punk roots poll..
 

i saw the documentary "punk attitude" by don letts last night.. thurston and glenn branca were in it, as well as henry rollins and a bunch of punk idols...

it made me think, there is a genuine distinction in punk that can be illustrated in the example of the pistols vs. the clash..

Pistols. Sexier, much more about appearance and amusing rhetoric and far less like old man music. The Clash's first album is passable, but London Calling is far too long and crap and sounds like Van Morrison. The Pistols were basically a bunch of obnoxious oiks, the Clash should've been insurance salesmen. The politics of the Clash was hackneyed, over-earnest bollocks.

In short, the Fall win, with the Pistols a not-close second.

what about their impact.. without either band, would there be a punk scene that transformed music? without the DIY ethics, there would be no sonic youth..
what do you think?

Neither band does much for me really, I've always always preferred The Buzzcocks and The Ruts.

I've always found this line of thought to be somewhat anachronistic - I don't really see what the punk bands 'changed' exactly. I wasn't there at the time, so it's taken as read that I can't comment with any orthodoxy; interestingly, the people I know who are most dismissive of the 'punk changed the way we look at music' type idea are people who were there at the time and grew up. Most of that generation are heading towards being grandparents.

The main problem I have is that the punk narrative tends more to inhibit music more than it does liberate it - I think the DIY ethos pre-dates Punk, you can take that all the way back to Jazz and beyond. I've got a fair few 40's and 50's Jazz records which are, if not self-produced and totally DIY, then at least they are a couple of kids giving it a bash, having a laugh, and fidlling about with the mechanics of song-form. Admittedly, the better stuff is always the more tutored types, but still, DIY is not something exclusive to punk.

The Pistols stole most of their riffs from the Faces, the Clash from what ever was in vogue, although they did know their reggae, I'll give 'em that. SY may have been interested in the Punk bands, but I think what separates them from NOFX or whoever is that they have clearly taken in lots of stuff, yr Creedences, yr Krauts, yr Jazz and whatever else.

In fact, this is my problem with a lot of punk - there is this stifling sense of orthodoxy around the scene which means that a lot of it has been using the same structures, chords and ideas for around 30 years now, which strikes me as worse than the Prog which it so-say stood against. The 'punk spirit' is, to me, just the general spirit of creativeness, common to any generation (in the era of recordings at least).

It's this attitude thing that confuses me most - although, for bands of that era, the notion of 'punk' would certainly be what inspired people, I think now we can look back, with our misty glasses, and say that that 'attitude' was merely the vogue term for something that has existed everywhere, always. To call it a 'punk' attitude seems very narrow to my mind. You can use all the contingent evidence you like, but SY would've been SY with or without the Ramones/ Stooges/ Pistols or whatever.

"you cannot have heresy without an orthodoxy"

okay.. i'll give you that..
but what about velvet underground? wouldn't you say that pioneers of that calibre have something radical to offer that transforms norms?

think of it this way.. does the attitude impose an expansion, that eventually progresses into something else?

you have the velvets --> the stooges --> the ramones --> pistols and clash --> joy division and post-punk --> no wave
et cetera..

my main argument is, the uk punk brought this movement mainstream attention, and exposed minds to it..
i'm thinking of influence..

everyone that saw the pistols live, formed their own band...
kinda thing..

hmmm, i dunno i have the clash'es first LP and its fucking awesome, but i also like the sex pistols.

"im so borred with the USA"

i think most people are bemused because of bands like green day and blink 182.. punk is not limited to that, and ideas are more fluid than the rigid representations of those bands..
just look at lydon's PiL - could we have post-punk without the initial punk?

i would proudly consider sonic youth punk.. at its best..

Hmm. Well, I'm going off the Velvets, but point taken. You can plot a route back from the Velvets to 60's minimalists/ free-jazz, and from there back through Webern/ Cage/ Ives/ Penderecki/ Stravinsky/ Wagner etc on one side or Ayler/ Coleman/ Davis/ Coltrane/ Hampton etc on the other. I think you may have a point insofar as punk offered a more mainstream exposition of one certain, very specific kind of music, which in turn may have inspired some good things, but I think that is missing the fact that nearly 100% of bands inspired by the Pistols (or whoever) are utterly shite. My point being that people who make decent music will make it regardless of where they take their influences. Alright, The Beatles, The Pistols, VU or whomever may have inspired, in part, some good bands, but all of the above are more responsible for the slew of dross (but not the lack of imagination of its makers) that is contemporary rock music 1950-present.

I prefer the Clash. Punk I think pales in comparison to the British post punk scene. The true founders of punk in my eyes were the Velvet Underground and no band in the "punk" scene even managed to equal them in image wise or musically.

For the record, I think Pil sucks a nut.

But anyhow

I'll try to address this as abstractly as possible.

Candymoan, I see your point about progression, though I think for the most part that's almost incidental. I agree with Glice that's moreso a mentality that will, independently (I use that word loosely, for argument's sake) of predecessors, produce 'innovative' music; in this case, music that, by general criteria, seems to reflect punk influences. I think more often when you can definitively track a progression, it's the result of mimicry with little or no independent development.

Sure, you can plot a timeline of how SY came into existence, or cite what instigated Thurston's interest in noise, etc., but again, I think that's incidental. Pre-existing bands/genres serve as a reference point, but not necessarily an integral element in a band's generation or maturation.

That didn't make sense. It's early, I'm tired. Fuck off and quit giving me a hard time.

Technical anal moment:

By virtue of the wording of your poll, "Which band do you prefer," the last two options are made redundant.

Just in case you cared.

truncated,
i was referring to "influence" - so when you call it "incidental" we are not talking about the same things..
appreciate your point, but i think even "independent development" needs to have a starting point.. that's where influence comes in..

wording..?
you're right.. the options should be:
"i can't choose between them, i love both dearly.."
and
"both bands could go to hell / fuck them both.."


ehem...

The first statement alone renders me unable to comply with the second.

Come on, those first three PiL records broke more true musical ground than the Pistols could have broken in five lifetimes.
Seriously, I love the Sex Pistols, but it's basically amped-up Chuck Berry riffs.
PiL in their early days were so forward-thinking and innovative, the two cannot even be compared.

fuck punk
punk is dead
i love it

c'mon shentov..

you know what we mean...

kind of off the topic but i thought puk attitude was a pretty good documentary that only really left out one band, wire

Can I just get this one out - It probably belongs in the Unpopular Musical Opinions thread - PiL were good but not great and I fail to see how a London-Irish mewling over Can type arrangements (with subtly harsher guitar tones) makes something original. PiL were good for making a pop-kraut, but they certainly weren't original, especially next to some of the other things that came out of the post-punk era.

I see your point, but Keith Levene could play circles around most of his contemporaries, and they brought influences to the fore that were considered seriously uncool in the years immediately preceding their formation. Tone-wise, I think they have been quite influential. While they don't top my list of alltime superfaves, they were very good, and far more innovative than the Pistols.

And far more "original" than the Pistols as well IMO, influence-wearing notwithstanding.

Ah yes, point made and agreed with entirely. I'm not in the habit of reading posts properly, gets in the way of arguments if you ask me. But yes, I agree.

the sex pistols are fun to watch, but i get tired of them quickly.

the clash first album is amazin, then they went downhill, they became boring. joe strummer was a cool mofo, though.

the buzzcocks were better songwriters than both; the damned were punkier in that they were fun, funny, didn't give a shit and their music was grittier and more original.

influentially, the pistols only real contribution was the punk dress code; the clash's contribution: giving people who have very boring lives and no imagination the idea of writing bad political songs without a plataform or even a notion of what politics is more than any other band this side of bruce springsteen.

both bands took their music from the ramones pretty much by itself.

pil are much more challenging to listen than the pistols; any 12 year old into fall out boy can become a pistols fan immediatly; the fact that pil takes much more to get into alone makes the music worthwhile.

basically, punk was just garage rock with shock politics/values in england; it wasn't until it reached america again that the music once again took a progressive turn to be the most influential and vital music since the 80's.

my opinions, there they are

this is one of those trick questions, the real answer is....

I'm not contesting their innovativeness; I just for some reason don't like their sound. It's a quirk.

Clash

The Clash were the better band.

I love some of their stuff ('White Man in Hammersmith PAlais' and 'Guns of Brixton' are great songs), but I do have to say that I find their LP's tend to contain 50% top quality stuff and 50% dissappointing stuff.