Almost thirty years ago now, driving around on a hot summer day with a couple of friends. One guy puts a punk mix tape in the player, and the guy with a college music scholarship was aesthetically offended. "Anyone could make this music," he complained.
The other guy nodded in agreement and replied, "that's the point."
The other thing about punk is that it's really more an attitude. Some punks are really skilled musicians and lyricists that bring a lot of outside influence into their music.
I got into playing the accordion because I decided that I wanted to learn some Dead Kennedys songs on the accordion (no I am not duckmandu). Some of them are quite tricky. Compare to the Sex Pistols who are musically boring but more than made up for it with the attitude and lyrics.
Good choices. I was thinking of Bad Brains, who started out as a fusion band, and Craig Finn's early stuff, but that probably gets into more post-punk.
If we're going out in the world of genre-spanning punk, Husker Dü, Hot Snakes/Drive Like Jehu, Wire, and (possibly if you count them) Shellac deserve a strong recommendation. The creativity and diversity in the world of post-punk is remarkable.
Was just reading parent comment and thinking “we don’t play ska anymore, we don’t play ska anymore, because it sucks”
Punk is so interesting in his variations. Compare with metal where speed, black, alternative etc are quite coded and baroque, whereas punk still manages to stat fresh.
I think while there are plenty genre that requires more skill than punk, that doesn’t make punk itself the musical equivalent of simpleton.
In some aspects, it’s the artigianal counterpart of the mass produced pop.
A beautiful sentiment :) I believe this should apply to tech as well – it shouldn't be an exclusive field and building logical apps should be simple. That's kind of why I chose to brand my freelance business as Punk Rock Dev.
Ok, I'm old and got into punk in the late 70s. Never lived in a place with a really big active scene until Seattle in the late 80s / early 90s, but honestly that wasn't punk per se, it was something different. More rock than punk, I would say. Feel free to disagree. The Bellingham Bash in 1990 or 91 had a good vibe, though, and I saw Nirvana at Squid Row for a dollar before they got famous.
I think the point is that punk is accessible and relateable for a lot of people. The punk people I've known were the most open-minded of any crowd, whether that was built around music or something else. I think it's true that it still unites people who otherwise would probably not mix. They are also the most open to different styles of music.
And as for connecting people across space and time, I can't help but think of The Fall's "Telephone Thing" every time I remember the douchebags at Google have all my data as I type HN comments. How dare you assume I want to parlez-vous with you.
I saw Nirvana kind of before they were famous too (first British tour). Am I right in thinking they were kind of unmemorable, or was it just that I had other things on my mind at that gig?
IDK, I kind of felt that way too when I heard it after it came out and I started off as a Nirvana skeptic.. but nowadays when I listen to it again there was really some interesting and unique stuff on it.
Yeah, that was the media's name for it. I never heard people call it that until the magazines and tv used the term. That lumped in a bunch of stuff, from Queensryche to Soundgarden to Nirvana to Mudhoney.
As a 90s kid living on the other side of the Atlantic that was my name for it too. The proliferation of the "Seattle Scene" was very much a product of MTV and 90s culture. I guess it's more of a cultural category than a musical one, but then again you could say the same thing about punk!
EDIT it actually comes to mind that I've also heard Grunge referred to as "Post Punk"
One of the interesting thing about these underground music movements from hip hop to punk is the DIY ethos for the creation of music, publications, performance spaces, and more. Adults and respectable companies aren't helping (for the most part) so the kids have to direct and make things on their own.
I think it's not a coincidence that many people who get involved in underground music movements later start successful careers in creative endeavors - fashion, cuisine, publishing, design, programming, etc. There was a documentary a few years ago tracing the lives of people who had been active in the 1980s music scenes and so many of them ended up in these professions.
And you don't have to look far to find more famous examples - Kira Roessler (Black Flag bassist) won an Oscar for sound editing for Mad Max: Fury Road, Damond John's fashion label coming out of the late 80s/early 90s NYC hip hop scene, and Anthony Bourdain's coming of age as a young chef and NYC punk fan in the late 70s.
There's a difference between consumption and creation that is easily seen and displayed in aesthetic and cultural choices. It also seems to affect attitude towards employment and economics.
McKenna summed up the evolution from passive, introspective subcultures when he observed that "we're not dropping out here, we're infiltrating and taking over".
I don't think I've yet to experience anything as incredible as the DIY punk scene in my teenage years. People from multiple communities around Chicago would show up at an abandoned transmission gallery and renovate enough of it to make it inhabitable for a show that night. The dedication was purely out of love for the scene itself and it's a shame I haven't found a parallel in modern adulthood.
Not modern adulthood, but electronic dance culture in the 1990s probably (from my point of view) was possibly close. Of course, I really don't know the early punk scene firsthand, which I heard was way more DIY in say the early 1980s, kind of like what you are talking about, vs when I played in a punk band in the 2000s (this is the impression I get when I talked to some guys who were in relatively known local bands in the 1980s).
I also don't know mmuch about the 1960s hippie culture firsthand, of course.
But my "impression" of the 1990s rave scene was that indeed it was in between the punk ethos (DIY, warehouse takeovers, some aggressive music styles like gabber/hardcore) and the hippie ethos (bohemian, some psychedelic influence, etc.) At any rate you did get that sense of "for the scene" with the rave community, something that is indeed special when you can find it.
For all I know there are some scenes similar to that still, but it's hard to keep up with this sort of thing -- it's hard to reconcile a late-hours youth culture with responsible 9-5 job culture. :( It would be interesting to know for sure what has taken its place.
I'm a father of two and a startup founder. I like Detroit techno, and all relevant events _begin_ at 1 AM. The solution isn't a startup, the solution is techno parties that start at 9 PM.
In The Netherlands some (not all, but a decent chunk) techno events have moved from a 21:00-07:00ish to a 12:00-01:00ish timetable. It works out quite lovely because one can attend without completely messing up their daily rhythm. And if you do like to burn the midnight oil there’s always the afterparty/ies :)
Yeah true! The one day dance festivals really got the message here. Those are lovely. But the clubs etc really don't (I'm in NL too).
I wish all of Europe had English pub/club opening hours. I mean it's not like the English party (or drink) less than us here on the continent. They just start earlier. That makes a lot of sense!
In hindsight I was jetlagged twice a week just by moving forward and back my biorhythm every weekend, during much of my youth. That was unhealthy and totally unnecessary if only party times were more sane.
maybe my lameness is showing, but why do people do this? even as a teenager I was usually running out of steam and thinking about bed at that time. is it for people who work late shifts or are there superhumans out there pregaming all night for a 1 AM show? or do they not even start partying until 10/11 PM?
From an attendee perspective I do remember those all night events to be quite fun, so I suppose that's why people do this. :) Honestly when I was younger, I was able to handle odd hours easier (that, or my tolerance for being sleep-deprived and off-kilter has gone way down). It helped that I was naturally a bit of a night owl, and it also helped that much of when I did this was when I was in college (much more flexible scheduling during those times). Back then the fun was worth any sleep-dep.
For others, some of it might indeed be helped by later work schedules as well -- a lot of service industry jobs for instance are not 9-5 and are more later shifts. On the other hand I do remember some talking about how little sleep they'd be getting before going into work, so...
On the organization side, I guess some of the reasons for many raves starting so late is that historically they often were after hours style events, sometimes semi-improvised and unlicensed. There was no liquor license getting in the way of closing earlier, and there's enough people that do want to party all night that it makes sense to do so. (It's not just restricted to electronic dance, where it is allowed, there are standard bars that are open 24/7).
I just chalk it up to a side effect of getting older. Even doing the standard dance club scene hours (which here often is a 10PM-2AMish scene, last call is 3AM here) would throw me off these days. (And I'm not even a parent, which I imagine cements your schedule even more!)
Soundsystem/free tekno culture is certainly keeping the mentality alive. My friends that build speakers and play heavy drum and bass and tekno all used to play in punk, hardcore and ska bands in their teens.
Ha, narrated by Tim Armstrong of Rancid fame -- until recently I hadn't listened to them since I was in middle school. Having lived in the Bay Area in the interim it was interesting to hear all of their references to Berkeley, San Francisco, Richmond, Campbell, etc. Half their songs seem to be about Bart stations.
I have a lot of respect for Henry Rollins. From working at an ice cream store to front man for the world's biggest punk act, to poet and actor. If you get a chance, watch him in He Never Died
Quite possibly the most abused punk logo in history. I've seen it used on everything from "Employee's Must Wash Hands" stickers to a t-shirt that read "Beach Boys"
"Punk's not dead, it just deserves to die when it becomes another stale cartoon."
Dead Kennedys was on constant repeat on my walkman or home stereo as a 14-year-old in the late 80's. Every Friday was spent at the tiny all-ages punk club in our east-coast college town. Government Issue, Fugazi, Das Damen, Black Flag, Jello Biafra, even They Might Be Giants came through.
Even now, 30 years later, I load up Frankenchrist or any other DK album on YouTube at work and that's my intense-focus music. The music is still strong as hell, Jello's words and delivery are ruthless and scathing and hilarious, and the whole thing just works.
I wish there was a DK today. Rage had it. Some Run The Jewels tracks have it, but not quite.
I feel like live music in general is at a low point right now that I've never seen it at since I started paying attention in the '80s.
I'm in England at the moment, and for the last several years all the band listings I see at bars are for one of the ten thousand "Tribute to the Mildly Popular Band from the 70s/80s". So if I want the Thin Lizzy experience or the Foreigner/Journey experience or the genuine-in-case-you-missed-it-the-first-time Ratt experience, you can get it six nights out of the week because that's all that's playing at every bar in town.
But there are no bands with stupid names playing their own crappy stuff. Even on a Tuesday night. And that's what I miss.
Older people are still going to gigs, they have plenty of disposable income and they want to see the stuff they grew up with. Younger people have many more options for making and sharing music.
If you were born in 2000, starting a rock band seems a bit retro - you might do it if you're into that sort of thing, but you might prefer to play solo gigs with a looper or do weird ambient stuff with modular synths on YouTube. There's no shortage of talented young musicians, they're just doing things differently.
Good piece... I feel the underground dance music world has a greater arc of history and continuity to it as it evolves, where punk was more a moment in time that lots of people cherish, and a very specific genre and subculture.
Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to 2000, when they stopped working. Why?
One reason—among several—is that as soon as subcultures start getting really interesting, they get invaded by muggles, who ruin them. Subcultures have a predictable lifecycle, in which popularity causes death.
It's an interesting piece, but it seems like sorts of things people would say when we actually had subcultures.
I often wrack my brain trying to think, what changed...
Was it the Internet sucking a lot of the money out of the music industry?
Was it the aging out of GenX?
Was it the long term structural effects of the GFC, with the shrinking of the middle class and the subsequent capital booms that QE created?
Was it a change in perspective in a generation coming up with a lot of economic and global turmoil happening? (no time for culture, time to get to work, economic security is fragile)
Was it the growth of online dating platforms and social media? (Was all of this just an incredibly complex system of mating calls?)
Was it the death of place? Did these cultures lose their luster when anyone could just read all about them online, consume them, and move on? Or perhaps a sort of centralization and homogenization of culture as a result of trends happening in the digital world (where everybody is reading the same things, thinking the same things, doing the same things, in any city)?
Was it the growth of burning man? A sort of Wal-Mart of subculture.
Was it rising real estate prices and the gentrification of cities globally? (Was this new global interest in urban living driven by the Internet in some way?)
Was it the fetishizing of Internet business? (Why do pop stars have Internet startups now, anyhow?)
...but yes, it is super interesting. American cities these days seem to be full steam ahead away from the weird and into the terrifyingly boring, and they have long been fertile grounds for the germination and growth of subcultures.
IMHO - I think the one thing wrong about that piece is that subcultures are dead. I think they're still around, its just the ones I was in tune with are gone (maybe to be reborn without me).
Looked at a different way, the author is writing a cautionary prediction to anyone who is involved in a sub-culture > be careful who you admit, else death becomes it.
>I often wrack my brain trying to think, what changed...
A subculture can only exist if there's a barrier to entry. Commodification, globalisation and social liberalism eroded those barriers.
In their day, hippies and punks paid a real social price for their subcultural identity - they outraged society and were marginalised for it. If you wanted to be a mod in the 60s, you needed money and cultural capital to get the right clothes, the right records, the right scooter.
The Wigan Casino and the Twisted Wheel formed a nucleus for the Northern Soul subculture, because they were the only place you could hear rare soul records. Carnaby Street and the King's Road formed the nucleus for the mod scene, because they were the only place you could buy tonic suits and winkle picker shoes.
Streaming has democratised access to new and obscure music. Retailers like H&M have democratised access to the latest fashions. Social media has democratised access to cultural capital. A new trend can spread globally within a matter of weeks, diluting any possibility of it spawning a subculture. There's very little that a teenager could wear or listen to that is genuinely shocking. Without a barrier to entry, there is no subculture, just culture.
There are two thriving youth subcultures, they just don't fit our idea of what a youth subculture is supposed to look like - the social justice movement and the alt-right. There's a social cost to holding extreme political views, which prevents these subcultures from being absorbed into the cultural mainstream. Your parents probably won't disown you if you dye your hair purple, get a neck tattoo or listen to Merzbow. They might well disown you if you start saying that all white men are complicit in rape culture or that Hitler had a point.
subcultures or supercultures as everything is subsumed into some kind of subphysical hellscape of abject banality where group think and mob mentality rule the day centering on the most immaterial of arguments and supercharged by misapplied statistics for engineering consumptive behavior.
Which is why the (really) underground post-rock “scene” in Brisbane is still going; no one knows it exists except the bands and about 100 people who go to the gigs! There’s even a distinctive sound to it.
When you have that spirit, you enjoy connecting with other punks. I was a guitar player in a punk band in my twenties and we self-published our music. When I had the idea to create a company at the end of the nineties, I had that punk attitude to move forward and create a company even if the business around it was new and full of question marks. All my friends recommended not to create that startup, and in a true punk spirit I didn't care and moved forward, I can now say 25 years later that it was a great decision. Even today I keep that punk spirit when I make my decisions, if you feel you're doing something right you should just trust yourself even if you are alone on the market, avoid beeing a follower.
Pink/hardcore has an appeal to a certain type of person. I went to my first hardcore show when I was 15. I still go to shows once in a while (I’m 47 now). Kinda funny, when I was in a band, we played shows in Boyle heights, at a House called the dust bowl, where dust got kicked up when people were slam dancing.
Cool story and interesting read, makes me want to go fucking rock out instead of being a code bro shelled up inside all day. been about 3 months since last big rock show, much too long.
Ah , you have many a year on me good sir. Wise words though. i'm just starting on my journey, coming up to 5 years of professional dev work at 1 company. My wife and I definitely connected over our love of punk/alternative musics. There is definitely an 'energy' at these shows that is hard to describe. It is raw and hard to capture on CDs and tapes. backyard/house/underground shows are amazing. The passion, sweat, energy, insanely loud music are all very organic. At most concerts here in the US the crowd is too busy taking a video of the show instead of getting into the music and moving
> At most concerts here in the US the crowd is too busy taking a video of the show instead of getting into the music and moving
Where are you going to shows? This seems pretty regional, and also tied to the size of the venue. The more DIY the space, the crazier the shows in my experience. NYC used to have some utterly insane shows at places like DBA (which unfortunately is no longer with us), and Oakland had some pretty rad DIY venues pre-Ghost-Ship fire (which also unfortunately are slowly getting shut down :().
Spent my college years and early 20's in Seattle helping throw parties at a variety of underground/DIY-ish venues (including ETG, two other loft spaces down Pike/Pine from ETG, and The Monkey Loft back when it was literally Brian's loft with his bedroom in it before he remodeled it and turned it into a licensed space). There's definitely a stark difference in vibe compared to larger and/or legal venues, and even a noticeable contrast between The Monkey Loft's early years vs. it's legal years.
Something about those spaces feel more organic, more raw, more unfiltered. Everyone is more connected, the artists seem to have a much better time, the crowds are often more diverse and you'll hardly ever see someone staring into their phones taking videos. That doesn't mean that good shows don't exist in larger or legitimate venues, just that I'm often very discerning with which large venues I'm willing to go to.
I'm going to somewhat tangent this to pick your brain:
Transplant to seattle from Baltimore, back east I knew all the good venues, DIY and otherwise, and had enough connections to friends working radio stations/djing gigs to stay in the loop. Out here I'm utterly clueless, even to something as simple as the basement EDM scene. Any tips, if that doesn't violate some unspoken dogma? :P (hip hop, electro, doom/grunge, punk, whatever.)
I did move away eight years ago, and while I keep strong ties to the people in that scene and still have a good sense of what's going on, I either don't know of the truly DIY spots right now, or there just haven't been many for the past few years. There are some quality legal underground spots, but my knowledge of that is limited to dance music.
Kremwerk is probably most like what you're looking for, in that it's a small, late-night basement that throws great parties with fantastic music. The Monkey Loft would be your next bet, though per my original post, some if its luster has faded since it remodeled itself and became legit (but they still bring great acts). Rebar also gets an honorable mention, and while I wouldn't say it's too "underground" of a venue anymore, it's got a lot of history as such (read into it!) and hosts the longest-running house music night on the west coast, Flammable (seriously, check it out, especially if my man Eugene Fauntleroy is playing). Last recommendation for a venue would be to check out the next Train Car House Party[0].
Your best bet would be to follow area promoters. Sweatbox and Shameless are long-standing groups from Seattle with a history of throwing great parties. Sweatbox doesn't throw as many parties as they used to, but just last month they threw one in some kind of garage space in SoDo with Derek Plaslaiko playing. I worked with both crews when I lived there and they're wonderful people.
Other honorable promoter mentions are Innerflight, Hunt & Gather, Grounded, Drop, Viva and Depth. While you're at it, look into anybody involved with the Cascadia Festival[1] coming up, as many of the acts/groups involved throw small underground parties in the city. Decibel Festival obviously gets a nod, but they've been kind of quiet in Seattle since Sean moved to LA a couple of years ago. All of these promoters have Facebook pages that should be easy to find.
Wanted to write a very specific thanks, you went so out of your way with this and it's got me excited again, I've been far too down on the scene out here for the last few years! This absolutely helps.
I can't speak to Seattle, but in Oakland at least most of the shows (somewhat surprisingly) end up organized on Facebook. Once you know a band or two you don't have to dig too deep to find out when/where shows are happening.
According to my friend from there, the DIY scene has migrated to the areas north of Seattle proper. I don't remember any specific places unfortunately.
> At most concerts here in the US the crowd is too busy taking a video of the show instead of getting into the music and moving
If you take your phone out at most punk shows, expect that phone to be knocked from your hands within 30 seconds. See better bands, then the phone thing goes away.
Well to be clear, 38 years is my age :) But still, yes probably 10 more on you. I'm not referring to just punk concerts, though I grew up in a huge hardcore scene on the east coast. More about just letting go of this lifestyle, and doing something enjoyable for less.
Any bands from that scene or imprints worth checking out? I remember seeing some upstate bands from Syracuse/Rochester/Buffalo when they'd do east coast tours, but I'm blanking on Albany acts!
Was Albany hardcore big on the sxe/vegan thing at that time?
Section 8 is the big one you should know, these were our gods. EVERYONE listened to them growing up. Albums Pain is Truth, and Nine Ways to Say I Love You. The latter is required listening.
Here are the two reunion nights recorded! I'm in there somewhere!
Although not part of it, I remember the QE2 and had friends who were into the scene at the time. Punk, hardcore, and combat boots. Looking back, I missed out.
Reading this with no clue what punk is. The article doesn't do a good job of explaining it or answering the question the title poses to someone not already part of it.
First kid asks, "What's punk?"
Second kid kicks over a trash can, points at it, and says, "That's punk." First kid kicks over another trash can and asks, "Is that punk?" Second kid says, "No, that's trendy."
Back when I first got into the punk scene I ended up asking this semi-infamous old-timer at my local punk dive "Just what the hell is punk, anyway?"
"Something you don't want to be in prison."
Really, it's whatever the fuck you want it to be and fuck anyone who tells you otherwise because they're definitely wrong, and that includes me right now telling you this.
Well, it has a lot of definitions. I still think of it as a reaction to overproduced rock and disco from the 70s, but it has evolved a lot since then.
Surely someone has put together an introductory listening list that is searchable. No idea if there's a scene anywhere these days. I rather doubt it, but you never know.
Do you think The Road to Punk Rock playlist makes sense? It has some punk staples (Ramones, The Clash, etc.), but also blues, rock-n-roll, and even an old school country song.
I’ve been listening a lot to Tim Armstrong’s solo work over the last few years. It’s great! A lot of it is acoustic guitar and many folk/country covers. They way he plays them though is still punk to me. I’m impressed.
For those that don’t know, Tim was part of Operation Ivy and later Rancid.
Vans warped tour hasn't had much to do with punk culture for like 15 years, unless you consider using it as a marketing tool as what punk really is. I saw anti-flag and face to face at a free show in Montreal this summer and punk rock certainly felt alive. The US has punk in drublic fest going on which is probably quite authentic considering it's thrown by fat wreck chords.
> which is probably quite authentic considering it's thrown by fat wreck chords
I believe it's actually throw some random investor types, who kicked NOFX and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes off of all Punk In Drublic events after Fat Mike, the owner and founder of Fat Wreck Chords, made a crass joke at Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas this year. I will concede the Punk in Drublic fest has a lot of big-name punk acts, but I would suggest The Fest in Gainsville or Punk Rock Bowling which, alongside the big name / main stage acts, have a lot of small, intimate club shows with big and small acts alike.
The last time I went to warped tour (2004 i think?) Anti-Flag played. Great show - being part of 5000 people chanting lyrics is very much like a religious experience. Such things are actually used to induce religious/trance states among many niche and ethnic religions (see Kecak/Sanghyang, which you may know from the movie Baraka).
Punk connecting people across space and time is pretty much the theme of the movie "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" (adapted from a novel by Neil Gaiman, I would recommend it).
To an outsider like me Punk's attractiveness is that it can be serious, but also not. Beyond that it is kinda anything you want it to be and that's ok.
The other guy nodded in agreement and replied, "that's the point."