Punk: Musical Genre? Or State of Mind? (My Thoughts)
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- čas přidán 2. 05. 2021
- My personal opinion on the whole "state of mind or musical genre" debate. Plus a little history on what I think this debate may have originated out of.
Background music:
"The Way it is" by A Global Threat
• The Way It Is
"Ode to Johnny Alkie" by Sick Shift
• Ode to Johnny Alkie
"Fighting in the Street" by Cockney Rejects
• Fighting In The Street
"Unidad Prohibida" by Los Crudos
• Video
"Judy Go Home" by The Riverdales
• Judy Go Home
It was interesting reading John Lydon's autobiography, where he talks about how the scene changed when it stopped being this underground thing that few knew about. Suddenly you had all these new people turning up, picking fights with people they thought "weren't punk enough" to be real punks, as they looked to establish their own punk credentials. They declare that punk has to be about anarchy and doing your own thing, while effectively declaring punk has a rule book and a uniform. As for the question, to me it's a musical genre. If you can hear a punk song in a foreign language, with no idea what it's about, and no idea how the band produces its music, and recognise it as a punk song, then how can it be anything else? "Being a punk" is a different thing.
100% agree. So refreshing to hear a non Finn Mckenty opinion.
FOR REAL👍
No hate for Finn but he has more root with the hardcore scene than punk. Shits he said felt more like of an outsider takes which which is in itself is hella refreshing to hear (I like it), but if Im looking for some punk holy guidance I wouldn’t go to him.
When his channel first blow up in 2018 people used to jokingly describe him as ‘metalcore fantano’. It’s a hillarious name but I still find it more perfectly fit his whole channel brand. He didn’t really talked about ‘punk rock’. If you’re looking for some insight into the diy or current youth music movement, especially in heavy music, then he is the perfect guy. Dude got some of the freshest takes. He however fails at being a punk rocker 😅.
To me, punk being music and a way of thinking are indistinguishable. The music comes from the ideas, the ideas come from the music. They feed off each other, they feed on each other. Like an ouroboros. Punk is music and punk is a way of thinking.
Well said
For me the music is like an anchor it keeps me from drifting away from the ideals that people like Joe Strummer Charlie Harper
Jake Burns Ian MacKaye Henry Rollins have installed in me.
Shit I'm sorry i left two people off who had massive input to my teenage years I'm very sorry KEITH MORRIS AND JELLO BIAFRA what a BAD disciple i am back to the cave to whip and beat myself with broken glass
I just discovered your channel and Im gonna watch all the videos! Thanks so much for making them and you are definitely not an underqualified punk historian!
When punk began in the 70’s it was really a state of mind. Bands as diverse as Ramones to Blondie to SexPistols, Patti Smith, Television, were all under the punk banner. Reggae and 2 tone were all in as well.Hardcore kinda made a more uniform sound, but it’s very diverse as well.
I dunno…I agree with what you say about punk culture…it’s bigger than either genre or a state of mind.
I grew up in the 80’s Toronto scene. We have a book on it here called “Tomorrow is too late TOXHC” .
I was a fanzine publisher and met tons of great punks from all over the world and the whole DIY culture was awesome. Also all the different scenes of every state, province or in the uk (I had an English Trojan skin friend in high school who tuned me into the uk scene. I loved everything and going to gigs was the best thing ever. I saw Bad Religion and Fugazi the very first time either played in Canada.
I’m rambling lol…I’m a 53 year old who never grew out of it. I don’t have an awesome record collection or anything much than a bunch of worn out demo tapes, fanzines and a couple flyers and pics I took of Toronto bands for my zine. (Warehouse of Strangers) we had “punk houses” and were very dirty and drunk then. Now I play blues music to a punk rock crowd in Peterborough Ontario Canada. I really dig yo’ channel. I kinda quit listening to most punk music when nofx and green day got big, (tho i spent the entire 90’s playing in punk bands)…watching you is kinda like picking up where I left off. Cheers buddy!
To me, Punk is music, rebellion or critcism against establishments, or just being provocative.
The fact that this is even a question baffles me. Punk rock is the music's name and being "a punk" is the culture side if things. To me they go hand in hand. This is the one genre where there should be less division and more unity.
Love the video by the way
People got called drunks then got angry about it and wrote fuck you music about it. Society created it.
Really interesting video, very well made and I like what you had to say. Personally the music is what really sells punk for me, although I feel like the music is, more often than not, an artistic outlet for the attitude associated with punk, and I mean in the lyrics as well as the musical style and sound itself.
The attitude and ideals of punk rock are definitely an integral part, and aren’t to be ignored, because it’s not “just about the music”, either. I personally feel like you can’t really have one without the other. (I will admit that you probably could have the attitudes described here without being a fan of punk, but I think it’s safe to say punk wouldn’t be such a widespread thing if it was all sappy, calm and unoffensive music that just had a stylistically harder edge).
I completely agree. I do see the word punk used in a sense that has nothing to do with music, but it’s in a vague sense of rebellion or doing the opposite of what’s expected. But punk culture isn’t unified nor does it have a single set of values. And to me punk is first and foremost a musical genre, though culture plays a big part. Like a band/artist can have a lot of the same values as a lot of punk bands and that’s awesome, but I don’t think that qualifies the music as part of the punk genre.
I also think that if you think of punk as a specific set of values you’re more likely to fall victim to a “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
This CZcams channel is fantastic
Thanks a lot!!
After 44 years of life and almost but not quite 3 decades listening punk rock music, I think it boils down to this: there is nothing more punk than being true to one’s self. From there comes protesting and middle fingers and sociopolitically charged music and tattoos and piercings and crazy hair and squatting and attitude and all the many things people site when self-identifying as punkers. What’s good for you may not be good for me, but so long as you’re being true to yourself, you’re doing alright.
Defending your look,
Defending your own idea of My life, My Choice, Grew up in Orange County California..
It was a violent day to day life, you either stood up for yourself or be tagged a POSER,
This sounds trivial to some, but it made us actually mean what you said and let them know,
Im 50 now and this ideal will always be important..
If you like it , be about it ,
Cheers from Westminster CA
I agree with your progression argument. Lineages - lines of descent - are important, and although hybridization between genres complicates (and is crucial to) lineage analysis, it's just as relevant in musical genres as it is in understanding political factions, religious sects, or biological taxa (which also feature hybridization).
Definitely hardcore and hardcore-derived bands (including early pop punk) sound more similar musically and have more attitudes/culture in common than metal bands (some of whom are former punks of course) but maybe more so now than the 80s or early 90s, when the attitude of bands like Fear & Meatmen were in stark contrast to Crass and Dead Kennedys.
Another reason why hardcore & hardcore derived bands sound more similar to each other than metal bands is because in contrast to all metal-derived subgenres keeping the 'metal' label many of the non-hardcore derived (or non-77 punk revival) genres are generally no longer called punk despite the roots: new wave, goth, postpunk, grunge. If they were, 'punk' would seem even more varied. Instead, there's the catch-all 'alternative'.
I often separate "PUNK" into its different categories. 1. Music Genre (or 12 trillion sub genres what ever you prefer) 2. Philosophy 3. Fashion 4.Culture. IMO all of these exist and are part of what makes punk a thing.
I agree with your break down and enjoy your content.
I feel like it's a mentality. Self declared punk since age 12, 35 now. House wife kids and all, but I never feel like I let punk go. I fucking love it. It becomes a part of you.
Kudos for spotlighting Entropy. That's my friend Brian's band
🔥🔥🔥
SUCH A GREAT VIDEO
This should be a full doc… Ive thought this a million times…. Jonah Ray would be a good interview for this
Good video.
The sub-genre of punk is what gets into the weird sketchy area.
Although many punk bands have always had that odd right wing guitar player, when you start getting into Nationalistic Oi!, Redneck/identity punk, no politics punk, etc. it all just reminds me of how jocks started shaving their heads and showing up to punk shows just to push people around to a soundtrack.
To me it's always been definitely left, and anti-system, gov, military, capitalism, flag, sexism, racism, etc.
Working class pride punk, also seems like a dated philosophy to me.
One minute in and you mentioned my favorite Bestial Black Metal band ever, Revenge!
Punk is an attitude to life that created music. It's so thoughtful and intelligent that it made music as well. There is very much a punk music style of fast three chord rock songs with shouted vocals. Also, historically its very political, often left-leaning towards anarchism.
Hey, I'm curious. Do you make a distinction between "hardcore" and "punk"?
Earth Crisis and Bulldoze seem to be bands you're fine with calling punk (and a lot of people seem to accept the bands who fused new york hardcore and new york death metal in the 90s too), but the other metalcore, beatdown hardcore, and deathcore bands which followed feel clearly outside the culture and genre conventions.
I personally do make the distinction, but it does get blurry with certain bands. I feel the same about emo too.
Personally I think of “hardcore” as you’re referring to it a subsect of both punk and metal sort of in the same sense as I do with crossover thrash.
To use that example, band like Municipal Waste leans heavier on their metal influences than on their punk influences, but their music does still have roots in punk to some extent, although they’re part of a genre that occupies a slot on both punk and metal. On the other hand a band like Vitamin X is much more in line with their roots in punk despite being a little more thrash sounding than most bands of their nature.
If you were to apply this idea to the board blanket of what most people would consider “hardcore,” a band like Suffokate for instance sits in an almost identical position on the spectrum as Municipal Waste. At their core they’re very much a metal band, but what sets them (and really all deathcore bands like them) apart from typical death metal is their influence from 90’s and early 2000s hardcore punk. (Specifically bands like Madball, Earth Crisis, Agnostic Front and others that were much more closely tied to punk than any other genre)
On the contrary you have a band like Rotting Out with a sound that’s much more akin to the early 80’s Circle Jerks or Suicidal Tendencies sound but has just enough “punch” from the extreme metal stuff to make them fall into this “grey area” of what hardcore has become.
In truth it seems to me like “hardcore” has become an entire spectrum of punk/metal fusion ranging from bands like Suffokate or I Declare War which are essentially just death metal bands with NYHC-style breakdowns instead of guitar solos, and bands like Rotting Out or Have Heart which are more or less just playing punk with screamed/shouted vocals and downtuned guitars.
And of course everything in between lol.
(I suppose it could also be argued that crossover thrash is in many ways a point of origin for “hardcore” in this sense)
Just my thoughts though, and thank you for sharing yours!
I have my own feelings on the term “emo” and it’s inconsistency as to what it represents but that’s a whole different topic lol.
Didn’t even finish your vid before I felt the need to comment….wrong!
Lol , I mean your totally correct and this is as well as thought out as any , but I’d like to add an angle towards the “ punk as a state of mind” ( which I think is more accurate). As a historian myself , herds of humans have always grouped into only a couple Catagories social structure , PuNks , are this that have nervousness about them and a Brian that is not as easily sedated as the majority of humans , this “ anckst “ is expressed though creativity in a range of ways. For musicians that must express this pain/love circle jerk it comes out …rough sounding if they are not great players, or clean sounding if they are technically skilled and naturally musical. Maybe great players express punk through metal sounds , or reggae, or country…the noise created is not as important as theWHY it’s created. If your highly educated you get to rock a poem about society using Greek Mythos as a theme, if your not then you use a bar fight between 2 chicks ….but I would argue they are both the same , the soul sickness that is expressed is the punk, bitch!
The definition of punk = debating the definition of punk
Thank God for you
Punk rock has to be about music. It's a musical genre. But it isn't necessarily about a particular sound. Rather than attitude, I have always thought it is more about a State of Mind. Patty Smith is about 8 million times more punk rock than Blink 182 for example, because she is entirely original rather than entirely derivative. It's worth remembering that the Ramones came out of a scene that included Blondie, Talking Heads, Patty Smith, Wayne County, and Television, all of whom espoused the punk rock state of mind and aesthetic, rather than a particular sound. I agree that the concept of it as a culture fits better, because you can fit a Patty Smith into punk culture, which you probably can't do if it is just about a particular musical sound.
The answer is simple, ‘Punk’ refers to 2 different things - one is a rebellious ethos which can include anything such as Death Grips. The other is punk as a taxonomical genre with specific interval pattern usage.
How many punkrockers doe's it take to screw in a lightbulb?
At least two but how the hell did they get in there?
I just discovered yer chanel today. Yer content is sort of like this punk rock MTV/VH1 fantasy I've always had in my head. Actually it's not sorta. It's exactly what I've always kinda dreamed of. Haha. I already sub and to understand what that means. I only sub to Abt 3 other channels. So u got my full support.
As for the subject of the video. To me punk rock the music. Is everything u talked Abt. But punk rock the "attitude" is every single person u have met that says they are a little punk but the reality is they have no idea that punk rock even has its own culture. It's similar to graffiti. Alot of people know what graf is. But they are clueless to the lifestyle. Things like beef. Racking paint. Crews. All that diff shit. But at the same time. This whole subject is a chicken or the egg thing. If it wasn't Abt the attitude. It would just be another musical genre and end there. If it wasn't Abt the music it would just be.... Another musical genre n end there. Haha. Things that I noticed Abt punk that really made me gravitate to it. Was the whole. Be yerself. Even if it's not the standard issue idea of punk. And the second was how it is a global community. Great example: when id see a flyer or some add for a band that wasn't punk. It would say. THIS BAND and that's all.IM PLAYING FRIDAY. COME SEE ME. Where punk shows. It would have everyone's name on the flyer. WE ARE PLAYONG FRIDAY. COME SEE US. (and get wasted) it always has had a family feel to it. People in the bands and people who just came to watch. Absolute Equality.
Oh yea and this might just be me. BUT I think vinyl records n sewing kits are alot more common in punk than mohawks n studded vests. Am I wrong?
What documentaries would you recommend?
Definitely American Hardcore!
There’s another one on CZcams that’s just called “SoCal Punk Documentary” that’s strictly about the LA scene from the 80s
As for docs about specific bands:
The Descendents Doc was pretty good too if you like them
And The NOFX book was fantastic too
There’s some good ones about the 90s era of punk too (specifically One Nine Nine Four and Turn it Around: The Story of East Bay Punk)
Recently a surplus of documentaries have been added to YT so I have to play some catch up
@@thepunkhistorian6397 thanks, man.
X, The Unheard Music.
Another State of Mind.
There's a Youth Brigade documentary, the name escapes me, however what is brilliant about that film is how it documents how the sound and science change over time.
*scene
I have always been of the state of mind perspective because I approach everything in life based on how Ian started Dischord or Brett started Epitaph, jobs, relationships, visual art projects,, and eventually music projects lol.
myself and my much more academically respected ex-girlfriend have been documenting since the 90's, my only real friends are dudes I play shows with
Awesome
Is your band on Apple Music?
My old band Selloutclub broke up.
But my new band Zest is:
music.apple.com/us/album/delivery-boy/1617160904?i=1617160905
from a fellow cat lover, mad respect for the giant tower by the window move like i do, SPOIL YOUR PETS PPL!
Yeah, I'd have to go with something closer to the latter. I think there's sub-genres that kinda fit better descriptors of the music but I think "punk" is more a cultural thing which is why you have not only music and diverse music expressions but also you have fashions as well and visual art pieces that go with punk (and punk video games if you're willing to accept the medium as one of expression). They're all signifiers of shared cultural experiences and values and don't all have to be expressed simultaneously to be a part of the punk culture. What is it, exactly? Dunno. I don't think there is any specific thing but rather a venn diagram of a ton of different things that all add to different aspects of punk.
Probably at the end of the day, maybe it can come down to fuck repression and oppression? Even the shitty parts of punk, for as ignorant and illiterate and destructive as they are, still will claim that they feel they are repressed or limited somehow. Whether that's an economic oppression, an emotional one, a chemical one, or an intellectual one. But I'll just shut up now because talking about this too long will make anyone just start saying stupid stuff.
It's both!
"it's ok if u can't spike yer hair but goddamnit u better know how to sew a patch on those jeans"
We toured with leftover crack in 2017 around South Africa. Was intense.
music...fast and real
They are not mutually exclusive… Both statements are true
D) Leftist Political Ideology, complete with Soundtrack & Uniform
neither - its a marketing campaign
When people define who they are essentially as a human as punk. You know you probably shouldn't hire them.
Those kinda cats have no personality
"Misfits and weirdos" -- my people lol :)
Punk is a PARADOX. On the one hand it's "fuck the rules", I do what I want and I do it my way, but at the same times the punk community has so many implicit rules, and if you break those rules, you're not considered a real "punk" anymore by many. But what would a "real punk do" other than ignoring the rules?
For me punk is non-conformity in music. So a band like (for instance) Negativeland was FAR more punk than, say, every DRI or Discharge copycats showing off their 'punk' credentials.
"If your not homeless, jobless, and hopeless your not a REAL punk" xD