Punk Or Not?

[Prinncess_of_compe]

Personally, I think that Punk stuff is inopropriet and setting a BAD example for children. <_< No offense to Punks.

[fallenangel]

What the fuck? The influence of punk on young people? Well right now it's got zero influence over pretty much everyone because "the youth" considers Good Charlotte and Blink 182 to be punk.

At the time, punk was just another 70s subculture with the mods and glitter rock and everyone else. Only they played fast, aggressive music that wasn't supposed to be catchy or pleasant in response to the boring, prepackaged junk on the radio. All music was clean and "safe", and they changed that.

As soon as the record companies got their hands on it, it wasn't punk anymore. You can't commercialize it. It didn't have a negative influence on kids, hell, most of the kids playing in punk bands lived in poverty or on the streets. And those who liked it did as well. As soon as it was commercialized, the bands broke up and went their separate ways (those who didn't die in the process). Billy Idol played in GenX and went on to the successful rock/pop/new wave career. But it wasn't punk just because he'd formerly been one.

Aaaand, the term punk only applies to late 70s. It's as much a scene as it is a style, just like "goth". The bands in New York (New York Dolls, Ramones, etc.) and England (Sex Pistols, the Clash, GenX, etc.) were happening at more or less the same time, and Caroline Coon came up with the term "punk" to describe them. [i]Them[/i] and what they were doing, not the style of the music. It's an insult anyway.

So no, punk does not have a negative effect on kids because 99.999% of kids barely have any knowledge of punk bands, let alone be influenced by them. I don't see a lot of kids joining gangs or doing heroin because of the Sex Pistols. In fact, most who do know of them are more influenced in a positive way. No one wants to end up like Sid Vicious.
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"I care about people as much as I care about lawn furniture" - Dexter/Michael C. Hall

[Sephir0th666777]

[quote="Prinncess_of_compe (Quigley)"] Personally, I think that Punk stuff is inopropriet and setting a BAD example for children.  <_< No offense to Punks. [/quote]
Seeing as how there is no punk anymore, no, no it isn't.

Even if there was, punk music is not even 1/10 as bad as public schools <_<

[quote]No one wants to end up like Sid Vicious[/quote]

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[img]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/Sephir0th666777/mercy.jpg[/img]
Red_Quatre:Who's the guy that says "Get over here!" and then grabs you.
Blad: A rapist

[fallenangel]

[quote="Sephir0th666777 (Tyler)"] [quote]No one wants to end up like Sid Vicious[/quote]
[/quote]
Indeed.

Sid (and the various other extreme drug cases) are way more of a positive model. Metal and glam and classic rock glamorize cocaine and alcohol and even heroin, despite the same effects it's had on other genres. But punk doesn't glamorize it. The story of Sid is in-your-face terrible.

There's millions of kids who want to be Nikki Sixx and shoot up heroin on a private jet with a harem of girls and worldwide success.

No one wants to wander around with the human-urinal that was Nancy and then die.
_________________
"I care about people as much as I care about lawn furniture" - Dexter/Michael C. Hall

[Sephir0th666777]

Sid deserved better. :(

Neil Young was on heroin as well, and look at him. His face looked like he was, like 90 at Live 8.
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[img]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/Sephir0th666777/mercy.jpg[/img]
Red_Quatre:Who's the guy that says "Get over here!" and then grabs you.
Blad: A rapist

[fallenangel]

Johnny's book is so depressing on the matter of Sid. Mostly because it goes from the friendship to him joining the band and becoming hopeless and Johnny doing very little about it. And the overall summary of it is "he was this really great guy that put his all into doing this, but the heroin and self-hate ruined his life". Cheery.

[quote]One of the reasons I stayed with Sid Vicious on the bus during the American tour, driving, rather than flying, from state to state, gig to gig, was to keep him away from drugs.  He had already developed a keen problem back in London.  The idea was to keep him clean.  That's what infuriated me so much.  The minute we hit San Francisco, somehow or other, Sid managed to escape and get himself a whole parcel of heroin.  Funny, that.  Some would call that a coincidence.  That buggered him up.[/quote]

[quote]I don't remember even seeing Sid after the San Francisco gig.  He was so embarrassing that I kept as far away from him as I could.  He became everything I didn't want a Sex Pistol to be: another worn-out rock n' roller.[/quote]

[quote]Sid was an absolute wanker.  We became friends a couple weeks after I entered state school.  I called him Sid, after my pet, the softest, furriest, weediest thing on earth, this soppy white hamster that used to live in a cage on the corner table in my parents' living room...Sid was an absolute fashion victim--the worst I'd ever known.  It was appalling.  Everything about him was wrong.  He'd buy these ridiculous Vogue magazines to study them and copy people.  It was just terrible.  He'd get it wrong so badly.  He'd wear nail gloss and think of himself as being very dainty.  He was a gangly, awkward git.  Trying to dress effeminagte was wrong, wrong, wrong.  He'd wear sandals in the snow with no socks when he wanted to show off his toenail varnish.[/quote]

[quote]Sid would often stay over at our house.  My mum thought he was a bit retarded.  He would strike you that way.[/quote]

[quote]I gave him his first decent haircut, which was the punk style as it soon became.  You'd literally cut chunks of your hair out of your head.  The idea was to not have any shape to your hairdo- just have it fucked up.  That was the beginning of it all.[/quote]

[quote]Sid got thrown out of his place and came over one night.  So I fobbed Nancy off on Sid.  Initially I thought of her as a filthy cunt, which of course appealed to Sid.  To be hated, loathed, and despised so much by me, he naturally went for her.  She, being a woman of loose inclinations, reciprocated.  That was it.  From that moment on that was the end of both of them.  So, yes, I fobbered Nancy off on Sid, which got her off my back.  I thought he'd do the same.  I thought he'd see through her.  Everybody else did.  I'm not very good at handling stupid people, I must admit.  I think that's what it was.  Sidney was basically stupid, so easily led into anything.  You could tell him anything and he'd suck it up like a sponge and believe it.

As far as I know, that was his first girlfriend.  Sid never had girlfriends.  He loved himself too much.  I think he was a virgin.  In fact, I know so.[/quote]

[quote]Sid was naive but full of wit about things.  Excellent person, but drugs did him  in and turned him into a deeply unpleasant Mr. Hyde.... Before drugs, Sid was such a funny chap when he was on a roll.  He could take the piss out of anyone and anything and totally have them down.  Again, he had a great perception with people.[/quote]

[quote]Sid died on a minor American holiday called Groundhog Day, February 2, 1979, a year and a month after the Pistols' demise, three and a half months after Nancy's... They found his nude body just past noon in the Greenwich Village apartment of a 22-year-old unemployed actress.

I was sitting in my front room when I heard about Sid's death.  I got a call from Joe Stevens.  It didn't seem to mean anything to me.  It's funny, that.  I kept thinking, Should I feel something here?  I didn't.  Not for years, actually.  It was much later that it struck me as sad.  I pushed it to the back of my mind.  I knew it would happen, so... Quite frankly, the wrong person died.  I was happy when Nancy went.  I thought that was great, but I knew in my heart that Sid didn't kill her.  I think he got set up.  Sid would have probably gone to jail for a sizable amount of time, although now you get less for murder than you do robbery.

There is a lingering rumor that Sid was murdered.  He was detoxified when he was in Riker's Island, but the night he came out, he was suddenly on drugs again.  One night, a matter of hours, really.  It's very curious.  Was Sid set up to fall?

I still think of Sid.  The whole thing was awful for him.  There's no point.  He died, and that's the end of it.  I wish he was around, but only the way he was originally.  All that self destruction was just too much...  Sid was a lost little boy utterly beyond help, and like all arrogant teenagers, he knew it all, and that's all there was to it.[/quote]

And who wants to be that? :(

So much more, but there's a quick skim. Anyone who wants to learn about punk should pick up Johnny Rotten's book ("Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs" by John Lydon). Certainly one man's story, but his story is as good as anyone's. Sid's a rather minor part, there's a lot about the scene in general and specific events and places. Good stuff.
_________________
"I care about people as much as I care about lawn furniture" - Dexter/Michael C. Hall

[Sephir0th666777]

I'm going to Borders tomarrow, will definatly try ti pick it up.

EDIT: Just got back, picked it up
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[img]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/Sephir0th666777/mercy.jpg[/img]
Red_Quatre:Who's the guy that says "Get over here!" and then grabs you.
Blad: A rapist