Unfortunately this is what most people think of as punk. Just another straight-jacketed rigid category for lazy musicians who had no ideas of their own. Just what REAL punk came to do away with.
That's one way of understanding it. Punk was also a reaction to groups like Pink Floyd, Yes, Steely Dan, etc. whose music seemed inaccessible for and out of touch with the average working class teen in the 70s who saw no way out of his present circumstances of inheriting his dad's job as a painter, plumber, factory worker; who also had no other skills upon which to build an escape route; and by whom the previous decade's values of love and peace declining into over produced "albums", glitzy stage shows with expensive tickets, long drawn out songs that required training in jazz or classical theory to grasp, and the decadence of cocaine and satin pants were considered a massive failure, sell out, and betrayal of everything they saw as important from the 60s and early 70s - freedom, independence, rejection of authority. Unlike the teens from the late 60s-early 70s who were rejecting their parents' values, these guys were rejecting their parents' values as well as the values of the previous decade.
Debbie Harry was undoubtedly part of the CBGB scene, but punk? She doesn't sound punk, and didn't she also have a little problem with Cocaine and satin pants? Hmmm...
I don't disagree, and here's why: Let's not undervalue the people who followed the bands, who went to the shows - these *were* the real punks, these people made the bands worth something and made the bands part of the picture. These guys were also punk when they weren't picking fights at the local pub. If in the latter 70s they were sporting mohawks and safety pins, then that is what punk was. We also have to remember that the early original punk bands didn't call themselves punk, just like Led Zep and Sabbath never called themselves metal back in 1969-1971, they were just playing rock and roll in their own voice. It's the fans who came to see them who made the scene.
Interestingly, prior to all this, "punk" was slang for a prison boy toy, or the young partner of an older homosexual - so don't discount Malcolm Maclaren's role in creating what we today think of as punk... his intent was BDSM clothing and accessories turned into fashion and put on stage with a ready made audience. Think about that next time you strap on a dog collar, spiked wrist band, eye liner, and torn shirt and start feeling all macho.
Henry Rollins - now *that* man is all about the attitude that we know of as punk. Stripped of
all BS!!
