Are Daft Punk Punk?

Pre-Daft Post-Punk, then. Or DAF for short.

I don't see how ABC were punk, although maybe...no, I can't see it.

I guess -- I think -- that the idea of 'punk listening' grows out of an idea that if punk is supposed to mean (or was supposed to mean) 'do anything you want, there are no rules,' then 'punk listening' is 'listen to anything you want, there are no rules'...again, I guess that's what you're saying there, Tom.

Of course ABC were punk. They were from England and had styled haircuts. This is me talking in my twelve-year-old early eighties upstate New York voice, you understand.

A spontaneous destruction of cultural baggage was the real achievement of '76 - any stylistic appropriation (in) post-punk seemed alien and strange, not because the rules had been jettisoned, but because artists were trying to translate those rules into a new musical language which at that point had no equivalents. Such an approach is really difficult now - we literally know too much, both as artists and listeners - but I think Daft Punk come astonishingly close to capturing its feeling.

I remember Tom & I had this interesting li'l chat about how we came around to "pop". (That is, pop music, the sort of stuff on the charts.) If I remember correctly, Tom came to pop music as a reaction against the indie sort of stuff that he was surrounded with. In that sense, "pop" was Tom's "punk". Maybe that's what is meant by "punk listening" - an attempt to divine something from the music outside of all the noise and confusion and press that a song or album receives. A more personal meaning. Not contrarian, per se (as the "punk" image would probably have you think), but individualistic.

You can take these sorts of thoughts and apply them to my ideal version of "punk". Attitude for the sake of attitude (in terms of being snotty and pissed-off and anti-establishment just to give The Man the bird) is weak and limp. I'm all for personal expression, though, however it may express itself - lyrically, musically, etc.

Perhaps Daft Punk is "punk" in that they're mucking around with a popular musical motif (disco) and making it their own, leaving their mark? (Granted, I think they're doing a crap job of it, but that has little to do with the discussion at hand.)

(That is Daft Punk innit? in the Battlestar Galactica masks?)

The pop band Daft Punk = disastrous unlistenable crap. Whether that makes or doesn't make them Punks I don't know.

The central question of 'punk' (for me) is how we cope with boredom. And how alleviating our personal moment-to-moment boredom might balance with doing something about a huger and more terrible kind of boredom (which punk-the-music and punk-the-not-doing-adverts might be part of).

"Punk listening": "Here's one song. Here are two more. Go and form an opinion".

not agreeing = all of the deep point = nothing ever is not a fight (except when you can't be bothered)

Good question. I agree with Tim F - it DOES sound like a yr zero record. I put a blast of it on last night (first rotation for 3 weeks or so) and was struck more than ever by how fucking ALIEN it sounds. Yet that in no way makes it punk -I'm not sure that any doors are being kicked down by Daft Punk.

What does interest me is the extended musing that Tom launches into upthread. The UK weekly music press was obsessed with punk's rules for 15 years, and only broke away from this with their phase around 92/93 of championing acts with their roots in pre-punk 70s ideas and sounds: The Orb, Saint Etienne, Ultramarine, even, *very* briefly, Jamiroquai. This confused and worried some of them, and the response was to retreat into a simplified rabble-rousing travesty of punk: The New Wave Of New Wave. Though this only lasted a few months in early to mid-1994, it paved the way directly for the inkies' obsessive championing of Britpop, which they loved *precisely because* its litany was as narrow as they wanted British pop music to be. Needless to say, though, they burnt themselves out and destroyed their critical importance forever in the movement's later period, definitively with the forelock-tugging reviews of the third Oasis opus. And this declining influence has arguably left a gap where the once untouchable - Sandy Denny, for instance - gets a clean route to rehabilitation, and it is not considered in any way strange or wrong to like her stuff *and* post-punk in the way it certainly would have been, at least in the UK (much less so everywhere else), when the NME Orthodoxy still meant something.

So my motion here is: "The UK music press actually accelerated the breakdown of post-punk consensus on What Was OK To Like with the aftereffects of what was originally a fearful reaction to people who challenged their fixed ideas".

Anyone fancy that?

"Another Brick In The Wall" = to me, disco as dirge, as grind, as endless drudgery. This makes it more interesting (very) than it is good (quite, at a pinch).

Your name is down amongst the Black hearts in the black book, and this is to advise you and the like of you, who are (unreadable bit), to make your wills.

Ye have been the Blackguard Enemies of the People on all occasions,

Ye have not yet done as ye ought

SWING

This from "Captain Swing" by E.J.Hobsbawm & George rudé (isbn 0-14- 05513-0

If Robin hasn't got that one, I'll be very surprised!

x0x0

I just heard the name at the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Museum and liked the sound of it, quite apart from its historical connotations. Should look into that.

If punk music is "Fuck it, let's make some music", then punk listening is "Fuck it, let's listen to some music". The willingness to surprise and the willingness to be surprised.

Having seen them live, I suspect that the Avalanches are Punk.

And also because I genuinely think some of those records deserve all the praise for being the height of production-line pop often heaped on Stock Aitken Waterman (and the soundalike follow-ups - Culture Beat's "Got To Get It" especially - were actually sometimes better than their predecessors). Remember when Melody Maker did their Eurodance special issue and got the usual "I will not tolerate this chart shite" indiekid letters? Unfortunately it was in May '94 when the trend was already on its way out and the UK and mainland European charts were heading in *very* different directions. Ah well ...

x0x0

I've still got that issue, Norman - a Price / Parkes / Paphides brainchild. "No No No No No No" round the edge was classic. Also had fantastic "line of descent" chart of disco / hi-NRG / synthpop / Eurodance etc. inside - the whole thing came from a genuine love of pop music.

"Faces, faces, joy and pain / They express joy and pain / No two faces are the same"

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x18/gr8080/fuckinggaytechno.jpg

At my house?

HA! BORING

Daft Punk aren't techno! They are ROBOT ROCK. Shows how much that fucker knows.

Any artist of any genre can call themselves punk (or post-punk) these days and sell more records to hipsters.

any 'artist' of any 'genre' has already outlived their usefulness

uh

no mention of Vice Versa?

Not very punk, this: http://hypebeast.com/2011/02/daft-punk-x-coca-cola-club-coke-limited-edition-bottles/