Comments on: 500: 17-31

By: Mark M

Mark M — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:58:32 +0000

The Misfits are one of those bands whose T-shirt/sticker presence is far more widespread than that of their music (I’m not absolutely postive I’ve ever heard them, and I was fairly interested in American punk for a while).

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:20:51 +0000

Thanks James! I think I’d heard OF them, but only in the sense that “Glenn Danzig used to be in a punk band” was filed away in my head somewhere.

By: jamesf

jamesf — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:36:06 +0000

never heard the misfits? did they not even make it across the pond, ferchrissakes?

for Misfits 101 = get “Walk Among Us” and succumb to the amazing one-two punch of “20 Eyes” and “I Turned into a Martian” … all the energy of the Ramones, but by a bunch of jerks from New Jersey who were really into horror movies, and somehow the whole thing comes out a little like doo-wop (in a great way)

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:22:16 +0000

i really don’t like it when people do this http://bobgable.posterous.com/500-17-31/

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:01:36 +0000

(oops that last line is a wan fossil of a deleted sentence)

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:00:34 +0000

skinhead reggae is i think (in its late 60s stage) more of a self-isolating niche; it was a breakaway from mod which distrusted and stood away from the countercultural “mainstream” but didn’t make any bid — that i’m aware of — to establish its own centrality, or importance to anyone but itself (as distinct from punk, which obviously did; and as disitnct from post-punk neo-mod, which ditto)

the key glam manifesto for me is the first bryan ferry solo lp, but i want to bring this back to the argument i was making about confidence on the earlier thread (only i don’t have time right this minute) (also margin not big enough)

but really i want to

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:54:10 +0000

the uk’s “crisis of confidence” in music i was talking about of course manifested through punk but it stems from a lot earlier, punk’s a symptom not a prime cause — i basically root the crisis in the break-up of the beatles, which i think was hugely traumatic for the uk wing of ‘the movement’ (as it didn’t quite know itself here)

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:53:21 +0000

Where would, for example, skinhead reggae or glam fit into the pre-punk counterculture-MFSq-niche schema?

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:48:18 +0000

i don’t think that’s what happened though, mark, at least not immediately — i think the retreat from a utopian project into a proliferation of less ambitious grumbly niches all walled-off from one another happened some time later; i think there was actually a considerable jockeying, during the prime subcults era, for the Mantle of True Punk* as the True Path, based on various criteria (the jockeying being a debate about which criteria would count)

also i don’t think the “grand rock narrative” had an internal idea of narrative or progress — this was part of the problem, actually, as it was rooted in a “detournement” of the leisure industry salesmantra of planned obsolescence
(prog’s place in the GRN — prog being a wing of rock that actually had a notion of progress, albeit a rather goofy one — was ALWAYS challenged)

*i don’t just mean oi or the exploited, i mean people thinking “punk claims to be thus-and-so, but _______ is surely more truly thus-and-so: hence ________ is the real thing”

(my bottom line here is this i think: as a test case for postmodernist theory’s explanatory power, pop history presents more problems and challenges than affirmations)

By: Mark M

Mark M — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:51:18 +0000

Or in classic postmodernism, you’d have it that punk is the moment when the rock grand narrative – and the notion of ‘progress’ (indeed) – crumbles, and what we’re left with is bountiful uncertainity, fragmentation and micro positioning.

By: j.

j. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:19:15 +0000

i should have said in the parens there, clearly not contemporaneous in some cases.

By: j.

j. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:53:29 +0000

contemporaneously? (because it clearly could be and was, if you count the more atavistic tendencies of counterculture – punk’s return to ‘original’ rock and roll, e.g.)

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:35:10 +0000

So (hypothesising here) the unintended consequence of the bid is that by demonstrating that CC music could be transformed into MfS, punk had the effect of leaving all CC music open to doubt (or worse, suggesting its own transformation was inevitable) – hence the self-doubt I’m hearing in a lot of it, and the focus on means of production and distribution as the proof of CCness. And then also the dawning realisation that the breakdown was two-way: MfS could be transferred back into the CC?

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:00:56 +0000

essentially — if you exclude self-isolated niche “specialist” genres like folk or jazz or classical — there were two genres*, defined in opppsition to one another, Music for Squares and the CounterCulture

punk was the first real deliberate bid to shake up what got counted as countercultural — to effect the exile (on generational grounds) of a bunch of formerly cast-iron CC stuff into the MfS category

*the division that for a while — maybe a decade? — the leisure industry and the “alternative media” more or less agreed on

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:30:13 +0000

No no the book is good! Well it is so far – I’m reading it at the same time as I do the writing.

By: mv

mv — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:48:53 +0000

Really enjoying this series so far… easily preferable to actually having to read the P4k tome!