Do you think modern day punk bigwigs (Sum 41, Blink 182) consider themselves on par with the punk greats of yore?

I think they'd be a lot better if they did, too.

In fact what would be ideal is for one of Blink or Green Day or whatever to say "Actually, let's face it, we've improved punk rock."

(Whether they have or not - it's more entertaining when musicians don't kowtow to history).

Time for my Geritol and midday nap. Nurse?

Intellectigence sounds like a Dubyaism.

I think Green Day is great!

I think there's always been a pop edge to some punk (Wire, Blondie, Adam Ant).. most of my examples betrayed my own taste.

I still laugh at "What the hell is caller ID."

So maybe a better term for these neo/suedo punk bands is "Bubblepunk".

It's really strange that thinking about punk always gets set up this way -- and I think that if there's anything keeping these modern-punk bands from being better than they are, it's exactly this conceptual set-up about old-punk versus the present. And it's the trap the old punks set for their followers: very few people claimed that the Beatles totally sold out rock'n'roll with their later albums, but punk, elements of which wound up making that claim about what came during the 70s, basically doomed its own future. And quite intentionally so.

If not for that, I think it'd be possible for today's punk-lineage bands to make exactly the claim that Tom says: to say that they want to do, say, what the Beatles did to rock'n'roll and r&b. And if they were allowed to make that claim without it being interpreted as a blasphemous one, who knows: maybe they'd actually go out and do exactly that. Two of my favorite broad categories of music -- new-wave and indie -- were largely attempts to follow and expand punk in precisely that way; I'd be interested to hear how someone else might try it.

Chuck, you are mistaken.

Blink are better than Minor Threat ever were.

I now declare a fatwa on Keith Harris.

I love the Ramones - saw them in a little club in CT in 1981, permanent hearing damage in my right ear (worth it)- but there's no way that the Ramones thought of themselves as bubblegum at the onset of their career.

Are Oleander still going? They were fucking awful...

Davlo, only point I was really trying to make is that I find nothing unappealing in the idea of "bubblegum punk."

Nabisco, I'd say Blink do "expand" on punk in their little way. Not so much musically--they obviously inhabit a specific musical form, though I think they've grown into a sound of their own. But thematically they've staked out some turf (exposing the secret fears of snotty "bad" boys) that I think they own. They certainly don't sound dragged down by the dead hand of history to me.

* they suck consistently.

Not true. Their music was certainly a lot closer to "Saturday Night" by the Bay City Rollers or "Ballroom Blitz" by the Sweet than, say, the Doobie Brothers or Yes or Barry Manilow were at the time.

The Dead Kennedys had a few really good songs, almost all of which were on their first album. Jello Biafra, though, sounded like Vegas carbaret moron even in stuff like "California Uber Alles" and "Kill the Poor" and "Holiday in Cambodia." And while I admit Blink 182 have maybe never done any songs quite on that level, they're certainly more *consistent* than the Dead Kennedys ever were. And a lot smarter.

Also extremely overrated: The Bad Brains and Misfits. (Though again, "Pay to Cum" is a really excellent track; it's just too bad those guys they never came up with another one.) But honestly, I think the first wave of punk (pre-1980) was actually pretty wonderful across the board. It wasn't until hardcore outlawed rhythm and decent singers and codified loud-fast tantrum rules that it all got boring.

he speaketh the truth

Chuck.....you're deliberately trying to wind me up, aren't you?

(Though again, "Pay to Cum" is a really excellent track

Ooh. That's big of you. Too bad they couldn't crank out hit after timeless, scintillating, spine-tingling, life-affirming hit like, say, Kix.

I think you're confusing 'consistency' with a state of arrested development.

And a lot smarter.

Oh dear.

Chuck, you're looking at this with sensibilities that have been inured to the Ramones sound through years of exposure to the stuff that followed the Ramones.

WHEN "Ramones" first came out, it was a freakin' revolution, a slap in the face to the insipidness that plagued the airwaves. Later, yes they did embrace their bubblegum roots. But do not dismiss the incredible impact that their 1st LP had on the world.

To say that the Doobie Brothers and Manilow (both dreck) are/were less aligned with bubblegum than the Ramones is nonsense. Did Manilow ever write a song about slicing someone up with a chainsaw? Was "China Grove" the Doobies response to "Havana Affair"?

You can't compare Ramones to what has followed - just consider it in relation to it's time of release.

Hardcore was the best thing that ever happened to punk and metal. Withouth hardcore you wouldn't have Slayer or Unwound.

the first song on the first album is blitzkreig bop - a BUBBLEGUM CLASSIQUE

Blink collectively probably couldn't come up with the name of our current Vice President.

Dead Kennedys not only would know the name of the VP, but they'd also know the secret location he was locating in and play a protest show at said site.

Boy do I miss politcal awareness in punk rock. Where have you gone Johnny Rotten?

Uh, "Saturday Night" and "Ballroom Blitz" came out in 1975. "Blitkrieg Bop", which was pretty much the same song (in fact, I believe Joey said they were TRYING to write their own version of "Saturday Night") came out in 1976. Hearing the Ramones in Detroit in 1976, they didn't seem all that radical to me at all -- they seemed like Fonzie or something. '50s guys in leather jackets. And when I first heard the Sex Pistols, they reminded me of Kiss (who the Ramones were also fans of. And who, along with the Bay City Rollers and the Sweet, DEFINED bubblegum in the mid '50s. That was my point.)

I meant mid '70s, obviously. Oops.

and I don't think the new groups think/care that they stand up to the Clash and all else. Which is both good (less bad attempts at ambition) and bad (less good attempts at ambition).

If the delivery measured up, I wouldn't trouble myself with the intentions. In Good Charlotte's case, however, it doesn't. They're crap.

and I don't think the new groups think/care that they stand up to the Clash and all else.

I agree with ya there.

And since when did this get to be about Good Charlotte? This is about overrated but decent and influential b-level punks from the late 70s and early 80s. Return to subject!

Anthony, that has to be the single worst reading of blink-182 lyrics I have encountered in my life. The anxiety/nausea/self-loathing/self-doubt of Dumpweed is totally great. There's hardly anything adolescent about that song at all. As for stay together for the kids, I mean, that song is another emotive bitter aimless punch to the gut -- naive, maybe, but hardly purile.

Hmmm, so Ramones were played on Detroit radio?

"songs? I don’t know if it is exactly the same, but "Stay Together For The Kids" could have the same meaning, I hope [as Adam's Song]. Tom was dealing with the divorce of his parents, he wrote a song to help him to work through some issues he had when his parents divorced. Divorce is such a normal thing today and hardly anybody ever thinks how the kids feel about it or how they are taking it, but in the U.S, about half of all the kids go through it. They witness how their parents drift apart and all that."

"Tom: The song is definitely biographical in that sense. A lot of our stuff is. It just boils down to being a kid and feeling alienated and sad that this is going down in your family. You have to deal with the pain. I think it changed Mark and I a lot. Both of his parents didn't want him. They just left him in the desert."

Good point -- I may not have actually HEARD them (or the Sex Pistols) til a couple years later. I really mean they reminded me of Fonzie when I heard OF them, and the Sex Pistols reminded me of Kiss (i.e.: *Love Gun*) when I heard their NAME. But I also vaguely remember kids bringing those records into school, so I think it's not IMPOSSIBLE I may have heard them at the time. (And again, it's not like I CARED that much about music at the time, AT ALL, though I DID buy a 45 of "Ballroom Blitz"!) The first punk rock songs that I KNOW were played on Detroit commercial radio were "I Fought the Law" by the Clash and "Homicide" by the forever UNDERRATED 999 (!), both in 1979. (Something in the back of my head says they were maybe also briefly playing "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" by the also-underrated Adverts as a novelty song; ditto "Punk Rock Christmas" by the Ravers if that counts.) But actually, the Ramones never seemed all that big (or important) in Detroit, even when I DID become a big music fan. I guess Detroit didn't NEED them; we'd already done that stuff so much BETTER!

"It's understood/I said it many ways/Too scared to run/I'm too scared to stay/I said I'd leave/But I could never leave her"

and I think the chorus is well aware that its a dicky response to issues of power & control, which is part of the self-loathing aspect.

I'm sorry, but most of those Ramones songs about killing, beating, chainsaws, etc. are FUNNY. And as far as I can tell are MEANT to be funny (though sure, they're laced with darkness obviously too).

I LOVE this post. I wonder if they were angry before anger was born, too!

Okay, here’s the thing: punk has had everything happen to it that usually happens to worthwhile musical genres. On one side it’s been subsumed into pop; on the other it’s mutated into lots of different forms, spun off into related genres, and had been reckoned with, on a deep level or not, by nearly every other major genre there is. New wave, hardcore, emo, indie, alt-rock, rock itself, pop, hip-hop, dance music, etc.: most everything done with guitars during the past two decades has been either built from or at least touched by punk, and a lot of stuff without a string in sight has found something or other of value to borrow from punk.

This happens to lots of genres: the question here is why punk fandom, more than most other types, is so hyper-concerned with the purity of the original form, with constantly checking every new development against the past and dismissing so much of it. (“It’s not really punk” is one of the poorest criticisms of a piece of music I can think of; is the implication here that it’s somehow impossible to appreciate anything that’s not really punk? Like, say, jazz, or something?) Why is this? Why is “punk” so beholden to this concern, a million times more so than most other genres, where people not only accept but encourage endless mutation, changing of the point, influence from one spot to another? In Kogan’s sense, why is “punk” a superword that people feel the need to protect and shelter as much as they do, while, say, “rock” has been allowed to drift off into near-meaninglessness? (Although I suppose the “new rock” wave has been trying to turn “rock,” or at least the phrase “real rock,” into an equally fixed, dusty, mythical thing.)

The only non-punk genre I can think of that’s so desperately rhetorically concerned with itself is hip-hop—and the weird thing there is that despite the rhetoric, hip-hop continues to mutate and pop-ify and branch out in loads of ways that fans embrace. In fact, hip-hop’s recent stock-taking about its own state and history has wound up coinciding with a moment where there seem to be most possibilities than ever for how it can be done: it’s a productive stock-taking and not a stifling one.

And as far as "Dumbweedwhatever" goes, I'm well aware of what's INSPIRING him to be a dick, and one of my problems with Blink is what self-aware dicks they are. They KNOW better.

What about "metal"? Or "country"? Metal and country people are ALWAYS talking about what does or doesn't constitute "real" metal and country. (See the recent metal thread if you don't believe me.)

And more to the point, isn't self-aware dickery particularly punk? Or did the Ramones never write "Beat on the Brat" and "Loudmouth"? Did the Pisols never write "Bodies" and "Belsen Was A Gas"?

Nabisco - I'll try to address that question, which I also think is a very valid one and really gets to the heart of the thread.

I feel that punk is a 'superword', as you call it, because when it began it was a revolt, a break from the purile shit that predominated popluar culture. People were PASSIONATE about the music AND their values. We don't see that now. What we get now is middle-class suburbanites in the Abercrombie & Fitch outfits pushing the very same purile pop for big record companys that the original punkers were reacting to.

If you are old enough (as I am) to have lived through that time, you'll remember kids getting major shit like beatings and derision for their musical tastes and personal expression. Being *PUNK* meant you stood for something, not merely that you thought some bands video was cool or that they were cute.

Punk was a statement against popular culture - the shit that calls itself punk now IS popular culture. All the meaning and danger and sense of political responsibilty has been stripped away and replaced with music videos, tee shirts, and the overwhelming desire to sell their product to 12 year old girls. Record companies have made punk corporate. Someone save us.

is self-aware dickery particularly punk? DO. I. GIVE. A. SHIT.

Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's not. Sometimes I enjoy hearing it, sometimes I don't. And I don't like hearing HAPPY misogyny, which is how Dumbweed always comes off. Put some hurt in that hate boys. Blink 182 sound like well adjusted guys who WISH they weren't, post-"Dammit".

Blink 182 may or may not have a lot to do with punk but they have more to do with the vast majority of it than the Clash do (the fact that they're from the suburbs and not London is a start).

Also, the new Good Charlotte song is totally great, but you'd have to ask a Good Charlotte fan whether it's punk or not, because I wouldn't know/don't care.

[Period of relative peace and dullness]

Blink-182 = Euro Immigrants
Aging Punkers = Know-Nothings
Ramones T-Shirt on Shania Twain = American Flag in the hands of a foreigner
Avril Lavigne = Slavery (it divides us all!)

(unf. anthony i don't think that "Treat Her Like A Prostitute" came off as awful absurd to much of Slick Rick's audience -- clever yes. in fact i tend to think that blink-182 comes off much more absurdist]

And you're wrong anyhow. I think they found it much more likely Blink 182 wishes they're girl would do what she's told than that you'll find Slick Rick's condom in your girlfriend's butt.

Sterling, when this bothers me about Blink (which is only one in a while) it's not the mere fact of the self-aware dickery, but the fact that theirs doesn't seem to have much aim involved or much behind it: it winds up a bit blank. (I'm not certain about it but this might also have to do with exactly the shift in punk's position between then and now: self-aware dickery suits the jester better than the king?)

Also: "Bodies?" I like "Bodies" 100x better read completely earnestly -- if there's "self-aware dickery" in there I don't want to know about it.

Wow. Sorry, Mr.Bile. I guess this is straying from a "good natured debate" into the realm of "taking it personally."

and what's good natured about telling someone not to post on a thread cuz they got nothing to offer?

Well, I meant it as a joke, but I guess it wasn't received that way.

well, Alex, though I DO think you tend to talk about everything BUT what's audible, I sure wasn't taking anything personally. Esp. since I've heard it all before.

I think they (Simple Plan, New Found Glory, etc.) are merely cribbing from the cartoony aspects of "Punk Rock" without delving more into the actual music of the bands they're visually aping. In other words, Benjy from Good Charlotte may dress like Wattie from the Exploited, but his music owes more to the Bay City Rollers.

Thank God for that!

Small collection, or really long shelf?

Oh, and you can't put a mailman's dick up one's throat.

What if there's tracheotomies involved?

Back on topic, a condensed opinion: punk was the first* counterculture designed in part to react against another, previously-established counterculture (OMG hippies). Wouldn't it be kind of understandable (viz. basically every single political movement ever) that the supposedly ingrained defensiveness/us-vs-them antagonism that somehow became a popular trend and peaked with the now-iconic American hardcore ethos ("YOU JUST HATE YOURSELF WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE GURGLE FROTH") wound up imploding inwards when there were more punks than hippies walking the streets of suburboid U.S.A.? Stalinist purges and all that?

*not really if you count the Mothers' great "phony hippie" diatribes, but work with me here pls

1- If Sum41 and Blink-182 consider themselves to be as good or better than The Sex Pistols, The Clash, etc., this means that they're merely carrying on a hollow tradition of subversion. People expect Punks to be arrogant and scoff at the music establishment, they're supposed to do that (needless to say, doing what you're supposed to = not very Punk.) The very statement "We're better than The Clash!" would show a decent knowedlege of Punk's history and ultimately lead to the impression that whoever is saying it is merely trying to be The Clash by adopting their old stance. Also, it was a lot easier for late 70's UK Punkahs to be subervise than it is for Punks today; remember, back then, actually rebelling against the Rock establishment was practically unheard of (ok, maybe Bowie on some occasions); these days, a statement like "Avril is Punk and bettah than all old Punk, too!" would succeed only in pissing off some old Black Flag fans, which as an acheivement rates somewhere below getting Grateful Dead fans to smoke pot. We've grown accostumed to the whole "kill your idols" thing, it's part of the canon, it's a tradition. Needless to say, conforming to such a tradition, relegating yourself to your place as a "Punk band" doing what Punk bands are supposed to do is very much against the spirit of Punk (or at least late 70's UK Punk, which is what this thread's title puts forth as "true Punk", more or less) in the first place.

2- If they do not think that they are better than The Sex Pistols, The Clash and so on, that means that they're basically emulating their heroes, showing respect for their elders, and probably thinking stuff like "gee whiz Punk music has had so many great groups, I sure hope I can live up to its tradition!" Again, it goes without saying that such a level of earnestness, traditionalism and hero worship goes against the spirit of (late 70's UK) Punk.

The only way out of this would be if they didn't know anything about classic Punk and were just young kids (or young adults, no aegism ovah here) trying to raise hell and have fun, which would be very Punk indeed (still wouldn't make me want to listen to their music tho.) This, however, is untrue, at least in Sum-41's case- I saw them record shopping on MTV the other day, they certainly know their way around a classic Punk record collection (they also love their St.Etienne and their Burning Spear, which means that they should actually be in the same "record store geeks" canon that favs of mine like Elvis Costello, Beck and Primal Scream are in; hmmm, might have to check out their album. )

(actually, alex in nyc is our hank rollins)

We call them fools
Who have to dance within the flame
Who chance the sorrow and the shame
That always comes with getting burned

But you've got to be tough when consumed by desire
'Cause it's not enough just to stand outside the fire

They're so hell-bent on giving ,walking a wire
Convinced it's not living if you stand outside the fire

Standing outside the fire
Standing outside the fire
Life is not tried, it is merely survived
If you're standing outside the fire

There's this love that is burning
Deep in my soul
Constantly yearning to get out of control
Wanting to fly higher and higher
I can't abide
Standing outside the fire

Standing outside the fire
Standing outside the fire
Life is not tried, it is merely survived
If you're standing outside the fire

I was posting here at the same time as the "what's so great about sincerity" thread, so this idea was foremost in my mind as I chose my words here. The upshot of what I was thinking over on that thread: I don't believe in worrying about the "sincerity" of what artists do, because I think they all "mean" whatever their doing on whatever level of artifice or calculation they're doing it (all art is calculation in the first place) -- I think the qualities of being calculated, self-aware, whatever are all perfectly "sincere" ways of approaching art, and I find it ridiculous to think that artists are being less honest or putting less of themselves into stagy or artificial material.

But part of that calculation and artifice is the decision to present a certain tone to the listener, which can be one of earnesty, irony, whatever: when I say "earnest" here I'm talking not about the artist's level of engagement with the work but just the type of emoting they've decided to present to the listener. Hollywood movies can be assembled pretty much by focus group and still have tones of really heavy earnesty; musicals are stagy and artificial to an extreme but nonetheless very "earnest." Disney movies are earnest like nuts; Miss Kittin mostly isn't. This doesn't mean to me that Miss Kittin is more calculating than Disney (surely less!), or that Disney "means it" more than Miss Kittin (if anything, the opposite!) -- it's just a choice between different modes of communication.

Hopefully that clarifies the way I mean "earnest." I think Blink go back and forth between striking tones of earnesty and tones of playful irony -- again, not necessarily in terms of their personal relationship to what they're doing, but in terms of the material they're offering the listener. And of those two modes, the "earnest" one -- the "but seriously, folks" tone -- is the one that's more appealing to me, basically because I think the playful one has been worked over by American pop-punk for ages and ages (e.g. Lookout stuff and funny teenage punk bands and whatever). And the thing I find most interesting and genuinely sort of "new" about bands like Blink is their willingness to do cutie-pie puppy-dog "vulnerable" punk.

Hopefully that explains how I'm using the term. You can call it something else if you want: I just think they do combine these two impulses and I happen to like one better than the other.

And sorry for the massive post, but it was just funny that after that whole long sincerity thread of deciding "earnest" was a better word to use to not imply anything about the level of calculation or self-awareness or whatever, it seems as if it still read that I meant it that way.

Yes I am. Why is that so hard to fathom?

(haha he got mad when i called his wife his bitch one time)

And that's unreasonable why?

that blows my mind when i think about it...what must their homelife be like?

Well, considering you've never met me or my wife, I'm not sure why it should blow your mind.

I love this post. "It happens to me = relevant. It happens to you = not relevant."

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/this-is-what-the-lead-singer-of-sum-41-looks-like-now

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2633352/Avril-Lavignes-ex-Derek-Whibley-pictured-looking-frail-revealing-alcoholism-nearly-killed-him.html

hard to believe hes only 34