I agree about lack of musicianship having made punk. I also had the pleasure of seeing some of my faves live, 20 years after they were current during the inevitable "the kids need braces" tour.
They'd practiced their instruments in the meantime! It was great to hear the songs played properly albeit with less urgency about the state of things...
Or how bout's Bad Brains second LP "Rock For Light" that was produced by Ric Ocasek from the Cars? These guys could play. Hardcore Punk, Reggae, Funk you name it. Super influential too
That's a great perspective on it, QITNL. I remember reading "Kiss or Kill" and Twight gives his take on what the punk ethic was. Like mentioned before, I always thought it was about undirected rage channeled through immediate gratification noise. It had nothing to do with being any good at being musicians, so it was anti-competency in that respect. In fact, the Sex Pistols had to unlearn how to play in order to recapture their raw sound when they toured the final time in the 90s. And there's Twight saying punk was railing against mediocrity. Huh, I thought?
One thing I knew when I was a teenager was that punk was full of sh#t. That was the big joke that I just never got tired of. Ha ha ha.
Punk broke down a lot of barriers; I'll give it that credit. Such as: who was on stage and who was in the audience. If you got too competent, it was time to switch instruments. If it weren't for punk, reggae would never have reached the charts, there would be no hip-hop, no rap.
Punk only lasted five years or so, it was just a fad - perhaps merely due to an under-served market, a birthrate dip between the boomers and their children. But it also was an adventure, a challenge. Like it or not, it changed a lot of stuff. We still live in the shadow of its demise.
One of the cool things about art: those who make it don't really give a fuuck; those who don't, they care a lot. So its meaning often has less to do with the intentions of its authors, but what the audience reads into it.
There are plenty of parallels in climbing and the Internet.
I was with a group of friends once...ages ranging from 22 to 40. We were talking about bands of different genre. I brought up Social Distortion and everyone one of them said, "That band rocks!" Of all the great bands I have seen in my life, I would put Social Distortion as the best. Fishbone comes in a close second. "Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't", Mike Ness
I wish more of my climbing partners had punk rock roots, as I have. My humor can be offputting and vulgar. I listen to loud, fast, sloppy music (though it's become more eclectic in the more recent years.) I see it merely as one of my feminine charms.
Screeching weasel, the queers and the nobodys are playing in Denver on July 15th. If you know these bands, you know how ridiculous a line up this is. Unfortunately, I'll be on the road. However, all of these bands still play a rad show. I pitted to "My Right" at the last Weasel show i went to, and I've seen the Queers 20+ times, they play the same set every damn time, and it never gets old.
Let us know!