Punk music in the 70s and 90s Essay

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 information that has been provided about the subcultures of Hip Hop and Punk shows there are many differences between Hip Hop and Punk and several contributing factors that shape these subcultures but ultimately each one’s existence serves a similar purpose: a form of escape and expression. Prior to research, I was an outsider looking in on the two subcultures. Assumed no similarity at all, but I learned, when you take a deeper look and explore the pages they are different books carrying the same message.

What is punk rock? How many people know the real definition? Punk rocks values, attitude, and ideologies? Punk rock isn’t just a style or a scene but a way of life. It all started in the late 1970s, originating from the working class angst and frustrations many youth were feeling about the economic inequality. One of punks’ main oppositions was rejection of mainstream, corporate mass culture and its values. It continued to evolve its ideology of anti-racist and anti-sexist belief systems as the movement spread from its origins in England and New York to Northern America.

“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).

The opening riff, played by Iommi, heard in the beginning of the song creates the Heavy Metal genre right away. There are an emphasis on sophisticated and distinctive guitar solos and loud banging drums that are amplified by a sustained, distorted nervous energy to go along with the simple shrieking verses throughout the song, a highly valued characteristic of heavy metal genre. The musical style shifts from dancing to repeated listening pleasure. Ozzy’s howling and screeching vocals express mental anguish such as, “And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state… I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could

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.

The mid to late 1970s brought about a slow but steady change in punk rock. With the advent of heavy metal and punk rock bands an explosion of new rock genres emerged. The change was started by three bands from New York. The New York Dolls, the Dictators and the Ramones started a new trend that quickly spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world. It slowly caught on in the US and when it finally did the hardcore form of punk rock became a national expression for millions of teens and young adults for the next two decades.

Through out the song Bruce Springsteen keeps a depressed tone as if he has no hope in life. The constant tone in his voice maintains the melancholy feeling and makes one feel sad instead of mad of what is going on. The mood of the music matches the theme of the lyrics. The music sets a dismal feeling just like the words. The instruments used such as the guitar, the flute and the accordion set the perfect tempo for the gloomy song.

The chorus is very forte and it has quick volume increases by a synthesizer sounding instrument that accents the downbeats in the chorus. The use of the softness of the piano harmony complements this hardness perfectly in his three verses as you can hear it lingering in the back. The use of his fading in and out with the symbolic piano sound uses dynamics very effectively – especially his opening, which starts by only a unique piano melody creating that feeling of mystery, nostalgia, and adrenaline. Timbre plays a vital role in the layering of this track. The three main instruments come in at different times and add its own unique place in the song contributing to the overall mood of the song. First, it’s the light high pitched piano, which is unusual in a rap song. Then the dark low pitched guitar comes in when he starts asking the question and it’s soon followed by the heavy sounding drums as he starts to rap. The interesting use of timbre gives an acoustic and classical feel versus the drums and synthesizer of hip hop giving the song its diversity and originality.

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. Punk bands typically use short or fast-paced songs, with hard-edged melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY ethic; many bands self-produced recordings and distributed them through informal channels.

Once upon a time, there was a little kid named Ed “the Punk” Wood, aged fourteen, who enjoyed punk music more than anyone he ever knew. His friends Luke, Alex, and Joe always tagged along with him whenever there was a good punk show in town that they had to go see! So one day Ed spread the word about one of his favorite bands, The World Inferno/Friendship Society are coming to play at one of his favorite venues on earth, Asbury Lanes. Asbury Lanes was a bowling alley that was also a concert venue. Basically they shut down five or six of their bowling lanes and constructed the building into “not your mom and dad’s regular” bowling alley where you can watch great bands, eat some delicious tater tots, have a nice ice

Riot is full of metaphors for example “Because it’s a game of cat and mouse and you gonna bleed silent”and also in that metaphor there was personification “you gonna bleed silent” blood can't scream or talk so that's personification. The theme of this song is deep it's about racial equality and black prejudice. There are certain lines in this song where it talks about different events. For example

The song used hard kick and snare drums over a melodic synthesizer keyboard to deliver the story of impoverished life in the inner city. “Rats in the front room roaches in the back / junkies in the alley with the baseball bat.” I was seven years old listening to the radio when I first heard this line. By that time The Message was considered “old school” hip hop music. That line in The Message caused me to create mental images of rats and roaches, two things I viewed as disgusting. As a result, not knowing what a “junkie” was, I assumed it was synonymous with rats and roaches. Upon further research from questioning my third grade teacher Ms. Michael, she explained that a “junkie” is a person that uses drugs. That was all I needed to hear. When I was younger kids were shamelessly ridiculed for having roaches and rats in there home. You could be the coolest person in the school with the newest sneakers, but if word leaked that your home had rats and roaches, any and all coolness was eviscerated. Although it may seem shallow I always wanted to be considered cool by my peers, therefore I did not use

There is little history behind punk music, partly due to its fairly recent beginnings, and also partly due to the nature of the genre. Beginning in the early 1970s in the United Kingdom and eventually stemming out to the United States and Australia, punk music was never truly just about the music, it was also about the idealism, the fashion, the attitude, and particularly the shock factor. The nature of punk culture is based around a pessimistic attitude toward the future, which led to a lack of interest by the involved community documenting the history of the movement. This philosophy has been referred to as “no future”. Punk music arose from the fact that everyone was angry about virtually everything.

The punk subculture was one of the influential revolutions on the 20th century, which originated in in the 1970s and spread across countries that included the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. This subculture was based on a loud, aggressive genre of music called punk rock, and it intended to gain individual freedom for the working class. This essay explains the journey from the evolution and widespread of the punk subculture in the UK in 1980s. As the title suggests, punk fashion has been ruptured, tweaked and re interpreted by individuals and fashion designers over and over again, and its style has been re adapted to juxtapose on contemporary trends.