Punk

For other uses of this term, see Punk (disambiguation)

Punk, also called punk rock, is a musical genre that emerged in the mid-1970s. the music industry for his independent and countercultural attitude. In its beginnings, punk was music with a minimalist composition, very simple and raw, and sometimes careless: a type of simple rock, with aggressive melodies of short durations, amplified guitar sounds with little control and noisy, loaded with a lot of distortion, few arrangements and instruments and, generally, fast bars and tempos.

The guitar lines are characterized by the simplicity and rawness of the amplified and highly distorted sound that create a noisy or aggressive sound environment inherited from garage rock. Sometimes, the bass only follows the chord line and does not seek to decorate with octaves or arrangements in the melody but, generally, in the first punk formations (an aspect that would be repeated later with post punk bands ), the bass presents simple and constant arrangements, showing off in many cases more than the guitar. The drums, for their part, have an accelerated tempo with simple rock and roll rhythms. The voices vary from strong expressions to violent or torn expressions, while the lyrics are characterized by dealing with political and social issues (carrying a message of conscience that extends with the aim of denouncing these types of problems through music). Topics related to drugs, love, pacifism, etc. are also discussed. However, since the late 1970s and even before (with the exception of the lyrical) these aspects were changing, since the new bands formed at that time (in general, hardcore style bands > and other more traditionalist bands) added very fast chord changes on the guitar, arrangements (for more complexity) and guitar solos (inherited directly from rock and roll and rockabilly ). In the bass, the arrangements with an octave were introduced, the drums accelerated the rhythm and tempo more, and the voices were much stronger.

Punk rock exploded into the musical mainstream in the late 1970s with British bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned, and American bands like the Ramones, The Dead Boys, and Blondie. Later, in the 1980s, two movements would emerge within the independent punk rock scene that would be characterized by following the ideas of the "do it yourself" ethic, with a much more aggressive, fast and fast musical formula; in the United States, hardcore (with bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, Bad Brains, etc., which helped and influenced musicians who would later make up the melodic hardcore scene, skate punk, nardcore and even straight edge/youth crew) and in the United Kingdom, the UK '82 (with bands such as The Exploited, GBH, Chaos UK, Discharge and Varukers, the last two of which continued and influenced more extreme forms of punk such as d-beat, crust punk and grindcore). Later, many musicians influenced by punk rock but with different musical interests would form bands of post punk, heavy metal, grunge, emo, i>noise rock, ska, new wave, alternative and gothic rock. In the 1990s grunge appeared with bands like Nirvana. Later, Californian skate punk and melodic hardcore bands would continue to sell millions of records such as Offspring, Rancid and NOFX. In the mid-1990s, the music market would promote pop punk bands like Green Day or Blink-182; likewise, hardcore punk and street punk bands such as The Casualties, Unseen, Blanks 77, Agnostic Front, Violent Society, Restarts, First Step, Battery and Good Clean Fun, among many others continued to form.

Features

Punk Philosophy

The punk is the constant struggle against the fear of social repercussions.

Greg Graffin.

It sprouted thanks to the Punk Movement, whose intention is generally protest. They usually do it in person or using music of a Protestant, protesting or demanding nature as a means of expression. It is very characteristic for a large part of them their rejection of sexism and racism, as well as the tabloid press for being sensationalist, directionalist, show business, manipulative, oppressive, constricting, lobbyist, tabloid, conservative, reserved, etc., whether it has some, several or all of those characteristics. The original form of punk was a simple and somewhat noisy type of rock to express itself with its own means and concepts.

Aesthetic characteristic of punks.

Among the first musical bands representing punk in the United States are: Ramones, The Heartbreakers, Dead Boys, The Voidoids, Blondie, Cherry Vanilla, The Shirts, The Bags, Tuff Darts, The Runaways, Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, The Cramps, The Misfits, Plasmatics, Black Flag and The Gun Club; and in proto-punk and garage rock, The New York Dolls, The Velvet Underground (Lou Reed's band), Iggy Pop and The Stooges, MC5, singer Patti Smith, Television and The Dictators, who served as influencers, references and precursors of punk.

In the United Kingdom groups such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Buzzcocks, The Vibrators, Generation X, The Undertones, Sham 69, The Jam, X-Ray Spex, The Stranglers, Adam & the Ants, U.K. Subs and The Addicts; and in glam rock, David Bowie, Marc Bolan of T-Rex and The Who, who also had an influence in the same way as the proto-punk bands of >garage rock from the United States.

The Pretenders, for their part, is a British-American group that was part of both the punk movement and the new wave of the United States and England.

The Ramones presented themselves as a rock band, with no declared pretensions to a directly innovative or groundbreaking message, except in terms of music. Later the punk label would emerge and the band would be considered the first to represent it. On the other hand, there was a form of transgression seeking to free oneself from social stigmas. This branch did not give explanations and tried to make the establishment uncomfortable by clashing, offending and disturbing good taste, morality and tradition. The provocation was basically sought through demonstrations of aesthetic transgression or contradictory, absurd and insolent turns of language. It's the style popularized by the Sex Pistols, loosely related to nihilism and other forms of skepticism.

Later on, especially with the appearance of hardcore punk and marked by the heritage of the attitude of the Crass collective, a whole range of approaches to social criticism, political positions and affinity for campaigns became present. of protest. The most classic musical examples are Crass and The Clash. The punk philosophy can be summed up as: "Do it yourself" or "Have it your way". Reject dogmas and question what is established. He despises fashion and mass society (although his aesthetic can also be considered a pre-established fashion for punk). In their songs, these bands express serious discontent with the systems and institutions that organize and control the world. Sometimes, music also serves as a platform for philosophical and ideological proposals.

A punk in front of a group of cops.

During the 1980s, punk in the United States was permeated with political content, mainly progressive, in opposition to the conservative government of the time. Some examples from this era are the bands Dead Kennedys and Bad Religion. In Europe, punk is a music especially used as a means of dissemination by people related to outsiders political and social movements, mostly on the left, although there is a current of the right that uses it, being criticized and insulted by most punk movements.

In the early 1990s, the amateur publications of punk and the songs of the groups also served as a vehicle for the statements and denunciations of the anti-globalization movements.

History

Background

Garage rock and fashion

In the early and mid-1960s, garage rock bands, recognized as the progenitors of punk rock, began to appear in different parts of North America.. The Kingsmen, a garage rock band from Portland, Oregon, found success with their 1963 version of "Louie Louie", cited as "the urtext that defines punk rock". The minimalist sound of many garage rock bands was influenced by the harder wing of the British Invasion. The Kinks' 1964 hits "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" have been described as "precursors of the entire Ramones three-chord genre; for example, 'I Don't Want You' from 1978, it was pure Kinks".

The Who made rapid progress in 1964 from their debut single "I Can't Explain", from the album "My Generation". Though it made little impact on the American charts, The Who's anthem heralded a more cerebral mix of musical ferocity and rebellious stance that characterized much of early British punk rock: John Reed describes the appearance of the Clash as a "tight ball of energy reminiscent in both image and rhetoric of a young Pete Townshend with an obsession for speed, pop-art clothing and art-school ambition"., The Who and The Small Faces were some of the few old rockers known to the Sex Pistols.

In 1966, mod was already in decline. America's garage rock bands began to fade within a couple of years, but the raw sound and unfamiliar attitude of psychedelic rock bands like The Seeds heralded the style of bands that would become known. as the archetypal figures of proto-punk.

One of the antecedents of the punk style, and for some ^{[according to whom?]} the first sample of the genre, occurred in the 1960s in Peru with the band Los Saicos, made up of 19-year-olds. Although the band has indicated that they only played rock and roll, they agree to be called the forerunners of punk.

Proto-punk

In 1969 came the debut albums of two Michigan bands, commonly known as the premier proto-punk recordings. In January the band MC5, formed in the city of Detroit, released "Kick Out the Jams". "Musically the group is intentionally raw and aggressive," wrote critic Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone:

Most of the songs are hardly distinguished from one another in their primitive structures of two chords. You've heard all this before in remarkable bands like The Seeds, Blue Cheer, Question Mark and the Mysterians and Kingsmen. The difference here [...] is in the fire, the superposition of adolescent revolution and stuff full of energy that hides this view of clichés and ugly noise. [...] "I Want You Right Now" sounds exactly (until in the lyrics) as a song called "I Want You" by The Troggs, a British group that came forward with a similar image of raw sex and sound a couple of years ago (remember Wild Thing?).

Iggy Pop, the punk godfather.

In August the band The Stooges, formed in the city of Ann Arbor, released their self-titled album. According to critic Greil Marcus, the band, led by singer Iggy Pop, created "the sound of Chuck Berry's Airmobile after it was disassembled by robbers". The album was produced by John Cale, a former member of the experimental rock group The Velvet Underground. Having earned a "reputation as the first underground rock band", The Velvet Underground directly or indirectly inspired many of the musicians who were involved in the creation of punk rock and heavy rock.

The bands New York Dolls, Dictators and The Who are also labeled as proto-punk; as well as hard rock songs like Blue Cheer's “Come and Get It”, Led Zeppelin's “Communication Breakdown”, “ Paranoid” by Black Sabbath or “I´m Eighteen” by Alice Cooper.^{[citation needed]}

Origins and cultural context

Ramones, considered by many as the first punk band of international recognition.

At the end of the 1960s, a current of young people in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries considered that rock had gone from being a means of expression for young people, to a mere market tool and showcase for the bombast of the musicians of that time, taking music away from the common people. Punk arose as a mockery of the rigidity of conventions that concealed forms of social and cultural oppression.

The characteristics of punk rock were preceded by garage rock (appreciated in the song "Pushin Too Hard" from 1966 by the Californians The Seeds). This genre intensified the strong sound of rock and presented less professional compositions influenced by the sound of the British invasion such as The Beatles, The Kinks or The Who. In addition, it integrated elements of the noisy sound of the garage rock of The Stooges or The Velvet Underground and picked up influences from the frenetic surf rock. These varied influences are now known as proto-punk. Among them we can also include Bobby Fuller Four, author of the single "I Fought the Law", which was covered by The Clash and The Modern Lovers, authors of "Roadrunner". Fuller incorporated accelerated rhythms, not so close to later punk rock but far from the conventional and typical rock of the time, with simple chords but still without distortion or high volume. The Dictators were also a crucial band for the rise of punk rock. They began as garage rock, which would later be called proto-punk, to later emerge as the same punk rock as themselves. they had helped form. Dead Boys was another American punk band formed in 1976 that debuted at the legendary CBGB club.

The Ramones made simple compositions, whose acid lyrics dealt with issues such as discrimination against other young people, anti-fashion and drugs, a guideline for bands to come.

Sex Pistols are considered to have started the punk movement in the UK.

Their visit to London (they performed at the mythical Roundhouse on July 4, American Independence Day, paradoxically) made existing groups like the Sex Pistols begin to use their instruments as means of expression and provocation to show their discontent towards what they considered a narrow-minded and repressive society.

The Damned are another of England's early punk rock emblematic bands. Unlike The Clash, their guitar chords were more worked, being considered precursors of hardcore punk, which is characterized precisely by having punk songs with more worked chords like those of thrash metal; their vocalist and frontman Dave Vanian carried a vampiric aesthetic that later influenced the aesthetics of the gothic subculture and gothic rock bands.

Blondie, initiators of the American punk together with Ramones and the proto-punk Television band, came to have a lot of followers at their punk stage.

Blondie was another of the bands that stood out in the first wave of American punk rock. They began their concerts at the CBGB and began with other bands such as the Ramones and Television. They were of crucial importance for what would later become the new wave, genre derived from punk rock.

Over time, the genre would take different paths, evolve into many subgenres, and draw influences from other musical styles. Punk subgenres are sometimes defined by musical characteristics, and in other cases, by the content of the message or the ideology that inspires it.

As would later happen in many other countries, in the United Kingdom the groups soon took influences from other genres. One of the first fusions of punk was with the reggae and ska of the country's Jamaican emigrants. As the first and most representative example, we can mention the band The Clash and their songs "Police and Thieves" (a version of the Jamaican Junior Murvin), "The Guns of Brixton" and "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais".

Punk fused with another black style, funk, which can be heard in works like Iggy Pop's The Idiot, and in bands like James Chance & The Contortions, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Gang Of Four, A Certain Ratio or The Clash themselves in their song "Magnificent Seven".

In the beginning, the hardcore punk style also emerged, characterized as a faster version of the dirty way of playing punk. The Damned was the main band to influence this new branch of punk, followed by others like The Misfits, Bad Brains, Middle Class and Black Flag. Another early band in this style were the Teen Idles.

Etymology

The English term punk has a derogatory meaning that usually varies by being applied to objects (meaning "garbage", "dirt") or people (meaning & #34;lazy", "despicable", "dirty" or, also, "garbage" and "scum"). It is used ironically as a description of the critical or discontent substratum that this music contains. By using it as their own label, the punkies (or punks) distance themselves from their adaptation to social roles and stereotypes. Due to the nature of this meaning, punk has often been associated with attitudes of personal neglect, it has been used as a means of expressing feelings of discomfort and hatred, and it has also given rise to neurotic or self-destructive behaviors.

The term punk was used as the title of a magazine founded in 1976 in New York by John Holmstrom, Ged Dunn and Legs McNeil, who wanted a magazine that talked about everything they liked: TV reruns, drinking beer, sex, cheeseburgers, comic books, B-movies, and the rock and roll that played in the filthiest joints in town: The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, and New York Dolls, among others.

Later, the meaning would also serve to inspire the leftist currents of the genre, as a label that undoes the condition of class or social role with debts of reputation or appearance.

Subgenres and currents that have assimilated features of punk

As a creative movement, the punk sound gave rise to numerous aspects. Many of the groups moved from one genre to another, with different levels of permeation, evolution and fusion, being able to speak of bands that fit the profile of more than two subgenres. These individual styles were popularized until forming musical subgenres, categories of works and artists that shared a common defined characteristic.

Among some of its subgenres, the following can be identified:

By common musical traits

Slam during the punk concert.

The Clash, one of the most popular British punk bands.

• Hardcore punk: was the first evolution of punk in the late 1970s in the United States. It was more extreme, faster and more aggressive. Highlights include bands of the first wave such as Bad Brains, Black Flag, Teen Idles, Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, Minor Threat, or Youth Brigade.
• Crossover thrash: is the thrash metal branch with more influence of hardcore punk. Perhaps the oldest antecedent (pre-thrash included) may have been the British band Motörhead. Names are called D.R.I. or Suicidal Tendencies. This style is influenced by the thrash metal (groups such as Metallica, Megadeth or Anthrax), although it often also has high harmony and diversity of sounds.
• Melodic Hardcore: based on hardcore punk, of fast rhythms and strong guitar bases, but with melodic vocal interpretations. A clear example is that of American bands Bad Religion, Pennywise or Rise Against.
• Gypsy punk: is the subgender that mixes traditional Romanian music and/or cabaret music with classic punk rock, examples of bands are Gogol Bordello, DeVotchKa, Chunga-Changa, etc.
• Post-punk: more experimental and melodic genre that was characterized by slowing the rhythm, the influence of other musical styles and a certain climate of melancholy. He eventually drifted into the genesis of Gothic rock. It is represented by bands such as The Cure, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Joy Division, Public Image Ltd., Bauhaus, Alaska and Pegamoides or Permanent Paralysis.
• No wave: experimental music movement within New York's punk environment, represented by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lydia Lunch, Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth or Birthday Party.
• Ska-Punk: is the sound of punk combined with ska, with fast rhythms and use of instruments such as trumpets or saxophones. The most significant examples are in No Doubt, Operation Ivy (to whom many point as pioneers), Rancid, Kortatu, Ska-P, Skankin Pickle or Less Than Jake, various NOFX songs, The Offspring and Propagandhi, Hesian etc.
• Deathrock: subgender of punk and Gothic, with elements of terror and dark atmosphere. It has a certain similarity with post-punk As for the prominent use of bass and slow pace, but in turn some bands incorporate rockabilly and glam rock elements. The main performing bands of this style are Christian Death, Alien Sex Fiend, Specimen, 45 Grave and Theatre of Ice.
• Psychobilly: it's the punk rock mix with rockabilly. Some representative groups are The Cramps, Quakes, The Meteors and Nekromantix.
• Pop-punk or also known as popular punk: is a subgener whose sound is more melodic and clean. In many cases, the representative bands of this genre do not spread the nihilistic ideals because of their most commercial character. It emerges mainly in the United States and was popularized at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s as much of the "second punk wave" by bands like Blink-182, Green Day, Sum 41, Simple Plan etc., although New Found Glory is the pioneer in the pop punk as he implemented the pop as his genre from the beginnings as a band and so far they remain in pop punk, as Green-182.
• Skate-punk: punk subgender that combines the scene Skateboarding with punk, being these last two very related, being the Skateboard a sport that is linked to music. Typical bands of this genre are: No Fun At All, Suicidal Tendencies (the old), Circle Jerks, The Descendents, Adolescents, Sum 41, etc.
• Celtic-punk or Celtic punk: divergent genre of the mixture between punk rock and traditional Celtic music. It is characteristic of containing instruments such as Irish flutes, accordion, banjo, etc. This genre was mainly founded in 1980 by The Pogues. His lyrics generally contain themes referring to the bliss of being Irish or a Celtic country; focusing on the political-social with letters generally referred to the working class or working class. Typical Celtic punk bands are: Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, The Prodigals, The Real Mckenzies, Street Dogs, etc.
• Electropunk: a mixture of lyrics and punk attitude, with clear reference electronic music underground from new beat Centraleuropero, breakbeat-hardcore English and the growing influence of synthesizers in the mid-1980s of the EBM scene and industrial music. His main representatives began in 1990, in Essex (London): The Prodigy.

By theme or focus

• Anarcopunk: groups that link their music with themes or anarchist practices. The pioneer group were the British Sex Pistols, but bands like Dead Kennedys or Crass were the most influential in an anarchist theme.

Anarcopunk is linked to anarchy.

• Horror punk: is characterized mainly by his lyrics related to horror and Series-B movies and the entire image that accompanies them, such as zombies, ghouls, vampires, skeletons, etc; his aesthetic and music is very similar to deathrock, using makeup, hairstyles (such as the devilockpopularized by the pioneer Misfits band. 45 Grave also represented the first bands of punk horror as Misfits. Some bands are Misfits, Creepersin, Goblins, Diemonsterdie and 45 Grave among others.
• Gothic punk: is the punk branch that mixes punk and the Gothic aesthetic movement.
• Straight edge: groups that advocate non-drugs and some for vegetarianism. Minor Threat were pioneers.
• Oi!: related to the skinhead theme. It is often associated with the working class and/or the hooligans. Some examples can be Cockney Rejects, Sham 69, and Blitz.
• Skate punk: usually in style hardcore punk or melodic hardcore, groups related to the skate subculture.
• Queer punk or queercore: groups with homosexual components.

Books about punk

• Please kill meLegs McNeil and Gillian McCain.
• O'Hara, Craig, The Philosophy of PunkAK Press, 1999 ISBN.
• Bethlehem Gopegui, "Desire to be punk", 2009. ISBN 978-84-339-7652-9
• For the forgotten roots of punk rockDaniel F, 2013.
• Tomeu Canyelles, "Breu Història del Punk a Mallorca", Panorama 40Putes, 2014.