When I first read the phrase "punk rock," I knew intuitively what it meant. It meant the malicious laugh in the midst of Syndicate of Sound's "Little Girl." It meant the snidely obnoxious way Rudy Martinez said "You're gonna cry" in ? and the Mysterians "96 Tears" - made "cry" sound sick, loathsome. It meant kids who terrorized other kids in junior high school hallways, those years when such songs were on the radio. I remember when a couple of kids in my school picked a fight with each other and then made rules about the fight - no kicking, no punching, no hitting in the face - so they ended up just shoving each other around, across the pavement. A friend of mine and I were there watching, and I said, "This reminds me of that song from last year..." He laughed and finished my sentence for me, "You're pushin' too hard." So that's one punk rock, kids who tried to make themselves feel strong by terrorizing weaker kids and singing hatred of girls, with any old I'll-get-even-with-you song on the radio as soundtrack. It's guys like the Young Rascals, early on, and Mouse & the Traps, who heard "Like A Rolling Stone" and didn't get its adventure and romanticism at all, just heard it as a way to tell some bitch off. Of course, this was all mixed up with straight pop sap (listen to the Troggs' "Love Is All Around"), coolness, and a dance into the unknown - who the fuck knew what was happening, this new world - and remnants of rock 'n' roll bounce and intimations of the really cool psychedelia that none of the punks could master. Anyway, this is how I first understood the phrase "punk rock," when it appeared in the early '70s, and if it meant any modern music it didn't mean the Dolls or Stooges - who were too self-reflective, would turn the gaze and the knife on themselves and on their audience. Might mean "Brownsville Station" or even "Sweet Home Alabama" but not "Search and Destroy" or "Personality Crisis." But then once I realized that "punk rock" was also being used for the Ramones and ilk, then of course it did very much mean those who turned the gaze and knives on themselves - the Dolls and Stooges in retrospect and subsequently the Sex Pistols (and I'd say again in retrospect the Stones and the Velvets and Dylan). And from there it could mean noisy sweethearts like X Ray Spex and the Clash and earnest do-gooders like Sham 69 and on. So that's a whole bunch of different types of punk, and there were many more to come. The most interesting to me were the ones who were mixing it up between "we're just normal guys lashing out at our exes" and "we're tearing everything up big-time" and "we're wearing our broken hearts under our hate" and so on, Electric Eels, Stooges, Dolls, Pistols. In 1978 I was sure that the Clash were the greatest band in the world, but I felt that the Contortions were more punk; I felt that Stevie Nicks' occasional punk moments outpunked the Clash, too, but she was just a normal heartbreak girl lashing out, not part of the Great Tear It Up or of any movement, and Ashlee's "I Am Me" [and little or nothing else by Ashlee] gets to be punk too in the Stevie way, not in the oppositional tear-it-all-up sense nor in the turn-the-knife-gaze-on-yourself-and-those-around but as a normal kid doing her lashout. And I think normal kid doing the lashout and dancing to the lashout is the wellspring for a lot of the other types of punk.
(And as I said above, there's a different and maybe even deeper well-spring, some obnoxious 10-year-old at the back of the schoolbus deliberately annoying the hell out of the driver, the teachers, everybody, including me, by singing "You make me want to la la" over and over and over until you want to scream, and it's not because "La La" is particularly punk - it's not - but because it's annoyingly catchy. And so "La La" is a wellspring not by being punk at all but providing the dance of the inner brat, maybe the real proto-everything-else. Though to be realistic, given what's on the radio, the kid's more likely to pick "Laffy Taffy.")
(When I was ten, and this really happened, the kids - there were two of them - were singing "She loves you yeah yeah yeah" about two million times, and boy was it irritating.)
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 12 December 2005 07:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 12 December 2005 07:48 (eighteen years ago) link
That is, might mean "Smoking in the Boys' Room" by Brownsville Station.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 12 December 2005 07:56 (eighteen years ago) link
What IS punk about Ashlee Simpson? Nothing.What IS NOT punk about Ashlee Simpson? Everything.
I mean, come on guys, I know you love to argue, but any part of this girl's image/"music"/success that works well is no thanks to her. It's a team of about 800 ppl. that is contractually obligated to ensure that this disturbingly average talentless shadow of a Texan virgin does not reveal her mediocrity to the world. Besides the boobs. But that was god's decision, really.
― scout (scout), Monday, 12 December 2005 08:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer: Deutsch Bag (latebloomer), Monday, 12 December 2005 08:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― edward o (edwardo), Monday, 12 December 2005 08:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 12 December 2005 08:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 12 December 2005 08:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― edward o (edwardo), Monday, 12 December 2005 08:48 (eighteen years ago) link
― scout (scout), Monday, 12 December 2005 10:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Monday, 12 December 2005 14:31 (eighteen years ago) link
Well, one of those names was on the cover of the album, but certainly I wouldn't say that some of the others aren't also deserving to be there. But that goes against standard practice. Arrangers, producers, songwriters, stylists etc. tend not to get their name in lights. Nelson Riddle didn't make the cover of the Sinatra records, Sam Phillips didn't make the cover of the early Elvis records, Andrew Loog Oldham didn't make the cover of the Stones, Greenwich and Barry didn't make the cover of the Shangri-Las, Holland Dozier Holland didn't make the cover of the Four Tops, etc. etc. etc. But anyway, even if you want to say that "I Am Me" is primarily Shanks and DioGuardi rather than Ashlee Simpson, how does that make it not punk, or not good?
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 12 December 2005 15:22 (eighteen years ago) link
("Wild Thing," if you're interested, was written by Chip Taylor, who had previously affiliated with Chet Atkins, one of the architects of the Nashville countrypolitan sound (Taylor wrote a song for Bobby Bare, "Just A Little Bit Later On Down The Line"!); after "Wild Thing," Taylor went on to work with James Taylor and to write and produce the country-inflected hit "Angel of the Morning." So, does this make "Wild Thing" unpunk?)
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 12 December 2005 15:46 (eighteen years ago) link
I haven't read Lester Bangs' "James Taylor Marked for Death" in quite a while. Does he mention Chip Taylor? Did he know that there was a James Taylor/Troggs connection? A lot of the piece is about the Troggs, and one of the questions it's posing is why the MC5's version of "I Want You" isn't as good as the Troggs', implying that it was now hard for people in the MC5's position to pull off what the Troggs had pulled off a few years earlier.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 12 December 2005 15:56 (eighteen years ago) link
Oh DO PLEASE give me a break.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 12 December 2005 15:59 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't think my aesthetics blind me to the fact that punk can come from anywhere. It's certainly present in Wild Thing, though I suspect that there it derives less from the sheet music than from whoever had the idea to have the loud guitars and drums all emphasize every single beat all the time, and of course from the sneering, leering, over-the-top vocals. And from the sheet music too, though the Troggs inhabit the song in a way that Chip Taylor may never have imagined when he wrote it. It's kind of present in Steppin' Stone, though in a much more controlled way. (Think Eddie and the Hot Rods, vice the Troggs' Sex Pistols.) Mickey Dolenz pushes the "anger" button, and out comes "anger," fairly convincingly, but still in quotes. There's nothing about the Troggs song that's in quotes.
I'm not sure that I know where the Troggs or the Monkees are coming from socially. Too far away in time. And it probably doesn't matter. The point here is that while punk is an interesting lens through which to view Wild Thing, and perhaps Steppin' Stone, it doesn't help much in explaining Ashlee. She's the wrong test case for the "Is ****** A Punk?" meme. In Ashlee's case, the more-or-less clear consensus here seems to be, well, "no." It's not that she can't make music that could be called "punk," just that she doesn't. There indeed may be a line tracing through Stevie to Courtney to Ashlee, and that's a more interesting line to pursue than the thin one that might connect Wild Thing to her.
― Sang Freud (jeff_s), Monday, 12 December 2005 17:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alice in Wonderland, Sunday, 15 January 2006 01:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alice in Wonderland, Sunday, 15 January 2006 01:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaxon (jaxon), Sunday, 15 January 2006 19:20 (eighteen years ago) link
Meanwhile, I now work for MTV.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Sunday, 1 October 2006 12:47 (seventeen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 1 October 2006 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 1 October 2006 13:43 (seventeen years ago) link
― maura (maura), Sunday, 1 October 2006 13:48 (seventeen years ago) link
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/arts/music/popcast-ashlee-simpson.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpopcast-pop-music-podcast&action=click&contentCollection=music®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&referer=https://www.nytimes.com/column/popcast-pop-music-podcast
first of two NYT podcasts on Ashlee
― President Keyes, Saturday, 10 March 2018 00:35 (six years ago) link
Boy, I was an angry young dad in 2005.
― Alex in NYC, Wednesday, 30 November 2022 17:24 (one year ago) link