Dammit, I'm a punk

At lunch today, I went with a guy in his mid 20’s and another guy who is in his early 40’s, like me and we were talking about music. When we got to talking about punk, it was VERY hard for me to describe punk to them because they knew next to nothing about it, and I had trouble describing it.

Why?

Punk wasn’t just the music. Sure, there were punk bands (and if you bring up the Sex Pistols, I’ll beat you to death with my Doc Martins…they were no more a punk band than the Backstreet Boys were a grunge band), but there was so much more to it. It was about stripping rock music down to its bare essentials, getting rid of the whole idea of being “rock stars” and getting the consumerism out of rock music. It was about working class attitudes, individualized thinking and a healthy disdain and sarcasm about mainstream culture. A punk is happy to rub people's noses in realities they don't wish to acknowledge. It’s the music and attitude of the outcast, and while it is realistic, it’s also amazingly idealistic. Appearances, however, are diverse, not uniform: clothes do not make a Punk.

The Ramones are the most influential band, not because of their musical talent, but because they reminded people that ANYONE can pick up a guitar or a drum set and make music. You didn’t need the London Philharmonic Orchestra, know how to write an opera, charge $75 for a concert, or have a stage show that rivals a Broadway production. The Ramones reminded us songs could simply be about what we want to do and what we don’t want to do.

Myself, every so often, I need to get back to my inner punk, which is one of my goals this year, but my punk comes through writing. How about you?