[kj] OT: "Punk's Not Dead" documentary

Brendan bq at soundgardener.co.nz
Sat Aug 11 00:18:41 EDT 2007


They're even more retro than the fuckin' Black Crowes.

Yeah but not nearly as "accessible" hahaha ;)

Looks like Zeppelin, smells like Zeppelin, sounds like...shit.


>

> It's called revisionism, Oliver, and you're absolutely right. Time

> was when you were literally DEMONIZED for liking Punk Rock. I was

> only ten years old circa the era of the Ramones/Pistols and such, but

> even by the latter era of hardcore, people were *still* having a hard

> time grasping/accepting it (witness the infamous episode of "Quincy,"

> the chair-throwing on "Geraldo" etc.). I caught a great deal of flak

> in high school for being a fan of the Circle Jerks and Black Flag

> (now, in all sincerity, had I been into Night Ranger and REO

> Speedwagon, who is to say I still wouldn't have caught flak, but

> stilll). Fans of the culture/movement/music/tribe of Punk were *NOT*

> plentiful, which only built a sense of solidarity between those who

> *were* into it. Being a "punker" was as stigmatized as being a "D&D

> geek" (albeit slightly cooler, one suspects).

>

> There was a great deal of closed-mindedness and misconception when it

> came to the Punk/Hardcore community in the early to mid 1980s -- it

> hadn't yet been de-fanged, housebroken and entirely subsumed by the

> mainstream.

>

> One thing I'm certainly not going to miss about working at MTV News

> was the sheer amount of cluelessness and -- again -- revisionism by

> today's crop of bands claiming to be Punk (espec. the pop-punk

> variety ala Fall Out Boy, Good Charlotte, etc.)

>

> I have to confess that I lost interest with hardcore by around

> `89..... I didn't see a lot of progression. Just a lot of band

> returning to the same old ground and grousing about the same boring

> issues without doing anything about it. Bands like NYC's the

> Casualties (profiled in this dumb ass doc) depress the hell out of

> me. They're even more retro than the fuckin' Black Crowes.

>

>

> But I'm an old fart with a beard, so get the hell off my lawn.

>

> Alex in NYC

>

>

>

>

>

> On Aug 10, 2007, at 12:10 AM, B. Oliver Sheppard wrote:

>

>> The rampant historicizing of punk nowadays esp. in the endlessly-

>> cranked out documentaries, biopics (Ina Curtis _Control_) and

>> especially books sort of gets to me only because I think it creates

>> the sense that everyone loved punk rock, post-punk, whatever, and

>> younger people don't realize that for a lot of people being into

>> punk was a kind of isolating, bizarre, fringe culture thing that

>> was seen as very antisocial; many people found punk actually very

>> frightening into the late 80s. It became associated with Satanism

>> (the Satanic Panic) and schools I went to began instituting dress

>> codes where you couldn't wear, for example, more than 50% black.

>> The Sex Pistols Nevermind the Bollocks barely broke the Top 100

>> when it was released, and didn't go gold until the early 1990s, in

>> the wake of Nirvana. Members of the respectable media and bands

>> like The Who claimed they hated punk and usually did "scare the

>> public" hit pieces on it, etc.

>>

>> Now with all this glossy "let's look back" stuff it makes it seem

>> like every one and their mother liked it, and ... sorry, it wasn't

>> like that. People liked Bel Biv Devoe and C & C Music Factory.

>> Where are the documentaries about that? About the morons and

>> idiots? They were the majority. (Still are.) It sucks especially

>> for some of us who were actually physically threatened etc by jocks

>> at school for having weird hair, only to see the same jocks years

>> later moshing and shit, when it became okay and safe to do that.

>>

>> -Oliver

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> Leigh Newton wrote:

>>> We'd still like you even if you just got into it yesterday,

>>> Oliver. That's the attitude associated with punk rock (or any form

>>> of anything, for that matter) that bugs me the most. The

>>> underlying impression I get from all these recent biographies/docs

>>> is that if you weren't there when it initially happened, then

>>> you're just a poseur who gets all their shit at Hot Topic and is

>>> being ironic. There's nothing better than being an archeologist

>>> and uncovering all these gems from the past. Hell, only a few

>>> weeks ago did I finally get around to checking out Neu!

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>

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