The Relationship Between Punk and Dada 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 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.

“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).

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 Sex Pistols embodied the anger and restless ambition. The Ramones, The Clash, The Dead Kennedys and the other punk bands of the late 1960s were all making their political claims. As time went on, there have always been punk bands to carry the torch. In recent years, bands like Angelic Upstarts, Drop Kick Murphy, Flogging Molly and Anti-flag have all had political messages. There is no shrinking to the sidelines to croon love songs and high school graduation themes. That certainly does not mean that all punk rock is political. It just means that punk rock has always been thoughtful and fully aware of what goes on in society, and that awareness has been reflected in the music.

     The punk subculture is often seen as a rebellious group of misguided youngsters who often come from lower class dwellings and haven’t gotten the attention that they needed so they dye their hair, dress differently, and act differently. In Facing The Music edited by Simon Frith, Mary Harron reduced the meaning of punk to “the spectacle of middle-class children dressing up in a fantasy of proletarian aggression and lying desperately about their backgrounds” (History). The flipside to that is that maybe these youths are expressing their individualism and choose to stray away from

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.

The Sex Pistols are a very important topic to bring to attention because they were such an influential band. Even though they only lasted two years, they “never really faded away.” (Dougan 413) According to Dougan, they are always present “when the words punk-rock are uttered” (413). The Sex Pistols not only instilled a love of punk rock, but also imagined a world where “a crud could become a king.” (Dougan 414-415). Hence, the Sex Pistols advocated for the English working class, and had a revolutionary impact against the norms

As a teenager growing up in 1970s Washington D.C. one might rise out of bed in the morning, squeeze into their bell bottoms and skin-tight t-shirts, not expecting that that would be the day they ran into a group of kids dawned in black with clothes pins in their shirts, who called themselves punks and were looking to make a change in DC music history. In a time where the country was divided by political beliefs, a raging war, and racial tensions, smack dab in the center of Washington D.C. came the punk scene. It was said that the hippie scene majorly influenced the punk scene, some would say that the hippies were “the real punks”(Punk: Attitude, 3:12). The punk scene consisted of kids who opposed hippies, so in retrospect the hippies are what

When the Punk Movement emerged in the mid-1970s in both the United States and United Kingdom, it spanned into such areas as fashion, music, as well as youth mentality and thus became its own type of subculture. However, this movement can also be considered a form of social deviance when viewed through the lens of Robert Merton’s theory of anomie. This deviance stems from the anti-social and anti-conventional nature of the movement’s members in response to lower and middle class socio-economic strain. Therefore, the Punk Movement can be categorized as a combination of two of Merton’s types of adaptation to strain, including retreatism and rebellion, due to the subculture’s rejection of capitalist values, withdrawal from the workforce and

Punks have always been known for pushing the envelope, but the Sex Pistols pushed it farther than anyone to date in the genre of punk music. The Sex Pistols boisterous lyrics and edgy appearance led for them to be heavily censored by the radio and print media and even banned in many places, Britain and abroad.

At it’s heart punk is anti-society and anti-normalcy. Because human nature yearns for acceptance, and punk objects such assimilation, it is the only true

The music began with Iggy Pop, but the Revolution began with The Sex Pistols. The Sex PistolÕs took the American form of Punk and made it their own, with Anarchist core, thus PunkÕs very essence was born, political activism- creating a social revolution.

     Punk music has gone through an evolution ever since the punk explosion in the late seventies. Although today’s punk music retains most of the ideology and sound that defines the punk genre, there are some distinct differences between Nineties and Seventies punk. Most of the punk bands to emerge and gain popularity in the nineties mostly hailed from California (Green Day, the Offspring, etc.). Punk vanguards from the seventies hailed from the East Coast and from Great Britain (the Ramones, the Clash, etc.). The Sex Pistols’ "Liar" and Blink182’s "What’s My Age Again?" demonstrates how conditions — social, political, and physical — are reflected in the nature of the music

Secondly, Punk Rock artists were rebels with a cause, their motive, destruction and rebellion through their ideology. “In its original nature, the punk culture has been primarily concerned with individual freedom, which