Rate this story

Related Articles

• Oct 07 - Punk's Not Dead...
• Oct 07 - The Stolen Mix Tape Idea
• Nov 07 - NEWS...NEWS...NEWS..
• Nov 07 - Album Review: The Hives - The Black and White Album
• Nov 07 - The Stolen Mix Tape Idea

More by Helen Wilson

• Jan 08 - I'm Not There
• Jan 08 - FabricLive
• Nov 07 - Gigs: Craig David at Southampton Football Club (Tranmission Street)
• Oct 07 - Singles Review: Ali Love - Late Night Session
• Oct 07 - Album Review: Kano - London Town

It is commonly associated with attempts to increase mass appeal or acceptability to mainstream society. A person who does this, as opposed to following the original path s/he laid (or claimed to lay) out for him/herself, is labeled a sellout and regarded with disgust and immediate loss of respect.

Selling out is seen as gaining success at the cost of credibility. Every person, from the entertainment industry, to political revolutionaries, to a Bohemian who suddenly switches to a socially conservative lifestyle, could be a sellout.

To me this definition is an uncanny resemblance to a certain reforming, supposedly punk band…

Sex Pistols; (n.) countless re-issues of singles in a desperate bid to make number one, reforming after the death of lead singer Sid Vicious’ death, and a sell-out tour almost thirty years after they split.

Sorry to have to break it to you, but punk is dead. It is history, past tense, departed, a movement which has been, never to return again. Let me explain…

Punk, circa 1974-1977 was an anti-establishment sub-genre of rock, short, fast songs, of stripped down instrumentation and political and nihilistic lyrics. But just like the songs, which seized the listener, shook them violently and threw them back down just as quickly, the movement was short lived. Take the Sex Pistols, that oh-so iconic band in terms of punk, Rotten left the band in ’78 wisely considering the thing to be over. The band barely lasted two years in the public eye.

The myth is that punk is in someway political, and this is, I think, the reason for their teenage appeal. But the trouble is that no punk band ever espoused a coherent political standpoint, and when I last checked a nihilistic two fingers at the establishment does not count.

What made the punks socialist left wingers was the press; ironically it was the authoritarian machine which gave punk its biggest asset. And there was no way that this could last too long, anarcho-communism had hardly been thought through and this movement didn’t have an intellectual leg to stand on, and would later have proved a foolishly incompetent and dangerous opposition to the abolition of the Soviet Union. Think this a bit far fetched? You only need to watch This Is England to realise the threat of naive and misguided anarchists, the last thing England needed was anymore angry fascist skinheads thinking they were doing the country a favour.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not for one minute saying that the punk movement was in anyway vicious or fascist in itself, it was only the militant punks who bombed gas stations and destroyed research labs. As always with a movement there are going to be the extremists, those who make violent demonstrations, the few who ruin it for the many.

I understand that behind the hostility and anger was a largely peaceful message, nobody really wanted London to burn or for any real harm to come to the Queen, they were just making a statement about the stagnant state of society, the apathy which had infected post-war Britain. It was equivalent to the angry young male of literature, but these Lucky Jim’s wanted to shout about things.

Now thirty years later, amongst announcements of re-union shows, there is a small riot of thought, insisting that punk is not dead. But why, all they are protesting against H-Bombs which are nowhere even in sight. Claiming to be anti-establishment, whilst having formed their own, equally commercial and narrow minded establishments in the past three decades. Interpunk.com and punkrockshop.com have firmly assured that there is absolutely nothing unique or liberating about punk, in fact it has itself become stale and apathetic. Punk now is nothing more than a label and a fashion, you can buy it and it is for this reason that I believe that punk is dead.

Like most music fans I own copies of London Calling and Rocket To Russia, and believe it or not I actually quite like punk music. Some of my favourite albums would be found in the record store, labelled punk, and equally I think there is a lot of great music around at the moment which wouldn’t sound the same if it weren’t for bands like The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Damned.

New Wave, Post Punk, Hardcore and Riot Grrrl are sub-genres of punk which have tag teamed through the decades to give us great new music under this anarchic umbrella genre.

But I think that the original energy and point of punk is lost in the pages of history. Punk has developed into an almost unrecognisable form now, it is the artists, from different genres who are making statements and creating original music who are carrying on the true spirit of punk, not necessarily the angry, mohawked, denim and leather clad white men, with A’s on their back.

Share this story

Email to a friend   Printable page
Delicious   Digg   Facebook   Reddit   StumbleUpon

misc,movement,punk,sub-genre,sellout