The Conservative Impulse of Punk

mark s bewhiskered trope #1: who is nevah betrayed nevah grows up

Yes LC but I understand the difference between Ska(1) and Rocksteady - I asked the difference between Ska(1) and Ska(2) - so is there a musical difference?
Hmmmm. Well, yeah. Ska(1) is dreamier and more...I dunno...soulful? Its a cliche, but its also true. But what it really boils down to subtle differences in the singer and the brass section.
Ska(1) == A real Jamaican accent and a slightly Cajan/New Orleans tinge to the brass section. Like a proto-funky Glenn Miller.
Ska(2) == A fake british accent and a more frantic/abrupt brass section. And although I haven't checked it out with a metronome, Ska(2) sounds like it uses faster tempos. Obviously the music of white punks you like Reggae...in theory...but who finds the vaguely hippee-like vibe of Rastafarianism to be off-putting.

that photo obv = the great punX0r Rorschach test!! Fritz's formulation is clear and sensible enough to stand up to almost everything said here so far so I perversely wanted to complicate it - it's TOO lucid for punk. I think Clyde is OTM - it works better for other things. DC hardcore and straightedge. and emo!! (at least fashion-wise) All of whom were working with a, ahem, legacy of punk so punk doesn't entirely evade the charges. The image of punk that I like is people who, from the vantage point of the crowd, had the attitude first and all the musical underpinnings second - is this too simple? - all the high-school band teachers told their students "get legit first - THEN you can wail" and the punks reversed this. JUDGE us = throw us into the charts like all the other Christian swine, even though we're wailing far before we're legit. Overcoming expectations: it's crude, we look weird, you are laughing us off: prepare to get rocked. the fantasy of EVERY disappointed misfit kid, from Dylan Klebold to the Second-From-Left girl you're imagining. (the difference between a school shooting, the Sex Pistols, and a betrayed fan = ::::::::::: ??) I am still avoiding the question I know.

I guess it depends whether the fantasy of EVERY disappointed misfit kid, from Dylan Klebold to the Second-From-Left girl is a)"I will have the last laugh on these fools" or b)"I will restore order because things are all terribly wrong" and maybe sometimes a) rises from an initial yearning for b), and that's what I was trying to get at with this thread. (but i will change my mind in 10 minutes anyway)

just thinking that the creative impulse might be intertwined with a retrogressive one, I guess.

i've used it before, but here's a semi-lame analogy: Punk as Pol Pot. We're going to build a great new society by going back to the traditional ways, but first we have to get rid of all this technology and book-learnin'.

"i've used it before, but here's a semi-lame analogy: Punk as Pol Pot."
In that case, what would be the equivalent of "Holiday In Cambodia"? And would the epic post-solo chorus go "Roll...ins... Roll... ins... ROLLINS ROLLINS ROLLINS ROLLINS"

Vaguely remembered from a Hankypoo interview: "Yeah, you go ahead and sing songs about smacking bitches or whatever. I'll be sitting over here waiting for music to be real again."

Jello Biafra also put down techno in (I think) the Onion's AV Club because it made people want to dance mindlessly instead of prepare for cultural revolution and billboard defacement and vandalizing McDonald's and participating in Critical Mass or whatever. OH NO

"i will restore wrongs because these laughs are all terribly ordered"

techno has resulted in more lame "culture-jamming" than any DK albums ever!!

Tracer your view of punk is a bit too "there's no such word as can't" for me. Or "Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway"!

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.

hey i just got in touch with colette (of venn diagram fame)!! she is a grown-up with a propah job!!

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)

Well I like the DKs. I just think Jello's views on not-punk music, when not pertaining to the censorship thereof, are kind of weird. Like dig when they came out with "Triumph of the Swill" on Bedtime For Democracy they mocked hair-metal pretty severely, but then Dee Snider gets called into the PMRC trials and all of a sudden Biafra has to side with him as an anti-censorship crusader or something. Weird how that happens.

Well, I think Biafra will happily ally himself with anyone who is anti-censorship...but that doesn't mean he has to like their music.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" as the Moslems are fond of saying.

that would be a wicked t-shirt!

anybody else have nekkid siouxsie pix to post?