What Is Punk?

January 27, 2016 6:05 AM

"What Is Punk?" or, Using 2016 Playlist Statistics To Make Punk Old People Fussy
posted by Greg Nog (177 comments total)

Seems like a lot of work to use statistics when you can just look it up:

"A punk is a smoldering stick used for lighting firework fuses."

Very clear.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:08 AM on January 27, 2016 [17 favorites]

Making data in charts move around when I scroll through the page is pretty punk I guess.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:10 AM on January 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

That is some damned fine trolling.
posted by entropicamericana at 6:10 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

MAINSTREAM fuses, if it was 1994.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:11 AM on January 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Bad Religion classified as a seventies band sort of, well, yeah, ouch... Foo Fighters and Weezer being listed at all should be a clear warning sign about the danger of accepting the ideas of the crowd over expert testimonial, even if the whole point of punk is there are no experts...
posted by Ghidorah at 6:12 AM on January 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

Apparently the oldest etymology of “punk” traces it to hobo slang for very stale bread, possibly from the French pain.
posted by acb at 6:14 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

the danger of accepting the ideas of the crowd
The only danger I can see in this particular instance is learning that a lot of people consider a band to be punk that some other people don't, which is way below, e.g., "running out of coffee in the morning" on my list of dangers.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:14 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is a super-neat visualization. I'd like to complicate the whole "punk is what I point to when I say it" line, though, by noting that there are almost no bands with women in them on this list, and there are almost no bands that are majority women on this list...which, given the actual presence of women in punk scenes and the political contention around that fact, suggests that "punk is what the majority of people call punk" is not a particularly satisfactory approach. (And pretty much the same thing goes for queer punks and punks of color.) Leaving aside the international and non-Anglophone question, too - Los Crudos at least used to be a pretty big deal, punk-wise, for instance, but a lot of their fan base were US-based people with Spanish as a first language.

I think that "punk is what people call punk" tends to reflect distribution more than anything else, which is why the Clash persists. I was able to buy Clash albums in a conservative suburb in 1990 - no Sex Pistols, for instance, but Clash albums were available. Not that the Clash were not awesome and Joe Strummer was not a truly sterling fellow, but there's a lot of awesome in punk, and a lot of it is hard to find.
posted by Frowner at 6:17 AM on January 27, 2016 [26 favorites]

Well the glorious era of punk rock was the 90s, was it? Well now I know.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:17 AM on January 27, 2016

The simple solution is to crowd-source your coffee supply, and hope someone remembers to pick up more coffee next time you run out.

Seriously, Metallica? Punk?! Metallica fans used to beat up punk fans for sport
posted by Ghidorah at 6:18 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

(That is, trying to say "Blink-182 isn't punk because [strict music and social scene reasons]" is pretty silly, but saying "gee, I notice that we don't actually have a narrative of 'punk' which places any value on women" is, to me, a big deal.)
posted by Frowner at 6:18 AM on January 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

Where was this kind of important data analysis when I was 15?
posted by Dip Flash at 6:18 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

People, especially people my age and older, are so insufferable when discussing what is or isn't punk that they deserve Blink 182.

I remember back in the 1980s when my brother got his first mini boom box with a cassette player. One of the first tapes he bought was by The Go-Gos and everyone would say "The Go-Gos? They're punk."

Are the Go-Gos punk? Discuss. I've got all day.
posted by bondcliff at 6:18 AM on January 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

I haven't even clicked on the link but I am already sure everything is wrong and I am so mad.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:18 AM on January 27, 2016 [33 favorites]

It's pretty obvious what is or isn't punk... it's what I say it is.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:20 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I defer to the esteemed authority of D Boon on this matter.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:21 AM on January 27, 2016 [15 favorites]

Isn't emo the same thing as punk?
posted by shakespeherian at 6:22 AM on January 27, 2016

The Go-Gos are a fascinating indicator of how music styles and classifications were super mutable at that point! More rapidly mutable than they generally are now! I also tend to feel that on Beauty and the Beat, Belinda Carlyle has a really punk vocal style and tone - as long as you are familiar with the diversity of early punk recordings.

"Punk" is like "science fiction" - it's a constellation, a field (a star field, if you like!) and it's far more interesting to trace the connections and effects among things in the field than to try to draw its border.
posted by Frowner at 6:22 AM on January 27, 2016 [28 favorites]

People, especially people my age and older, are so insufferable when discussing what is or isn't punk that they deserve Blink 182.

I don't think that I've ever heard Blink 182 but I'm still sure that they're not punk.
posted by octothorpe at 6:24 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Where are the Hives!?! I cannot see them on this list...and I don't think punk and charts really go together...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 6:25 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Isn't emo the same thing as punk?
Emo is a particular kind of punk which is also referred to as "hardcore."
posted by Wolfdog at 6:27 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Is Avril Lavigne technically punk or would her music be better classified as hardcore
posted by shakespeherian at 6:27 AM on January 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

Wot, no wimmin? No Crass, The Slits, X-Ray Specs, Siouxsie, or even Patty Smith? Loved the dynamic visualizations, but the content feels trolly. Or maybe I'm overly "get out of my yard"-y.

EDIT: And where's Bauhaus in all its deathrock glory? Surely legions of fans with such a tremendous Aqua Net addiction would find themselves under the punk umbrella (which would also fill in that gap during 1983 pretty well).
posted by Heretic at 6:30 AM on January 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

No Joni Mitchell?
posted by shakespeherian at 6:34 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Avril Lavigne is technically plantigrade, (generally) walking with toes and metatarsals flat on the ground.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:39 AM on January 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

"I also tend to feel that on Beauty and the Beat, Belinda Carlyle has a really punk vocal style and tone"

Why am I suddenly picturing Christian Bale saying this as he sharpens an ax?
posted by JaredSeth at 6:40 AM on January 27, 2016 [20 favorites]

It seems like how narratives about punk are formed would be worth investigating - because undoubtedly there's a lot of people who listen to plenty of nineties punk, for instance, but not most of the nineties punk bands with women members or led by women. How was an understanding of punk generated in which people interested in punk still remember Bouncing Soles but have totally forgotten Hole, Babes In Toyland, etc? Those bands loomed so much larger than most of the nineties bands listed here back when I actually was young and punk rock - like, Hole and Babes In Toyland and Sleater-Kinney albums and shows were routinely announced with the really big, full-color posters in shop windows, and I remember Bouncing Souls much more as a small-flyer thing.

So obviously something happened between the nineties and now so that people who are interested in punk don't consider those bands at all. What was that, and how did it happen?

I mean, clearly the answer is "dudes". Dudes happened.

(And it's not as though no women remember Hole or Babes In Toyland, etc...it's just that that's, like, girl music. And "punk" is one of those "neutral" categories like "mankind" that we all know tends to default to white straight dudes.

It makes me sad, because I spent a not-inconsiderable portion of my teens and twenties collecting as much punk involving women and people of color as possible, along with books and zines pertaining to this, etc. And it's sad to see that even though there's some great material out there, we still have this master narrative of punk that says it's a white guy thing.)
posted by Frowner at 6:44 AM on January 27, 2016 [26 favorites]

Are the Go-Gos punk?

AF.
posted by escabeche at 6:45 AM on January 27, 2016 [22 favorites]

when i was little i had a record album called pink panther punk so i am definitely the most authentic punk

also irwin the disco duck
posted by poffin boffin at 6:45 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Black Flag is #51 on the list. Three slots below Weezer. Fifteen slots below the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:45 AM on January 27, 2016 [15 favorites]

This actually makes me feel a little better about my life choices in re punk. I'm into a lot of it spread across multiple decades, and I've made some effort to educate myself, given that I'm married to someone who grew up with a different decade of punk music than I did. But I'll always have a place in my heart for the newer punk sound of the '90s and '00s. When I was buying my first rock albums (growing up where I did, I bought my first rap and R&B much earlier), Green Day's Dookie and The Offspring's Smash were punk. They were completely unlike the cutesy, girly café rock and show tunes my friends were largely listening to at the time. And listening now, some of the subject matter from those pre-Columbine, pre-9/11 albums still sounds violently subversive. But I remember even then having to deal with people saying everything I liked wasn't real punk.

But to another friend of mine, who came of age a decade before my husband...yeah, the Go-Gos are punk. At least we can mostly all agree on the standard of wearing black jackets and coats.
posted by limeonaire at 6:47 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Some people say that Classical music was only made from 1750-1820 (I know orchestral musicians who say this, anyway). People have been arguing about these distinctions forever.

If, by some unexpected quirk of fate, I manage to spawn an entire genre of popular music, you can bet I'm going to do a better job of defining it than those good-for-nothing punks. In fact, the boffins in my legal department are drawing up a set of guidelines right now...
posted by pipeski at 6:51 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

limeonaire: "This actually makes me feel a little better about my life choices in re punk."

Feeling better about your life choices is definitely not punk.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:51 AM on January 27, 2016 [31 favorites]

> Isn't emo the same thing as punk?

/uses punk to set shakespeherian on fire
posted by rtha at 6:54 AM on January 27, 2016 [11 favorites]

punk is marketing
posted by pyramid termite at 6:56 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

pipeski : Some people say that Classical music was only made from 1750-1820 (I know orchestral musicians who say this, anyway). People have been arguing about these distinctions forever.

If it ain't baroque, don't fix it.
posted by dr_dank at 6:56 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's very interesting how many people seem to want to own "punk" nowadays, considering that it was very much an outsider thing even into the mid 1980s. The same sort of person (or even literally the same person) who would have called me "punk" as a pejorative back in high school and tried to fight me because I had bleached spiky hair and pierced ears, is now apparently a fan of the genre and proclaiming their "punk bonafides."
posted by slkinsey at 6:57 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Punk seems to me to lump together a bunch of different music scenes that have a few things in common – fashion and some variant on "rock and roll music played hard, fast, and loud." Since those scenes aren't around any more and we can all listen to the Ramones or Black Flag or Bad Religion or whoever via streaming, it makes sense that the music those scenes left behind would be lumped together with other rock and roll music played hard, fast, and loud.

Pretty much you can listen to what music you like. But sweet Jebus people have bad taste in what they think of as "punk."
posted by graymouser at 6:59 AM on January 27, 2016

Green Day's Dookie and The Offspring's Smash were punk

And up until those bands had major-label success, many punks would have agreed with you! I remember when many people had a Green Day album kicking around because they were fun and Larry Livermore (who ran Lookout) was a nice guy. I had an old cassette of one of the early ones and actually thought it was pretty cute. And I remember the transition, when that became utterly unacceptable. I don't know but have the sense that there was not enough of a stylistic change in their music to really justify this on musical grounds - they were poppy and bouncy and on a big-small label, and then they were poppy and bouncy and on a major.

I mean, honestly, there were definite reasons for saying "I prefer music distribution that doesn't put money in the pockets of eg Sony and will not buy anything not on an independent", but that's not the same as a musical critique.

Actually, a large part of why this list looks as it does is the 1994-ish post-grunge "lots of pop punk about dude pain is suddenly on major labels" thing. It was the best of times -(manic panic everywhere! and so cheap all of the sudden!), it was the worst of times (having to hear that one song with the "sometimes truth is stranger than fiction" lyric everywhere you turned, o god).

That dude-pain-pop-punk stuff was very successful with people who had not listened to punk before. It had some great knock-on effects - reissues of older, rare albums; people who got into Green Day getting into less well known but associated acts, or getting into punk generally - and it also meant that there was huge distribution of a few acts that were then taken to stand in for the whole genre.
posted by Frowner at 6:59 AM on January 27, 2016 [11 favorites]

Some people say that Classical music was only made from 1750-1820

That would be the classical period, not the classical tradition of music, and those people would be idiots.
posted by slkinsey at 7:00 AM on January 27, 2016

Site shits the bed on mobile browser. Punk AF.

Page sponsored by Converse. Mighty Mighty Bosstones ranked 9 in the ska-punk category. Suddenly I have my doubts about the legitimacy of this, Greg.
posted by ardgedee at 7:00 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hildegard of Bingen was punk as fuck.
posted by Devonian at 7:03 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Mighty Mighty Bosstones ranked 9 in the ska-punk category.

Having turned 18 in 1999 I am totally unable to be objective about ska punk, ska-core or anything in that realm.
posted by graymouser at 7:06 AM on January 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

BURROUGHS: I am not a punk and I don't know why anybody would consider me the Godfather of Punk. How do you define punk? The only definition of the word is that it might refer to a young person who is simply called a punk because he is young, or some kind of petty criminal. In this sense some of my characters may be considered punks, but the word simply did not exist in the fifties. I suppose you could say James Dean epitomized it in Rebel Without a Cause, but still, what is it? I think the so-called punk movement is indeed a media creation. I did however send a letter of support to the Sex Pistols when they released "God Save the Queen" in England because I've always said that the counry doesn't stand a chance until you have 20,000 people saying BUGGER THE QUEEN! And I support the Sex Pistols because this is constructive, necessary criticism of a country which is bankrupt.

posted by gwint at 7:06 AM on January 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

Also, oh my god I am so old.

Also, also: Larry Livermore is a lot older. Ha!

Although he seems to be in very good trim for someone in their mid sixties, so maybe there is hope for me too.
posted by Frowner at 7:08 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would like to note for the record that the Go-Go appear in "URGH! A Music War" and were therefore undeniably punk at one point at least.

I'm not much for gatekeepers. But has Blink-182 even seen "URGH! A Music War"?
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:08 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

You posers. I was on to the inauthenticity of punk before it was cool.
posted by mikewebkist at 7:12 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

My biggest problem with this list is that it doesn't include any John Cage, whose music is both Classical and Punk, and who invented Elmer's Glue as well as safety pins
posted by shakespeherian at 7:18 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Heh. I self-identify as a punk, and think a lot about the shifting boundaries of what that means. Enough so that I just wrote a longish thing about it. On the identity side, I come down pretty much to "if you care enough to ask whether you're a punk, you're a punk."

Or, really, what D Boon says by way of louche mustachio up above.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 7:19 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

"This actually makes me feel a little better about my life choices in re punk."

Feeling better about your life choices is definitely not punk.

Eh. I had this debate a while back. I argued that like journalism, the best rock music (not just punk) should actively afflict the comfortable. And a friend argued that part of the point of this sort of music is to comfort the afflicted. I think there's room for both.
posted by limeonaire at 7:20 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

What is Punk?

The Cramps, that's what's fucking punk. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, that's fucking punk. You show me a list of punk without the fucking Cramps on it, and I'll show you what's fucking punk, allright.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:24 AM on January 27, 2016 [15 favorites]

"have totally forgotten Hole, Babes In Toyland, etc"

Babes in Toyland were pretty great. I think I'm gonna go back and listen to them today. Thanks.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:24 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

limeonaire: " I argued that like journalism, the best rock music (not just punk) should actively afflict the comfortable. And a friend argued that part of the point of this sort of music is to comfort the afflicted. I think there's room for both."

In reality I totally agree with you, limeonaire. I actually think being happy with your life choices is punk as fuck, because it goes against the mentality of fear and self-doubt that the mainstream world hopes everyone buys into. I was just making a silly joke, and I actually considered not making it because it is so antithetical to my actual beliefs, but, you know, tryna be funny on MeFi.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:25 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

When I saw band 'x' at the 'y' back in '84...
But the thing about punk rock is that it wasn't profitable, 'we rock econo' but it was loud and sincere and likely misguided.
I cannot really say that of Blink182 - I kind of always felt they were a confectionary of some record exec's inadequately cocainated fantasy world. Which is almost punk, but mostly just failure.

To describe it, I don't really know what punk is, but I know it when I hear it.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:26 AM on January 27, 2016

TL;DR, but if this person didn't include Kanye in there somewhere then this bullshit thesis falls apart. (by which i mean, boastful claims and aspirations coupled with market share, focus groups, branding and quarterly rankings do not the genuine article make).
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 7:27 AM on January 27, 2016

The Misfits.
posted by Splunge at 7:28 AM on January 27, 2016

Speaking of Livermore et al i just recently found out Imogen Binnie apparently has a column in Maximum RocknRoll and it actually made me curious about reading it again for the first time in like years

Good old Maxxie Rocker! I too have not read it in a long time - it's one of those things where it's sort of a security blanket, the world can't have changed too terribly because it's still there, even if you haven't actually read an issue since you picked one up at a friend's party back in 2012.
posted by Frowner at 7:29 AM on January 27, 2016

I actually think being happy with your life choices is punk as fuck, because it goes against the mentality of fear and self-doubt that the mainstream world hopes everyone buys into.

The way I look at it: being happy with your life choices is Clash punk but not Sex Pistols punk, which is fine because the Clash are way better over the long haul.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 7:29 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Are emoji punk? I'd give you a peace-sign one, Rock Steady. But then again, I'm never sure whether peace is punk. (The Clash would probably argue it is.)
posted by limeonaire at 7:30 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't give a crap about what's punk and what isn't, but after googling a bunch of those Genres Associated with Punk Bands, I loaded up a Scottish-Gaelic Punk playlist on Youtube. Oi! Polloi! The album Dùisg is more like progressive punk, awesome!
posted by Huck500 at 7:31 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I always love it when The Clash are cited as a benchmark of what is true punk, since they were the subject of The Mekons' "Never Been In a Riot"
posted by ardgedee at 7:33 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

the Clash are way better over the long haul.

I always hated the Clash and never thought of them as punk, and I still listen to the Pistols occasionally. Which is the point of the article, I guess...

And in John Lydon's autobiography he says he loves the Spice Girls, and had the action figures, which I guess is really punk by one definition.
posted by Huck500 at 7:35 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

(Which is not to say The Clash aren't true punk or that I want this to be the opening to some rockist hair-splitting dictionary fight over them. However the Mekons are true punk, independent of the status of other bands, and there can be no argument.)
posted by ardgedee at 7:35 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

John Lydon seems pretty happy with his his life choices. He's a landlord now in a small way, you know. Bought a couple of houses during the property crash in the eighties, IIRC.

Actually, honestly, what you see in punk is that - as in everything else - fucked up working class kids get destroyed or marginalized, middle class art school kids do well...pretty much except for John Lydon, who I've gotten fonder of over the years because he's kept on trucking. Of course, he's rich now, but still.

Since I'm digressing - can I just recommend my favorite punk band ever, The Homosexuals? Normally I'd be all "but none of you are gay, that's kind of offensive" except that they started with that name in the seventies explicitly to disturb homophobes and then really ran with it. Hearts In Exile is a great starting point (it's just so chugging! you can just hear it getting up to speed) , but honestly I really love all their stuff. I believe the title is a reference to the significant fifties gay novel The Heart In Exile.
posted by Frowner at 7:40 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Guy Debord was spinning before entombment, and now there's gasoline-scented cotton candy stuffing up the sky.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 7:41 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not for nothing, but I'm pretty sure my 35 year old steel toed boots have more punk on them than this list.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:43 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Bauhaus were from the wrong side of the Atlantic to be classified as "death rock".
posted by acb at 7:43 AM on January 27, 2016

I always love it when The Clash are cited as a benchmark of what is true punk...

I always hated the Clash and never thought of them as punk...

I always thought of the Clash as the end of punk, since so much of punk relies on its innovative aspect, and after the Clash, and largely because of the Clash, everything in punk had been explored. There was only tinkering at the edges, people panning in streams after the mother lode had been mined out.

General working theory, and there are exceptions. I look forward to your angry letters.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:45 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Hehehe, I wish I could go back to 2003 so I could tell the insufferable asshole kids with safety pins through their fancy leather jackets in the lunchroom that, according to 2016, Fallout Boy is more punk than they'll ever be!
posted by ChuraChura at 7:46 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

You know what's really Punk As Fuck? Jockeying to establish punk bonafides on a website in 2016.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:46 AM on January 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

"everything in punk had been explored"

Has it though? One of my hobbies is going on youtube, making up a genre and then youtubing for it.

I think I'll try "dubstep punk". Don't think the Clash could've come up with that.
posted by I-baLL at 7:52 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, nothing is more punk than safety pins with the safety off.
posted by I-baLL at 7:52 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Using 2016 Playlist Statistics To Make Punk Old People Fussy

hey look it worked
posted by soundguy99 at 7:52 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I actually think being happy with your life choices is punk as fuck, because it goes against the mentality of fear and self-doubt that the mainstream world hopes everyone buys into.

Unless your life choices are totally mainstream, then you're a SELLOUT and that ain't punk.
posted by looli at 7:53 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Black Flag is #51 on the list.

I blame Rollins. If you break it out Pre-Rollins Black Flag comes in at #3.
posted by MikeMc at 7:58 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

What is punk?

Baby don't hurt me

Don't hurt me

No more
posted by Existential Dread at 8:05 AM on January 27, 2016 [26 favorites]

Do the Beach Boys count as punk or more like proto-punk?
posted by shakespeherian at 8:07 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think using Spotify as a dataset is starting off on the wrong foot. A big part of the punk ethos (to me) involves DIY, off-the-mainstream production that would preclude distribution through a massively corporate streaming service. Including YouTube might offset this to some extent, but the data is still going to be slanted at "historical" punk that has had time to be filtered and repackaged for wide release, whereas "modern" punk is thriving on some obscure Bandcamp/Soundcloud/independent website.

So I guess I would rename this "What Was Punk In The Past, As Viewed From the Present? Sponsored by CONVERSE (tm)"
posted by .holmes at 8:07 AM on January 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

I think I'll try "dubstep punk". Don't think the Clash could've come up with that.

Infected Mushroom probably counts as this.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:11 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yeah, it seems to me that by definition that this article is less an answer to the question: "what is punk?" And more an answer to the question "what do contemporary teenagers think of as punk?" If you tapped some random 14 year old on the shoulder and asked them if Blink 182's a punk bank, I'd bet most would say yes. If you asked the same kid who Television or Patti Smith or the Cramps are I bet you get blank stares. The same trick pulled for jazz would get you Michael Bublé.
posted by Diablevert at 8:14 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Seems like this list should be normed for how popular the group is overall, though. I grabbed the Spotify playcount for each group's highest played song and then sorted by the ratio of playlists to plays and it re-orders that main list a bit. Presumably if you used this metric in the first place you would find bands that were even more over-represented on punk playlists given their overall popularity.

1. NOFX: playlists 25% (830); playcount 5.8M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0143%
2. Bad Religion: playlists 27% (896); playcount 8.2M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0109%
3. Sum 41: playlists 35% (1162); playcount 36.7M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0032%
4. All Time Low: playlists 24% (797); playcount 25.3M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0032%
5. My Chemical Romance: playlists 31% (1029); playcount 55.2M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0019%
6. blink-182: playlists 45% (1494); playcount 80.9M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0018%
7. Rise Against: playlists 34% (1129); playcount 61.2M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0018%
8. Green Day: playlists 45% (1494); playcount 82.6M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0018%
9. The Offspring: playlists 39% (1295); playcount 84.6M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0015%
10. Panic! At The Disco: playlists 24% (797); playcount 62.5M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0013%
11. Fall Out Boy: playlists 34% (1129); playcount 172.0M; playlist to plays ratio 0.0007%
posted by yarrow at 8:15 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Shit, punk was experimenting with dub and reggae in the Clash's era.

I think the real question is: is Trump the first punk candidate for president
posted by Existential Dread at 8:16 AM on January 27, 2016

Are the Go-Gos punk?

AF.

QFT

Also, what is this bullshit. I can't seem to find the Pogues, X-ray Spex, Dead Milkmen, Social Distortion. I can't even figure out how to use all of this shit. Get. off. my. fucking. lawn.
posted by Sophie1 at 8:17 AM on January 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

if this person didn't include Kanye

punk was experimenting with dub and reggae

I am not and never have been punk, but isn't punk a genre of music? One that can in principle be distinguished from other genres? Perhaps music that bears some family resemblance to the Ramones?
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 8:25 AM on January 27, 2016

You know what band I will defend to the death as punk despite literally never ending up on anybody else's lists of punk bands?

DEVO. DEVO is punk as fuck.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:26 AM on January 27, 2016 [20 favorites]

Punk is whatever Bernie Sanders says it is.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:28 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

[howard jones]
What is puuuUuUuuUnk anyway? Does anybody punk anybody anyway? Whoa-oh
[/howard jones]

Howard Jones was not at all punk
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:32 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I guess that X is totally forgotten now?
posted by octothorpe at 8:32 AM on January 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

Are we talking about punk, the music, or punk, the subculture? Or maybe punk, the fashion sense? How about punk, the personality identifier?

The problem starts when you identify at a visceral personal level with a genre of music you like. That leads to rejecting all other forms of music, rejecting people who listen to other forms of music, and being insulted when someone else's definition of the genre differs from yours.
I loved punk music when I was younger (and I was around for the real stuff, kids) but I also loved lots of other kinds too, so I never saw myself *as* a punk or a New Waver or a goth or a metalhead....I just listened to them all.
As the wise sage Lemmy once said; "There's only two kinds of music: music you like and music you don't like".
posted by rocket88 at 8:34 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

"isn't punk a genre of music"

Hahaha, clearly you've never listened to punks discuss punk. Depending on who you talk to, punk is a lifestyle, or an attitude, or a meaningless term, or, yeah, possibly a genre of music. There is much debate about this.
posted by kevinbelt at 8:35 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not a pissed off old person, because I never liked punk anyway, so I have no idea whether Blink-182 is or was a punk band. All my artist friends were into it; it was the 80's. That and New Wave. Not the same thing. One thing about punk was that you didn't really have to have a lot of musical skills to be in a punk band. Not that there was anything wrong with that. That D.I.Y. ethos allowed me to call myself an artist despite the fact I couldn't draw.

I thought punk was pretty much over after the 80's, but I guess I'm wrong about that.

Black Flag, X, and thousands of local bands: punk. And since there are still 'zines around, I guess there must be punk around too. Punk is dead. Long live punk.
posted by kozad at 8:36 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

@justsimebodythatyouusedtoknow: It's called humor, or probably snark. Punk bonafides are pretty tiresome at this point in history, but Blink182 is about as punk (and packaged/performative) as Kanye West, and considering his penchant for big claims and sweeping pronouncements about himself i would think any genre would be open game for him. Also, co-optation, commercialization, dilution, pandering, marketing, signaling, received-information, Blink 182, "punk."
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 8:37 AM on January 27, 2016

I thought punk was pretty much over after the 80's, but I guess I'm wrong about that.

Punk's not dead, it just deserves to die before it becomes another stale cartoon.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:38 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

^ too late
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 8:41 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Perhaps music that bears some family resemblance to the Ramones?

The Cramps bears VERY little resemblance to the Ramones and yet, the Cramps are nothing but punk. So if you define punk as the Cramps/Dickies/DK, then you have very little resemblance to say, Adam and the Ants or X (call out to octothorpe). And then what about Iggy Pop or the Meat Puppets?
posted by Sophie1 at 8:41 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

In terms of "what is punk": I think it's a loosely linked sequence of musical styles - sometimes similar by actual musical style, sometimes similar by theme, sometimes similar by self-identification, sometimes similar by fan identification, sometimes similar by merchandising, sometimes similar by personnel, etc.

You can create a lot of different narratives about punk, each of which have their uses. Do you argue that punk begins before the name, with certain kinds of rock music in the fifties or sixties? Do you argue that there's a meaningful transition from punk to post-punk? How do you talk about the globalization of punk?

People who are into punk sometimes use "punk" to mean "socially acceptable to me" or just "oppositional" which confuses matters.

You can probably say some things are not punk, such as these musicians that I like - the band Erasure is not punk; Owen Pallett, the musical darling of my heart, is not punk; The Smiths are not punk, although some of their videos, directed by Derek Jarman, are; Sisters of Mercy is not punk; Noonday Veil is not punk; Don Cherry, another musical darling of my heart, was awesome but not punk...you get the idea that some things really are not part of this constellation of punkness, even if they are awesome and/or oppositional.

But as with anything with unclear edges, there's a lot of room for argument. The Homosexuals, for instance - socially and label-wise, they are punk as fuck; musically, they owe a lot to prog and seventies experimentation generally while also incorporating punk 3 chord type stylings.

Punk is like any genre - a useful way of comparing and understanding some stuff and a terrible way of defining edge cases.
posted by Frowner at 8:46 AM on January 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

I wonder if some of these odd classifications under the "punk" umbrella has to do with the fact that it's become fashionable to be "punk" or consume "punk music," but most of the people who want to follow that fashion don't actually like it so they latch onto something that has some superficial trappings of "punk" and decide that's it. In this sense it may have something in common with the miss-classification of minimum-juniper "new American gins" that were effectively created for people who understand that gin is cool want to drink something called "gin" but don't actually like gin.
posted by slkinsey at 8:48 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Arguments over "what is punk" are also a useful way to look at how narratives are constructed - as with the one in the OP, where "punk is what people on Spotify say it is" generates a narrative with almost no women/queers/people of color/queer people of color/women of color/queer women/etc. So we might want to look at how and who constructed that history, where they got their model and information, and then at how the people who only know about white straight guy punk bands are getting their cultural narratives.
posted by Frowner at 8:49 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

But is punk a sandwich?
posted by Rock Steady at 8:51 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

(That is, when there have actually been a TON of really important people in punk who are women/POC/queer, etc - it's not even like you have to be committed to buying a vintage cassette from 1982 than was only available on the Lower East Side from that one guy to find these people/bands or something.)
posted by Frowner at 8:57 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bauhaus were from the wrong side of the Atlantic to be classified as "death rock".
Whoa. This is truly news to me. My cohort of 20-something midwesterners always called Bauhaus death rock because we knew no other term. "Goth" didn't exist in our neck of Indiana in 1983. My life was a lie! Or my friends were idiots. Possibly both.
posted by Heretic at 8:58 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

But is punk a sandwich?

Punk is a sandwich. Spaghetti is a sandwich. Eminem wrote the canonical Spaghetti Song. Eminem is punk.

QED
posted by shakespeherian at 9:01 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I feel like I should comment in this thread.

So now I have.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:08 AM on January 27, 2016 [19 favorites]

DEVO. DEVO is punk as fuck.

I basically spent the '90s pushing boombox dubs of the Ryko HARDCORE DEVO compilations at any of my Punk and DIY Indie friends who laughed at my love of the "Whip It" guys, to the point that I inspired at least a couple of them to form short-lived basement bands in reaction to/emulation of that particular 4-track nihilist-freak sound. An argument could be made that Devo was the only Punk band that internalized their rebellion all the way to the culture of Punk itself.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:09 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

How was an understanding of punk generated in which people interested in punk still remember Bouncing Soles but have totally forgotten Hole, Babes In Toyland, etc?

Best in mind, even in metafilter it's still acceptable to dismiss a female musician with the line So did she write those songs herself?" Sexist gatekeeping is dominant in music criticism, so there's a constant process of erasure. Even here.

Twenty years from now some critic is going to get publicity by stating confidently that there were no female punk bands, and use that in a sexist argument about women in music.
posted by happyroach at 9:10 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't know but have the sense that there was not enough of a stylistic change in their music to really justify this on musical grounds - they were poppy and bouncy and on a big-small label, and then they were poppy and bouncy and on a major.

Probably not much of a stylistic change for the band between the perceptions changed from "Green Day is cool" and "Green Day is fake" or whatever. But for me anyway, there's having a poppy bouncy album I can occasionally listen to and enjoy, and then there's a poppy bouncy album that is being played on the radio, on TV, in all my friends' cars, at all the parties, at all the stores, etc constantly and cannot be avoided. Eventually it can become kind of annoying. That's what happened with me and Green Day back then. Some songs can wear out their welcome with too much exposure, for me anyway. I remember enjoying Kerplunk and Dookie for a good while as a teenager, when I was in charge of when I got to hear it. But as it turned out I could only hear "When I Come Around" so many times before I wanted to hear ANYTHING else.

I always hated the Clash and never thought of them as punk...

What else was the first album then?

The Cramps bears VERY little resemblance to the Ramones

I dunno, they both pretty clearly owe a debt to rockabilly even if one of them is playing faster and harder.

DEVO. DEVO is punk as fuck.

I never understood what people meant by this until I heard Fu Manchu's cover of Freedom of Choice and realized they'd hardly changed a thing except used guitars instead of synths. They totally are.
posted by Hoopo at 9:44 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Sex Pistols, punk or The Monkees with a heroin problem?
posted by zippy at 9:44 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

@bitteroldpunk The first thing I did was search the thread for your comment.
posted by Canageek at 9:45 AM on January 27, 2016

Did it make it to the Repo Man soundtrack?
posted by maxwelton at 9:45 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I deny that punk exists.

DEVO. DEVO is punk as fuck.

I can't tell the difference between the joke examples of the genre and the serious ones. I see no reason to think there is a difference.

This is not a boundary issue. Metal, jazz and hip hop - each is a diverse genre, but although we might disagree about marginal cases there are a lot of non-controversial core cases. All three genres have more-or-less agreed upon historical milestones and (broadly) identifiable sounds. Punk? You as an individual might have beliefs about what punk is and who the most important punk bands of all time are but there is clearly no consensus.

Punk is not an attitude, demonstrated by the fact that people on this thread cannot agree on what that attitude might be.

Concepts have shared meanings. "Punk" does not. Twas brillig and the punks did gyre and gimbol in the wabe.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:46 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Punk was dead by the end of 1976. Stonehenge was already built, the Harappans were in severe decline, commercial bullshit like the Minoan palace culture was in full swing, Amenemhat I wasn't even doing new stuff anymore since he'd already secluded himself in Itjtawy. Just bullshit all around.
posted by Copronymus at 9:50 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Asking other people what punk is is not punk. You do what you want. I'm done.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:51 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've always taken the goth/deathrock distinction to be that goth descended most directly from Joy Division and Bauhaus while deathrock descended most directly from Christian Death.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:55 AM on January 27, 2016

When I saw band 'x' at the 'y' back in '84...

I saw X when they played at my high school in about 1987, does that count?

Also, this thread is useless without '90s Punk Decries Punks Of Today.
posted by The Tensor at 9:56 AM on January 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Punk fail tests (half joking here):

Does the band play venues which have decent restrooms or room for more than a hundred or so people?

Does the band show up for all of their shows?

Do frat bros like it?

Do you find yourself considering the word "nuanced" when thinking about the band?

Did "raw" not occur to you when thinking about the band?

Is the band ignored by kids who should be grateful they're clothed, fed, and otherwise in good situations but are instead so angry about that, for reasons they can't articulate?

Conversely, did the band have its roots in those kids?

Etc.

"Punk a year past when it was cool" test:

Is young maxwelton into it?
posted by maxwelton at 10:03 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Asking other people what punk is is not punk. You do what you want. I'm done.

this is the ultimate meh argument for me, born in 1959, should have been one of those disaffected youth types that invented the genre in question but for whatever reason, I wasn't really acknowledging my disaffection until at least 1980, so came in late to the game and thus could never honestly look myself in the mirror and see spiked hair or whatever and buy it as genuine, so f*** it, I chose just to roll with what I liked be it two-minutes-ten-seconds of gtr driven aggro or fifteen minutes of repetitive vibes run through deep reverb or some funky shit with weird samples on top of it or whatever the f*** I liked, which I'd never call punk by the way, that's getting the whole dumb thing backasswards -- punk is not whatever I happened to say it is, punk is loving what I love because it sends me and f*** anyone that gets in my way, tells me I'm wrong, I'm uncool, I'm actually something-something-something sub-group of something. This is a great great movie.
posted by philip-random at 10:04 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Do frat bros like it?

People who decide what music they like based on answers to questions like this don't really like music.
posted by rocket88 at 10:24 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

...except that bands who play for fratty audiences tend to suck (see also: Limp Bizkit).
posted by pxe2000 at 10:49 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Do frat bros like it?
People who decide what music they like based on answers to questions like this don't really like music.
Although people who decide what shows or venues they will go to based on answers to questions like this can, in some instances at least, be exercising good sense, I think.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:49 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Do frat bros like it?
Back in 1992 I saw a jeep full of frat bros singing along to Nirvana's 'Territorial Pissings' (true story!) and I was like, dudes, you're making Kurt Cobain very sad.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 10:58 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

DEVO. DEVO is punk as fuck.

Yes. Yes they are. Pioneers who got scalped.

And it was never more apparent to me than when post-concert, I stood late at night at a dark bus stop wearing an Energy Dome. Then you really get a sense how outside of the mainstream DEVO is. Passerbys insist on reinforcing that idea.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:01 AM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Would band X ever play at a prison or a state psych hospital? Would they be crowd pleasers at BOTH institutions?

I was prepared to be mildly dismayed at the list and I was. Kids these days, you know. But I what do you expect when they don't know what "selling out" means. And hell, even the Clash had a couple of frat party favorites.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 11:02 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Explaining why Band X is punk = insufficiently punk.

Sneering at something for being insufficiently punk = punk as fuck.
posted by straight at 11:10 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I can't tell the difference between the joke examples of the genre and the serious ones. I see no reason to think there is a difference.

I'm not joking, and neither is DEVO.

Shortly after their big MTV hit, they put out "Through Being Cool". That's not joking, that's taking the piss.

I chose just to roll with what I liked be it two-minutes-ten-seconds of gtr driven aggro or fifteen minutes of repetitive vibes run through deep reverb or some funky shit with weird samples on top of it or whatever the f*** I liked

Os Mutantes is pretty punk, too.

Explaining why Band X is punk = insufficiently punk.

Sneering at something for being insufficiently punk = punk as fuck.

I know, this is the main reason why I'm not actually punk even though a lot of the bands I like are.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:15 AM on January 27, 2016

I am going to spend the rest of my day trying to find bands that overlap "Blackened-crust" and "Vegan Straight Edge" and see if they suit my taste.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:15 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

DEVO. DEVO is punk as fuck.

I can't tell the difference between the joke examples of the genre and the serious ones. I see no reason to think there is a difference.

Trust us, this is our serious face. It would be a joke if we threw something like Bad Company or Michael Bolton up there, but not DEVO. Would a non-punk joke band have recorded something that sounded like this?
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:16 AM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Honestly, I think that at least some of the "what is punk" stuff can actually be answered by simply doing a bit of research - not in any hard-and-fast way, but you can certainly get a sense for key moments (at least in the Anglophone world), significant albums and people, significant concerns, etc. I'd say that if I were doing, like, a dissertation on this I'd probably write about nineties punk and how it's narrated (dissertations! more punk than you'd think!) since I don't think there's necessarily that much out there.

I read England's Dreaming (punkly available on Amazon now, but you can readily buy it from a better bookseller) when it came out, and the huge discography in the back was immensely helpful as a starting point - kept me busy looking through vinyl bins for years, though that doesn't matter now. Obviously, one reads all those Rip It Up And Start Again and Please Kill Me books and so on; there's also fascinating interviews with Lydia Lunch and a couple of other relevant women in that old "Research Publications Angry Women" book. And there's tons of other books, memoirs, etc now. Plus this interesting object, which I'd like to see if only to see whether it matches any of the old zines I've got.

Something I think I might get, too: Inseparable, the memoirs of an American and the story of Chinese punk rock. If you want something that is indubitably, indubitably punk as fuck, so punk that the Sex Pistols could only dream of it, pre-Tiananmen and early/mid-nineties Beijing rock/punk music was absolutely it. He Yong, who seems to have had some pretty sad things happen to him, poor guy, but who recorded some rather remarkable stuff. The video for "Garbage Heap is really quite something, or so it seems to me - or perhaps it was just that I was in China in the mid-nineties.
posted by Frowner at 11:17 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is worse than the LearnedLeague "Punk" one-day mini-league that was outrageously skewed toward eighties West Coast hardcore. That's what it's worse than.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:17 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

DEVO is amazing. There's a quite good chapter substantially about them, "The Important Sound Of Things Falling Apart", in Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the last days of the working class. They had a lot more going on artistically and intellectually than people realize because everyone is like "ooh, I know, novelty hit! And the funny hats!". Their whole early aesthetic was really foundational for a lot of punk stuff well up through the nineties.

I remember I was at a party once and someone was playing this just incredible punk album that I'd never heard before. It was obviously older stuff, but I couldn't even begin to place it even though I used to be quite good at that kind of thing. So I asked what it was, and it was a really hard to find compilation of DEVO's pre-novelty-hit stuff.
posted by Frowner at 11:22 AM on January 27, 2016 [11 favorites]

So some guy, sponsored by a shoe company, mined a corporate database consisting of data submitted by people who willingly submit information to corporate databases, and he made some charts that caused hippies to fight amongst themselves over the relative punkness of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park.

I didn't even know it was my birthday.
posted by ernielundquist at 11:26 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

also irwin the disco duck

Oh wow did I just get a case of some very very specific nostalgia. Some day Peter Pan Records (a division of Synthetic Plastics Corp., Newark, NJ) will get the righteous FPP it deserves.
posted by mintcake! at 11:28 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

In 1985 I saw three Omega Psi Phi dudes actively dismantling the very foundations of capitalism with their bare hands in a vain attempt to institute exactly whatever your ideal state (or stateless society) would look like while singing the entire Minutemen catalog to that point, but you could tell it was, like, covers by bands I respect less, and I was all, "Oh, Hell no!" to all of that forever.
posted by Copronymus at 11:31 AM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Savages is the best punk band today. Or post punk. Whatever they are.

That is all.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:41 AM on January 27, 2016

Huh I didn't know Bad Religion were that big. Bad Religion were really good, and I feel like they even get respect from old punk dudes. Though not only did they not exist or just barely exist in the 70s but their classic run of albums was almost into the 90s.
posted by atoxyl at 11:43 AM on January 27, 2016

Even by Greg Nog standards that was hilarious.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:43 AM on January 27, 2016

Or I guess Against the Grain (one of my favorite albums ever) was in 1990.
posted by atoxyl at 11:44 AM on January 27, 2016

Next up: Death To False Metal-the Spotify survey
posted by Existential Dread at 11:49 AM on January 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

One of you whippersnappers bring my damn walker over here, I busted my hip riot grrling in the pits with the boys in the 80s and 90s and my blood pressure just went sky high and I think I need a few pills from the cabinet.

Oh my creaking Docs and my busted heart.
posted by littlewater at 12:05 PM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

really hard to find compilation of DEVO's pre-novelty-hit stuff.

Sounds like one of the HARDCORE DEVO comps I mentioned upthread. Both volumes were out of print for going on forever, but got a recent re-release on vinyl/CD through Superior Viaduct, and ought to be available on various streaming services now as well.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:12 PM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

While everyone else is being fussy about punk, I'll just be over here getting all cranky about the hardcore and post-hardcore lists because where the fuck is Fugazi or Quicksand and what in the name of Lou and Pete Koller is Blink-182 doing anywhere near there jesus christ kids today etc. and also emo is just hardcore without the screaming so when you add the screaming back in you didn't invent a new genre called screamo you little pricks there I said it etc. seriously though who put Avenged Sevenfold on a post-hardcore playlist I mean who even does that to themselves etc.
posted by Errant at 12:14 PM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's like hardcore never happened but the still made a hardcore list?

How is Avail not here?
posted by littlewater at 12:18 PM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Fucked Up is not here either.

Fuck this list.
posted by littlewater at 12:21 PM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

No article on punk rock should wind up with the "And that’s the point: genres exist entirely in our heads" feel-good moment. "Walk Together, Rock Together?"

Esp. as we know: your favorite definition of punk rock sucks.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:51 PM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ugh, we're doing "is it punk?" again? I don't care if something is punk or not, but I can say that Black Flag is not the same kind of music as Green Day, and Metallica is not the same kind of music as the Go-Go's. I think people end up drawing their own genre lines and the problem with punk is that people use the word to describe a bunch of stuff that isn't the same. None of it particularly matters, though - know what you like, and like it.
posted by DrLickies at 1:00 PM on January 27, 2016

Ugh, we're doing "is it punk?" again?
Some people are, some people paid attention to what the article said.
Some people are just trying to share helpful knowledge facts.
posted by Wolfdog at 1:31 PM on January 27, 2016

Fortunately this isn't displaying properly on my stupid iPad, so grar avoided.

I was able to buy Clash albums in a conservative suburb in 1990 - no Sex Pistols, for instance, but Clash albums were available.

That doesn't surprise me. By punk rock standards, The Clash were practically mainstream after Combat Rock, which made it to #7 on the Billboard pop charts.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:26 PM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I always hated the Clash and never thought of them as punk...


Hating the Clash has always seemed, to me, like hating the Beatles. I am prepared to accept that people really feel that way, but I don't really understand why. I don't understand the aesthetic priorities that would drive such a vehement dislike.
posted by howfar at 2:31 PM on January 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

Anybody interested on old school DEVO should check out Hardcore Devo Live, which is streaming on Amazon Prime. Not old films, but a new concert from 2014 doing only old songs. The guys still kick ass.
posted by InfidelZombie at 2:41 PM on January 27, 2016

I was kind of shocked, as I watched my 5 year old nephew happily play his new Rock Band game, that "I Wanna Be Sedated" was the sort of song they'd include. It inspired me to go back and listen to some old Ramones, Clash, X, and other "punk" bands from my youth.

And MAN! They're really great (of course) and lyrical an kind of... nice? Like, in comparison to the music of today a lot of it seemed like something that one should put in a video game for children.

And, yes, I just said "the music of today", which is worse than shooing kids off lawns. It was one of my first indications that maybe I wasn't just a grown-up, I was getting thoroughly middle-aged.
posted by ldthomps at 2:56 PM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Bikini Kill, ASF, those bands rocked hard. I'd call them punk rock. Plenty of music listed here I wouldn't. I get to decide what is and isn't punk rock. To me. You get to decide that for you. Of course if you chose differently, you'd be wrong.
posted by evilDoug at 3:36 PM on January 27, 2016

People who are on Spotify, are there *actual* punk bands available on it? I always get annoyed with Spotify when using it to find music because it often doesn't have the track I happen to want to hear.

I know that you can find punk on Youtube, but that has a much more diverse way of sourcing music. That Newtown Neurotics track has an always pertinent chorus; don't believe everything that you read in the press!
posted by asok at 3:36 PM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

There are four Newtown Neurotics albums on Spotify, and five compilations they appear on.

Spotify keeps growing its library. Even a few months ago they didn't have Edna's Goldfish, an obscure ska punk band that I loved in high school because I had a tape copied from a friend's tape of their first album. Now both their albums are on Spotify.
posted by graymouser at 3:44 PM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ghidorah: "Metallica fans used to beat up punk fans for sport"

We knew very different Metallica fans and punk fans. Well, actually, the Metallica fans I knew and the punk fans I knew got along great, but had there been a fight, the Metallica fans, with their scrawny builds and soft Converse shoes, would have gotten their asses handed to them by the punks with the steel-tipped boots and pointless chain decorations.

Heretic: "Wot, no wimmin? No Crass, The Slits, X-Ray Specs, Siouxsie, or even Patty Smith?"

Siouxsie is in there, under "Post-Punk", as is Bauhaus.
posted by Bugbread at 4:07 PM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, why doesn't languagehat ever come into these punk threads? Is he scared away by all the language prescriptivists?

Like, I have to wonder if you are all in some kind of weird religion where words have concrete True and Eternally Immutable Meanings that are revealed to humanity through the ages. Punk has meant a thing to light firecrackers with, a hoodlum, and a prostitute, among other things. Over time, the same word gets used to refer to different things. If there's one dude out there saying "Wilson Phillips were punk" then he's wrong, because that's how language works. The meanings of words are determined by how they are used, and almost nobody says Wilson Phillips were punk. But if 100 million people say "Michael Bolton is punk" then Michael Bolton is punk. That's how language works!

My own punk meter started off totally miscalibrated against the conventional language usage, because the first bands I was introduced to as punk were the Dead Kennedys and the Subhumans (the UK one, not the Canadian one). I think next was Minor Threat, and then a bunch of hardcore bands (except I didn't know they were called hardcore). So the first time I heard the Clash, and the first time I heard the Ramones, were a big shock. "People call this punk?!?! There's nothing wrong with this, but it's straight-up rock. It's the epitome of plain ole rock'n'roll!" But everybody accepts that the Clash and Ramones are punk. Even people who hate those bands will call them punk bands. So I had to realize that whether or not they feel like punk to me doesn't matter. They're punk because people categorize them as punk, and that's how language works.
posted by Bugbread at 4:24 PM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

that is not, however, how Michael Bolton works.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:28 PM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Now let's rank punk stage names, which were definitely better in the 70s.

Best: Captain Sensible, Dinah Cancer, Poly Styrene, Frank Discussion

Worst: Lee Ving
posted by Existential Dread at 4:48 PM on January 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

this list wasn't handwritten/typed/drawn, collaged, and then photocopied (B&W). sooooo, basically not punk at all.
posted by nikoniko at 5:17 PM on January 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

The thing is, an arbitrary measure of what's punk doesn't really work- we need empirical tests. That's why I put my blazer on over my peach-colored polo shirt, and after the set, I ask the band in my best music critic voice: "But was it really punk?" Then if I get my ass kicked, that's pretty solid evidence that it's a punk band.

I've discovered a lot of punk bands over the last twenty years.
posted by happyroach at 8:53 PM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I was not a card carrying Punk, but I was a fan and went to a lot of shows. I remember in the mid to late 80’s seeing people dressed stereotypical "punk" at shows and we couldn’t figure it out. What the hell were they doing? Punk was done and gone, we thought it was hilarious these people were still hanging on. If you told me that in 2016 I’d witness yet another conversation about what current bands were Punk or not I would have been stunned. I would have said "WTF, I’ll still be alive in 2016?"
posted by bongo_x at 12:45 AM on January 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

You can acknowledge that punk doesn't intrinsically mean one thing as a word to everyone, while at the same time advocating that it should have clear and definite boundaries and meanings. Re-read Frowners comments in this thread if you want to know why I choose to do that.

30 years ago Jazz meant a lot of shit like weather report and paul whiteman and kenny g and what the fuck ever else.

Now due to snobby snobs and cultural curators advocating for a specific definition of jazz and what makes it great and what the canon of jazz should be, if you search jazz playlists on Spotify you'll get a different result: Mile. Coltrane. Bird. Duke. Louis. Some others. A core of greatness of a specific path. Retroactively applied perhaps, but no less real than anything else.

Recorded music always goes through this. It happens when a genre dies out entirely or becomes so ossified that it is no longer being innovated upon. It's easy to do with, say, Calypso. Eventually it will happen with punk. What we say now, what we write in this thread, the playlists we make, the songs we share, the films we score, the documentaries we create or consume, this is defining the genre.

I'm fine with people defining punk any way they choose. But I'm not going to stop rejecting their definitions and making my own, and rallying support for what I see is the core values of punk, not least of which is giving a detached ironic power to the voices to the most marginalized and degraded people in late stage capitalism.

I know I is old & it's funny that I'm Mad, and that's cool, but actually I bet young folx hate the continuing Blink182ism of punk way more. I'm counting on it actually.

Excerpt for The Punkers Agree With Me In Email - Online Power Dynamics In Hegemonic Joke Formats (c 2016 University of Phoenix Press)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:40 AM on January 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

I guess I can get on board with that. It's a bit of a performative thing, I would guess. Like when you're raising small children and you pretend to be more absolute than you actually are because age three is a little young to be talking about which drugs are okay in which ways, when killing people is justifiable, to what exact degree you should trust policemen, etc. And if that's what's going on; that folks aren't actually upset and don't really think others are using the word wrong, but are pretending to be upset in order to shift the definition of the term to one they prefer, I can grok that.

And as far as "the playlists we make, the songs we share, the films we score, the documentaries we create or consume, this is defining the genre" yeah, that 100%. That's not negating other people's definitions, it's just providing your own personal definition. Even without a performative aspect, that's hunky dory.

(I wonder which is less punk, Michael Bolton or the expression "hunky dory"?)
posted by Bugbread at 6:55 AM on January 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

What the hell were they doing? Punk was done and gone, we thought it was hilarious these people were still hanging on

But in the mid-80s a lot of the late-70s/early 80s punk and hardcore bands were still going. The Ramones, the Clash, Black Flag, Bad Brains, DOA, presumably they still had some fans? And the whole "thrash" thing. Cro-Mags, and DRI and all that.
posted by Hoopo at 10:13 AM on January 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Also, why doesn't languagehat ever come into these punk threads? Is he scared away by all the language prescriptivists?

I don't think it's a language issue. It's a social issue, or maybe it's better to think of it more as an anthropological question than a linguistics question. Punk is basically the self-ascribed identity of people who consider themselves punk, inclusive of their acknowledged antecedents.

So The Clash is punk not because it resembles Punk as it is now, but because they were always considered Punk, considered themselves Punk, and are acknowledged as antecedents of the punks who followed them, not even necessarily because of their music, but because of their activities, ethics, and who they associated with. Similarly (or conversely, I guess), Thin Lizzy is not Punk, even though there's Punk music that sounds more like Thin Lizzy than The Clash.

I don't know where the "fashion tribe" came from so I'm going to try to be careful with it, but I think it's a good phrase to use right now. Punk is, in its myriad ways, a collective of fashion tribes that coalesce due to overlapping interests. People join the fashion tribes because they like the music, or the looks, or the ethos, or for lack of finding anything they feel more strongly about -- and people leave the tribes as their interest fades or other commitments become more important, and Punk has been churning along that way for somewheres over 40 years now. There are 60 year olds who are as Punk as they ever were, and there are 22 year olds who were Punk and moved on.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by ardgedee at 5:27 PM on January 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

So The Clash is punk not because it resembles Punk as it is now, but because they were always considered Punk, considered themselves Punk, and are acknowledged as antecedents of the punks who followed them, not even necessarily because of their music, but because of their activities, ethics, and who they associated with.

Yeah this is true.
There's lots of punk people making music that sounds much, much more like folk or country music, but since the musicians are punks, the music is claimed by the punk genre (Bonny Prince Billy, Chuck Ragan, and pretty much every pop punk frontman that decided to do a few heartfelt singer songwriter sets).

I really think punk gets defined more by culture and values more than musical sound. Did the musicians consider themselves punk? Did they travel in punk circles? Then they are in, and they are still punk even if they put out a banjo album.

The only think that gets you kicked out is turning away from the culture/not having the values. Blink 182 has no DIY cred, so even if they "sound punk" they will never be accepted as part of the culture.
posted by littlewater at 7:49 PM on January 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Huggy Bear! You wouldn't walk through the door with your face so long, if you knew you were the heroine of our new song!!! Man, they were great.

And gee, what other bands did I listen to which had women in them? Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens To Betsy (they were probably my favorite), Lois Maffeo, Scrawl, this local band called The Blue Up? (who I see right now had been playing for like ten years when I heard them), Slant 6, Mecca Normal, Kicking Giant, old Beat Happening, Tribe 8, Spitboy, Dogfaced Hermans (Dogfaced Hermans are still one of my very favorite bands.)

I felt like it was also a time when people who "identified as punk" were seeking out a lot of early/mid-eighties stuff, some of which wasn't punk but small-label alternative - so, the Shop Assistants, for instance. I really love the Shop Assistants. There was a re-release of the Adverts albums, and Penetration, and a bunch of small label stuff from the UK.

And it's difficult to overestimate how important the rerelease of the Raincoats albums were - thanks to interest from Kurt Cobain, IIRC, who seems to have been a pretty stand-up guy, all things considered. Fairytale in the Supermarket is kind of the most famous, but I really like the translated Jacques Prevert poem. The first album in particular. The cover is a painting by a Chinese girl named Pang Hsiao; I have mixed feelings about its use in this context, but I think that in 1979 it was intended more to read as a rejection of screwed up Western femininity than anything hostile or exoticizing.

And then there were the rereleases of Lilliput and Essential Logic and Delta 5, those were so important, but that's right at the end of the nineties or early 2000s - Die Matrosen is one of my favorite songs.
posted by Frowner at 6:09 AM on January 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Bratmobile, Heavens To Betsy (they were probably my favorite)

As someone who really should have been into riot stuff but was instead listening to boring oldies at the time, Gone Home was a godsend. Not only for actually providing a deluxe edition of the soundtrack at some point that included full albums by Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy (also my favourite), and The Youngins, but also for putting you in the right mindset to listen to that stuff and really fully get it.

Gone Home is pretty punk.

On the subject of riot bands, Maow is fucking great, too, though obscure enough that I don't get mad about them being left off canonical lists of punk music.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:43 AM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

And gee, what other bands did I listen to which had women in them?

If we can include grind, let's throw Melt-Banana in there. They are fucking awesome and still killing it. We could even go as far as Agoraphobic Nosebleed (currently doing a series of EPs with just Kat on vocals), although it's pretty much metal at that point.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:08 AM on January 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

So The Clash is punk not because it resembles Punk as it is now

This? This? This? That's why they were considered punk, I guess I'm not clear on how that doesn't resemble punk now... They branched out later and tried out a lot of different sounds and styles, but I'm pretty sure they were considered punk because that's what they were playing and got famous for in the early days.
posted by Hoopo at 9:37 AM on January 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

But in the mid-80s a lot of the late-70s/early 80s punk and hardcore bands were still going. The Ramones, the Clash, Black Flag, Bad Brains, DOA, presumably they still had some fans? And the whole "thrash" thing. Cro-Mags, and DRI and all that.

I was one of those fans. I’m not saying there was no Punk in the late 80’s. There were still hippy bands in the 80’s. I love the 80’s Ramones records but there was a lot of not-punk on them. Most Punk bands were playing some kind of Metal by the mid to late 80’s.

Dressing up like the cover of Punk and Disorderly in the late 80’s seemed pretty dated.
posted by bongo_x at 10:43 AM on January 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dressing up like the cover of Punk and Disorderly in the late 80’s seemed pretty dated.


I would agree with this.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:46 AM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I mean, I was a punk in the early/mid-nineties, and I was unusually interested in canonical "punk" fashion - but what we all wore was hand-stenciled t-shirts, ringer tees, chokers or maybe dog collars, 1970s vintage plaid stuff, not-very-short pleated shirts, beat up overalls, striped tights, vintage scooter dresses, Kurt Cobainish cardigans and a lot of plaid flannel. If you were more arty punk than grungy punk, you might wear some gothy stuff or some of the Cold War detritus that was emerging from Russia and Eastern Europe - I had a giant dark grey wool overcoat from Poland or someplace, plus a couple of pairs of fatigues. Also either combat boots, converse or mary janes. You might have a punk haircut, but that was by no means obligatory.

Also, if you look back at pictures of actual early punk shows, clubs, bars, etc, you find that people who clearly "look punk" aren't that common. Lots of people don't read as punk rock at all, lots of people look kind of "disco hair and sex pistols tee shirt", lots of people look sort of preppy, etc. This makes sense because very few people can just start wearing totally new clothes and hairstyles - it's expensive - and fairly few people live lives where they can make rent and dress exactly as they please. And also the idea of "punk" takes a lot of time to crystallize.

This is equally true of the much-talked-of eighties downtown art scene. You look at most of those people - like David Wojnarowicz - and they're just, you know wearing clothes. I'm sure that most of them would have looked unusual and kind of arty at the time, but the effect is a bit subtle. Like, there's an early eighties picture of David Wojnarowicz wearing these wire aviator frame glasses and some kind of perfectly ordinary denim shirt and looking like a big dork, and yet he was a brilliant, transgressive artist who was well known in that scene.

IME of arts scenes, there's a percentage of people who are super into fashion and super flamboyant, but a pretty well-established tradition of people, like, doing their art and playing their music and dressing in slightly odd but basically ordinary ways.
posted by Frowner at 11:00 AM on January 29, 2016 [11 favorites]

The punks and outcasts in "Repo Man" look more boringly normal than today's average tech industry worker.
posted by ardgedee at 2:35 PM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Where is The Fall on this list?
posted by pxe2000 at 4:51 AM on January 30, 2016

Post-punk? Whatever that means, now.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:58 AM on January 30, 2016

I figured it out

By tallying who appears most often on playlists titled with the word “punk," we can learn how parts of culture perceive genres and the bands who represent them.

What are the chances that people would use a genre name as a title for a playlist? It's certainly not something I would normally do. I might call a punk playlist 'Jayne County's Crass Membranes' or something.

To conclude, here is a nice interview with Jayne County regarding the British love of the New York scene and nascent punk.
posted by asok at 12:05 PM on January 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dressing up like the cover of Punk and Disorderly in the late 80’s seemed pretty dated.

That's fair. I wasn't even 10 years old by the time the mid-80s were done so it was all new to me when i was first seeing it in junior high. For my age, it's probably like seeing those 30-year old white dudes in sagging pants downtown.
posted by Hoopo at 9:05 PM on January 30, 2016

I saw Blink-182 at a punk club in 1996

Tell me more...
posted by josher71 at 1:02 PM on February 17, 2016