@photographthesun 532770 wrote:

Who do you think of as punk?

well i kinda need educated, especially as i was speaking to my mate a few weeks ago about punk and he told me it was the main underground party attraction before techno?
The only ‘punk’ i know of is just some bands as i was growing up like limp bizkit, Papa roach, rage against the machine.. Actually now thinking about it i guess i have confused hip-hop with punk all this time lol.
Is velvet underground decent?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqH21LEmfbQ

sorry to divert the thread but has anyone listened to folk punk, just recently got into it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiCQ0oF0Q-Q

@photographthesun 532857 wrote:

Sometimes punk is defined more as an anti corporate attitude, sometimes it was defined by working class men coming to gether who could barley play but had a lot to say. For example Sid Vicious was so fucking terrible they would usually unplug him and play a recording of his parts…

Later on punk become more main stream and took on more SKA type elements.

Within months/years it was co-opted by corporate record labels who also owned commercial TV companies, notably EMI group who owned Thames and ATV Music (who were of course linked to the ITV region of the time). This meant a lot of fairly punk bands often made it to pre-watershed kids TV (thus boosting their popularity) particularly as until the mid 1980s there was no such thing as “yoof TV” and kids TV was made for an audience which ranged from babies well into the teenage years and even early years of University!

TBH in this case its probably only because of age, I was a kid when this all happened and even then was interested in media and broadcasting. Though by the time I reached my teens the punk scene had mutated (as you say) into indie with ska influences. And for all its “badness” it was mostly middle class white kids into this (if you look at the concert audience in the Big Audio Dynamite video I posted that is apparent) other racial groups and social classes graduated towards disco and then soul/urban genres until MDMA appeared. These divisions still exist to some extent on the music scene today (as I notice when working at the local radio station)

yep probably true though in recent times I’ve noticed a lot of people (not just younger folk either!) who seem to idolise the punk / indie and rave scenes from the 1970s to the early 90s as a force for social change when (although social change movements coexisted alongside) it ultimately because just another form of commercial pop music.

A mate of mine who is slightly older and a punk remixed a punk/ska track as part of the “DIY ethos” and uploaded it either to youtube or soundcloud. Instead of being congratulated for keeping the scene going within a day or so he had a snotty email from some random startup (upstart?) small company to which the punk band had auctioned off their rights to the music ebay style for quick cash!

@General Lighting 532860 wrote:

Within months/years it was co-opted by corporate record labels who also owned commercial TV companies, notably EMI group who owned Thames and ATV Music (who were of course linked to the ITV region of the time). This meant a lot of fairly punk bands often made it to pre-watershed kids TV (thus boosting their popularity) particularly as until the mid 1980s there was no such thing as “yoof TV” and kids TV was made for an audience which ranged from babies well into the teenage years and even early years of University!

I think this happens with pretty much everything. Companies thrive on people thinking that buying/consuming is rebelling.

@barrettone 532893 wrote:

I think this happens with pretty much everything. Companies thrive on people thinking that buying/consuming is rebelling.

Thats mentioned a lot in “No Logo” by Naomi Klein but even this is over a decade old now…

To be fair it was a different era and in them days the suits in charge of the companies and media were relatively socially naïve old men from the British public school system and that accidentally let through a lot of at least mildly subversive stuff, plus there was way more money in the music industry.

nowadays though there are genuinely far more opportunities to get music out (so the punk and indie lot got exactly what they wanted) everything is a lot more ruthless and competitive…

TBH there probably was a brief time in the 1990s when a kid from a urban estate could make a reasonable career out of music/creativity without selling out but now being in a band seems to be what they do from year 10-12 and gap year before going up to University and then coming back to your birthplace or growing up area (and often even back to the parental home!) and to work in a call centre. (our local further education colleges sponsor some local bands!)

@barrettone 532903 wrote:

. Since the kids growing up on estates don’t tend to have those “marketing skills” it becomes more and more middle and upper middle class folk who make it big in the music scene.

Also (and I know it isn’t PC but its not something what should be swept under the carpet) until the 2000s and advances in forensic accounting, laundered drugs money helped fund a lot of peoples entry into the business. It still does/did in the USA urban/hip hop scene hence why when they had a hip hop convention in LA there were as many feds around as if Al Quaeda had set up a base camp there..

However this is less common in the creative industries as a whole today and they much more professional and less rebellious than before. This also means middle class parents don’t judge their kids for getting involved in them any more (probably remembering their own ambitions to be in a band) and will often fund their college/uni studies for at least one creative subject on the assumption that they will eventually “grow out of it and get a proper job” (or end up like the 50 something British Telecom workers who spend their spare time in tribute bands playing prog rock).

as for punks and anarchists they are certainly not dead here but they have been busy fixing up the main infrastructure of their housing commune before they get to build the band practice room in the basement.

@photographthesun 532854 wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVUZuVZWHkk

pogues are my favorite band man