A Personal Punk Rock Paradigm
When did this so-called “punk rock” begin? Or more importantly, when did it begin for you? When did this angry, middle finger in your face, angst-ridden, thought to be, hoped to be rather, flash in the pan take hold? Was the two and one-half minute, socially conscious three chord raging scream the Answer to one-song long side two opuses from psychedelic acidheads who jammed for twenty-seven minutes with wind chimes and violin bows on their stratocastors? Did the pogo, gobbing and slam dancing replace white-hot pyrotechnics, ten-inch tongue-wags and the field level-seating wristband? Did stage-dives and crowd surfing usurp the pop throne of Broadway like theatrical extravaganzas complete with upside down drum solos and three-dimensional set design? Let’s face it music fans, the backlash is inevitable.
Some would say it started with the early Seventies post glam nihilists like the Fugs and The Stooges (soon to be known as Iggy Pop), or was it before that. We’ve all seen our favourite Mod, Pete Townsend as the amped out speed freak hopped up on “goofballs” destroying the stage and equipment. His band, The Who, had a progressive, disenchanted sound that smacked in the face of the pop/blues based “Mersey-beat” made so popular by their fellow countrymen.
Let’s go further, the Southern blues men and free jazz practitioners in the Mid-west’s Metropolitan dark corner speak easies were very radical, smoking marijuana and drinking home-made solutions until nearly blind jamming until all hours. Mostly black men, they were feared and hated those who subscribed to main stream pop culture of the day, doo-wop, dippity-do bullshit, vomited up by squeaky-clean, WASP friendly crooners.
In the early nineteenth century an Italian solo violinist, Nicolo Paganini, flabbergasted audiences in an era when opera singers were the only performers of note. He contrasted their pretentious fat woman theatrics by wearing tight pants and sporting extremely long hair. His performances are the first to have documented accounts of fanatical woman fans screaming and fainting. He held such mastery over his instrument and audiences that soon he was accused of selling his soul to Satan, ala Robert Johnson in the 1930’s. A concert review of the time soberly related having seen Satan himself on stage guiding the hand of Paganini.
Punk Rock is the backlash. It just didn’t get tagged “punk” until about 1973. From Paganini’s operatic backfires, Little Richards Negro piano and Elvis’s gyrating hips, me generation angry kids on both sides of the Atlantic spitting at the audience, to affluent white suburban surfer/skaters disgruntled with successful parents and the American dream. Punk is the backlash, the reaction, not the music. The style is secondary. What caused the backlash? What is this rage against? Why do music lifers of all varieties and all generations eventually tire of the convention that gets fat and boring and demand the envelope be pushed, the decibels blare and the message say “fuck you establishment?” Who are we; this ages old Klan of malcontents who through the times seek out and embrace the new, the angst, and the anti. Who are these fans that shit upon the stodgy and laugh with whole hearts at whatever may be the current icon on the pop landscape?
We are the real fans. We are the ones who rail against the status quo. Though there was a bonafide punk rock scene at the time, in 1978 I was stuck in an elementary school vacuum that could never reveal such progressive ideals. The New York CBGB sounds of Blondie and The Ramones, their English counterparts, The Sex Pistols, The Clash and the rest of those socialistic, working class pride, queen hating Brits, and later, a revised, refreshed California sound, goodbye Eagles and Crosby Stills and Nash, hello Black flag and Dead Kennedy’s, was alive and well and I was oblivious to it. Kids in my class were bringing the “popular” records to school, the big ones of the day, ABBA, The Bee Gees, Village People, other disco tripe and the Grease Soundtrack. In my early pursuance of acceptance, I decided that I should bring some records to school.
My parents’ record collection combined had about a dozen albums and maybe fifty 45’s. My old man had a pretty cool Manfred Mann and Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots are made for walkin’. My mom was big on Mo-Town as a teen, which I must admit was pretty punk rock in the mid sixties for a white middle class teen-age girl. She spun tales of Ike and Tina Turner at the Apollo in 65’ during the Watts riots, somehow taking in the concert and the riots in one magical L.A. weekend. Having no access to other music, no older siblings, no money, no frequent trips to the mall etc. I had to make do with what I had. I set off to school armed with one Michael Jackson; Rockin Robin 45, the B-side to Ben I believe, the aforementioned Nancy Sinatra work and Shaft, The Original Movie Soundtrack. Of course most of the class cracked up at what were obviously my parents records and the teacher seemed faintly reminiscent of them. But my two good friends, Todd Estelle and Tim McMullen loved them. They had been to my house when we would play them from boredom on my parents pull out consol stereo, and these were our favourites. Nancy was so hot, like a dominatrix with her sexy, threatening boots. Of course, who doesn’t love any thing by the even then king of pop, Michael Jackson? And yes, Shaft is a Bad Mother Fucker.
The three of us were the lunatic fringe; we were the only ones to embrace this different sound. We flew in the face of popularity, daring to be different, blasting Shaft and Nancy during inside recess due to weather. Our contemporaries thought queer of us and that soon became the motivating factor. If they hated it, we liked it. If they bought it, we cursed it. We were not dismissed though, we wouldn’t have it, and we would be accepted as the fringe, the minority, an alternate voice in our insular little world. This would soon progress to our dressing and speaking just a little differently as the need to further separate and identify ourselves grew…I was hooked!
I loved it. I loved the sense of camaraderie that developed as we three nerds found a common bond. I loved how we ran roughshod against the most popular grain and the notoriety that soon followed. Now one could be noted, and be popular without being “cool”, one could have a sense of belonging and purpose even if it is only based on something that some may deem relatively meaningless, a common passion for music. The feeling is intoxicating. One feels as if they’re in on a secret of some sort. Something that only the small minority knows about. Superiority at it’s finest. Scoffing at the force-fed contemporary radio sounds and those weaklings who subscribe to it. Now we can have something over even the coolest kids in school.
This addiction continued to be satiated from then on. In junior high it was my nerdy model rocket friends who put the punk rock spin on things by shooting the rockets at each other from across the schools field, cranking The J. Geils Band, Freeze Frame on someone’s sisters very crappy boom box. We thought it was hard-core because it was loud. Then early on in high school I was turned on to the real deal, the for real punk rock scene. I went to see The Addicts and the Bad Brains at The Jackie Robinson YMCA in about 1984 and that was it, punk rock forever!
To be cont...work in progress
When did this so-called “punk rock” begin? Or more importantly, when did it begin for you? When did this angry, middle finger in your face, angst-ridden, thought to be, hoped to be rather, flash in the pan take hold? Was the two and one-half minute, socially conscious three chord raging scream the Answer to one-song long side two opuses from psychedelic acidheads who jammed for twenty-seven minutes with wind chimes and violin bows on their stratocastors? Did the pogo, gobbing and slam dancing replace white-hot pyrotechnics, ten-inch tongue-wags and the field level-seating wristband? Did stage-dives and crowd surfing usurp the pop throne of Broadway like theatrical extravaganzas complete with upside down drum solos and three-dimensional set design? Let’s face it music fans, the backlash is inevitable.
Some would say it started with the early Seventies post glam nihilists like the Fugs and The Stooges (soon to be known as Iggy Pop), or was it before that. We’ve all seen our favourite Mod, Pete Townsend as the amped out speed freak hopped up on “goofballs” destroying the stage and equipment. His band, The Who, had a progressive, disenchanted sound that smacked in the face of the pop/blues based “Mersey-beat” made so popular by their fellow countrymen.
Let’s go further, the Southern blues men and free jazz practitioners in the Mid-west’s Metropolitan dark corner speak easies were very radical, smoking marijuana and drinking home-made solutions until nearly blind jamming until all hours. Mostly black men, they were feared and hated those who subscribed to main stream pop culture of the day, doo-wop, dippity-do bullshit, vomited up by squeaky-clean, WASP friendly crooners.
In the early nineteenth century an Italian solo violinist, Nicolo Paganini, flabbergasted audiences in an era when opera singers were the only performers of note. He contrasted their pretentious fat woman theatrics by wearing tight pants and sporting extremely long hair. His performances are the first to have documented accounts of fanatical woman fans screaming and fainting. He held such mastery over his instrument and audiences that soon he was accused of selling his soul to Satan, ala Robert Johnson in the 1930’s. A concert review of the time soberly related having seen Satan himself on stage guiding the hand of Paganini.
Punk Rock is the backlash. It just didn’t get tagged “punk” until about 1973. From Paganini’s operatic backfires, Little Richards Negro piano and Elvis’s gyrating hips, me generation angry kids on both sides of the Atlantic spitting at the audience, to affluent white suburban surfer/skaters disgruntled with successful parents and the American dream. Punk is the backlash, the reaction, not the music. The style is secondary. What caused the backlash? What is this rage against? Why do music lifers of all varieties and all generations eventually tire of the convention that gets fat and boring and demand the envelope be pushed, the decibels blare and the message say “fuck you establishment?” Who are we; this ages old Klan of malcontents who through the times seek out and embrace the new, the angst, and the anti. Who are these fans that shit upon the stodgy and laugh with whole hearts at whatever may be the current icon on the pop landscape?
We are the real fans. We are the ones who rail against the status quo. Though there was a bonafide punk rock scene at the time, in 1978 I was stuck in an elementary school vacuum that could never reveal such progressive ideals. The New York CBGB sounds of Blondie and The Ramones, their English counterparts, The Sex Pistols, The Clash and the rest of those socialistic, working class pride, queen hating Brits, and later, a revised, refreshed California sound, goodbye Eagles and Crosby Stills and Nash, hello Black flag and Dead Kennedy’s, was alive and well and I was oblivious to it. Kids in my class were bringing the “popular” records to school, the big ones of the day, ABBA, The Bee Gees, Village People, other disco tripe and the Grease Soundtrack. In my early pursuance of acceptance, I decided that I should bring some records to school.
My parents’ record collection combined had about a dozen albums and maybe fifty 45’s. My old man had a pretty cool Manfred Mann and Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots are made for walkin’. My mom was big on Mo-Town as a teen, which I must admit was pretty punk rock in the mid sixties for a white middle class teen-age girl. She spun tales of Ike and Tina Turner at the Apollo in 65’ during the Watts riots, somehow taking in the concert and the riots in one magical L.A. weekend. Having no access to other music, no older siblings, no money, no frequent trips to the mall etc. I had to make do with what I had. I set off to school armed with one Michael Jackson; Rockin Robin 45, the B-side to Ben I believe, the aforementioned Nancy Sinatra work and Shaft, The Original Movie Soundtrack. Of course most of the class cracked up at what were obviously my parents records and the teacher seemed faintly reminiscent of them. But my two good friends, Todd Estelle and Tim McMullen loved them. They had been to my house when we would play them from boredom on my parents pull out consol stereo, and these were our favourites. Nancy was so hot, like a dominatrix with her sexy, threatening boots. Of course, who doesn’t love any thing by the even then king of pop, Michael Jackson? And yes, Shaft is a Bad Mother Fucker.
The three of us were the lunatic fringe; we were the only ones to embrace this different sound. We flew in the face of popularity, daring to be different, blasting Shaft and Nancy during inside recess due to weather. Our contemporaries thought queer of us and that soon became the motivating factor. If they hated it, we liked it. If they bought it, we cursed it. We were not dismissed though, we wouldn’t have it, and we would be accepted as the fringe, the minority, an alternate voice in our insular little world. This would soon progress to our dressing and speaking just a little differently as the need to further separate and identify ourselves grew…I was hooked!
I loved it. I loved the sense of camaraderie that developed as we three nerds found a common bond. I loved how we ran roughshod against the most popular grain and the notoriety that soon followed. Now one could be noted, and be popular without being “cool”, one could have a sense of belonging and purpose even if it is only based on something that some may deem relatively meaningless, a common passion for music. The feeling is intoxicating. One feels as if they’re in on a secret of some sort. Something that only the small minority knows about. Superiority at it’s finest. Scoffing at the force-fed contemporary radio sounds and those weaklings who subscribe to it. Now we can have something over even the coolest kids in school.
This addiction continued to be satiated from then on. In junior high it was my nerdy model rocket friends who put the punk rock spin on things by shooting the rockets at each other from across the schools field, cranking The J. Geils Band, Freeze Frame on someone’s sisters very crappy boom box. We thought it was hard-core because it was loud. Then early on in high school I was turned on to the real deal, the for real punk rock scene. I went to see The Addicts and the Bad Brains at The Jackie Robinson YMCA in about 1984 and that was it, punk rock forever!
To be cont...work in progress
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