Why Punk?

Well, the punks I know are more into the hardcore stuff which didn't really exist until half a generation later than the '77 era, but they do also listen to those formative artists and even 1960s stuff like 13th Floor Elevators as forerunners to their own subculture. Maybe the mid/late-1970s punk sound is more of a nostalgia thing these days, but the genre has evolved since then. (all the -cores for instance: crust, grind, math, noise etc)

I mean, try to say these bands aren't talented musicians or don't take what they do seriously beyond just being a fashion phase for them:











The last band in particular show a lot of Gorguts and Voivod influence, for crying out loud.

I should say that there's nothing wrong with not liking punk, nothing's for everyone after all, but the negative descriptions of the scene given here in this thread I can't recognize at all and seem like they've been informed entirely by propaganda from Margaret Thatcher-era conservative tabloid newspapers.

Turns out it's just that most people here's experiences of punk culture are from the late 1970s and early 1980s, but I know firsthand that punk isn't a static and stagnant form of music but has instead continued to evolve since then. I'll give you this, though, that the music often ends up taking a backseat to the ideological aspect though...

I get the impression people exaggerate how unpopular progressive rock, but that probably has a lot to do with me being Scandinavian. I mean, Sweden is the one country on the planet where Henry Cow command a significant degree of mainstream crossover success. Henry freaking Cow!

Sean Trane wrote: Svetonio wrote: Sean Trane wrote: Floydoid wrote: Good question mate. Punk tried to kill prog, and failed miserably.   (...)   Punk didn't kill "prog"   (...)       Depending on where, really.  In my country, prog was thoroughly destroyed by punk. It was because that 99% of new bands that were formed in the late eighties and nineties just were wanting to emulate their punk idols from late seventies and early eighties, and they did not even think about progressive rock although prog was going pretty strong in former Yugosalavia before that punk hysteria; also, the record companies were lost interest to release some new prog bands, only bigs from 70s. Punk / Post Punk became popular so much that there was no substance anymore from which that prog could emerged with a number of new  prog bands and new fans of prog; there were just a few of new prog bands with a very small fanbase.  It's needless even to write about how much punk here was supported by national rock press, and even British NME declared a Belgrade's punk band Električni Orgazam ("Electric Orgasm") as the best non-British band.       You mean that bands like Genesis ELP and GG were wiped out from the Yougoslavian state radio airwaves of 77 or 79 by The Clash and TSP??   Because your post talks about a decade later than the "punk" explosion, who strated in August 76 (the Mont-De-Marsan punk festival in France) until the fall of 77... after that , we can talk of new wave   If anything in Canada during the late 70's, Toronto (Ontario in general) got somewhat influenced by the London-punk-scene, but it affected few people... the then-contemporary disco-craze did much more damage than punk in that regard And in Montreal  (Quebec in general), disco really wiped out all prog bands except for the ones who had a squerer rock format... which only leaves Octobre and Offenbach (and its offshoot Corbeau) by the start of the 80's.  There , prog got "killed"... but by disco twits.

I said that the Yugoslavian prog was destroyed by the punk because, after all that punk histeria, the new kids were lost the motive to form the prog bands, only punk/post-punk. It was like a good football team that was left without the junior team.

Sean Trane wrote: Svetonio wrote: I said that the Yugoslavian prog was destroyed by the punk because, after all that punk histeria, the new kids were lost the motive to form the prog bands, only punk/post-punk. It was like a good football team that was left without the junior team. Yugoslavian radio stations were played all of important and "important" albums of the time, and therefore they were playing a lot of punk.     OK, no idea what the Yugoslavian radio (were there any other than state radios?) played in the 70's, but I certainly wasn't picturing them playing King Crimson or Genesis in 71 or 75.  or The Clash in 77, FTM... I mean even Belgian radios didn't... we had to resort to France Inter   I mean, I'm sure there were underground networks in Serbia, but nothing mainstream/official (and neither punk nor prog were mainstream in  the 70's), AFAIK.

Floydoid wrote: Sean Trane wrote: Floydoid wrote: Good question mate. Punk tried to kill prog, and failed miserably.     Naaaah... That's like saying CDs killed vinyls : totally inaccurate >> vinyls were killed by cassettes (portability reasons: ghetto blaster, walkman), which in turned were killed by the CD (especially once the discman came in)   Punk didn't kill "prog"   Prog committed suicide by getting fat, old, tired, spoiled, uninspired and often ridiculous by 78     I never said it killed prog.  Agree with your last sentence though.

Edited by Sean Trane - August 27 2015 at 09:00

Smurph wrote: Sean Trane wrote: Floydoid wrote: Good question mate. Punk tried to kill prog, and failed miserably.     Naaaah... That's like saying CDs killed vinyls : totally inaccurate >> vinyls were killed by cassettes (portability reasons: ghetto blaster, walkman), which in turned were killed by the CD (especially once the discman came in)   Punk didn't kill "prog"   Prog committed suicide by getting fat, old, tired, spoiled, uninspired and often ridiculous by 78     Only the famous prog bands did that though... The Rock in Opposition Movement, and a few bands like Islands and Cathedral were just as amazing as ever in the late 70s!

SteveG wrote: I see that this thread is devolving into another 'punk killed prog' debate of which I'm to blame because of the context of my initial post. That being said, I'm sill curious as to why punk started and took off. Any opinions?

Hmm, I was at school when punk took off. A kid in my class who was into classical and opera went crazy for punk practically overnight, but I really don't know why. Perhaps he was trying to be trendy?

Well, the UK punk movement already had its own forerunners to punk in their homegrown glam rock scene's harder end as represented by The Sweet and their ilk. I think if you look at the list of musicians that have covered The Sweet, there's like 50% punk groups and 50% metal groups.

Not to mention that the purposely garish and shocking fashion sense seems to pretty obviously having come from there too.

Punk was the right thing to do at the time.....at the very least it brought with it a new experimental wave of musicians that very quickly got beyond 1950s rock n roll riffs played ridiculously fast and choppy. There was so much more to it.
Post punk, No Wave, New Wave happened or whatever you wanna call them. They are stickers for a great time in music.
The Cure anyone? Siouxsie, Suicide, Chrome, Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Throbbing Gristle, Coil, Dead Kennedys, Mission of Burma, Wire, Gang of Four, Minutemen, The Fall, Pere Ubu, The Chameleons, PiL, Glenn Branca, The Sound, New Order, Swans, Sonic Youth the list is so long that you could wrap it around a small mountain.