The Hot August Night Inside The Echo 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.

In the 1950s, when rock was developed, one of the first groups to drift to it was teenagers, being attracted to its themes of rebellion and non conformity. Certain groups of individuals have sprung up around certain musical styles. For instance, punk, techno, and ethnic music all include some type of subculture that embrace an entire lifestyle.

Differences in beliefs and values from what the “norm” considers the right way makes you a subculture, but what makes them unique are the instruments they use to make their voice heard. While most people have taken for granted their language, beliefs and values there are some who within their subculture use their music to escape forms of oppression and lack of freedom. Hip Hop and Punk are two large subcultures that are well known through out the world. There are many differences between Hip Hop and Punk and several contributing factors that shape these subcultures but ultimately each one’s existence

In order to understand why punk came about the preceding periods will be considered. The baby boom after the war had resulted in a large amount of people being born at the same time. A knock on effect later down the line resulted in mass unemployment for young people. The punk era showed angry,

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.

In Justin Pearson's memoir, From the Graveyard of the arousal Industry, he recounts the events that occured from his early years of adolesence to the latter years of his adulthood telling the story of his unforgiving and candid life. Set in the late 1970s "Punk" rock era, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry offers a valuable perspective about the role culture takes in our lives, how we interact with it and how it differs from ideology.

My friends and I walk into a packed venue, and are immediately met by a young guy with shaggy brown hair and a skull hoodie, who holds up a white piece of paper with a hastily scrawled "$8" in the center. I pull out my worn wallet from the left pocket of my leather jacket. My hands strain momentarily to pull the snaps open, before my fingers find their way to my single worn 10 dollar bill. The man hands me two dollars in change and stamps my hand with a blue paw print, and I turn to face the stage. All the while a man has been screaming and singing on stage, not unpleasantly. The vibe of this crowd feels different from the normal one, rougher. They have a more hardcore look to them, and I've never seen Alexia's band play with one that yells, other than one time at a small coffee shop in which a single kid with an acoustic guitar spent twenty minutes strumming and screaming slam poetry into the mic, while my friend and I sipped iced vanilla lattes in the other room.

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.

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.

Throughout the entire world, music is one thing that is a constant. From Africa to Antarctica, music can be found. There are literally millions of types of music out there: Rock, Rap, Pop, EMO, Hard-core, Ska, Latin, Classical. The list goes on and on. But one form of music has had one of the most significant histories of them all: Punk rock. A look into the history of this type of music will help us understand why punk rock sounds and feels the way it does. It is necessary to look at the types of dancing, different types of punk rock, and the reasons behind it to understand how and why this type of music formed.

Everyone belongs to a subculture and every subculture has their niche in society. To the untrained eye, mosh pits look like unruly fighting rings. The purpose of mosh pits, however, is not to hurt people, but rather to “release frustrations and celebrate music” (Clark par. 1). Mosh pits offer a place for people to express themselves in an appropriate manner and setting, which otherwise would not be considered fitting outside of the pit. In my course of studying the subculture of mosh pits, I grew to better understand their purpose and the emotions they give off.

“That Evening Sun” by William Faulkner is a good example of a great emotional turmoil transferred directly to the readers through the words of a narrator who does not seem to grasp the severity of the turmoil. It is a story of an African American laundress who lives in the fear of her common-law husband Jesus who suspects her of carrying a white man's child in her womb and seems hell bent on killing her.

With the economic decline and availability of jobs with upward movement, a culture of youths formed in Britain that challenged the ideals and cultural norms of the generations that came before them. A consistent movement from traditional society through youth subcultures brings light through the eyes of the musicians that describe their generation’s feelings of homelessness in an era filled with unemployment, low wages, and violence. The insurgence of the counterculture movement, poor economic conditions, and the commercialization of previous Rock and Roll music in Britain directly led to the punk subculture because it allowed youths to speak up about their conditions and frustrations through an easily understood and accessible medium while maintaining a different stance than their predecessors.

During the mid-1970’s, the Punk subculture emerged between both the US and the UK. At the end of the 1960’s bands such as Velvet Underground began to form an ‘underground rock movement’ , it is from here that a ‘cultural exchange’ began between the US and UK, generating Punk Rock. Punk was a form of artistic liberation. It was an era which emerged after a decade which focused on the ‘utopian idealisms of the sixties’ . Advocates and followers of the Punk subculture aimed to confront mainstream society.

At boy band concerts, the general admission standing floor is an open space in front of the stage; concert attendees buy tickets at a single price and try to get as close to the stage as possible by lining up in front of the concert venue as early as twelve hours before doors open (Stone, 2015). The vast majority of the concert attendees have the same motivation: 1) to get a clear view of the stage and 2) to be as close to the front as possible. These motivations in fans could be combined with such a feeling of desperation that any kinds of hierarchies (like position int he crowd) or culturally-specific paradigms of politeness that could govern their behavior are dissolved. In the midst of a boy band concert, the general admission floor, constituted of at least a hundred individuals that are separated by no groups or hierarchies, often sees widespread pushing at the very least as an emergent property, which can then erupt into more intense types of violence. For example, at a One Direction concert in Lima, Peru, the pushing in the general admission crowd was so intense that forty-seven people had to be treated for asphyxia (Gusmaroli, 2014).