As I was listening to todays lecture (oh and taking notes of course) I couldn't help but think about the fact that all these punk rock acts who yell and scream about what is wrong about society, they never become the mainstream of music.
take the sex pistols who sang 'God save the Queen'. As they protested about how England still has the Monarchs and our connection to them pulls England down because they are the most important part of the class system that developed and how it is still the case that your life is dictated by your birth right. Yet here we are 30 years later the Queen and all those economic problems are still here while all those like the Sex Pistols have vanished and are now just mere parts of social/music history. Most of the bands that should of taken up where they left off once they were discovered were assimilated into the main stream that most of punk was oppose. One of the guys in the documentary was calling 'Limp Bisket' punk and would be his favourite band if he was 17, but at the hight of their fame they were mainstream, even so far as to do a David Bowie cover about being such famous people.
So that leads me to my point, if the punk rockers had a problem and wanted social change did they want to go into higher society and have a more peaceful world, which would stop them from living such lives because their voices were heard, or do they want the rest of us to be like them which would cause even more chaos and the dreamed utopia would even be harder to achieve as the world would be more like them. Either way if they achieved the goal of changing the world either the world would be utter chaos like them or they would be mere shells of themselves as they become similar to that of a mainstream band
cheers for the read and/or ponder
SimonL
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I guess I have the same questions as Simon had: what are the Punk attitudes really for? I always think if someone seriously not satisfied with the status quo, they should DO something to change it. Though one can argue that the expression of anger and visibility or representation of those who are angry is a way of attempting to change, is it enough? After all, the ability of songs or attitudes or dressing code is limited especially when they are already not challenging any more. Because even the Punk is not mainstream, it is already a gene that recognizable and accepts as “other”. And follow the reorganization, there is marks and stereotypes that put on to this genre, and then comes the inevitable consumerization. Once the band are discovered and made public thought marketing, they kind of lost what they insist on. The only emphasis is their Punk characters because that is what made them different from any other bands and that is what made them sell their album. So my point is when a band goes to mainstream, they will achieve the public influence they need to express their view point, but I doubt thought the mass marketing haw many view points will they really have.
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