Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The punk movement cannot be relegated to just a genre of music or dismissed as simply a passing fad. Punk gave a generation an ideology that was meaningfully their own, one that represented a counterculture to the counterculture. For those who began to come of age in the dwindling era of non-violent cooperation, representative of the 1960s hippie culture, punk was fast, bizarre, and often outrageous. By the late 1960s, revolutionary changes in music were bringing Nico and the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, and Television to the forefront of pop culture. Iggy Pop and the Stooges began to communicate the violent contortions of a population that had been raised in a materialistic and violent society. Attitudes amongst the younger generation, mostly working class, no longer represented an interest in peaceful protest. In New York City, as the 1970s arrived, the Ramones, MCS, Television, and Patti Smith began to pave a new path and a new philosophy. By the mid-1970s, punk found even more traction among London's working-class youth, where poor social conditions invoked feelings of anger and frustration. The movement would be further amplified by the emergence of the Sex Pistols and The Clash, whose music cranked out lyrics of hatred and despair, advocating nonconformity. Questioning existing modes of mainstream thought soon became a motivating characteristic behind punk attitude. ... log in or subscribe to read full text