Punk Music

Like many musical styles, Punk isn't just a genre of music but an entire culture. Slang made the term “punk” a reference to a juvenile delinquent, and in the seventies, it somehow became associated with garage bands who played with a simplistic style and very little excess electronic fluff of the pop bands. Some of these punk bands recordings were often crudely done with an ordinary cassette tape recorder. Punk groups usually didn’t seek fame and fortune, and most even shunned labels.

For example, the famous Ramones, a punk band who started in New York, never achieved much commercial success even after 22 years of playing. The Sex Pistols of London also had their influence on the European and American front, but never received any awards. In fact, when they were asked to be inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame, they turned it down, reportedly with an obscene gesture. The Clash, a British band who often opened for the Sex Pistols, made it big with the London Calling album, with the title song as a signal that the punk revolution was on both fronts.

Punk culture was deliberately anti-establishment, and the styles in London were especially outrageous, with colored hair and spiky leather jackets. Perhaps many of these ‘punk rockers’ tried to live down to the name of punk. Many punk concerts were cancelled due to rumors that violence often followed punk bands performance.

The songs often discussed similar issues of the Heavy Metal genre such as the plight of the underprivelged and war. Even though most of punk has left the mainstream, it still remains a great influence on the alternative bands of the nineties, and some recent artists have described some later styles of music as ‘post-punk’. MC Lars, for example, has a completely different beat, but his do-it-yourself attitude has made him a contemporary punk musician.

back to Genre