Punk Music

@philosopherqueen,

Punk is about non conformity.
Punk today is about as non conformist as a catholic school boy uniform.

I spit on todays' punks. They probably would get offended by it, but that's what punk really is...not giving a ****, and not caring who does.

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@Aristoddler,

Today's punk aren't really punk!!! To tell you the truth punk was onnlly formed to sell clothes. If you don't know the story I recommend that you watch The great Rock N Roll Swindle.

Punk reformed away from this with music that is loud fast and angry. They were like the rage against the machine. They don't care and they want to get all the frustration of the week out. Tell me the truth haven't you ever wanted to scream so loud that everyone hears you because the world just isn't nice? Everyone does, but not all do it. The Punks wanted to and didn't care what people thought of them.

Now today Punk music has transformed. It has melody now, if you take the time to listen to it. Green day for example came out as punk but has gradually turned into a really mellow punk.

Main stream punk isn't the real punk, you only experience the real punk if you look for it. Some people I can understand why they don't like it. To tell you the truth, I don't like it unless I'm in this DOWN WITH THE MAN mood. lol!!!

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@philosopherqueen,

Funny you should say it like that Philosopher Queen. I should have grown up a punk but hit the weed, got lazy and grew up a hippie. Weird as it may seem my taste in music is still punk but not in the form of the Sex Pistols. Neil Young was punk, though he wrote a lot of ballads, his sound was punk. The Pistols were pop, not unlike Billy Idol. True punks would find it hard to seperate themselves from true goths or revolutionists (not protestors), hence hippies and punks are idealist but only one of them are to out of it to act on it.

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@urangutan,

The Pistols were as manufactured as anything, even before Vicious joined. Punk took the garage rock sound of The Stooges and similar bands and turned it into a whole cultural movement which sadly made a lot of profit for the execs.

Still, this is how music evolves, those terrible execs we always see depicted in biopics basically let us have the best music of each generation, albeit at a price...The Clash were a great product of the time using punk as a machine to break boundaries....same as The Ramones...it means a lot to people. Without punk we may never have had New Wave and Prog right might have reached ever higher heights of awfulness.

I think we need another movement like Punk or Grunge right now, kick out the "i've got a degree, and i wear a waistcoat and play guitar and i have a beard" bands completely and put an end to X Factor, American Idol etc

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@thethirdman,

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Weird as it may seem my taste in music is still punk but not in the form of the Sex Pistols. Neil Young was punk, though he wrote a lot of ballads, his sound was punk.

Right on. Neil Young is great.

I think of bands like The Replacements and Sublime as punk. Forget the Sex Pistols.

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hence hippies and punks are idealist but only one of them are to out of it to act on it.

Oh, the hippies act. They march, establish communes, intentionally break the law, publish; I imagine the hippies are more socially active than punks. But that's expected, punks have that element of nihilism the hippies so strongly reject.

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kick out the "i've got a degree, and i wear a waistcoat and play guitar and i have a beard" bands completely

What's wrong with higher level musical education and facial hair?

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@Didymos Thomas,

I've always seen punk as an attitude associated with some music movements, rather than a music movement in itself.

When Bob Dylan played an electric set at the Newport Folk Festival, that was punk... even though he was playing rock'n'roll, it was the attitude that was punk.

Considering punk as an attitude, I think it has a strong relation with philosophy, as I see the punk attitude as being principally that of non-conformity and a rejection of societies values. A rejection of standard codes of conduct. Punk is applied existentialism.

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@Aristoddler,

Aristoddler wrote:

Punk is about non conformity.
Punk today is about as non conformist as a catholic school boy uniform.

I spit on todays' punks. They probably would get offended by it, but that's what punk really is...not giving a ****, and not caring who does.

Um.... I really like sum 41, skillet, disturbed, nickelback, green day, three days grace, simple plan. Does that make me a punk?

No!!!!!

But I think it is better not to conform to something if you don't agree with it. Especially if you like philosophy, because chances are the philosopher will actually have given the conformity more thought than the others.

Why conform and disagree.

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@philosopherqueen,

philosopherqueen wrote:

Is punk really punk? When it surfaced big with The Sex Pistols to today.

I'm always quietly amused by the number of people who profess to know something about the whole Punk thing that happened in the UK in 1976 and who were either not alive or not in the UK.

To fully understand where Punk came from, you had to be resident in the UK because otherwise you wouldn't be able to realise what a truly piss-poor place it was to live in.

Essentially, the Labour government of the day had failed, and the Unions were dictating socialist policies to a weak and ineffective administration that had lost its way.

Punk was never, ever about selling clothes. You're referring to the shabby end of the scene that never, ever went away. For a true punk, it was always and will always be about the music, the whole DiY ethic. Suddenly, you didn't need to have a music degree or be able to sight read scores or practice for 10 hours a day. You just picked up a guitar and learned to make two chords, E and A. That covered pretty much every Punk song you can think of.

When some compare the likes of Green Day and Nickelback (FFS) to the Sex Pistols, Sham 69 et al then they really need to just give up and start talking about something thing really know about like knitting or embroidery.

M.

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@nietzschespet,

I was using the definition of punk in terms of "not conforming", so I figure that a lot of music is about that.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

What's wrong with higher level musical education and facial hair?

Because I'm too working class to understand it.

Nah not really I just think those bands tend to be very pretencious and it's not my thing.

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@thethirdman,

thethirdman wrote:

Because I'm too working class to understand it.

Nah not really I just think those bands tend to be very pretencious and it's not my thing.

But does it sound any good?

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@FatalMuse,

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But does it sound any good?

I sure think so. Soulive is one of my favorites.

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@Holiday20310401,

Nietzschespet, I guess England was the only place that set music to the abhorrent rhythms that surrounded lifestyles and the workings of. No offence to you all but you all seem to dwell in this semi clad existance that revolves around yourselves and your own environment. Punk was not a combination of Velvet Underground and David Bowie but the Sex Pistols were. Here in Australia, we have been listening to both worlds, for just as long as you have been listening to your own, plus we have had our own sounds. So Punk isn't England, it is a mood and though it may well have been England that sent it out, don't imagine that we don't get it. I won't say that Fleetwood Mac were not a Blues band, nor will I say that Led Zepplin didn't know what it meant to Rock.

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@urangutan,

From a technical standpoint, punk is garbage. If the only thing behind the music is the ideals it carries, it isn't about the sound, its about the message, it isn't about the music, its about the ideals. That being said, I don't have any problem with it, I find the Clash enjoyable. Though I do find the quite oxy-moronically named 'pop punk' offensive to the ears, musically obtuse, and incredibly shallow in its message.

Without the presence of ideals, most punk just doesn't have a lot going for it. It has 19th century boring diatonic tonalities(which is conformist, apparetly their nonconformity only lies in their group attitude against it and goofy clothing styles), basic western 4/4 rythms, and standard lyrical content, nothing technically special or aurally interesting. I can't say its bad, for who knows what that even means, only a bit trite.

If the punk ideal is nonconformity, they failed everywhere that the hippies suceeded. I do not like the hippie ideal, it is very naive in my opinion, though their hearts were in the right place. On the modern front, there is quite a different story to be told; most neo-hippies have totally lost sight and become drooling hedonistic nimrods.

I prefer music with unusual tonality, odd meter, cool sounds and interesting structural concpets. To those who might view a preference to complexity, intrigue, originality and technical magnificence in the arts as elitist and attack it as such:

"Were there no advantage to be reaped from these studies, beyond the gratification of an innocent curiosity, yet ought not even this to be despised; as being one accession to those few safe and harmless pleasures, which are bestowed on human race. The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind. And though these researches may appear painful and fatiguing, it is with some minds as with some bodies, which being endowed with vigorous and florid health, require severe exercise, and reap a pleasure from what, to the generality of mankind, may seem burdensome and laborious. Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needs be delightful and rejoicing."
-David Hume, An enquiry concerning human understanding

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@Zetetic11235,

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From a technical standpoint, punk is garbage.

Okay. You're right, for the most part. However, I do not think we can draw such a hasty generalization. I mean, if you take the top session players in the country and have them play a punk gig, is it still garbage from a technical standpoint?
What about slop as artistic?

More importantly, I would hardly consider diatonic notes and 4/4 time to be negatives. Not to mention the fact that punk music is in no way limited to diatonic notes and 4/4.

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If the punk ideal is nonconformity, they failed everywhere that the hippies suceeded. I do not like the hippie ideal, it is very naive in my opinion, though their hearts were in the right place. On the modern front, there is quite a different story to be told; most neo-hippies have totally lost sight and become drooling hedonistic nimrods.

Do you know any hippies? I'm not talking about 15 year olds in tie dies and band-Ts they bought at Hot Topic. I mean off the commune folks.

I also do not understand the suggestion that this particular subculture is any more naive than any other section of society. The claim is not new. It seems to me that the claim grew out of the minds of angry old men watching the younger generation react to modernity in a new way. That can be scary. But naive? Hardly.

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@Didymos Thomas,

I have indeed met hippies. I have a friend who's mom is close with Bill Ayers, she was in the weatherman and is getting her doctorate(how many of the weathermen are professors now?). My friend, however, is conservative in comparison, he was raised on the radical doctrine and ideals of groups like the Weathermen and disagrees with it. Another friend of mines dad was a radical whp was involved in some pretty serious riots. He is a very interesting guy, apparently his grandfather was one of john nash's professors (not sure if that is really true). He is very well read and a very amiable fellow. My uncle was a college student at Cornell in the sixties. He went to Woodstock and is still very left wing, but dispite his intelligence he is very shallow in his politics(like Al Franken shallow) so I dislike discussing it with him. He still somkes pot and drops acid, and he owns a pretty sucessful workers comp law firm in Chicago.. I guess you might consider him a hippie...but he doesn't really strike me as a true hippie. My mom and dad were both involved in hippie culture at least a little, though my dad is now a neo-con unfortunaterly.

I simply disagree with the hippie ideals and literature just as I disagree with marxist literature, most utilitarian literature, and most idealism in general. Its not really like the hippies were homogenous though, there were the yippies, the college students, the highschool dropouts, the revolutionaries ect, I don't disagree with their views I simply view them as utterly impractical, and I am more of a pragmatist when it comes to social and political philosophy.

As far as the 4/4 times, maybe I'm a sucker for tabla and odd time avant jazz, but I have trouble getting into 4/4 unless its some damn interesting funk groove. As far as diatonic, I tend to get absorbed into complex form due to my interest in music theory, and I just really like dissonant sounds, so serialism is an object of interest for me. I like traditional jazz and fusion ok, especially funk oriented jazz or free jazz like late coltrane or Ornet Coleman(which is on and off as far as it being diatonic).

I really like stuff like this YouTube - U.S. Maple -- "Ma, Digital"
orthrelm
http://beholdthearctopus.com/

I also dig mastodon and a pretty wide variety of classical. I like more standard stuff like Hendrix, Zeplin, Buddy Guy(who I say live earlier tonight:a-ok:) and the likes of Steve Vai and select few from the shred crowd. There isn't a lot of music I decisively dislike that isn't top 100 pop rock.

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@Zetetic11235,

Quote:

I simply disagree with the hippie ideals and literature just as I disagree with marxist literature, most utilitarian literature, and most idealism in general. Its not really like the hippies were homogenous though, there were the yippies, the college students, the highschool dropouts, the revolutionaries ect, I don't disagree with their views I simply view them as utterly impractical, and I am more of a pragmatist when it comes to social and political philosophy.

To the point about hippies you know - does that group strike you as any more naive than any other group of human beings?

You make the most important point in the quote above - the hippies are not a homogeneous group. Idealism, for example, while being prominent in the movement, was not and is not today an absolute.

It just seems to me that the label of naive is not really warranted - unless we are going to call every other group naive, which might be fair. I tend to think that most humans, myself included, are pretty naive.

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As far as the 4/4 times, maybe I'm a sucker for tabla and odd time avant jazz, but I have trouble getting into 4/4 unless its some damn interesting funk groove.

My guess is you're not much of a dancer.

Many drummers convert all of their charts to either 2/4 or 3. I use this system as well. Time signatures are not absolutes - they are ways of organizing the music in your own mind.

But really, I mostly wanted to point out that punk is not limited in the way you suggested.

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As far as diatonic, I tend to get absorbed into complex form due to my interest in music theory, and I just really like dissonant sounds, so serialism is an object of interest for me. I like traditional jazz and fusion ok, especially funk oriented jazz or free jazz like late coltrane or Ornet Coleman(which is on and off as far as it being diatonic).

I'm also into jazz. Coltrane, but also a lot of Miles and Monk. More complex music can be difficult to get into without some music theory bouncing around the brain, but it's worth the study - as you obviously know.

I also think it is worth the effort for us snobs to learn appreciation of simplicity in music; be able to appreciate Dostoevsky and Hemingway, you know.

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I also dig mastodon and a pretty wide variety of classical. I like more standard stuff like Hendrix, Zeplin, Buddy Guy(who I say live earlier tonight) and the likes of Steve Vai and select few from the shred crowd. There isn't a lot of music I decisively dislike that isn't top 100 pop rock.

Hey! I bet that was a great show. Very nice.

Mastodon is wild. Personally, I drifted away from metal some years ago and just haven't kept up with the genre. But I've heard some of their work, and it was impressive, at least from a technical standpoint.
Hendrix, Guy, and Zeppelin rely primarily on toe-tapping time sigs.

1 Reply

@Didymos Thomas,

Yeah man, the show was bad ass. How do you reduce 11/8 or any other prime sig to 2/4 or 3? Its easy to see somthing like 14/8 go to 7/8 or 9/8 to 3/4(though I would go with 2/4 3/8 alternating) ect (unless you are trying to make a 14/8 beat sound different from 7/8, I would go for a 3/8+ 3/8+2/8+2/8+3/8+2/8 so the ends go together with a 5/8, its not really standard but I it is still distinctly 14/8 if taken to have one time sig).

On the other topic .Who, then, isn't naive in your opinion? I just find the hippie brand of idealism that raises peace and love and freedom and pacifism unusually impractical among philosophical ideals. It is akin to trying to make all men find compassion. Would it work if it be done? Probably. Can all men find compassion? Probably not. It seems like Plato's Republic but worse and without realizing that it could not be implemented. I find most social and political philosophies too artificial. Marxism is not quite as bad, but it is still very much a praxis, it just cannot be properly implemented and is not economically viable.

I say the hippie ideal mentioned above is unusually niave in that rather than observing human nature and considering what might improve the systems within which we operate, it aims to change natue altogether through ideological agreement with no means of implementing it.

1 Reply

@Zetetic11235,

Quote:

How do you reduce 11/8 or any other prime sig to 2/4 or 3? Its easy to see somthing like 14/8 go to 7/8 or 9/8 to 3/4(though I would go with 2/4 3/8 alternating) ect (unless you are trying to make a 14/8 beat sound different from 7/8, I would go for a 3/8+ 3/8+2/8+2/8+3/8+2/8 so the ends go together with a 5/8, its not really standard but I it is still distinctly 14/8 if taken to have one time sig).

Basically the same way you learn to count 11/8. For example, in my mind I might count 4 measures of 2/4 and then a bar of 3. Or some other equivalent combination, depending on what I want to do rhythmically. And yes, it is a form of dumbing down time signatures. But it's also a method I have not seen outside of set percussion, and I do not think anything is lost in the process.

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On the other topic .Who, then, isn't naive in your opinion?

Pat Buchanan? Maybe I should point out that the nearly universal degree of naivety in question is something I'm not necessarily against. I think a certain degree of naivety keeps us young and spirited. There's a balance we should try to strike.

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I just find the hippie brand of idealism that raises peace and love and freedom and pacifism unusually impractical among philosophical ideals. It is akin to trying to make all men find compassion.

That hippie ideal is often reducible to the single issue of promoting compassion.

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Would it work if it be done? Probably. Can all men find compassion? Probably not. It seems like Plato's Republic but worse and without realizing that it could not be implemented.

The fact that not all men are capable of compassion, sociopaths for example do not have this capacity (I think, or is it some other psychological disorder I'm thinking of?), is irrelevant. The suggestion is that we who have the capacity for compassion should cultivate compassion. How is that naive?

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I say the hippie ideal mentioned above is unusually niave in that rather than observing human nature and considering what might improve the systems within which we operate, it aims to change natue altogether through ideological agreement with no means of implementing it.

I'm not sure that the hippie ideal does these things. The ideology is the result of observing human nature, even if the inferences drawn are not wholly accurate.
And I'm also not sure about the suggestion that hippies want to change nature altogether. To continue the compassion example, all this amounts to is suggesting that humans cultivate a certain part of their nature, compassion, as opposed to aspects of our nature like selfishness and hatred.
As far as implementation, this issue is the most confusing to me. Many communes still exist - some have existed since the late 60's/early 70's and remain remarkably active to this very day.

I think their naivety lay more in their belief that their dream was a possibility on a massive scale in the near future. Significant change takes time.

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