PUNK

I love Punk music. Granted I never conformed to the look that so defied the punk movement. Mohawk, leather jacket, ripped ironic t-shirts etc. But like Johnny Rotten always said and I'am paraphrasing "once rich kids started dressing that way, the punk movement was over. We couldn't afford nice leather jackets, we were poor so we wore what we had." That's where I fit in, by the time i was in high school , I was dirt poor. I wore what i had but i tried hard not to dress poor. I went to school with rich kids who lived in Ken Caryl Valley and who wore bobby pins as earrings and neatly dyed florescent Mohawks. They said they were punk but they didn't have a fucking clue what that meant. It wasn't about the clothes, although that was a part of the anti-establishment routine,  it was more about the music as an outlet and expression of raw anger and dissonance. Anger at the ruling class majority that unified society through its conformity. Rebellion at who deemed what was  popular and acceptable and what wasn't.  Punk music stripped that all away, and let loose a torrid of fast unrellentless sounds that expressed the hidden feelings of a generation. Re watching the great documentary on the Sex Pistols the Filth and the Fury it is fascinating what they were able to accomplish in such a short amount of time, and how incendiary and original their music was. Theirs is an unlikely story. Coming from truly impoverished conditions, stealing instruments and teaching themselves how to play Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock Paul Cook and later Sid Vicious, somehow cut through the pretension that had defined England in 1975, and created a voice for the lost generation of youth that were living in squalled conditions in England and who was desperately looking to break free. Songs like Anarchy in the UK, and God Save the Queen came out at the right time and right place when music really mattered and actually had an effect on people. They were polarizing and represented the opposite of what was the norm was at that time. Saddled by miss management, and infighting, and the addiction of Sid Vicious is was inevitable that they couldn't have lasted any longer than the two years they were together. But is it better to burn out or fade away? For them it was better to burn out quickly and leave such a huge impact on society and future bands than to have continued on into the 80's and become parodies of themselves. They will forever exist in the cultural consciousness as young, raw, and indelible to their time and place. Besides The Sex Pistols and The Clash, my favorite punk band was The Ramones. Representing the New York punk scene the Ramones were the flip side of punk music. Their were a unified quartet  singing loud  and fast and  they told stories in their songs. Stories about everyday life and the hardships of it. It would be easy to just get lost in the fast tempo of their songs, and miss the theme altogether, but if you did, that was your problem. Songs like Were A Happy Family, Commando, and the KKK Took My Baby Away, were social commentaries, not so much about chaos and anarchy but what was recognizable about what was happening in your day to day life. I don't know what constitutes as punk music today. Whatever it is it doesn't matter to me, because it has already been done better. Thats the beautiful thing about the music of The Ramones, and The Sex Pistols, and The Clash, is that it doesnt age, or date itself, its just as raw and powerful as it was when it was first recorded.