There's always been this long standing idea that the punk movement needed to happen to save rock music from the "excesses of prog" and that the world during that time period was crying out for something new that punk delivered.
Is this accurate representation of the time or just some revisionist history that has been cooked up to over state the impact of the genre? Were music fans really crying out for something new and was there a general feeling that rock needed to be "saved from itself"?
leftists ruining everything, as usual
I was 14 back then (yes I'm old, I know). A lot of people like to say punk rock killed off prog, but that's at best a half-truth. The real enemy wasn't so much prog as it was the crushing dullness of stadium/AOR rock. Prog groups weren't what you heard on the radio in 1977--no, what you did hear instead was a whole lot of Eagles, Foreigner, Boston, and Fleetwood Mac. They were the industry giants of the day.
None of it or very little spoke to the kids. I mean, Fleetwood Mac singing about doing coke and cheating on your spouse? What's a 15 year old supposed to do with that? Bands like the Ramones actually seemed to reflect the real world in ways you could relate to, and without needing a $3,000,000 album budget.
I don't like prog, and its elaborateness (and what I considered to be dippy lyrics about hobbits and trolls) were alienating to me back then. But it was mainstream rock that felt like the enemy.
Let's get real here. Punk was never as big as you think. When the Sex Pistols were a thing, Paul McCartney's "Mull of Kintyre" was #1 on the charts for weeks. I bet if you went through your parents' record collection, you're more likely to find Wings albums than you would The Clash.
By the time punk broke, 60s rockers were rich 35 year old fatcats living in a mansion in the south of France surrounded by hookers and bags of cocaine. They'd stopped having any connection with the kids for some time.l
Fallen for the Malcolm Maclaren propaganda.
Maclaren copied punk from NYC bands and launched the Sex Pistols to make money and promote his shop. To support this he coined the phrase that he was "giving noise back to the kids". All commercially calculated (see The Great Rock and Roll Swindle).
But kids believed it... as if 14 and 15 yr olds were the natural producers or consumers of the "best music". Musically punk bands were dire.
The stadium bands continued to fill stadiums and make money. Punk was limited in its audience, and it was post punk that made money and reached the masses. Johnny Rotten was beaten up in the toilets.
Meh
Daily reminder that American bands were doing post-punk while the English were still recycling Chuck Berry riffs (who was, by the way, an American).
See also: Television, Devo, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, etc.
>None of it or very little spoke to the kids. I mean, Fleetwood Mac singing about doing coke and cheating on your spouse? What's a 15 year old supposed to do with that? Bands like the Ramones actually seemed to reflect the real world in ways you could relate to, and without needing a $3,000,000 album budget.
I think in England it was a little different because of demographics. The birthrate in the UK shot up in the late 1950s, so there was a sizable youth audience who wanted music that spoke to them. However, the birthrate in the United States started dropping at that time, meaning you had a huge baby boomer audience who favored albums like Rumours that were aimed at young adults and less for punk bands who targeted teenagers, of which there were fewer.
Also the economic and social situation in the UK in the late Seventies was quite dire. The US had a slow economy and inflation problems, but it was much worse here. Bad economy, striking unions, rubbish piling up in the streets, breadlines, IRA terrorism.
>Daily reminder that American bands were doing post-punk while the English were still recycling Chuck Berry riffs (who was, by the way, an American)
Since when did Zeppelin, Sabbath, et al sound anything like Chuck Berry?
I was referring to the British punks (Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks) who were recycling American music while their American peers were, in '77, inventing the sound of the entire next decade.
Also:
>Zeppelin
>Sabbath
Done better by Americans ten years before them, too. I really don't understand why everyone gives the Japanese shit for being an island of imitators but the inbred yokels on freezing Albion get a pass for their general lack of imagination and unrelenting theft.
>Since when did Zeppelin, Sabbath, et al sound anything like Chuck Berry?
They wouldn't have been anything without Jimi Hendrix, who was also American.
The US was a lot bigger place than Britain as well. There was a vast stretch of suburban and rural America who connected with REO Speedwagon and Tom Petty a lot more than Lou Reed, New York Dolls, or other critics' pets.
My dad grew up in NYC in the 70s and he said even there, most of his peers didn't listen to punk rock. They were into classic rock/metal, R&B, and disco mostly. Only a few daddy issues weirdos and of course the critics like Christgau were into punk.
It was just a natural progression of music. People wanted rock that was harder and faster, so that's what they made. And then after that they made thrash metal, and then grindcore, and so on.
>Most people have bad taste.
Same as it ever was (did you see where my hand was)
Finally. Someone who knows what happened and doesn't sugarcoat it.
My mum grew up dirt poor in the working class neighbourhoods of Liverpool. She had very little money for nice clothing, fancy haircuts, or George Harrison triple albums, and when punk rock happened, she dyed her hair green and made customised outfits with straps and safety pins. Punk records were also much more affordable to working class types because of their low budget, stripped production especially given the state of England's economy at the time. It gave her and her peers a youth culture of their own and spoke to what they were feeling.
Today she works as a chemist and the one obvious trace of her teenager years is her dyed hair, she's had it dyed pretty much since she was 14. She also still enjoys Blondie and Stiff Little Fingers.
It's rather accurate. And it wasn't just overindulgent "Prog" rock either. The radio was filled with bland, boring, shallow, mindless music at the time that was killing the true spirit of rock and roll. Imagine turning on your radio and listening to nothing but James Taylor, The Carpenters, Seals, and Crofts, The Captain and Tenille, ABBA, not to mention what all the great bands from the 1960s had become, and don't even get me started on how awful disco was/is.
Although The Jam were not a "Punk" band, they were accepted by the punks in the early days, and the album you posted certainly carried the spirit of punk, what it stood for, and what it was trying to say, even if they DID get dismissed as a second rate Who rip off. In The City is STILL a great power pop album weather you're a punk or not.
ITT - anons who know little of popular music history, and turn it into some USA vs UK squabble.
Modern pop music developed in the US in the 50's and owed its development to many factors , including economic boom. Development of equipment was a big factor going forward i.e. the electric guitar and amplifiers.
By the mid-60's the Beatles were the biggest band in the world and the Rolling Stones were the second biggest. The US at that time had Dylan and the Doors. Psychedelic drugs were an important factor - see Sgt Peppers.
Cream (Eric Clapton) and The Who (Pete Townshend) were already established before Hendrix appeared, and Hendrix had to come to Britain to launch his sound.
English punk (Maclaren) borrowed from the US proto punk scene, esp. The Ramones but produced something new. Post punk followed almost immediately in both the US and the UK. Television, Talking Heads, Patti Smith were all going before punk became a separate phenomenon.
Sour grapes much?
By the early 80's Springsteen and Dire Straits were the "mainstream" big bands, and the real revolution comes with the thrash metal bands. (See also ZZ Top, Van Halen, Aerosmith etc.)
Punk is overrated as a musical movement, but did produce change in music and attitude.
tl:dr - read some books about musical history
It wasn't just prog that was the problem, it was that all of the 60s generation like the Stones and The Who were tired and out of gas by the late 70s. Glam rock was no longer a thing and David Bowie turned towards soul/funk. The charts were full of MOR rubbish like Wings and Bonnie Tyler.
The album charts told a different story. Also disco (driven by displaced sub-cultures at the time like gays and blacks) was big until racist white dj's in America and the UK did their best to kill it off. "Disco sucks"
Yes it was a breath of fresh air and energy that gave a much-needed slapping to twats like Mick Jagger who were flying around on a private jet surrounded by cocaine and strippers.
This poster gets it.
That might've been true once upon a time, but I think kids today would find old Black Flag and Dead Kennedys records in their parents collection. Let's face it. Punk is now Dad Rock. Deal with it.
This user also gets it.
While there is some truth in what you say, which can be backed by historical fact, (Your pic is a good example) some of the best early British punk was influenced by past Glam/Glitter like Gary Glitter, Ziggy era Bowie, early Queen, The Sweet, Slade, and spirit of 69 skinhead bands like Fresh, World War 3, and Hustler, mixed in with some more artsy stuff, like Eno era Roxy Music. Of course some of the early Mod/Powerpop played a role too. OP's posting of the first Jam album is a good example as well as early Small Faces, and, dare I say Beatles and Rolling Stones, no matter how much The Clash tried to deny this.
>74359894
The U.S. was in a similar situation. Don't be fooled into thinking different. Let's not forget when New York was on the verge of bankruptcy, President Ford told the state to "Drop dead"! There was a very legitimate need for punk at the time, and it couldn't have come at a better moment for us.
Are you kidding me?
Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath basically stole from The Blues, although BS had more of a jazzy side to their music. Black Sabbath even used to cover Carl Perkins' Blue Suede Shoes when they started out. And how about The Wizard?
I agree, punk did have a pretty big reverberating effect. The 1979 releases by AOR/arena rock bands like the Eagles and REO Speedwagon (maybe Fleetwood Mac's Tusk as well?) also show a clear attempt to "answer" punk bands.
Punk was also one of the reasons (aside from Rob Halford's personal fetishes) for Judas Priest adopting leather and studs instead of the glam robes they had in the very early days.
See for a response. I accidentally "Green text" it
i also think that narrative about prog and punk is way off
prog even overlaps a bit with punk via the stranglers, the police and even henry cow who were themselves proto-punk in some ways
>It wasn't just prog that was the problem
Didn't Camel have a whole suite of nonsense about hobbits and social tensions between elves and dwarves and magic and all that crap? They were prog, right? And Rush (if they count) had songs about that kind of stuff too. I am sure there is more.
More generally, the medievalism and fascination with kings and queens and lords and ladies and dragons and fantasy that appear in lots of prog just put me off. Like this kind of stuff:
The dance of the puppets
The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun.
The purple piper plays his tune,
The choir softly sing;
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue,
For the court of the crimson king.
I really didn't know anything about purple pipers and jousting tournaments. I never met a lord or a lady. I grew up in San Jose California for God's sake. It all seemed utterly ridiculous. If I wanted faux medievalism I'd rather turn to Victorian poetry.
But prog wasn't the only offender. Led Zeppelin and later metal had a lot of such nonsense in it too.
I remember a quotation from Jello Biafra in which he said something like, "metal songs are about lots of imaginary scary stuff like Satan and demons and dark magic etc. Our songs are about real scary stuff like Pol Pot and police brutality."
So the remote, medieval, fantasy, sci-fi aspect of prog always seemed like a joke to me.
most of that stuff was political allegory though
and if you think about it, it's no more fantasist than saying 'i am an antichrist'
just whatever literary tool helps you express yourself, y'know
While there is some validity to what you say, I don't 100% agree with you.
Most prig at the time, like Yes, and Emerson, Lake, And Palmer went on too long to hold a teenager's attention span, and a lot of the music was just too complicated for a teenager with raging hormones who just wanted to pick up a guitar and rock out. Punk fit the bill nicely, as it was simple, easy to play, and you didn't have to go to some music conservatory, and study boring music theory before you could pick up an instrument and play your heart out.
Of course you are right about there being an over lapping or crossover between prig and punk, but it didn't happen very often. I mean, if Hawkwind had cut down their songs to mage three and a half minute, the early punks might've jumped on that, since, if you listen closely, their songs are very easy to play, but who really wants to hear a ten minute version of Brain Storm unless you're completely stoned on some good pot, or tripping out on some good psychedelics. (Of course the punks did gravitate towards short songs like Silver Machine)
Also a good example of how punk and prig crossed paths and was good is Gong. Pictured here is a fine example that is mandatory listening for fans of both genres! (Tell me Opium For The People isn't punk as fuck! I DARE YOU!)
I think that punk, disco, rap, new wave, synth-pop, post punk all were getting big around 76-80. So in 5 years, music fans found all these new genres and styles which should prove to a point that whatever music was out in the early 70's wasn't enough to satisfy everyone.
Not necessarily prog rock or regular rock, but the other genres too got pushed to back: reggae had just gotten big but by the early 80's it was off the charts. Folk had been nonexistent as a major genre for a decade by then since Dylan went electric- folk never recovered and these new genres buried it. Traditional pop was also dead, guys like Tom Jones and B.J. Thomas were the last fling of that. Country was also in the toilet by the mid-70s and jazz was also at death's door. So it wasn't just prog that had become stale.
Correct. As a 15 year old, you could imagine yourself being Johnny Rotten. You couldn't imagine yourself being Keith Emerson.
>gong, hawkwind
yeah exactly, and then motorhead of course
from what i could gleam from watching old interviews it seemed like most of the (uk) punks had a problem with concert ticket prices, and that was the main factor, and when things are bad economically then you need to figure out a new way to appeal to people
and of course then mclaren (and even a few punks) still managed to get rich, and the cycle continued
Guys like Bono and Henry Rollins were teenagers right when punk broke, it was what made them want to play in a band.
The grunge generation were still kids at the time (Kurt Cobain was in the 4th grade when the Ramones came out) so they were not old enough to have experienced the scene firsthand, but they still loved the music and image of punk and made something unique and original out of it.
Points taken, (though KC had moved a long way from that lyric by the time of punk/post punk)
It wasn't that punk swept away prog rock. From the end of the 70's into the 80's popular music was fragmenting. New genres were emerging - disco, hip hop, metal, electronica (house, techno and garage) and post punk. Post punk became Indie in the UK.
In short OP, punk didn't "need to happen".
Punk was just one development of many taking place at the time, but grabbed the sensational headlines. As other anons have pointed out, the prog rock that emerged from the 60's was running out of steam (band members getting old) as much as "kids taking over".
.
>and of course then mclaren (and even a few punks) still managed to get rich, and the cycle continued
None of the punks made anywhere close to Mick Jagger money, but the more successful ones aren't exactly eating out of dumpsters.
funny that you used jagger as an example because he used the same trick punk did of appealing to the fans' need to vicariously experience drug addiction
and also he was middle class, as a lot of punks quietly were
>and also he was middle class, as a lot of punks quietly were
Whereas bands like Sabbath and AC/DC who had working class origins, oh no they were worse than Hitler according to people like Christgay.
right, fucking exactly
It's been 40 years since punk and 25 since grunge and nothing new and revolutionary has come along in the music world, all we have is Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.
Music critics are all upper middle class hipsters/beatniks. No shit they prefer artists that are more like themselves.
i take it you don't listen to electronic music
I take it you don't listen to hip hop either
Not only were many punk and post punk bands middle class, they were also art school students.
It seemed to me that the real thing punk rock did was slap the complacent ex-60s hippies and singer-songwriters like James Taylor and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. And of course the Beatles. What 15 year old wanted to hear George Harrison doing 15 minute songs about Indian mysticism?
interesting you bring up hip hop which happened at the exact same time under the exact same circumstances (more or less), only in the bronx instead of manhattan or london
and still survives, which maybe down to the fact that it wasn't constructed by the industry to begin with, so it had a more solid foundation
lol does that make them worse
idk, i just find all that bleating about class war a bit shallow
don't really care if someone's an art student - never did brian eno any harm
no prog was in the right place at the right time, it had had its day, brilliant in its time but gone as far as it could go and getting very silly. Rick Wakeman for example was totally in the crosshairs as he now freely admits, but Rod Stewart was too as well as all the manufactured chinnychap garbage
>It seemed to me that the real thing punk rock did was slap the complacent ex-60s hippies and singer-songwriters like James Taylor
Listen to JT--he picks up the tempos on this album versus his previous efforts since like every other "establishment" artist at the time, he was having to respond to punk.
See earlier comment about bands like REO Speedwagon also putting out albums that were an obvious reply to punk bands.
Ninety-nine percent correct. Ballroom Blitz, Teenage Rampage and Blockbuster being the exception.
Except those singles all came out in 1973, back when the hippie generation still ruled the rock world. The Who had just come out with Quadrophenia, the Rolling Stones were the biggest band on the planet, Sabbath, Purple, and Bowie were all at their peak. Within 2-1/2 years, things had changed dramatically. Also let's not put Sweet on a pedestal, they were generally seen as a cheap teenybopper outfit, despite the odd harder single or heavy B-side (which only 12 year old girls were buying). Real rock fans laughed at Sweet while buying their Zep, Sabbath, Jethro Tull, Stones, Rory albums (the real thing).
idk about this, the press like to promote this idea that 15 year olds don't like muh epic jamz but in my experience they're exactly the audience for that kind of thing
maybe not as big as a demographic as a pop audience but still probably more 15 year olds listen to prog now than 25 year olds do, in a lot of ways prog is quite childish music (still love it though)
I dunno, as much as we'd like to all believe punk rock started a revolution, it wasn't quite true. If you looked at the Top of the Pops charts for 1982, they were nearly as awful as the 1976 charts. And of course the fact that "Start Me Up" and "Ebony and Ivory" were being played to death on the radio in the early 80s proves that the dinosaur 60s rockers weren't exactly killed off by punk either.
The first wave of punk was over by early 1978; at that time punk bands were giving way to New Wave and post-punk, it was inevitable since the record industry pushed bands towards a more commercial, accessible format. But for that short time in '77, it was a groundswell and there were fantastic punk singles coming out almost every week.
It did need to happen yes. Listen to a compilation album from 1975-76 and it's fucking dire.
It needed it culturally, in fashion and in music. It was time to get rid of your long hair and bell bottoms and get rid of The Who and Paul McCartney.
you can't get rid of paul mccartney
doesn't matter how many punk records you release, he still manages to land a mull of kintyre every couple of years
You're really just claiming to be special and you've swallowed the hype. There was lots of music to listen to besides the 60's generation, and lots of that generation was still producing good music.
Consider that 1975, the supposed start year for punk had these #1 albums both sides of the Atlantic:
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Queen - A Night at the Opera
Bob Dylan - Blood On the Tracks
Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
The next year 1976 saw #1's for Earth Wind and Fire, George Benson, and Stevie Wonder. Bob Marley was becoming huge.
Black Sabbath and Ozzie were going strong. Lots of new types of music were developing.
There was room for punk, and in South Cal the hardcore scene developed (punk was over in the UK by then). The known post punk bands on the East Coast were already started.
Now you've reached your middle age you could drop the snotty 15 year old claiming to be taking over act. That was always hype.
Punk rock was very much a product of the media/hype machine which was based in NYC. Out in the Midwest at the time, only super weirdos/societal outcasts listened to punk records and you generally had to go to indie record shops to get them, because K-Mart sure wasn't going to stock that shit.
The punk bands were _very_ good at marketing themselves and getting on the cover of Rolling Stone and Creem and making themselves seem bigger than they were and by the time punk got anywhere in the US, it had evolved into New Wave and to a lesser extent the British pub rock that spawned Graham Parker and Dire Straits. The Stooges and MC5 were a forgotten joke until revisionist history decades later. I guarantee you the average teenager in 1978 was a lot more likely to have Ted Nugent or Foreigner on his record shelf than the Ramones.
By the early 80s, when Black Flag appeared, then punk started to become a force to be reckoned with.
Nobody can get rid of the Rolling Stones either, but...
maybe if we could get them to collab they would cancel each other out
like matter and antimatter colliding
Kys Nazi faggot
Ok but I'd say the decay started as early as 1972, by 74 it was well advanced which is why that year was the lowest point of the entire decade for music releases.
>The punk bands were _very_ good at marketing themselves and getting on the cover of Rolling Stone and Creem
It's funny because all those magazines had their mouths firmly clamped onto Bob Dylan and The Who's nuts just a few months before punk broke.
>le ebil malcom mclaren is the meanie who did everything for monney!!!
You are the real 14 years old. It's amazing how many bands are, in the shadows, formed/ influenced by managers but nobody ever fucking talks about it. Face it mclaren was no different from your average 70s manager, the pistols wrote all their music and as long this is true the rest doesnt matter. And yes the pistols stole from the ramones... as literally fucking everyone lmao
I dunno; if you read columns in RSM or anything that Bangs and Christgau wrote in the mid-70s, those guys were very much looking for something new and were giving poor reviews to the albums that the Stones, Who, and whatnot had out at the time.
not they guy you're replying to but mclaren's bands all ended up hating his fucking guts which makes him at least slightly different to other managers
not all of them obviously, but most
Why u mad user? Calling me a nazi faggot for pointing out racist behaviour about music?
Search Disco Demolition Night. Rock fans tried to kill disco, and to some extent they succeeded. Shamfur dispray,
punk and post-punk fans are the most insufferable ppl in music. can't stand both
The prog versus punk feud is overstated anyway; besides, Zeppelin and the Stones were a much bigger symbol of rock star decadence than Pink Floyd.
Prog was already done by the mid-70s, albums like The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Tales From Topographic Oceans were the genre's swansong and there was no further place to take it. Most of those bands were seeking a change in direction at that time.
Besides, as said, the better punk groups quickly moved out of that three chord garage rock sound into a more professional, commercial format.
Fucking nazi faggots like you trying to single out a group of people you don't like and do your best to redefine words. You probably want national healthcare too fucking nazi fag.
A lot of 70s band hated the guts of their managers. I mean they were gateways to scams, hard drugs and shit like that
Right. From what I've seen, most (like 80%) of punk rock enthusiasts were artfags. Maybe it was different in the UK, but in the US punk has always been a rather gentrified genre of music. Goobers in Tennessee or Texas didn't listen to punk rock, they listened to REO Speedwagon, ZZ Top, Aerosmith, and Ted Nugent. It was mostly hipsters studying art or English literature in college.
I could agree that the rot was setting in by 1974, but there was still a lot of great stuff coming out in 72-73.
Manassas
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Exile In Main Street
Rory Gallagher Live In Europe
Rio Grande Mud
Roxy Music
Sailin' Shoes
Waka/Jawaka, The Grand Wazoo
Never A Dull Moment
The Slider
Superfly
On The Corner
Clear Spot
Into The Purple Valley, Boomer's Story
Ennismore
Can't Buy A Thrill
School's Out
Machine Head
Eat A Peach
+ Lou Reed starts to put his solo career into action
Maybe you need to take your identity politics to Sup Forums
Do you have anything to say about music?
yeah fair enough, and he definitely wasn't the first
i think a lot of it is the punk ethos (which was constructed) was all about being real and not being into money and all that
but obviously like any other music scene back then, there were money men involved, and so they get more shit for it, because it's so contradictory
I meant more than pop was starting to go south in 1972. Rock wasn't affected for another two years.
i enjoy threads like this one bc i enjoy thinking about rolling stones/NYT music critics shitposting on Sup Forums
Yes it did seem a bit interesting how punk rock was working class music in Britain but it belonged to elitist liberal arts majors in the US.
klosterman if you are in this thread i still remember you promising to 'get me back' for that half gram in Iowa City
you owe me $40 you motherfuck
As someone born in the early 80s, I appreciate punk more so for its influence than the actual music itself. While I'd rather listen to Never Mind the Bollocks than anything by, say, Boston or Rush, I only have a handful of punk albums and it's rare that I play them. I think the DIY culture/ethos to which punk contributed in the US is more enduring and valuable than the individual artists or songs.
That said, the punk aesthetic/sound is surprisingly resilient, unlike most of the conventional 70s AOR which comes off as campy and dated as fuck. Local venues have a seemingly endless supply of punk-type acts on tour. Punk has obviously managed to perpetuate itself across several generations, albeit as a generally niche product. There are plenty of movements in pop music that can't say the same.
I kind of agree. Fleetwood Mac appealed to an older boomer audience with money, less so the teenagers in the late 70s. It's no different than how in the 50s during the height of rock-and-roll, traditional pop and jazz records were still significantly outselling Little Richard.
Yes.Punk rock was affordable to the working class. It was made BY the working class kids from the streets of big and small cities around the world.And punk also start to change.There were Sex Pistols, The Clash but then we started to see also groups like Agnostic Front,Exploited,Amebix etc.
Punk isn't a one style genre,oh no!
Even during the late 60s, The Sound of Music and anything Tom Jones put out were bigger sellers than Disraeli Wheels or Surrealistic Pillow.
Indeed.
Corporate rock still sucks
Pretty much. By now, I'm enclined to say that it's a fact.
Also, I laughed at that reference. Nice.
Kinda similar to what happened with Grunge. There was a huge load of party/hair rock that just talked about doing cocaine and falling in love, but it never really spoke to most kids of Gen x who weren't living such glamorous lives and in fact were more nihilistic. Sure, it can also be defined as whining leftis shitting up and panting like usual, but you can't say it didn't do much to rock as a whole.
The country was in a recession in the early 90s--nobody wanted to see some faggot in LA bragging about his hot tub and his Playboy centerfold girlfriend.
Critics didn't like Black Sabbath because they were upper middle class hipsters who wanted lyrics about hope and changing the world, not doom. As for AC/DC, probably because critics are all unattractive nerds who can't get laid, so cockrock is intimidating to them.
^This. The Sex Pistols were literally a boyband created by Malcolm McLaren. He just plucked some teenagers off the street, dressed them in leather and studs from his bondage gear shop, and told them to act all edgy and shocking. Somehow it worked and kids bought into it.
I think you fellas are forggetting something. The impact that punk had WORLDWIDE, even though none of the original bands from the 70's experienced worldwide fame in their time (that would only happen with pop punk in the mid 90's and early 00's), by the 80's every country was experiencing a punk movement, some bigger, like in Brazil and Argentina, but every country had one.
In Britain, yes, the first wave of punk rock passed quickly and gave way to New Wave and post-punk. In the US, which is a much much bigger country, punk rock was mostly a regional thing confined to the urban areas of the West Coast and Northeast and it stuck around longer. The punk movement in the US lasted roughly to the mid-1980s, then gave way to hardcore.
What's prog lol
It's true that the demographics of punk fans in the US and Britain were different, and that it lasted much longer over here than over there, but even so the British and American music scenes were still in close contact with each other, and the music critics like Christgau were equally big on both British and American punk bands. And of course Malcolm McLaren had been involved with the punk scenes on both sides of the Atlantic. Plus American groups like the Ramones, Blondie, and Devo toured in the UK and found (in many cases) a bigger audience than in their home market.
Plenty of artists from this side of the Atlantic made albums that were in reaction to punk rock, including Neil Young (Rust Never Sleeps) and even some of the AOR rock groups like REO Speedwagon (Nine Lives).
Punk became formalized and lost its DIY ethos early on. In the New York scene in 1975, you could see Blondie, Television, Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, and others playing a wide range of musical styles, each offering something different and unique. By the time the Sex Pistols were a thing, punk magazines were already appearing and "rules" being laid down on what was "appropriate" punk rock (ie. fast, loud, and sloppy).
Yes. In the US, punk rock was a gentrified music scene for bohemians, art students, film students, and bored suburban kids. They disliked AOR rock because it was too bombastic, prog because it was pretentious and overwrought, and they were too white to appreciate funk, soul, and disco. So they looked back to the first decade of rock-and-roll, from 1955 to 65, for inspiration. It was both fresh and completely retro at the same time, and it caught the attention of people burned out on the excesses of Led Zeppelin and KISS.
In Britain, punk rock was the voice of nihilistic working class kids who wanted to protest the bad economy, lack of jobs, and (later on) Thatcherism.
>In Britain, punk rock was the voice of nihilistic working class kids who wanted to protest the bad economy, lack of jobs, and (later on) Thatcherism
This could describe Britpop aswell...
My dad said he was at a party in 1978 and the guy renting the house had a big stereo system rigged up. Anyway, most of the music he had on there was the usual AOR stuff like Robin Trower, Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, ELO, Scorpions...think he said Judas Priest--Stained Class was in there too. One day he said someone put on The Clash S/T. Some people liked it, others didn't. Then he put on Devo and it got mixed reactions. It took another year or so before Americans were able to digest punk/New Wave.
>Plenty of artists from this side of the Atlantic made albums that were in reaction to punk rock, including Neil Young (Rust Never Sleeps) and even some of the AOR rock groups like REO Speedwagon (Nine Lives).
It was a pretty big ripple effect. Like I said earlier, a lot of 1979 releases like Head Games, Tusk, and The Long Run had clear signs of punk influence. Judas Priest donned leather and studs and adopted a grittier, more urban sound on Hell Bent For Leather in place of the sci-fi/fantasy of the first three albums. Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town was definitively influenced by the punk movement. Billy Joel flirted with New Wave on Glass Houses.
My dad had this priceless story to tell as well.
>1979
>get off the ferry from Seattle
>sees this teen girl with her grandparents (who were maybe in their 60s?)
>they're asking her what she was doing in Seattle
>says she'd just come back from seeing Journey and how exciting and awesome it was
>they're like "The fuck is a Journey?"
>she says "OMG you don't know about Journey?"
Actually the term New Wave was originally used to describe any punk bank who had musicianship beyond three chords. Later on it got transferred to skinny tie bands playing synth-heavy power pop.