Punk/Hardcore

Started by Reprobate, March 23, 2012, 03:29:09 AM

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Euro Trash Bazooka

GISM has sucked for 25 years anyway. That's like when Judgement or Bastard played Chaos In Tejas and everybody was saying it was the best thing they had ever seen and a few years later they're all revising their opinions. The truth is that those bands have all sucked since they broke up (well, I think Judgement's CD sucked as well anyway) but people need to pretend or be there or something so they can feel important.
DROIT DIVIN: https://droitdivin1.bandcamp.com/

CRYPTOFASCISME / VIOLENT SHOGUN /
ETC: https://yesdivulgation.bandcamp.com/

calaverasgrande

I was a punker back in the early 80's.
Back then it was in my opinion a much more visceral experience and a lot less genre regimented.
I fondly remember going to shows with bands like post punk Scratch Acid, necro-metal Graveyard Rodeo and thrash punk Corrosion of Conformity often on the same bill.
Punk shows, at least in the deep south, were sometimes very violent. There were also people shooting up in plain sight, and having sex in the bathrooms. It was not a safe, PC or accessible thing.
A few times I was part of some collective spaces, where we would have a 'punk night' and an 'other night'.  The former was where you have bands like Thinking Fellers or Caroliner playing for a small but still black clad punk rock audience.
At some point the arty, strange and experimental was asked to leave and punk/HC just became a bunch of loud music and drinking. Really not so different than going to a Van Halen show. Very mundane.
I do not think that todays punk scene is very adventurous. To be frank the last few times I have been dragged out to a punk show I have regretted it and usually pulled an Irish goodbye before the 3rd band was up.

holy ghost

You'd think with Trump and Clinton on the ticket this would inspire some actually cool new US hardcore, maybe it's out there but I'm hearing none of it (save for a few of the dis-clones out there), I'm on a DRI bender today and I've been thinking about how in a lot of ways we're closer to the early 80's than we ever were in the 90's when I bought all those 7"s. Threat of nuclear war, tensions with Russia, riots, gross racial injustice..... I guess now the protest is selfie sticks at shows, those precious punks could get hurt rioting or maybe tear the $50 disclose shirt they bought on etsy.... I know right, how much more cliche could one get?

Andrew McIntosh

I think there's a matter of personal perspective. I can't blame people for talking about "the good old days" when they were involved since they were probably having a great time getting involved and being enthusiastic. But holding that experience up to any punk scene today leaves out a lot of context.

For mine, I have to admit that the punk scene I was involved in was, for the most part, utter crap, and a lot of that was because of my own mistaken impression of the whole thing. Naivety on my part. Most of the bands were rubbish (if anyone is tempted to buy a double compilation album called "The Not So Lucky Country", take my advice and don't, unless you're academically interested in how bloody terrible an entire nation's punk scene can sound), most of the punks were just bogans with funny hair cuts. Not a lot of sus of any kind, let alone political.

But that's okay. I had different expectations and that was my fault. There's nothing wrong with punks now being middle-class wankers with expensive t-shirts, because it doesn't matter. Punk has got to be one of the most nostalgic genres of music around, with all the emphasis on what happened then as opposed to now. But don't get me wrong about that - that's fine. The truth is, all the protest and anger in the world isn't going to stop it from going down the toilet to its well deserved destruction. These days I've got more respect for shooting up in the bogs or posing at the bar then taking it to the streets. It's still bullshit, but at least it isn't pretending that life can be anything else.
Shikata ga nai.

absoluten calfeutrail

Quote from: holy ghost on June 10, 2016, 02:44:51 AM
You'd think with Trump and Clinton on the ticket this would inspire some actually cool new US hardcore, maybe it's out there but I'm hearing none of it (save for a few of the dis-clones out there), I'm on a DRI bender today and I've been thinking about how in a lot of ways we're closer to the early 80's than we ever were in the 90's when I bought all those 7"s. Threat of nuclear war, tensions with Russia, riots, gross racial injustice..... I guess now the protest is selfie sticks at shows, those precious punks could get hurt rioting or maybe tear the $50 disclose shirt they bought on etsy.... I know right, how much more cliche could one get?

I reckon Brujeria's 'Viva Presidente Trump!' is the best response to Trump I've come across so far. Not strictly hardcore I guess, but definitely in the mold of jocular 80s hardcore dipshit responses to the Reagan era. Fucking hilarious,   vitriolic and impotent as ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGJzMzW3kuY

Zeno Marx

I think people, even kids, kind of actually cared back then.  The Cold War felt real.  Everyone sold it well.  Everyone felt in it.  Does anyone in the USA give a fuck about anything anymore?  That's not really rhetorical.  I question that all the time with genuine curiosity.  Our political system plays into the lowest common denominators.  I might be biting into a load of shit with all this, but a great percentage of the Trump and Sanders supporters strike me as rebels without a cause.  They just want to break the system at any cost.  No idealism or rational drive.  Children and a reaction.  Who  knows?  Maybe burning it all down at any expense would create something better, but I'm doubting those same people are willing to be the collateral damage to a fix.  I got news for them:  there would be, and they likely would be it.  "Change is going to cost me something?  It's not just the puerile fun of voting for a Third World-like lunatic and egomaniac to prove a point I never had?"
"the overindulgent machines were their children"
I only buy vinyl, d00ds.

holy ghost

Quote from: Zeno Marx on June 10, 2016, 10:53:08 PM
I think people, even kids, kind of actually cared back then

I got into hc in the 90's, and I distinctly remember caring about stuff. But it seems like the philosophy in the 90's was "think globally, act locally" which I much prefer to the "fuck everything" kind of attitude I see today (granted my interactions with the punk scene today are pretty much limited to online and the occasional show). I dunno, I'm Canadian, if I was living in the US I wouldn't even know where to start. It's truly the most baffling country out there. I'd kind of forgotten how different it is until I went to Boston last year. Machine gun toting national guard, homeless veterans everywhere, 'MURICA just shoved down your throat, beer in the 7-11, Dunkin' Donuts coffee (okay the last two are good). Everyone is hella friendly though.

I just signed up for Facebook a few months ago and have reconnected with a few friends I hadn't seen in 15+ years and it's interesting how virtually none of them have taken a conventional path through life. Virtually all of them are doing something socially relevant/conscious with their lives. Barely anyone has decided to breed. It's pretty cool to see. No one decided to get fucking boring and work as an accountant and push a stroller around.

Yrjö-Koskinen

Quote from: holy ghost on June 10, 2016, 02:44:51 AM
You'd think with Trump and Clinton on the ticket this would inspire some actually cool new US hardcore.

At least it means that some good old HC has finally made it big. With Trump the US will finally have a One Life Crew inspired presidency!
"Alkoholi ei ratkaise ongelmia, mutta eipä kyllä vittu maitokaan"

Ahvenanmaalla Puhutaan Suomea

calaverasgrande

I think it is a good point that punk/hc in the 70's and 80's was happening in the now. It was not nostalgic or precious.
Over the intervening years it has devolved into a subculture no more significant than deadheads, ravers or any other identity costume.
Funny thing I noticed about pictures of old punk shows. Look at the audience. They didnt look very punk.
I dont know what really killed it. But it seems like it was a combination of the personal/political stuff which kind of crested with the whole riot grrl thing. Followed by pop punk blowing up top 40 in 92-94.
That caused the still existing punks to kind of reject anything remotely like Green Day. But they kept on with the hot topic nonsense.

I'd like to think that current political apocalypses could inspire a new wave of punk style stuff. But I doubt it would be done with guitars, drums and other such old fashioned gear. Kids these days are more likely to use synths, laptops and other DJ gear.

Zeno Marx

Quote from: holy ghost on June 11, 2016, 10:02:16 PM
I just signed up for Facebook a few months ago and have reconnected with a few friends I hadn't seen in 15+ years and it's interesting how virtually none of them have taken a conventional path through life. Virtually all of them are doing something socially relevant/conscious with their lives. Barely anyone has decided to breed. It's pretty cool to see. No one decided to get fucking boring and work as an accountant and push a stroller around.
That's mostly been my experience as well.  It's interesting and AWESOME.  I don't know if it is simply because the wounds from the 80s and 90s left huge keloid scars that permanently changed how we operate.  And if its the new corporate model of ever-changing, planned obsolescence philosophy to the extreme, and the playing out of Wall Street numbing and shallowing reactions being so subversive with so little trace that it leaves everyone confused and zombie-like that it basically has become a new natural state of being.  It's strange, almost overnight, how we went from being affected to being unaffected.  From pissed off and aware to emotionless and disinterested.  The corporations finally got their wishes granted, and the consequences have been beyond anyone's expectations.

I've been surprised for a while now how I've seen so little reaction to terrorism and the state reactions to terrorism in punk (or any music really).  Without taking a side, there are mounds of ethical and moral darkness that would've been addressed in the 80s and 90s.  Crass and DxRxIx would have written entire albums about these things.  Punk had become passive a long time ago, right along with the rest of our culture.  It's always been a mirror from a different perspective.  I doubt Trump nonsense is powerful enough to jostle any of it out of its slumber.
"the overindulgent machines were their children"
I only buy vinyl, d00ds.

calaverasgrande

judging by the people I still know in punk circles, they are much more about drinking and drug abuse than social commentary.

bitewerksMTB

When I got into punk rock in the mid-'80s, everyone was so busy with volunteer work and donating to charities, that they didn't have any money left for safety pins, hair dye, combat boots, tattoos, 7"'s, or beer.

Andrew McIntosh

Quote from: Zeno Marx on June 12, 2016, 10:02:28 PM
It's strange, almost overnight, how we went from being affected to being unaffected.  From pissed off and aware to emotionless and disinterested. 

That's just burning out. I've been through that myself. There's only so much energy you can direct at "The Man" before you realise that it's all being wasted. Most people of course go the normal direction, but that's less to do with giving into the system than giving into normal human instincts.

Punk's obviously had its time as the go-to protest generation, but its had it's impact. The kind of right-on snark I used to read in "Maximum Rocknroll" I now read in the opinion columns of "The Guardian". I recall MRR's guidelines for interviewing bands. One bit said that if people in a band were saying things that were regarded as offensive, "call them out on it". A few decades later and we have so-called "call out culture" online all over fucking Twitter and other social media. Whether that's directly related or not, the righteous have a lot more platform and social acceptability than they did when all they had was zines and leaflets.
Shikata ga nai.

Zeno Marx

Anyone know anything about the Tuscon band, Sex Prisoner?  Are they a Brainbombs or power-electronics informed power-violence band?

https://sexprisoner.bandcamp.com/album/s-t
"the overindulgent machines were their children"
I only buy vinyl, d00ds.

poserspotted

Quote from: Zeno Marx on June 14, 2016, 06:50:25 PM
Anyone know anything about the Tuscon band, Sex Prisoner?  Are they a Brainbombs or power-electronics informed power-violence band?

https://sexprisoner.bandcamp.com/album/s-t

band kicks ass. total 90s PV worship and probably the only band doing that style to actually sound fucking heavy