Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxn.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxn!rlr From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.music Subject: Re: Well, it sort of got better.... Message-ID: <576@pyuxn.UUCP> Date: Tue, 17-Apr-84 13:34:54 EST Article-I.D.: pyuxn.576 Posted: Tue Apr 17 13:34:54 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 18-Apr-84 07:25:12 EST References: <1133@garfield.UUCP> Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J. Lines: 48 > Rich, what's dis garbage that punk `originated` in America? Can > you name some early American punk bands that heavily influenced any > future bands. There is quite a difference between what is > known as American Punk and what is known as British Punk. British > seems (to me anyway) to have more raw emotion and feeling behind > it. American punk seems just to have evolved from what was rock > back in the early-late 70's. It seems that the americans just > changed what they had to sound like the British, not the other way > around. The Ramones played their first gig ten years ago (that's 1974, when Yes was still waxing topographic and Rod the Clod Stewart and Barry Manilow shared the airwaves). It was their trips to England (among other things) that precipitated the "punk" movement there. (No, the Ramones were not, are not, and probably never will be truly punk.) Yes, there was a seminal movement there with weird types associating and being labelled as punk (Sid Vicious' Flowers of Romance band, Siouxsie & the Banshees, ...), but most of the "movement" consisted of poseurs and dilettantes. Bands like the Clash and the Jam et al., grew out of this period, so it was not all in vain. I admit, even a bloody toad like McLaren couldn't have made punk a national phenomenon without an initial base already being present. But the very notion of a "punk" style of dress originated with Richard Hell in NYC. I'm in absolute agreement with you (for the most part)--British punk is rawer and contains more emotion and feeling than what followed in America. What preceded it (and also what occurred simultaneously) in America was equally fresh and different as its British counterpart (e.g., Talking Heads, Blondie, Television, Devo, B-52's). Of course, we're no longer talking pure "punk". Just as well. Punk is so limiting and obscure a term that it hardly applies to anything. (Is Billy Idol punk? David Johansen? Burce Springsteen?) About punk evolving from rock. Yeah, I guess it did, just as rock n' roll originally developed from things prior to it. My own tastes lean towards that "new music" which breaks the ties with its forebearers, breaking new ground instead of treading on the old ground over and over again. What gets labelled as punk seems to be that which owes more to rock. (Hardcore probably fits in somewhere else, though the choice seems to be to continue ties to rock) To me, rock is a dead issue. No, not dead, just "obsolete", in the same sense that swing jazz is obsolete--it still gets played and enjoyed, but it's a music of the past, not of the present and the future. Rock today is the music of two distinct groups, the 30-40 year olds who remember the "fabulous sixties" and the glory days of rock, and many of today's younger people who still feel that rock applied to their generation. (In reality, rather than being "rebels" and "individuals" as they might like to believe, they are becoming cogs in a corporate marketing strategy that makes them into clones rather than individuals). Oh, enough preaching for one day... -- Never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME... Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr