Word: punks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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ITEM: In Florida, Promoter Sidney Drashin declares that it is only a matter of time before the punk invasion begins there. Says he: "Our company believes it's going to break loose big. It's everywhere...
...gods, the thoughtful, thirtyish ex-Beatles freak may well ask, what is happening to the younger generation? In Tokyo, Chicago and Paris, kids are bumping, grinding, loving, hating, wailing to the loud, raucous, often brutal sounds of punk rock. For a year or so, punk has been flourishing in the seediest rock joints-a Bowery bar called CBGB's in New York, a dingy cavern called the Roxy in London, and The Rat in Boston. There, shock is chic. Musicians and listeners strut around in deliberately torn T shirts and jeans; ideally, the rips should be joined with safety...
...Blast. Up on the stage can be found a numbing array of groups and soloists whose names dramatize the nihilism and brute force that have inspired the movement: Clash, Thunder-train, Weirdos, Dictators, Stranglers, Damned, and the demon-eyed New Yorker who could become the Mick Jagger of punk, Richard Hell. The music aims for the gut. Even compared with the more elemental stylings of 1950s rock 'n' roll-which it closely resembles -punk rock is a primal scream. The music comes in fast, short bursts of buzz and blast. Some groups have but two or three chord...
Even on the Bowery, lyrics are not as rowdy as in Britain. Punk there is a protest by Britain's working-class children, who have no memory of swinging London and cannot find jobs. Detractors of punk would argue that these children are coddled by a very expensive welfare state and are feeling sorry for themselves. Still, the Sex Pistols' pile-driving Anarchy in the U.K. is an anthem of despair. The British punk bands are a community linked by anger and frustration. They are, within the music world, a rebuke to the bourgeois excesses -and smooth musical...
Says Johnny Rotten: "The millionaire groups were singing about love and their own hang-ups. That's stupid. You don't sing about love to people on the dole." Blithefully, whiningly, punk says anything and everything. As the Sex Pistols chant, "God save the Queen/ She ain't no human being...