The Conservative Impulse of Punk

Ditto bebop, hair metal with respect to its progenitors (quite shameful, that), etc.

Then again...are we saying, with the question: "Arr, these young 'uns are a bunch of conservatives, unwilling to Embrace Our Truths?"

Just thinking out loud, not trying to make any major points or anything

I suppose you're bound to go a bit overboard if you're reacting against a place and time ('70s America, in the case of the initial punks) where the most popular band in the country is the fucking Eagles. I also think that part of it was not necessarily a vilification of hippie ideals but a vilification of the fact that they failed, sold out and started churning out "mellow" music that started dominating the charts. Also don't forget that the dominance of art-rock and virtuoso guitar bands like Zeppelin put more of an emphasis on technique than short pop songs with noisy semi-competent 20-second solos and lots of exuberant yelling -- which by no coincidence whatsoever was what said punks primarily listened to as schoolkids in the mid '60s.

and there was a conscious "back to the 50's" or at least pre-beatles thing going on in early punk - what with the eddie cochran covers and greaser get-ups.

hey i just heard someone on TV say "break-dancing was a short-term solution to gang violence"

and talking heads, gang of four, a certain ratio are all post-punk anyway... ;)

and, yeah, post-punk reacted against capital-p Punk's fundamentalism by experimenting again, but that's not really contradicting the fact that a lot (definitely definitely not ALL) of Punk had a back-to-basics streak in it.

and mark s., pls expand on yr "it was a mix". I was really curious to hear your thoughts on this question when I posted it.

maybe I'm drawing a false connection here, but was the anti-60's impulse of punk actually pro-'50's: a wish to return to a simpler time?
No. It was just as anti-50's as anti-60's. Possibly the reason it failed was that it wasn't pro-anything.

there were no over-arching tendencies, it was the end of a unity not the start of one: the pistols alone contained six complete distinct and incompatible youth sub-cultures (seven if you include jamie reid)

sorry fritz i am in the middle of a giant serious academic essay on TOLKIEN and the GOTHIC in CHILDREN's LITERATURE (true!!) for a journal devoted to education: if i try and think abt punk as well my head will rot to a pimple on top of my neck oh wait....

This thread is reminding me of how much I hated the Punk Magazine mentality and how welcome the diversity/pro-everything attitude of New York Rocker was when it showed up on the scene.

"darkness falls like a black leather jacket..."

http://zenorecords.com/enter.htm

You're dealing with a jumble of myths here anyway...if you're mentioning straightedge punk and glue-sniffers like the Ramones in the same sentence then "punk" is probably more inclusive than you think.

I would argue that hip-hop is *way* more reactionary than punk ever was...even the "conscious" strains so favored by liberal writers tend to espouse a "let's get back to God, family, and strong black men" ideology. But for all I know there are tons of underground hip-hop groups like the Coup (whose "Wear Clean Draws" is the one explicitly radical feminist hip-hop song I've heard.)

Anway, there is no necessary relationship between content and form in music or anything else. There's nazi punk and there's anarchist punk, and I'm sure you'd find the same thing in free jazz or whatever.

Punk was a reaction to the overly technical, glossy music that dominated rock, where no one released singles and every number had to have long solos - but that's largely a Brit's perspective, because I don't think it makes too much sense to talk of Television and Talking Heads that way. And there was as much '60s stuff that punk liked as '50s - Iggy was a way more revered figure than Eddie Cochran, obviously, but in both cases we are only talking about liking a couple of things. Dislike was much more what punk centred on.

Also, doesn't part of the Townsend-goes-cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs story that inspired "Who Are You" involve Pete running into a couple of the Sex Pistols at a pub (Steve and Paul, I think), telling them the Who were breaking up and then freaking when the Pistol members lamented "But we love the Who!" (Then again maybe he made that up to make himself look more "hep" and "with it".)

What I was trying to get at was that there was an element of conservatism in SOME of it, and moreso in how the story of punk gets retold ("rock n roll had lost its way and needed to be brought back to its roots").

OK - I really want to make it clear that I was never trying to make an inclusive generalization about ALL punk - I admit IT WAS A MIX.
It cannot be done. Punk is not a single genre or style, or even a mix of genres or styles. It is a rebellious spirit that all musicians feel when they are still young, brash and naive. Every new musical act has a little bit of punk in them. Hell, I'm sure even Michael Bolton has some c30s he recorded at age 14 that would be quite amusing (especially when we see how he turned out.)

Hardcore, though--that was definitely conservative in the beginning. At least to an old turd like me.

I saw the movie Downtown '81 a few months ago, and the funniest thing about it was just how uncool it was to be a mere punk rocker at that time. The laughing stocks of the movie are the fake punk rockers the Felons (basically Blondie) rehearsing in Bradly Field's basement. Everyone rolls their eyes whenever they're mentioned.

How does that match with your disdain for Oi! then? Is the moralist/vegan/anarchist form of punk more in line with the "art school" heritage of punk and thus more acceptable? How did such paradigms form?
This is actually a very good question. I admit a bias toward the "art school" sub-sub-sub-style, but thats not why Oi! annoys me. Its that at least half of it is been absorbed by some strain of Naziism. I've never met a smart Nazi, nor have I ever met one who wasn't a total drag. Granted extremely "leftist" and extremely "artsy-fartsy" musicians are just as boring and irritating. The Nazis just seem to be more likely to be fatally violent for no reason.

ppl who have a 'rebellious' spirit make remarkably similar music (even if the instrumentation is slightly different from band A to band B) and so you can identify, (by listening to the sound) what punk is, what it sounds like. The opinions of ppl in punk bands is already so boringly similar too.

''it's this idea that rock music had somehow been polluted by foreign influences like classical, jazz, folk, country & hippies in general and needed to be purified & returned to its basic, pure elements that strikes me as conservative (and I don't think its entirely untrue either)'' and ''later the all work no play ethic espoused by the sst & dischord crowds''

I honestly don't think you can lump SST in with the punk crowd strictly because it sounds to me that a lot fo the bands just ddin't swallow the 'punk' goespel and let it be. Some of those bands had open ears to jazz, reggae and so on.

I don't hate anybody...I'm a good person in the end but I just don't like being told that 'Funhouse' is one of the great rock alb of all time or guff like its a great distillation of free jazz and rock.

heh...julie. Thanks marky!

Lord Custos: "When Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake it was the most original novel of its day!! So now when I copy it word for word that will make me the most original novelist now living!!"

Also, Fritz: clarify what you mean by "conservative", I know you don't mean politically or aesthetically, but that word seems to be what keeps tripping me up.

Lord Custos: "When Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake it was the most original novel of its day!! So now when I copy it word for word that will make me the most original novelist now living!!"
You're wandering off, again, Mark. Focus on what I'm saying, not on what you think you suspect you seem to feel that I might possibly be implying...

custos! this is ALL WRONG! Like flat-out NOT TRUE.

the clash for one had rockabilly AND reggae influences (since you addressed that post to mark s., allow me to pipe in on his behalf: the clash R not punk and there R no influences) and k-zillion other punk bands with 50's rockabilly/roots/country in 'em or rockabilly/country/roots bands with punk in 'em.

besides which 2-Tone and Ska are the same thing not two different subgenres (oh ok you could argue that 2-tone was a subset of ska but who cares)! and SKA predates REGGAE let alone PUNK let alone reggae-tinged punk!

and if i could clarify what I meant by conservative I would but I've tried, man, I've really tried.

it may have been contrary to the mainstream culture, but the "back to basics" attitude of Ramones et al was about affirming the intended audience's beliefs that the culture had lost its way which = conservatism

The point is that these elements weren't usually used in a conservative manner. Reusing the past isn't always conservative. In the case of Punk it was commonly not a major point (maybe Whirlwind or something).

I reject the notion of 57-67. There was plenty Bowie, Kraftwerk, and T Rex there. There was plenty of hard rock. There was plenty of Disco there too. Man Machine, Silver Machine, Silver Convention.

"Ska grew out of punk" No it didn't.

"maybe three or four Punk bands with noticable rockabilly flava" Suicide, Generation X, The Birthday Party, The Clash, The Rezillos, B52s, Adam and the Ants. (and expand Rockabilly to cover all pre-Beatles American pop and its hard to find a band that isn't)

Fritz: the clash for one had rockabilly AND reggae influences..[..]
the clash for one had rockabilly AND reggae influences..[..]the clash R not punk and there R no influences
Uh....this is a contradiction...
a. the clash for one had rockabilly AND reggae influences..
b. the clash R not punk and there R no influences...
a. rockabilly AND reggae influences..
b. there R no influences...
a. influences...
b. no influences...

Fritz: and k-zillion other punk bands with 50's rockabilly/roots/country in 'em or rockabilly/country/roots bands with punk in 'em.
I guess I'm using an artificially narrow definition of Punk.

Fritz: and SKA predates REGGAE let alone PUNK let alone reggae-tinged punk!
When I say Ska(2) I'm referring to the white-people made version from the late 70s, not Ska(1) the original pre-Rockstready proto-Reggae dance music from 1950s Jamaica.

Fritz: and if i could clarify what I meant by conservative I would but I've tried, man, I've really tried.
Okay. Fair enough. What word should we use instead then, so we all stop bickering like partisans? Is this all about a "status-quo enforcing" impulse in Punk? A "return to the roots" impulse in Punk? A "fear of the different" impulse?

It's dialectical.

and please note that this is based on "Alley-Oop" not real facts

Roots reggae always had a conservative slant

and hell yeah to that! I still don't understand why the emperor-worshipping back-to-the-land anti-gay anti-woman pro-Bible religious elements of reggae get such a free pass to groovytown just because they smoke pot (take out the emperor and bible and you got the MC5 too)

Lord C. - what are the differences between ska(1) and ska(2)?

have I got an ILE thread for you ;)

The Clash and some others responded (I think) to the liberation theology in there - and the groove - but that spark seems to have been quite ably contained somehow.
Tragic, really. We shoulda let it all flow out of us.

I mean the last time I was over at June Cleaver's she had Bob Marley - "Legend" in her CD stack. And "London Calling".
Yeah, but YOUR June Cleaver is Rockist Scum who has the records but never listens to them. The June Cleaver I'm referring to still thinks Tony Bennett is too racy for her blood.

Fritz: have I got an ILE thread for you
Post a link, and I'll take a look.

That's Mark on the left getting rid of Custos in the middle while Fritz looks on in horror. I'm in the background with the white hat thinking "The hell?"

What you're talking about definitely applies to many punk subgenres, but I think the "alt-country" movement might be a better example of "musical conservatism."

Tracer I don't agree - the look is more negative than just jealousy. I read it as a bit of jealousy, a bit of fear, a bit of disappointment. I think punk - like most 'scenes' - must have been a crushing disappointment for a lot of scared or shy kids who wanted a place where they could 'fit in' and 'be themselves' and discovered that it *was* themselves who made them unable to fit in, not the square straight world (or whatever).

I'm reminded of the Venn Diagram Mark S reprints in his 'Concrete' essay - here are the punks and here are the non-punks and here are the people who don't fit into either. The reading is that those people are sympathetic but I think they can be sympathetic and also frightened and miserable and disappointed.

i suppose this is hardly earth-shaking news but it just goes to show: when is jello biafra going to get a propah job, eh? (i haf still not forgiven him for "too drunk to fuck", i paid GOOD MONEY FOR THAT you laYMoR)