Philosophical analysis a broad range of perspectives on the developments in punk rock music, while rational arguing as We watch, observe and over time realize that much of it has become commercialized, undermining its original philosophy energy, angry, and passion of rebellion and alienation. In reviewing this you'll see how punk started from the underground sub-culture of punk roots and then followed them to see what happened when they went commercial.
Gina does a brilliant job of speaking to those of us who sort of nostalgia you get when you were your a punk kid thus growing up on the Clash and the Sex Pistols and later PiL and X and the Replacements and REM. Moreover Gina's book is about the recent commercialization of punk She
“He [Pearson’s father] would freak out when he read the song titles to the cassettes that my friends and I would shoplift from the mall…He was certain that I’d become a Junkie if I listened to that kind of music. But with an alcoholic wife-beater father who didn’t give a shit about his son I was bound to avoid the cliched, nihilist aspects of punk culture” (Pearson 12).
Nevertheless, punk shouldn’t be held to such high standards of influence. It’s influential; it’s something that made misfits feel as though they had a place, but not something to be held to the unattainably high standards. All things considered, it did do something positive, it provided a home and inclusive environment for those who were frustrated and just plain angry.
Music has been a long standing form of expression for hundreds of years. More recently however, it has become a way for artists to make social commentaries on the society they live in. During the 1970s, Punk bands and Ska bands emerged in England and rose to become a major source of social commentary through their upbeat music. Specifically looking at music from The Stranglers, The Specials, and The Clash, it is clear that lyrics clouded with anger and passion can be best communicated through upbeat sounds and melodies. Each of these groups communicates a need for radical change in society; but each one goes about this in a different way. Through the songs, “I feel like a Wog,” by The Stranglers, “A Message to you Rudy,” by The Specials, and “White Riot,” by The Clash, these bands point out that there is a common enemy in Society. They are forcing the mainstream to realize unpleasant truths about the culture that they inhabit. The future of England was unknown, and these songs were written during a time where people were worried about their place in the world. Faith in the system was dying and these bands gave way to a future generation to improve upon society that will present a more positive and equal multicultural Britain. Through the music it is clear that multicultural Britain was complicated; there were tumultuous times that these bands were commenting on, which pitted races against each other but also brought them together in fighting back against suppressive societal
Mike Ness is the lead singer and has seen how the “punk rock style” changed from being looked down upon and then slowly became culturally accepted. The “punk rock style” in 2014 is very criticized and looked down upon within our society. In my experiement culture shcok was probably the most prevalent sociological
Music, in the past, has often spelled bad news to society at large. It can challenge norms and invoke a sense of hype in places that modern culture may be uncomfortable with, such as sex, sexuality, and drugs. Personally, when I think of punk music, I see a genre that stands to be individualistic, aggressive, and rebellious. Phrases such as ‘anti-establishment’ also come up. This notion comes from many aspects of punk subculture, including dress, music, performance, and my interpretations.
In order to understand the topic that is to be discussed in this essay, one must first understand two seemingly unrelated topics. Those topics are feminism and punk rock. These two social movements spawned the love child that has come to be known as the riot grrrl movement. The history of the riot grrrl movement is deep and intensely intertwined with themes of monumental social change, musical evolution, and the previously unseen all-encompassing nature that is unique to third wave feminism.
For many of those within the punk subculture, negotiation between the expression of their punk identity and expectations of the roles they had to play in their working environment were forced to take place. With the chance of restrictive rules in place, limiting self-expression, it can be difficult for a person to feel content in their work place
Marker Amerika expands on this theme in remixthebook (potentialism). In his piece Cranked Up Real High: Genre Theory and Punk Rock, Stewart Home demonstrates the effects of remixing and the punk rock age. Through experimentalism, Pierre Christin and Enki Bilal demonstrates the characteristics of the punk.
The previous year, when the punk rock revolution began in Great Britain, was to be both a musical and a cultural "Year Zero". Even as nostalgia was discarded, many in the scene adopted a nihilistic attitude summed up by the Sex Pistols slogan "No Future"; while "self-imposed alienation" was common among "drunk punks" and "gutter punks", there was always a tension between their nihilistic outlook and the "radical leftist utopianism" of bands such as Crass, who found positive, liberating meaning in the movement. As a Clash associate describes singer Joe Strummer's outlook, "Punk rock is meant to be our freedom. We're meant to be able to do what we want to do."
The attitude common in the subculture is the resistance to selling out, which means abandoning one’s values and changing in musical style toward pop to embrace anything that’s mainstream capitalist culture in the exchange for money, status, or power. Punk rocks’ common thinking wasn’t only anti-authoritarism, and not selling out but also non-conformity, direct action, and a DIY ethic. The DIY attitude was pointed towards stepping forward and speaking without any restraint. To fight with warrior qualities to achieve what you were striving for. The kind of thinking and motives for punk rock subjects was to not settle for what society made acceptable and standard but to think and work outside of the box that was holding them in.
Punk music is usually defined by power chords, raw vocals and high energy performance. Punk rock is the best music ever created. It is, in short, a thinking man’s rock music. And to some, it’s like God himself ordained punk rock as His preferred music of choice. Why? Because it’s just that good. Hundreds of faithful teens and twenty-something adults pack themselves into basements shows like sardines in a tin, just to have their holy gospel delivered to them by guys with names like “Johnny Rotten,” “Justin Sane” or “Davey Havok.” Punk rock is the best musical style for numerous reasons. The reasons might seem simple, but the difference between punk and mainstream music is that punk is just better. It’s clever, thoughtful and passionate. On
Punk rock music has been used for decades to express dissatisfaction with society, government, or any idea common in mainstream media. Yet punk rock is not simply a tangent of the mainstream, it is a dynamic and fluid genre with many distinct songs. Don Letts, a mainstay in the London punk scene during the 70’s and 80’s, went as far to say that hip-hop was essentially “black” punk. While punk and hip-hop music are stylistically different, the fundamental tone of the two genres is the same. Even throughout the decades, hip-hop has sang the same issues as punk, including the plight of the lower class, police brutality, and gang violence.
The majority of these bands fall under the punk rock genre, however, they have several genres under rock that they fall under as well. Some of these sub-genres include: pop rock, screamo, metalcore, hard rock, and rap rock. Punk rock was important to me because of the raw emotions and stylistic guitar solos that hit my heart strings. In the 1970s, the music genre’s incarnation was said to be “simple, against the increasing complexity of other rock and pop forms” and that “the noise of punk cames as much from the amateurish or calculatedly dissonant musicianship as from brandishing the usual rock tools of volume and distortion”. In other words, its simplicity and development, without formal training, made it easier to fit into the mainstream music scene.
Though they had founded a solid community, they hungered for a vaster one. Along with their friends from fellow punk band, Bratmobile, they moved to Washington D.C., where they found themselves among a thriving alternative scene of like-minded visionaries, and thus, was the advent of Riot Grrrl. Kathleen, Tobi, Allison Wolfe and Molly Newman of Bratmobile and Jen Smith, all fanzine veterans and musicians came together to create a ‘zine called “Riot Grrrl,” which essentially expressed feminist ideas through a punk lense, just as they’d demonstrated in their music. This ‘zine, this concept, was a response to a popular misnomer that “feminism was dead or irrelevant.” Such an idea was exemplified in the skewed and male-dominated punk scene of the late eighties and early nineties, in which men manipulated what was previously a healthy outlet of aggression and rebellion to an extremist level, wherein severe physical violence often presented itself, such as what as the behaviour seen in Mosh
Most of the original rebellion was directed towards the British class structure. They wanted to express their disapproval of the structure that governed their country. In The Jam’s “Eton Rifles”, the band sarcastically attacks the upper class, calling them arrogant and preaching to them that rugby is the only thing making them strong (Punk 68). The Sex Pistols’ album “God Save The Queen” portrays the Queen of England with a safety pin through her nose on their cover. The reaction to this outburst of shocking rebellion from the mainstream society was a strong, displeased one. American writer Greil Marcus defined punk as, “…refusing the future society has planned for you.” Thousands of social misfits attempted just that. Through the many causes for this rebellious political expression: communism, anarchy, feminism, etc., the punks of England had a focus and a reason. It was this that made the “punk” a valid, yet undesired member of society, and the British public got to see this sociological change first hand (Chamberlain par.8). Although this movement was short lived, its impact was a phenomenon, and its effects were long- lasting, which distinguished this group from previous generations.