Dr Feelgood, Ian Dury & The Blockheads

[Johnny Mac]

Great post Clyde! I did some of those things too

I had heard of led zepp, deep purple before the punk scene. I got into them a bit later. I only remember the punk scene lashing out at disco, from the eyes of a 11 year old just starting at the local comprehensive. Punk was big in my school. I don't ever remember letting it tell me what I could and couldn't like though. I liked some of the disco it lashed out at. But I did like the way it broke down some of the class barrier cr@p in this country. It had a huge effect in my opinion and the ripples of it still resonate today. Punk isn't dead!
I love the pistols, the clash, the stranglers, the ruts. Sh*t I love everything! Music is f*cking brilliant :-)
The blockheads were great back then wasn't they. Top band!

[richard]

So we went from the prog rock of Genesis, ELP, Yes etc where you needed a degree in music in order to get an audition to the 'simplicity' of punk where it was preferable that you couldn't play at all. The sad thing with punk is that the 'ethos' simply wasn't true. The Pistols could play more than well enough to do justice to the stuff they played which is all that was necessary for their music. Same could be said for R'n'R in the 50s.

The result was that (in Brighton at least) the pubs were invaded by bands that REALLY couldn't play. Even worse were the slightly older bandwagon jumpers that saw punk as the way forward and PRETENDED they couldn't play. I remember seeing more than one spiky haired ham-fisted guitarist who I recalled having seen a few months before with waist length hair knocking out extended improvisations that would have had Jerry Garcia looking at his watch.

Having said this I do wonder what would have happened to UK 'rock' if punk had never happened.

[jpfamps]

I'm of the opinion the Punk made little or no positive contribution to music, and was mainly a London media based fashion "movement", and did cause many venues to stop having live music, which was hardly positive...

The "punk" manifesto that modern rock music had become stale and boring and was inhabited by musicians with more technical know how that was good for them, and that music would benefit from a "back to basics" approach, is very much the revisionist view. This "back to basics" already happening with the pub rock movement and bands like Dr Feelgood.

Bands that Punk aimed to "overthrow" such as Genesis, Pink Floyd and Queen became even bigger through the 70s. Led Zep were still going strong until Bonzo died.

Many of the bands that broke through after punk, often labelled as New Wave (and is one of favourite era's of UK music), were already in existence in some form, eg Dr Feelgood,The Stranglers, The Clash, Ian Dury and the pub rock movement (which actually did change music), so it would hard to claim that they were "inspired" by punk.

Additionally, many of the "New Wave" bands were amazing musicians, eg the Blockheads, the Attractions, the Police, Joe Jackson (Royal Academy of Music!), so punk hardly drove the musos out of music either (thank heavens).

Incidentally Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock were huge Faces fans!

[Dmoney]

ooohpf! Frank! haha.

Punk was the first genre of music I really felt a connection to. Prior to that, when I was younger I'd listen to my parents records, which were John Cooper Clark, Black Sabbath, Free, Paul Jones Blues Band, Canned Heat, Paul Lamb & The King Snakes, Dr Feelgood... lots of British Blues stuff as well as the Blues classics.

For me, listening to Punk was kind of the same as listening to Robert Johnson etc but with louder guitars. 

I've never really been into the Pistols mainly DUE to the fashion side of things. I know a lot American punks/bands didn't really appreciate that either and took more influence from British bands like Sham 69 which came across to them as not being part of that so much. The Pistols where however a big influence on the Bad Brains who are probably one of the best bands ever. They are even excellent musicians. The whole US punk thing is a different beast though.

Not that I was around at the time, but I feel like a lot of the aims (like driving out musos and overthrowing rockstars) and such have been hyped up back then and over time. I feel like those people who were part of it I see on TV tend to talk it up a bit and believe their own hype to some extent. Maybe a combination of self importance and nostalgia a bit beyond what they may deserve, though credit where credit is due. What I've taken from it is that you don't need to be on a major label to record, tour the world, put out a record etc. I don't feel musically constrained by wanting to write music I'd consider punk either.

If you think about trends through mainstream rock music from then til now, while I've been conscious of it at least, I feel like there was a point where musicianship wasn't job number one, and that over time that has changed and 'shredding' has made its way to the forefront again. Maybe I'm wrong.

The worst thing about punks is that they worry too much about being punk

[AndyR]

The worst thing about punks is that they worry too much about being punk

:lol:  PDT_003

You can say that about many groups of people, though.

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I suppose, for me, one of the things that colours my perspective is that I regard music as entertainment and not much else. I think it's artistic as well, you're creating things, but basically it's all about entertainment for me. When ever musicians (or the engine selling it, or the media) start adding political or social baggage, or trying to make out it's a force for change (any more than other art forms are), then I get turned off big time. 

I want entertainment and escapism from music, I'm happy if lyrics deal with interesting topics that make me think, but I don't want a load of other bollox crammed down my throat. When/if the message gets "preachy", I'm off..

I missed, at the time, a lot of very good music because it came out under the "punk/new wave" banner. Elvis Costello is a particularly good example - I was turned off what he was doing because of how he fitted into things at the time and how fans of his told me about him. I didn't realise it at the time, but I loved the tunes and inventiveness he was applying. But I couldn't get past the image and attitude stuff. It took meeting Rory Gallagher at a festival (during Elvis Costello's set), and hearing what he thought about them to open up my ears (he was there a day early, as a punter, to check him and Ian Dury out because he thought they were brilliant - and he was "anti" pop music and the apparatus around it). Admittedly Elvis C was trying to distance himself from the new wave thing at the time - it was his country music period - so I might have got into him after that anyway.

I suppose I didn't like the social message that went with punk. I am of the generation that punk was apparently about and for. I faced the same bullsh1t they had to put up with and were apparently trying to knock down. But I don't agree with the knock it down, destroy the past, approach. I do think we should be able to mock the past or the establishment, but I think we can do it more gently (with better results) and hang on to respect (both self-respect and respect for others).

Punk and other things that were going on (eg Not The Nine O'clock News - I hated that) taught us that you don't have to respect anyone or anything. All of us now, if we don't like or understand a thing - whether it's right or wrong - instinctively feel that it doesn't deserve our respect.

So, yeah, from that perspective, punk is not dead - it's the cr@p that we don't like today, society apparently falling to bits, people with money just using it to make more for themselves and "screw you, by the way", and people without it taking it from people who ain't got much more and going "screw you, by the way". Long live punk... :lol:

The music itself, the good bits, were very good. The rest, as far as I can see, was a big mistake...

This is blaming a lot on "punk", I know :lol: - I do suspect that punk didn't actually cause it, though. I suspect that punk helped get it out in the open, but really it was just an expression of how uncaring and unsupportive of each other society was ready to be.

[Philly Q]

Good discussion.  I'm finding lots of stuff to agree with, and disagree with, on all sides of the argument!  :)