Post #106504 by tiki mick 1 on Thu, Aug 5, 2004 1:12 PM

Well, I agree and disagree......

I was 16 in 1979..Punk was current chronologically, but people were already saying "punk is dead"

There were bands that I considered to be punk at the time, that actually were the forunners of goth....

Christian Death, catholic discipline, 45 grave, the cramps..etc....

Remember, i was 16 at the time...all the different genres were not so evident back then.....Frankly, to me there was prog/70's rock, disco, and punk/new wave....three things!

I just yesterday listened to one band that crossed those lines, even on one album....I am talking the first Pretenders album...first track is very new york dolls-ish..and then they do a straight out pop hit "brass in pocket"

Spandau Ballet started out as a new wave, then mutated into blue-eyed soul....

I guess my point was that the current "punk bands" (with the exception of Rancid, who I watched play at Cloyne court, a berkeley co-opt about 10 years ago) are bands that are to me, as corporate sounding as say, Journey!!

If you take the chords they play, and do it on an electric piano instead, you will find standard musically correct songs! And that is not supposed to be punk!

Punk should be for amateurs,by amatuers and I never knew a punker who was a happy person on the outside....greasy hair, monochromatic clothing....yeah, we wore that kind of stuff back then...(I had my head shaved in '79, long before it was vogue)!Punkers I knew did have the "fuck all" attitude, cause if they didn't, they got there asses beat by the jocks!! A lot of my friends were obssessed with decay and death, destruction and anarchy..that was what punk meant to us! Nowadays, that kind of sentiment seems to be the exclusive domain of the goths.

The movie "suburbia" exactly captures the essense of punk rock culture..so does the movie "decline" and if you think Darby Crash was anything like today's crop of punker poster boys, you are way off!! half of today's dudes wore LONG HAIR back 90's, and listened to GNR!!!!

And for the record, I never, ever listened to speed metal!!!!!!

Unfortunatly, (and here a lot of SoCal people will get mad at me) it is bands like Dramarama and bad religion and sublime, that have most influenced today's crop..and my opinion is that those bands are basically melodic rock bands with short haircuts and hessian tattoos...with slightly faster tempos!

If I'm lyin I'm dyin!!!!