Where this discussion gets REALLY interesting is when people start debating the merits of one strain of Punk vs. another.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Sid Vicious could play the bass
- Thread starter Panek
- Start date
Karen's skills on drums were a lot better than "rudimentary." She just didn't get a chance to show it on their music because it was singer music, not drum music.
You think American punk started with X and Black Flag? Not even close!
By that time I was traveling internationally with what was a Southern Rock band that quickly morphed into a Western Swing/Country Rock band to capitalize on the Urban Cowboy phenom. I already told you I was a total musical whore.
I don't think it started there, but it didn't end in 1980 either. Humbled was limiting the time frame of American Punk to 1975-1980.
I'm gonna split the difference between you and @Humbled and call the "center mass" of the punk movement as 1977.
This was the year the Ramones released second album "Leave Home," (January 19, 1977). I was already aware of the band, but as a suburban L.A. kid I took note of the fact that my local Licorice Pizza Records devoted a whole middle display rack to the album. This was a bold move, like moving the Corn Flakes down a shelf to highlight Bran Flakes. Both the US labels and (more importantly) the retailers were betting on punk. January 1977.
The record companies got a pitiful fistful back, of course, as the general consumer rejected punk as a gambit. But the major labels recouped handsomely when punk became "New Wave" early 80s, Boy George/George Michael/Frankie Says Relax/Madonna/Duran Duran.... For a good long spell it rained greenbacks on places such as Burbank, California, once the home of mighty Warner Brothers Records, who released "Never Mind The Bollocks" and also the second PiL album before falling out with Lydon when he characterized them in the press as straight up legit mobsters.
Last edited:
There are still people playing New Orleans jazz!I don't think any genre ever really "ends".
Many of the true aficionados I have known keep this on their top shelf. 1977 vintage:
Punk is like the VU: limited sales at the time and hugely influential over the decades. Every time I hear David Bowie's "Heros", I hear Lou Reed all over it.
That is true. It's still going on. As long as there are pissed off kids, it'll continue. Some of them have dubious reasons for being pissed off, but whatever
I think it fairly rapidly became different, but I think that there was more art-school influence early on.
Back in 1980 when I was starting secondary school you had the option of being a punk or liking ska, but some of the punk options people might now consider the first flush of New Romantics which seemed to be punk going back to art school to some extent, but from the other direction. But then you had punk bands dabbling in reggae and vice-versa so it's all a bit absurd as it was pretty fluid over a short period of time.
...and then yours truly posted a link to a good quality demo recorded at the Sex Pistols rehearsal space, with Sid on bass playing a song he wrote! So there's that one little bit of musicianship
I get the impression that the people in The Sex Pistols had little interest in it as anything long term, which might explain some of it. I look at it as an art project in and of itself like an installation. And there's nothing particularly wrong with that, but it's quite an art school view of things. There are many other bands that came up before then that were much more concerned about a form of career.
But then the boundaries of punk are really ill-defined. The Jam, as another example, seemed to toy with some of the guitar sounds of punk, but also the R&B background of mod along with the suits, but then The Beat were also wearing the suits and incorporating Motown and crossing over into punk from a different melting pot.
It seems like a pretty exciting period of music, more so than today, but then I also have no idea what 'the kids' listen to now. I do know it's not really music and you can't understand the lyrics. Now I have to ask you to get off my lawn.
Steve Jones and Paul Cook would have probably liked it to go longer, as they tried to make it happen again after Johnny and Sid left. In a very weird way by getting Great Train Robbery exile Ronald Biggs to sing a song, yes, but hey...
But Johnny clearly had plans to use it as a stepping stone.
This is a legit argument. And then of course there is Patti Smith guitarist and rockologist Lenny Kaye, who put together the nuggets compilations in part to build the case that songs like "Dirty Water" were the first punk efforts and anthems.
