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POWER_OF_PUNK

                                             June 11, 2010

  What's in a word?

  Where did this one
  come from?

    Punk was, of course, a word that was
    around before it was associated with
    music.  William Burroughs claims          It appears in some of
    a "punk" was someone who "took it up      his earliest writing,
    the ass", which would account for it's    the novel "Junky".
    use as a tough-guy insult.

    As for it's first use in describing
    a musical phenomena, a lot of us          Though there are even
    are inclined to retroactively             earlier music journalism
    adopt Lester Bangs as the father.         references dating back
                                              to around 1970:
       BANG_PUNK
                                                  [ref]
       Bangs also had an
       unpublished novel
       kicking around titled
       "Drug Punk".

       But then, Bangs was clearly
       talking about 60s garage
       bands, lame-ass Yardbirds         Though Bangs' attitude
       knock-offs like Count Five.       toward these bands,
                                         knowing that they're
          If he'd used it to             trashy but kind of          SUNDAY_CAMP
          describe the Velvet            liking them because
          Underground, he                they're trashy... that's
          would've seemed                not so far away...
          more prescient...
          But perhaps the                     PUNK
          Velvets seemed too
          intelligent. They                     And when punk happened,
          had the                               Bangs didn't exactly
          associations of                       need any help understanding
          avant art world                       it.
          sophistication
          going for them,
          courtesy of the
          Warhol brand.



   I think it's interesting
   that the SF band "The Tubes"
   had released an album with
   "White Punks on Dope" on
   it as early as 1975.


   Then when Holmstrom, Drum
   and McNeil were starting      McNeil was apparently
   their zine it got called      after the connotations
   "Punk"...                     of young and criminal,     Apparently they
                                 dumb and out for fun.      had the idea of
                                                            turning McNeil
                                 Then their first issue     into a mascot,
                                 featured interviews        a living Alfred
                                 with both the Ramones      E. Newman.
                                 and Lou Reed, conducted
                                 at CBGBs.                     STANDUP_TRAGEDIAN

                                 And there you
                                 have the tension
                                 between two           AND_NOT_DUMBER
                                 visions of punk.

                                          Punk: a celebration of stupidity.
      The trouble with things
      like this... they get               Punk: smart people indulging
      used as rallying flags              in intentional crudity
      for a bad element, a
      fallback for losers who                I'll take door number two.
      can't (or don't feel
      they can) succeed in                   To me punk is a strategy,
      any other way.                         a way of trying to deal
                                             with the obvious failure
      "It's so bad it's good"                of more straight-forward
      morphs into excuses and                approaches.
      justifications for being
      bad, an injunction against                        UNINTENDED
      trying to be good.           RACE_DOWN

          AUTHENTICALLY_STUPID






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