It has, although after great consideration I find myself mostly ambivalent toward emo, which is what happened to punk rock when it lost the political edge and started talking about its feelings.
I find myself returning to the old stuff more and more -- Bad Religion, the Minutemen, even Rancid, which isn't so old, but definitely legit. Really don't feel the outrage in most of the new stuff, except when I hear Ani DiFranco or Pamela Means play. There I hear it. Hip-hop started off well, but it lost its edge. Needs to seriously get back to its roots. I think once hip-hop starts learning to bite the hand that feeds it again, something seriously important can emerge from that well again.
I think it's not as monolithic as it once was...but it's still there. One could argue that the original dissemination of music over the Web (Napster, KaZaa, etc.) was a punk expression; I'd suggest that the Myspace music angle is pretty punk, regardless of the genre of music involved.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you look at the punk ethos from the point of view of DIY...I'd say it's everywhere these days.
I would certainly say that I try to practice that aspect of it as much as I can.
You need to read "Our Band Could Be Your Life" when I'm done with it. I just finished reading the chapter on Mission For Burma, and it really blew my mind -- about the whole concept of indifference to success. I know it's a subject I've written about before, but it's such an important concept for artists to grasp.
I keep wondering, but then again, punk has evolved and morphed, too. Sometimes I think I expect it to be the same, but why should I? I'm not the same as I was back then.I think it depends on one's definition of punk (for me, anger is kind of an ingredient--it can be subtle or simmering or seething, but not quite polite). I came around to punk a little in high school, but then it was much more defined for me after college, in DC. It's not an understatement for me that Fugazi changed my life~the fact that instrumentation could be so good and booming with those lyrics....and free or pay-what-you-can out on the monumental mall or some church basement.So, my thing is that punk has to have some well definied political sensibility that walks the walk it talks, or at least provides catharsis and empowerment to do it, and it has to be easy to access (curse and bless the all-ages show).It's less about the noise and more about the attitude (but for me, noise helps the whole catharsis thing). Back then, thanks to them, I was intro-ed to Bikini Kill, 7 Year Bitch, Jello Biafra (even though he predated them), etc. Now I see the shades in the lyrics of Bright Eyes, The Evens, The Gossip, Sleater Kinney, Amy Ray's solo work, I did see it in Rage Against the Machine, I see it in Ani DiFranco and some of her followers or spoken word people like Katz (Athens Boys Choir). I get nostalgic for the time when it seemed there were so many really HARD ROCKING, LOUD women with names like Women Of Destruction (WOD, complete with a dyed, dreaded accordian player), Spitboy and Stone Fox. I think the beliefs are still floating around, more than hair or more even than the noise element.I don't think punk is dead, but when I think about it, I realize I'm not as young as I think I am in my head, that scenes have changed and---I don't know, I've changed and punk has also changed in to some broader definition, like the WTO-protesting younger-than-me folks have found a broader definition of activism. At least, this is my take on it today.
Indeed. It all comes back top that willingness to tell the whole establishment to go fuck itself.
I look at Ani, and that's punk rock. I look at Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents dinner, and the utter lack of irony in his voice when he said, "I have nothing but contempt for these people." That's punk. I look at Patricia Smith up on stage, refusing to be pigeonholed by a bunch of poems she wrote more than a decade ago, no matter how famous they made her, and that's punk.
And all punk really was was rock 'n' roll, what happened when it went too far down the path of self-importance, and needed someone in combat boots to kick the teeth out of it.
this phrase: "And all punk really was was rock 'n' roll, what happened when it went too far down the path of self-importance, and needed someone in combat boots to kick the teeth out of it," in its glorifying of punk's importance, eats itself. it's a built-in problem with celebrating nihilistic art.
Hmmm. Perhaps you're right. But sometimes I wonder the world isn't a lot simpler than we make it out to be, and the rush to put things in genres (or other catgegories) isn't largely self-defeating.
As a matter of aesthetics I agree. But when the art has a foundation of rebellion, of being *against*, it's an infinite regress to use it as a new unit of measurement.
I've been pondering this, and after much thought, I've decided you're entirely correct.
I'm still interested in where that punk rock, anti-establishmentarian impulse went to, with what happened now that the original punks are hitting their 50s and the youngest of those days (like myself) are in their mid-30s. Because there was something valuable there, just like there was something valuable at the core of the hippie movement.
In "Our Band Could Be Your Life," Mike Watt of the Minutemen talks about the hippie movement, and how Nixon finally killed it by ending the war. Punk didn't have that sort of moment, per se. People just got older, and their actions and impulses changed. I'm fascinated by that, as I don't know if anyone's really stepped back and looked at what happened afterward. Not at the stars -- we can find them easily enough -- but at the people in the audience.
I think, socio-politically speaking, it would be fascinating to step up and track that, to start looking at things like what they do for a living, how they vote. (This is the sociologist in me.) There's been a lot of work done on "Generation X," and on the hippies and the Boomer Generation, but not so much on the people in the punk movement.
Sure, I know probably hundreds or more myself, but by and large in cultureal sociology, they've disappeared into the statstics, often buried beneath the baby boomer's immense demographics.
It is really fascinating--for a wide range of demographics--and I keep hearing good things about that book, so I guess it's now on my list.
I've had the moment of being in a very un-glam grocery store, and Mott the Hoople plays on the Muzak and I look around at my fellow customers and wonder which of them embraced that aesthetic when they were 19, and how they feel now, hearing that music as they are doing their domestic chore...
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Re: It's drifted to the left a bit as its matured
I find myself returning to the old stuff more and more -- Bad Religion, the Minutemen, even Rancid, which isn't so old, but definitely legit. Really don't feel the outrage in most of the new stuff, except when I hear Ani DiFranco or Pamela Means play. There I hear it. Hip-hop started off well, but it lost its edge. Needs to seriously get back to its roots. I think once hip-hop starts learning to bite the hand that feeds it again, something seriously important can emerge from that well again.
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In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you look at the punk ethos from the point of view of DIY...I'd say it's everywhere these days.
I would certainly say that I try to practice that aspect of it as much as I can.
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I get nostalgic for the time when it seemed there were so many really HARD ROCKING, LOUD women with names like Women Of Destruction (WOD, complete with a dyed, dreaded accordian player), Spitboy and Stone Fox.
I think the beliefs are still floating around, more than hair or more even than the noise element.I don't think punk is dead, but when I think about it, I realize I'm not as young as I think I am in my head, that scenes have changed and---I don't know, I've changed and punk has also changed in to some broader definition, like the WTO-protesting younger-than-me folks have found a broader definition of activism.
At least, this is my take on it today.
ps
Re: ps
I look at Ani, and that's punk rock. I look at Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents dinner, and the utter lack of irony in his voice when he said, "I have nothing but contempt for these people." That's punk. I look at Patricia Smith up on stage, refusing to be pigeonholed by a bunch of poems she wrote more than a decade ago, no matter how famous they made her, and that's punk.
And all punk really was was rock 'n' roll, what happened when it went too far down the path of self-importance, and needed someone in combat boots to kick the teeth out of it.
Re: ps
Re: ps
Re: ps
Re: ps
I'm still interested in where that punk rock, anti-establishmentarian impulse went to, with what happened now that the original punks are hitting their 50s and the youngest of those days (like myself) are in their mid-30s. Because there was something valuable there, just like there was something valuable at the core of the hippie movement.
In "Our Band Could Be Your Life," Mike Watt of the Minutemen talks about the hippie movement, and how Nixon finally killed it by ending the war. Punk didn't have that sort of moment, per se. People just got older, and their actions and impulses changed. I'm fascinated by that, as I don't know if anyone's really stepped back and looked at what happened afterward. Not at the stars -- we can find them easily enough -- but at the people in the audience.
I think, socio-politically speaking, it would be fascinating to step up and track that, to start looking at things like what they do for a living, how they vote. (This is the sociologist in me.) There's been a lot of work done on "Generation X," and on the hippies and the Boomer Generation, but not so much on the people in the punk movement.
Sure, I know probably hundreds or more myself, but by and large in cultureal sociology, they've disappeared into the statstics, often buried beneath the baby boomer's immense demographics.
Re: ps
I've had the moment of being in a very un-glam grocery store, and Mott the Hoople plays on the Muzak and I look around at my fellow customers and wonder which of them embraced that aesthetic when they were 19, and how they feel now, hearing that music as they are doing their domestic chore...