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Punk rock (from 'punk', meaning rotten, worthless, or snotty; also a
prison slang term for a person who is sexually submissive) is the anti-establishment music movement of the period 1976 80, exemplified by the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash, and The Ramones. The term is also used to
describe subsequent music scenes that share key characteristics with those first-generation "punks". The term is sometimes also
applied to the fashions or the irreverent "do-it-yourself" attitude
associated with this musical movement.
Origins
The term "punk rock" was originally used by early-1970s rock music journalists and amateur historians it described the
guitar-based rock and roll of untutored US bands of the mid-1960s such as The Seeds and
The Standells. For example, in the liner notes of the 1972 anthology
Nuggets, critic and guitarist Lenny Kaye uses the term "punk-rock" to refer to the Sixties music now usually called "garage rock", as well as some of the darker and more primitive elements of psychedelia. Shortly after the time of those notes, Lenny Kaye began
performing music with avant garde poet Patti Smith. Smith's band, and her first LP released in 1975, directly inspired many of the first-generation
punk rockers, so this suggests a path by which the term became applied to the music we now know as punk. Another early use of the
term "punk" music appears in Lester Bangs' 1971 essay "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung": "... punk bands started cropping up who were writing their own
songs but taking the Yardbirds' sound ..."
In addition to the inspiration of those "garage" bands of the sixties, the roots of punk rock also feed on the abrasive,
dissonant style of The Velvet Underground, the sexually
and politically confrontational Detroit bands The Stooges and MC5, the UK pub rock scene, and glam rock groups such as The New York Dolls.
In the mid-1970s, three influential punk bands emerged separately and simultaneously in three different corners of the world:
The Ramones in New York, The
Saints in Australia, and the Sex Pistols in London. Punk rock became a
phenomenon of the late 1970s, and soon interacted with reggae & ska subcultures, to form the 2 Tone movement that included bands such as The Specials,
Madness and The
Selecter.
Punk attitudes and fashion
An important feature of Punk Rock was an evident desire to return to the directness and musical simplicity of early rock and roll. Punk rockers rejected what they saw as the pretension,
commercialism and pomposity which had overtaken rock music in the 1970s, spawning
superficial "disco" music and grandiose forms of heavy metal, progressive rock and "arena rock".
Punk rock emphasised simplicity of musical structure, extolling a "DIY" ("do it yourself") ethic that anyone could form a punk rock band (the early UK punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue once
famously included drawings of three chord shapes, captioned, "this is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a
band"). The lyrics introduced a confrontational frankness of expression in matters both political and sexual, often dealing with
urban boredom and rising unemployment in the UK—e.g., the Sex Pistols'
"God Save The Queen" and "Pretty Vacant"—or decidedly anti-romantic depictions of sex and love, such as the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck" or the Sex Pistols' "Submission".
The influence of the cultural critique and the strategies for revolutionary action offered by the European situationist movement of the 1950s and 60s is apparent in the vanguard of the
British punk movement, particularly the Sex Pistols. This was a conscious direction taken by Pistols prime movers Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, and is apparent in the artwork of Jamie
Reid, who had previously been involved with Suburban Press and King Mob, and designed many of the band's
graphics.
The cover song, in the hands of a punk band, can often be an
instrument for irony and commentary on popular culture. Examples
include the Pistol's version of The Who's "Substitute", which turns the spurned-lover
song into a class war diatribe, The Dead Kennedys' cover of "Take this Job and
Shove It" (David Allan Coe), Siouxsie & the Banshees' "Helter Skelter" (The Beatles) or Black
Flag's lyrically-altered "Louie Louie" (Richard Berry, popularized by The Kingsmen).
At least as important as the music, however, was the associated punk culture. Highly theatrical punk fashion, which outraged
many observers at the time, was characterized by severe haircuts, such as the mohawk,
body piercing (often with safety pins) and conversion of items such as bin liners and thrift store remnants into clothing. "Punk chic" has since been largely absorbed by the mainstream.
Punk devotees created a thriving underground press. In the UK Mark Perry produced Sniffin'
Glue. In the United States magazines such as Maximum
RocknRoll, Profane Existence and Flipside were leading a
movement of fanzines. Every local "scene" had at least one primitively
published magazine with news, gossip, and interviews with local or touring bands. The magazine Factsheet Five chronicled the thousands of underground publications in the 1980s and 1990s.
Post-1970s punk
In the 1980s a second wave of anti-establishment and "DIY" bands came into their own in the United States and the UK. MDC, Crass, Hüsker Dü,
Bad Brains, Vice Squad, X, Picture Frame Seduction, The Exploited ,
Minor Threat, JFA, The Dicks and many others had little impact showed on the music industry charts, but
nonetheless had a huge effect on popular culture. The period from approximately 1980 to
1986 is considered the peak of hardcore
punk.
A thriving Punk Rock subculture can still be found in many cities. Punk rock underwent a brief commercial renaissance in the
late 1990s with bands like Rancid, Green
Day, The Offspring and others.
See also
Extensive lists of relevant bands and so on can be found at the following sub-pages:
References
External links
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