mr.mincemeat@syteka.UUCP (mr.mincemeat) (03/27/84)
Well, on my way out (mincemeat quits his job) I note the presence on the radio of a wonderfully idiotic song from those golden middle seventies, "I like drugs" by the simpletones which seems to be in rerelease, find and buy.. Some corollaries to sean's chat about the development of punk: In the early seventies when commercial rockbiz had finally achieved its full, leaden plod-potential and there was nothing, absolutely nothing happening on the radio or in local scenes (every band was a cover band) AND economic chaos was in the air (Arab fear was frightening a lot of people) AND a lot of youngsters who had grown up in the shadow of the sixties, without tons of good acid to color their perceptions of that ludicrous time, were starting to look around at the world they were stranded in, punk was much more than dance music, it was a summation of the bitterness and desperation that was rife at that time... one of the cash boys (strummer?) said 'we are the revenge of the hippies' which was just pure truth for me, escaping the dregs of the counterculture as I was (in 77 I was living on a commune in new mexico, surrounded by incredible human garbage) People seem overquick to forget that punk was a pretty reactionary music/attitude.. Years of tubby razor-cut zombies playing limp arpeggios, or middle-class refugees crooning and strumming acoustic guitars mommy bought them have more to do with why punk happened than any great upsurge of rebellion or anything. Those days were just fucking repulsive; the only appropriate reaction was jumping up and down and screaming (and getting as absolutely fucked up on brain-killers as possible); tra-la, it's punk. Now they sell pre-shredded t-shirts in Macy's... Ah well. Still waiting for the apocalypse, mincemeat.