Punk's ethos (its perspective, values, attitudes, customs, traditions) must constantly struggle to educate the successive waves of newcomers, many attracted by sensational accounts in the mass media, others crossovers from heavy metal, to its own radically different values.

Whenever a new trend sweeps through the Punk scene, Punk's own rebel resistance to all forms of homogenization immediately stimulates an opposition to the trend; thus diversity is preserved. Some of the major currents in the subculture at this time are anarchist politics, skateboarding, vegetarianism, alcohol, psychedelics, "straight edge" opposition to the preceding two, squatting, animal rights, feminism, anti-rascism, and internationalism.



CHAPTER 4: THE PUNK ETHOS

What is the Punk ethos? There is great variation, of course, and perhaps no single Punk matches the pure archetype, but in general Punk seems to have these characteristics: It is passionate, preferring to encounter hostility rather than complacent indifference; working class in style and attitude if not in actual socio-economic background; defiant, unconventional, bizarre, shocking; starkly realistic, anti- euphemism, anti-hypocrisy, anti-bullshit, anti-escapist, happy to rub people's noses in realities they don't wish to acknowledge; angry, aggressive, confrontational, tough, willing to fight — yet this stance is derived from an underlying vulnerability, for the archetypal Punk is young, small, poor, and powerless, and he knows it very well; sceptical, especially of authority, romance, business, school, the mass media, promises, and the future; socially critical, politically aware, pro-outlaw, anarchistic, anti-military; expressive of feelings which polite society would censor out; anti-heroic, anti-"rock star" ("Every musician a fan and every fan in a band!"); disdainful of respectability and careerism; night-oriented; with a strong, ironic, satirical (often self-satirical), put-on-loving sense of humor, which is its saving grace; stressing intelligent thinking and deriding stupidity; frankly sexual, frequently obscene; apparently devoted to machismo, yet welcoming "tough" females as equals (and female Punks are often as defiant of the males as of anyone else) and welcoming bisexuals, gays, and sexual experimentation generally; hostile to established religions but sometimes deeply spiritual; disorganized and spontaneous, but highly energetic; above all, it is honest.

"Punks hang out wherever they're not thrown out!" We love to criticize each other, but stick together in the face of common hostility from the rest of the world. Being Punk is an adventure. Punks are outcastes by choice, by habit, or by necessity, being sick of the real values of the social order. We are contemptuous of a majority which Punks criticize as manipulated by the mass media, unthinking, unaware, sleepwalking through life, conformist, fashion-controlled sheep who are being led to subtle economic slavery and martial slaughter.

Punks may not be able to change the world, but we are dedicated to creating an island of freedom, a community of dissent and experimentation, and we are determined not to go down with our sinking civilization without a howl of protest and an angry fist shaking and hurling curses at the inhuman gods above.


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Email: jfowler@stwconn.com