Why punk keeps connecting people across space and time
huckmag.com
huckmag.com
The other guy nodded in agreement and replied, "that's the point."
Punk is so interesting in his variations. Compare with metal where speed, black, alternative etc are quite coded and baroque, whereas punk still manages to stat fresh.
I think while there are plenty genre that requires more skill than punk, that doesn’t make punk itself the musical equivalent of simpleton.
In some aspects, it’s the artigianal counterpart of the mass produced pop.
I think the point is that punk is accessible and relateable for a lot of people. The punk people I've known were the most open-minded of any crowd, whether that was built around music or something else. I think it's true that it still unites people who otherwise would probably not mix. They are also the most open to different styles of music.
And as for connecting people across space and time, I can't help but think of The Fall's "Telephone Thing" every time I remember the douchebags at Google have all my data as I type HN comments. How dare you assume I want to parlez-vous with you.
Grunge?
EDIT it actually comes to mind that I've also heard Grunge referred to as "Post Punk"
I think it's not a coincidence that many people who get involved in underground music movements later start successful careers in creative endeavors - fashion, cuisine, publishing, design, programming, etc. There was a documentary a few years ago tracing the lives of people who had been active in the 1980s music scenes and so many of them ended up in these professions.
And you don't have to look far to find more famous examples - Kira Roessler (Black Flag bassist) won an Oscar for sound editing for Mad Max: Fury Road, Damond John's fashion label coming out of the late 80s/early 90s NYC hip hop scene, and Anthony Bourdain's coming of age as a young chef and NYC punk fan in the late 70s.
McKenna summed up the evolution from passive, introspective subcultures when he observed that "we're not dropping out here, we're infiltrating and taking over".
I also don't know mmuch about the 1960s hippie culture firsthand, of course.
But my "impression" of the 1990s rave scene was that indeed it was in between the punk ethos (DIY, warehouse takeovers, some aggressive music styles like gabber/hardcore) and the hippie ethos (bohemian, some psychedelic influence, etc.) At any rate you did get that sense of "for the scene" with the rave community, something that is indeed special when you can find it.
For all I know there are some scenes similar to that still, but it's hard to keep up with this sort of thing -- it's hard to reconcile a late-hours youth culture with responsible 9-5 job culture. :( It would be interesting to know for sure what has taken its place.
I'm a founder at a startup trying to address this problem.
I wish all of Europe had English pub/club opening hours. I mean it's not like the English party (or drink) less than us here on the continent. They just start earlier. That makes a lot of sense!
In hindsight I was jetlagged twice a week just by moving forward and back my biorhythm every weekend, during much of my youth. That was unhealthy and totally unnecessary if only party times were more sane.
But then all the old people like us will show up...
For others, some of it might indeed be helped by later work schedules as well -- a lot of service industry jobs for instance are not 9-5 and are more later shifts. On the other hand I do remember some talking about how little sleep they'd be getting before going into work, so...
On the organization side, I guess some of the reasons for many raves starting so late is that historically they often were after hours style events, sometimes semi-improvised and unlicensed. There was no liquor license getting in the way of closing earlier, and there's enough people that do want to party all night that it makes sense to do so. (It's not just restricted to electronic dance, where it is allowed, there are standard bars that are open 24/7).
I just chalk it up to a side effect of getting older. Even doing the standard dance club scene hours (which here often is a 10PM-2AMish scene, last call is 3AM here) would throw me off these days. (And I'm not even a parent, which I imagine cements your schedule even more!)
Web-friendly link –> http://www.foopee.com/punk/the-list/
about the widely disparate groups of people who sport "The Bars" of Black Flag. (I've got mine next to The Zen Of Python on my arm)
Dead Kennedys was on constant repeat on my walkman or home stereo as a 14-year-old in the late 80's. Every Friday was spent at the tiny all-ages punk club in our east-coast college town. Government Issue, Fugazi, Das Damen, Black Flag, Jello Biafra, even They Might Be Giants came through.
Even now, 30 years later, I load up Frankenchrist or any other DK album on YouTube at work and that's my intense-focus music. The music is still strong as hell, Jello's words and delivery are ruthless and scathing and hilarious, and the whole thing just works.
I wish there was a DK today. Rage had it. Some Run The Jewels tracks have it, but not quite.
Taiwanese: 滅火器 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOgNLY8nDxQ
Mongolian: 九大圣器 Nine Treasures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa7PfYfmoEo
杭盖乐队 Hanggai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nf1HKQNuQQ
Norwegian: http://www.folk-metal.nl
Spanish : Soziedad Alkoholika http://www.soziedadalkoholika.com
French : La Dent Noire https://ladentnoire.org/ (<- my band !)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWyMfmdADAM
Japanese: Monoeyes/The Hiatus/Ellegarden (3 bands with the same lead singer, Takeshi Hosomi)
Bosnian: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NZOf47Iv2Zo (Its actually more ska/rap but still three is some punk in it if you listen carefully :))
I'm in England at the moment, and for the last several years all the band listings I see at bars are for one of the ten thousand "Tribute to the Mildly Popular Band from the 70s/80s". So if I want the Thin Lizzy experience or the Foreigner/Journey experience or the genuine-in-case-you-missed-it-the-first-time Ratt experience, you can get it six nights out of the week because that's all that's playing at every bar in town.
But there are no bands with stupid names playing their own crappy stuff. Even on a Tuesday night. And that's what I miss.
If you were born in 2000, starting a rock band seems a bit retro - you might do it if you're into that sort of thing, but you might prefer to play solo gigs with a looper or do weird ambient stuff with modular synths on YouTube. There's no shortage of talented young musicians, they're just doing things differently.
Great book from 99 somewhat in the style of this punk article https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18756.Last_Night_a_DJ_Sa...
excerpt:
Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to 2000, when they stopped working. Why?
One reason—among several—is that as soon as subcultures start getting really interesting, they get invaded by muggles, who ruin them. Subcultures have a predictable lifecycle, in which popularity causes death.
I often wrack my brain trying to think, what changed...
Was it the Internet sucking a lot of the money out of the music industry?
Was it the aging out of GenX?
Was it the long term structural effects of the GFC, with the shrinking of the middle class and the subsequent capital booms that QE created?
Was it a change in perspective in a generation coming up with a lot of economic and global turmoil happening? (no time for culture, time to get to work, economic security is fragile)
Was it the growth of online dating platforms and social media? (Was all of this just an incredibly complex system of mating calls?)
Was it the death of place? Did these cultures lose their luster when anyone could just read all about them online, consume them, and move on? Or perhaps a sort of centralization and homogenization of culture as a result of trends happening in the digital world (where everybody is reading the same things, thinking the same things, doing the same things, in any city)?
Was it the growth of burning man? A sort of Wal-Mart of subculture.
Was it rising real estate prices and the gentrification of cities globally? (Was this new global interest in urban living driven by the Internet in some way?)
Was it the fetishizing of Internet business? (Why do pop stars have Internet startups now, anyhow?)
...but yes, it is super interesting. American cities these days seem to be full steam ahead away from the weird and into the terrifyingly boring, and they have long been fertile grounds for the germination and growth of subcultures.
Does it really just all come down to $?
Looked at a different way, the author is writing a cautionary prediction to anyone who is involved in a sub-culture > be careful who you admit, else death becomes it.
A subculture can only exist if there's a barrier to entry. Commodification, globalisation and social liberalism eroded those barriers.
In their day, hippies and punks paid a real social price for their subcultural identity - they outraged society and were marginalised for it. If you wanted to be a mod in the 60s, you needed money and cultural capital to get the right clothes, the right records, the right scooter.
The Wigan Casino and the Twisted Wheel formed a nucleus for the Northern Soul subculture, because they were the only place you could hear rare soul records. Carnaby Street and the King's Road formed the nucleus for the mod scene, because they were the only place you could buy tonic suits and winkle picker shoes.
Streaming has democratised access to new and obscure music. Retailers like H&M have democratised access to the latest fashions. Social media has democratised access to cultural capital. A new trend can spread globally within a matter of weeks, diluting any possibility of it spawning a subculture. There's very little that a teenager could wear or listen to that is genuinely shocking. Without a barrier to entry, there is no subculture, just culture.
There are two thriving youth subcultures, they just don't fit our idea of what a youth subculture is supposed to look like - the social justice movement and the alt-right. There's a social cost to holding extreme political views, which prevents these subcultures from being absorbed into the cultural mainstream. Your parents probably won't disown you if you dye your hair purple, get a neck tattoo or listen to Merzbow. They might well disown you if you start saying that all white men are complicit in rape culture or that Hitler had a point.
cool.
The dominant feature of youth used to be relentless, neverending, soul crushing boredom.
If you were creative you would do almost anything to escape that boredom. Make something, write a song, create an event. Anything.
Now nobody is bored anymore. Maybe existentially but not in a literal minute to minute sense.
(Honestly, you don't even need the guitars.)
Where are you going to shows? This seems pretty regional, and also tied to the size of the venue. The more DIY the space, the crazier the shows in my experience. NYC used to have some utterly insane shows at places like DBA (which unfortunately is no longer with us), and Oakland had some pretty rad DIY venues pre-Ghost-Ship fire (which also unfortunately are slowly getting shut down :().
Something about those spaces feel more organic, more raw, more unfiltered. Everyone is more connected, the artists seem to have a much better time, the crowds are often more diverse and you'll hardly ever see someone staring into their phones taking videos. That doesn't mean that good shows don't exist in larger or legitimate venues, just that I'm often very discerning with which large venues I'm willing to go to.
/shrug
Transplant to seattle from Baltimore, back east I knew all the good venues, DIY and otherwise, and had enough connections to friends working radio stations/djing gigs to stay in the loop. Out here I'm utterly clueless, even to something as simple as the basement EDM scene. Any tips, if that doesn't violate some unspoken dogma? :P (hip hop, electro, doom/grunge, punk, whatever.)
I did move away eight years ago, and while I keep strong ties to the people in that scene and still have a good sense of what's going on, I either don't know of the truly DIY spots right now, or there just haven't been many for the past few years. There are some quality legal underground spots, but my knowledge of that is limited to dance music.
Kremwerk is probably most like what you're looking for, in that it's a small, late-night basement that throws great parties with fantastic music. The Monkey Loft would be your next bet, though per my original post, some if its luster has faded since it remodeled itself and became legit (but they still bring great acts). Rebar also gets an honorable mention, and while I wouldn't say it's too "underground" of a venue anymore, it's got a lot of history as such (read into it!) and hosts the longest-running house music night on the west coast, Flammable (seriously, check it out, especially if my man Eugene Fauntleroy is playing). Last recommendation for a venue would be to check out the next Train Car House Party[0].
Your best bet would be to follow area promoters. Sweatbox and Shameless are long-standing groups from Seattle with a history of throwing great parties. Sweatbox doesn't throw as many parties as they used to, but just last month they threw one in some kind of garage space in SoDo with Derek Plaslaiko playing. I worked with both crews when I lived there and they're wonderful people.
Other honorable promoter mentions are Innerflight, Hunt & Gather, Grounded, Drop, Viva and Depth. While you're at it, look into anybody involved with the Cascadia Festival[1] coming up, as many of the acts/groups involved throw small underground parties in the city. Decibel Festival obviously gets a nod, but they've been kind of quiet in Seattle since Sean moved to LA a couple of years ago. All of these promoters have Facebook pages that should be easy to find.
Hope that helps!
edit: aha: http://www.924gilman.org/
If you take your phone out at most punk shows, expect that phone to be knocked from your hands within 30 seconds. See better bands, then the phone thing goes away.
Boston? That scene was insane in the late 90s.
Was Albany hardcore big on the sxe/vegan thing at that time?
Here are the two reunion nights recorded! I'm in there somewhere!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO9wB1sUEUQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeWMC75WgUA
Eh, there were some people with the straight edge stuff, the singer of One King Down was big on it, but that wasn't the scene.
--Must listen to--
Cutthroat (HateBreedsRage)
One King Down
Withstand
DyingTaLive
The Clay People
--Other notable--
Straightjacket
Wrath
Skinless
End of Line
Stigmata
Politics of Contraband
First kid asks, "What's punk?" Second kid kicks over a trash can, points at it, and says, "That's punk." First kid kicks over another trash can and asks, "Is that punk?" Second kid says, "No, that's trendy."
It just deserves to die
When it becomes another stale cartoon...
-Chickenshit Conformist, DK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KX8OMVXyVo
"Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny." - Frank Zappa, Bebop Tango
;)
"Something you don't want to be in prison."
Really, it's whatever the fuck you want it to be and fuck anyone who tells you otherwise because they're definitely wrong, and that includes me right now telling you this.
What is punk? Punk isn't.
Surely someone has put together an introductory listening list that is searchable. No idea if there's a scene anywhere these days. I rather doubt it, but you never know.
The Road to Punk Rock: https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWU0...
Complete Chaos: https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX1f...
Punk Unleashed: https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DXdJ...
Skatepark Punks: https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX3M...
New Punk Tracks: https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX0K...
These playlists are not really definitive of the genre but can at least give a broad range of styles, plus, they're fun to listen to.
For those that don’t know, Tim was part of Operation Ivy and later Rancid.
> which is probably quite authentic considering it's thrown by fat wreck chords
I believe it's actually throw some random investor types, who kicked NOFX and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes off of all Punk In Drublic events after Fat Mike, the owner and founder of Fat Wreck Chords, made a crass joke at Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas this year. I will concede the Punk in Drublic fest has a lot of big-name punk acts, but I would suggest The Fest in Gainsville or Punk Rock Bowling which, alongside the big name / main stage acts, have a lot of small, intimate club shows with big and small acts alike.
[0] - https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/8459092/nofx...