are there still punks?

(Fuck! Why couldn't I have thought of that yesterday when it might have actually been funny?)

Just read this here whole thread. I'm almost 39, started listening to shit like the Necros and Dead Kennedys at about age 15 - 1982 or so. Grew up going to hardcore shows and even then people were making the same arguments as Mr. Osborne above - oh, it's different now, these kids have no idea, blah blah. Now it's twenty years later, and I own a house. We have punk shows in the basement. We book everything from local 15-year-olds to 40-something dudes like the Detonators or Iowaska (ex-Amebix).

Let me make this clear:

There is a clear and continuous line of DIY culture that can be drawn through all of this. Many of these young kids are very smart and the music they play sounds nothing like the hardcore I used to listen to. I am proud to have them within the lineage of punk music. The heaviest influences these days, paradoxically, seem to be folk music and noise. As a lifelong musical omnivore, I view this as a very positive development. And what about these kids who listen to The Ex or Fugazi? Those bands are practically first-wave punk themselves, don't the kids have a right to dig them and be inspired?

Jesus, this blathering about how punk is this or that is such crap. It's a cultural template that people impose their own ideals and dreams upon. Lester Bangs put it best... it's all about some kids who want to be fried out of their skins by the most scalding propulsion imaginable, for a night they can pretend lasts for the rest of their lives.

Over and out.

-- sleeve (sleev...), May 5th, 2005.

otm.

so you mean minor threat, black flag, bad brains, etc. dont count as punk?

"I also suspect from your spelling of mischaracterization (sic) that we’re in danger of getting into a debate about US punk vs. UK punk, which is something else again!"

i think thats a LARGE part of the issue actually.

Speaking both as a Limey and as an old (former? ex?) punk, it seems to me that it's not just the writers but the members of those youth culture themselves.

"so you mean minor threat, black flag, bad brains, etc. dont count as punk?"

Speaking both as a Limey and as an old (former? ex?) punk, it seems to me that "Hardcore" is a much beter name for them, don't you agree?

x-post 4vr|l roxx fuk all yuo h4t4z

Oh and before anyone starts: yes, you Septics invented it - but (as has frequently been the case) you largely failed realise what you'd got or to do anything particularly useful with it until us Limey's took it, rationalised it, repackaged it, and sold it back to you!

We done here?

Not if they're swaddling themsevles in the iconography of the Punk Rock that happened two decades before their birth it isn't.

Fair enough, but lots of that stuff itself was ripped off of WWII imagery from the British military. I'm talking more about specific band names. I.E. you didn't see the Vibrators walking around with Small Faces t-shirts on.

This could be its own thread. I think they were given a helluva hard time and were rather quick to distance themselves from it all....but that same thing could be said about droves of bands.

-- sleeve

HUGE ROUND OF APPLAUSE

You are now two lines into writing your first street punk anthem, but you don't really get it, do you?

Also -- they throw good parties.

Two lines into the worst fucking song ever? For the smallest group of the biggest dipshits on the planet? Great.