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History of Punk Rock essay
History of Punk Rock essay
History of Punk Rock essay
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Punk
This is Peter Inskip coming to you live from triple j, with this week’s segment in our ‘Music and Society’ series. For the next half hour we’ll be looking at the punk music scene starting in the mid-seventies.
Punk was born in the early 70’s in New York, and is still evolving.
No other style in the history of rock, has been so uncompromising, or made such a dramatic impression as Punk Rock. The two versions of punk, the original American and its British descendent, were very different.
British punk was aggressive and angry. It demanded immediate change and had no interest in working for the solution. The Sex Pistols typified British Punk with such songs as "Anarchy In The UK," which did not give a thought to anarchy's effect.
American punk seemed lazy by comparison. It was sarcastic where the English version was more violent; the British pushed one step further, thus gaining more recognition.
The first of the punk rock bands to be signed up with a record company were the Ramones. The Ramones survived through to the mid 90’s and still have a huge following. In that time they released over a dozen albums, most of their songs are short and simple three or four chord arrangements.
Artists like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, Talking Heads, and Blondie, came out of the U.S, but Punk took on greater strength in England, where Bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Clash, and the Buzzcocks emerged with more aggression than their softer Amer...
The Ramones were a punk rock band started it 1974 and originally consisted of Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone. None of the members were related; they just chose Ramone as a surname. In 1976 they came out with their debut album, Ramones. Their sound consisted of a really raw, stripped down effect, and a signature, guttural chant of “1, 2, 3, 4” Dee Dee exclaimed at the beginning of their songs to start them off. The group wasn’t extremely popular until they traveled to a tour in the U.K. (RollingStoneArtists).
Rock ‘n’ roll and 20th Century Culture According to Philip Ennis, rock ‘n’ roll emerged from the convergence of social transformations which resulted from World War II (Ryan 927). Despite its pop culture origins, rock music is arguably one of the strongest cultural factors to develop in this century. Artists such as Lennon, McCartney and Dylan defined the emotions of a generation and, in the last decade, it as even been acknowledged by members of the establishment which it hoped to change as a major influence in the country. In order to understand how rock went from a sign of rebellion to a cultural icon, it is necessary to understand where it came from.
The ‘60s were the age of youth, as millions of children’s from post World War II became teenagers and rebelled against the conservative fifties. Denying civil rights to African-Americans and liberation to teenagers in previous decades and Vietnam War, created a vortexes which lead to massive rebellion against the status qua. Music of the 1960s was characteristic of the revolution that was going on during the decade. It was a time of rebellion and counter-culture in which the teenagers and college students were critical of government, business, religious institution and other various aspects of life. Era marked by civil rights movement, Vietnam War, environment of drug abuse and sexual freedom formed new music like: folk rock, soul and psychedelic rock. These genres starkly contrast the teen idol music of ‘50s pop mainstream. Writes John Covach; “World was exploding, and rock musicians were listening more closely than ever.”(Covach, 152) Such stark contrast in pop music directly relay to changing social culture in America, which further echo’s the relationship between music and culture.
Kim Wilde. Iron Maiden. Denim Jackets. Michael Jackson. Four essential aspects of 1970’s American pop culture. All have played influential roles in numerous lives, including Satrapi’s. While many have been affected by the aforementioned, perhaps few have had their personalities shaped as much as Satrapi. Growing up in the suppressive environment of the Iranian Revolution, Satrapi turned to American culture to help get through the difficult times.
The British Invasion of 1964 brought America's music - reinvented and revitalized - home, a new generation of rock fans was born. Rock now entered what is now known as its Classic Era.
...ularity in the other, but this is not often the case, as seen with the punk rock movement. Separated by over two centuries, British Americans have generations between their cultural brethren across the ponds. However, beneath all these cultural differences, the levels of social hierarchy are consistent throughout nations.
The American rock band Nirvana impacted American culture and society by paving the way for the punk rock subculture into mainstream corporate America. Punk rock music stems from the rock genre but has its own agenda. The crux of punk rock is that it is a movement of the counterculture against the norms of society. Punk rock in itself is made up of a subculture of people who rejected the tameness of rock and roll music during the 1970s. (Masar, 2006, p. 8). The music stresses anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian ideas in its lyrics as well as scorns political idealism in American society. Before Nirvana unintentionally made punk rock a multi-million dollar commercialized genre of music, underground rock paved the way for the punk rock genre by creating core values that punk rockers drew upon.
The late 1970s gave birth to a punk culture that further distended into an evolution of the genre during the mid-1980s, particularly in Seattle, USA. A punk inspired movement called grunge became internationally recognized after Nirvana’s debut release album ‘Nevermind’, in 1995. Grunge gained a mass recognition for its punk ideology, attire and music, which stemmed further away, and was in itself a rejection to the mainstream metal and pop boom in the music industry of that time. Grunge incorporated a fusion of cultural and social threads that linked themes like feminism, liberalism, anti-authoritarianism, wry post-modernism, and not least a love of dirty, abrasive music; grunge reconciled all these into a seminal whole. (Standard grunge definition, Internet source)
Seventies punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use. This was often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism an...
In the early 1980s, the "new wave" movement, a sub genre of punk rock that began in the '70s, was generating a more sophisticated pop sound. In Britain, artists including bands such as the Clash, Squeeze, and the Police attained both critical and commercial acceptance. The Pretenders, another British band established in the late 70s, was led by an American-born singer and songwriter, Chrissie Hynde. In the United States, the Los Angeles-based band X navigated the transition from punk to new wave, and the New York-based group Talking Heads with a big assist from MTV, succeeded in fusing art rock with funk and African rhythms. Which leads me to my next new 80's genre.
In the isolated city of Seattle during the mid 1980's a new sound and attitude was developing. Although it didn't yet have a coined term it would later become know as Grunge, "originally a tounge-in cheek term for the pungent guitar noise propagated by the cultish independent label Sub Pop" ("Grunge"). This mix of 70's metal and early 80's punk blasted into mainstream America and brought the hard rock sound of the 70's back to life, but the sudden, unexpected and to some unwanted, fame and popularity would prove to much for it and like so many pop culture movements before, it would fade away under the pressure("History").
The British invasion was one of the most important periods in the history of rock n roll. It brought many different bands and styles to America. Many bands including The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and Herman’s Hermits swept the nation with their music. Americans jumped into the hype and the British invasion changed rock n roll music forever. Without these British bands, rock music would never be the same.
With rioting and terrorism taking place around the world, more aggressive and rebellious styles were being created. The punk look came with this; singers like Johnny Rotton and bands like The Ramones and the Sex Pistols were a few to lead a new generation of teens. There was also the introduction of glam-rock in which musicians mixed glamour with rock. Davis Bowie was the most successful. Fans copied his "rooster" hair cut. He made the androgynous look popular.
The generation of punks was influenced from many different kind of modern art and writers. The word punk was used in a defamatory manner, which has been considered with punk bechaviour of personal disrespect or has been used as a form of expression of feeling of hatred. It started by the youth people who were criticizing the economy, the rising unemploymend and they were seeking a reform of the goverment system. The punk culture is a subculture which defines the freedom, the liberty and the revolution against the stereotype society and the casual culture. They were anarchist or marxist. Their ideas were anti authoritarianism, the movement of DIY (Do It Yourself) and there only request was not to sell out. Ten years after the emerge of the punk subculture many currents imitatived from the first, the celticpunk, the hardcore punk, the anarcho-punk, skate punk, garage punk the street punk and many others. So the punk subculture went through a laboratory which affect its DNA which created new forms of the initial subculture which had their own
They formed their own movement. They made their own music and expressed it in the way they wanted to. They came up with what idea they wanted to spread and effectively distributed it. They did all of the producing, booking, recording, and touring on their own without the help of some other company. They always had an audience interested in them. Most importantly, they never gave up. All of those things are the basic characteristics of DIY punk bands and what makes them stand out from everyone else. To say they were not successful is an understatement. They were very successful in getting their ideas across and getting people to follow them as was described earlier. DIY punk bands deserve to receive more acknowledgement for the hard work and dedication they had to experience along the way of producing and performing their