Med332 punk and art rock lecture

#med332

1.  Punk acts as Year Zero for the music industry 2.  Punk as reac8on against the middle-‐class meanderings of

progressive rock 3.  Punk as organic working-‐class music of social and cultural protest

Early punk was a proclama8on and embrace of discord. In England it was begun by working class youths decrying a declining economy and rising unemployment, chiding the hypocrisy of the rich, and refu8ng the no8on of reform. In America, early punk was a middle class youth movement, a reac8on against the boredom of mainstream culture ... Early punk sought to tear apart consumer goods, royalty and sociability; and it sought to destroy the idols of the bourgeoisie. -‐ Clark in Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2003: 225

Punk 1976-1978

USA: 1960s Garage Rock

The Standells The Swingin’ Medallions

The Kingsmen Electric Prunes



The Stooges (feat Iggy Pop) – ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ (1969)

The Ramones – ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ (1976)

Punk wasn’t a musical style, or at least it shouldn't have been … It was more a kind of ‘do it yourself – anyone can do it a_tude. If you can only play two notes on the guitar, you can figure out a way to make a song out of that -‐ David Bryne cited Bennea, 2001: 60

John Lydon, aka Johnny Roaon (vocals) Glen Matlock (bass) Steve Jones (guitar) Paul Cook (drums)

Stanley Cohen Moral Panic Folk Devil

1 December 1976 Thames Television Today

Punk’s expressive forms:

1.  Iconography 2.  Fashion

3.  Gigs/dancing 4.  Fandom

Iconography

•  na8onal culture – Banking crisis – Energy crisis – Unemployment crisis – Race riots

Sex Pistols – ‘Anarchy in the UK’ (1976)

The Clash – 1976 ‘Career Opportuni8es’ ‘White Riot’

Sex Pistols – ‘ God Save The Queen’ (1977)

#1 NME chart #2 UK official chart

Through their music and stylis8c commitment, [punks] suggested and enlarged the spaces for subversive cultural ‘play’ ... Punk proclaimed the necessity of viola8ng the quiet, everyday script of common sense. It proposed a macabre parody of the underlying idealism of ‘Englishness’ – that dour pragma8sm that sees no future beyond the present, and no present except that inherited, apparently unmodified, from the past. -‐ Chambers, 1985: 185

Punk was a total cultural revolt. It was a hardcore confronta8on with the black side of history and culture, right-‐wing imagery, sexual taboos, a delving into it that had never been done before by any genera8on in such a thorough way -‐ Vale, cited in Savage, 2010: 440

Fashion

Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in the punks’ ensembles: lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests encased in plas8c bin-‐liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domes8c ‘u8lity’ context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip ... Hair was obviously dyed (hay yellow, jet black, or bright orange with tuts of green or bleached in ques8on marks), and T-‐shirts and trousers told the story of their own construc8on with mul8ple zips and outside seams clearly displayed. -‐ Hebdige, 1979: 107

Gigs/dancing

Slamdancing ... mirrors punk ideologies in the symbolic breakdown of order which seems to occur in the pit. The fast, counter-‐clockwise mo8on of dancers turns the pit into a swirl of seemingly chao8c mo8on. Although slamdancers themselves do follow customs which prevent the pit from denegra8ng [sic] into actual chaos, the pit, when viewed from the outside, looks like a lawless realm. The enemy for punks is the mainstream, and slamdancing allows punks to present the threat of chaos while s8ll maintaining unity among themselves in the pit. -‐ Tsitsos, 1999: 407

Fanzines

Actually we’re not into music …We’re into chaos -‐ Steve Jones (Sex Pistols), in Savage, 2010: 152

‘somebody had figured out how to make ar8s8cally and commercially viable pop music based on a rhythmic process outside R&B, a feat unequalled since the advent of Elvis Presley; consequently, things were fundamentally different thereater. It was a true historic disjuncture’ -‐ Marsh 1989: 72

‘there seems liale doubt that Lydon was fed material by Vivienne Westwood (McLaren’s designer partner) and Jamie Reid (the Pistol’s graphic ar8st), which he then converted to his own lyric’ -‐ Savage 1991: 204.

1.  Liveness = iden8ty and reputa8on 2.  Voice = blurred line between singing and

speech 3.  Mode of address = strong declamatory

voice 4.  Tempo = basic, primi8ve, breakneck

Cri8quing the common narra8ve of punk


‘English’ punk did not rise spontaneously from below on a wave of working class anger. It was invented, constructed and perpetrated by a motley bunch of 1960s counter-‐culturally informed radicals […], art school and other species of students[…], middle and working class musicians […] and music journalists bored with stadium rock, and disillusioned by rock’s lost radical poten8ali8es […]. -‐ Albiez, 2009


Boredom with mainstream culture and ins8tu8ons is oten a characteris8c of adolescence that it is hard to suggest has a specific class or na8onal base. So within the UK punk scene of the early 1980s, youth from various socio-‐economic backgrounds rubbed shoulders, sharing a common interest in the poten8al for punk to become a vehicle for their personal, familial, ins8tu8onal, social, economic and/or poli8cal grievances. -‐ Albiez, 2009

Images

•  Paul Townsend 2013 Bristol Punks 1980 •  Andrew 2007 CBGB Hardcore Ma8nee •  EL_M@SCO 2005 CBGB's 1973-‐2006 •  Andrew Vella 2012 Anarchy graffi8 •  Todosnuestrosmuertos 2010 punk is dead •  Gerry Balding 2013 Planet Punk

Date post:	18-Dec-2014
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Med332 punk and art rock lecture

Education