Genre Breakdown: Punk Rock

[A new design on a struggling blog merits a new feature. So from time to time, Genre Confusion will feature Genre Breakdowns, an explanation of why various "genres" of popular music exist, and why they shouldn't exist. Herewith is the first entry, one near and dear to my heart.]


All right, trendsobbers, it's time to spike your hair, rip your shirts, and unlearn everything you have learned about what makes rock n'roll good. We're going to jump into the most unfunky, amateurish, and loudmouthed subspecies of rock ever to lay claim to popular imagination. Behold, Punk Rock.

1. Where the Name Comes From

The word "punk" is of indeterminate origin, and had a dual meaning in early American culture. In the first place, it referred to any prepared substance that will smolder when ignited, so that it may be used as tinder, to light firewood, etc. This had a connotation of something rotten that could be used. In the second place, and as early as 1596, it denoted a harlot or prostitute, and in prison culture referred to those on the ahem, bottom. By the early 20th century referred to a young hoodlum or troublemaker, often an associate of an older criminal.

The musical movement focused on the troublemaker aspect and largely ignored the homosexual undercurrents (although it was the first movement in rock to be even remotely gay-friendly). As Legs McNeil of the influential Punk Magazine put it:

The word "punk seemed to sum up the thread that connected everything we liked -- drunk, obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, funny, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side.

Rating My CD's: She's an Artist, She Don't Look Back

16. Bob Dylan -- Bringing It All Back Home

Somewhere along the way, this tiny, curly-haired white boy from Goditscold, Minnesota became the Voice of a Generation, when such a title meant something beyond achieving a certain level of music-industry investment. Well before the Beatles promised them endless youth or the Rolling Stones gave them a window on their darkness, Bod Dylan enshrined in the Baby Boomers their founding myth; that they were righteous, that the world was going to shift into their hands without effort, by the aligning of some cosmic alarm clock. Hunter Thompson called it "that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or on theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave . . . ."

And there more or less, lies the reason I cared not a whit about Bob Dylan for the longest time; that sense of inevitable irrelevance to anyone born after 1960. I missed that high and beautiful wave; and have since seen little in it high or beautful. Just because I can dig on Cream's thundering romanticism doesn't mean I'm buying into the notion that sex and drugs and raucous music were something my parent's generation invented. Rather, like Howdy Doody and Social Security checks, it was something provided for them, and they claimed it as theirs.

MIA = Missing In Action, in the Jungles of Hip.

 A few months ago I shot a quick dart of snark at Sri Lankan-born rapper MIA over her intentionally-infamous "Born Free" video. I did so without a whole lot of knowledge of anything about her other than her popularity amongst the hipsters, and Andrew Earles' tart dismissal of her:

It’s amazing the lengths to which music consumers, makers and critics will go to avoid appearing—gasp—racist. If the Sri Lankan-born M.I.A. had instead hailed from Tulsa, Okla., with the exact same music in tow, well, she would still be there right now. I call it TV On The Radio Syndrome: If they were white, one-eighth of the press and attention would’ve come their way. Music critics are terrified of facing this fact. M.I.A. provides lazy listeners with an easy multicultural accessory, the equivalent of traveling through India by way of seeing The Darjeeling Limited.

And so I would have let the matter rest, had not Ace of Spades linked the NY Times' skewering of her radical pretensions. Which he goes on to lambaste:

Basically, M.I.A.'s rule seems to be that if you're talking about her being a terrorist as if it's a chic, fashionable, daring, awesome thing -- i.e., as a good thing -- then she is a terrorist, precisely as she herself often claims.
But if you're saying it's a bad thing to be a wannabe terrorist jocksniffer, then she's not, and you are just being an unfashionable dolt who doesn't understand her sly humor.

After which, he links to the following (Content Warning: Real corpses and violence):

Rating My CD's: Indie-Pedant

15. Death Cab for Cutie -- The Photo Album

I tried with this one. I really really tried.

There's a whole swath of music that came out in the decade past that I cannot relate to in any way. I fundamentally don't "get it." Most of it falls under the rubric of "indie" rock or pop. Now, I am aware, as is anyone who's ever used the word "indie" in any piece of writing about music for the last fifteen years, that "indie" doesn't mean anything specific. It's an umbrella term that describes music bubbling up from the so-called "underground" (the pop culture's minor leagues). In this way, it's basically short for "independent" and can cover a wide variety of sounds (for purposes of clarity, I'm not going to get into the fact that the original "independent" labels, like Atlantic Records, were those that lacked their own distribution channel). And that's all perfectly fine.

Rating My CD's: Let's Go Trippin'

14. Dick Dale -- The King of Surf Guitar: The Best of Dick Dale and His Del-Tones

Somewhere out there, beneath the clear moonlight, some kid is looking at this disc for the first time in his uncle's CD collection and asking himself, "What's a Del-Tone?" He is afraid that there is no answer, and begins to wonder if he can ever relate to something when he has no frame of reference to it. Someone, somewhere, must have known what a Del-Tone was at some point. Someone must have thought that it was a good idea to name a band that at some point. But, as regular viewers of Mad Men know, then the Sixties happened, and we were left, like the Simpletons of a post nuclear-apocalypse, hunting for meaning amid the ruins of a culture that made sense.

I first heard Dick Dale the way the rest of you did, five minutes into Pulp Fiction, my mind blown by the juxtaposition of blistering surf guitar, Tarantino's screwball-comedy-esque dialogue, and the threat of impending violence. The first ten seconds of "Misirlou" (which means...?) shows up the the Beach Boys, and the Byrds, and the Doors, and any other California rock group for the posers they are.

Talking Back to Punk Rock #6

"Um, do you want me to touch you to verify that you're sick? Because you seem pretty sure of it. I'm willing to take your word, if you know what I mean."

-Mudhoney, "Touch Me, I'm Sick"

Rating My CD's: Sunshine of Your Love

13.  Cream -- Disraeli Gears

When we were kids, my brother and I would make fun of Eric Claption, and our dad for presumably liking him (Dad had a Clapton Greatest Hits, but preferred early Elton John and Grand Funk and such). We did this without having really heard Clapton, in the fashion of juveniles everywhere: we made fun of him because he was old, and a honky, and had the kind of name that a bank executive or CPA might have.


Later on, when my brother actually sat down and learned to play guitar, he came to a 180 on this position, and briefly went through a period where Clapton was the man, coinciding with a period of digging the Beatles. I never went through this period, preferring always Jimmy Page to Clapton, and I’ll have loads to say about this when I get to my Zeppelin collection.