Nobody needs to school me in punk rock. I was in several punk bands and I grew up on it. It was the reason I was dissatisfied with my little hick town.Jikan wrote:from the album "Zen Arcade" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qCSAWnl8EI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;kirtu wrote:Actually there was quite a bit of variation in punk rock. Punks overall came from a kind of anti-society viewpoint but that was because society was in fact destructive. The iniital impluse was to uncover and eliminate hypocrisy and usually hidden manipulation (all the things some mega-corporations, Enron being a good template, and most banks really have been doing coupled with governmental control and insanity at the time [Reagan, Thatcher, Brezhnev/Chernyenko]). All on top of teen and post-teen sexual awakening. Punk wasn'tt ipso facto self-destructive.padma norbu wrote: Stop trying to equate the term "hippy" with negativity. Save that for punk rockers, who stole the hippy DIY ethos and fused it with a negative, anti-society, self-destructive vibe. Neither of them showered much, but at least the hippies tried to cover it up with patchouli.
Kirt
Husker Du is from Massena, NY. I grew up in the next town literally 15 minutes away, separated by cow pastures. I am quite aware of all the nuances of punk. And that means that I am quite aware that while Bob Mould might be a gayboy from a hicktown and a really nice guy, he also shared the punk sensibilities which were negative. If you don't think punk is overtly negative, let's just go ahead and collect all the lyrics from any album you care to mention.
I was listening to Circle Jerks and Black Flag in 6th grade, Butthole Surfers by 7th grade, dropped acid for the first time in 9th grade and opened my mind to hippy music. If anyone knows of any subgenre of music I have not become intimately familiar with, I will be very surprised. I became an obsessive music fan from about 1986 - 2000 when I finally pretty much began to become less interested in it. Still, in the past 10 years, I have purchased and downloaded hundreds of albums, generally obscure stuff. These days, everyone wants to be classified as "punk," even if they are not remotely punk. Just go look at E-Music. Half the stuff on Alternative Tentacles is closer to indie "alternative" rock of the late 80s like Mercury Rev than it is remotely punk.
The only criticism of hippy culture I respect at all is Frank Zappa's. But, if he wasn't a guy with aspergers, he was quite antisocial, so despite him having some good points, I think he's still a bit wrong-headed. His crowd, the freaks, were probably the first "punks."