Thread on the trial of the Charlottesville shithead:
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What an utter piece of shit.
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How long until a Trump pardon or commutation?
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White Supremacist Who Plowed His Car Into Charlottesville Counter Protestors Begs for Mercy Ahead of Sentencing
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How’s about he beg for a higher wattage of electricity.
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I mean, a band like Skrewdriver or later period Misfits or even the Ramones would be more apt than citing the FUCKING CLASH! WTF? Is he going to try to argue that Crass was anarcho-capitalist next? Does he live in opposite land?
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I was gonna ask, wasn’t the Clash fairly… mainstream?
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Also descended from the aristocracy, so…built-in privilege whether they wanted it or not.
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They had some relatively socialist leaning songs - the song that was posted in the thread was about the Sandinistas for example. And punk was far more mainstream in the UK than it was in the US. Clash had hits here, and a pretty big following, but they were huge in the UK.
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Fair point; when I think punk music, I automatically think “underground” because so much of it never got any radio airplay here. Of course, the small Midwestern town I personally grew up in is probably a big factor in that impression.
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My argument on punk has general been that it started as a marginal subculture and went underground and countercultural with the hard core wave (second wave punk). Quite a few of the bands that started out in the early punk scene had some mainstream success (the Gogos, Devo, Blondie, Ramones, Talking Heads, Clash, etc). The hardcore wave and post punk scenes were more likely to reject mainstream success and embrace underground culture.
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OTOH, I have some sympathy with the Clash-critical POV as well. They were too willing to buy into rock star bullshit for my taste.
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That’s a good distinction; all the groups you listed as early scene punk had videos on Mtv, so I always thought they were ‘new wave.’
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Yeah, they all started out in various punk scenes. The NYC bands that got signed to Sire were specifically marketed as “new wave” instead of punk. There was an ad (in Rolling Stone, I think it was) for several bands that had been picked up by Sire (Ramones, Talking heads, I think?) that said “don’t call it punk, it’s New Wave”! By the late 70s and early 80s, “punk” had a really negative connotation (thanks in large part to the notoriety of the Sex Pistols). If you have ever seen the Ramones film “Rock and Roll High School” they never call them punk once, too.
Now of course, lots of these bands have been inducted into the R-n-R hall of fame as punk bands. Although I doubt they’ll ever induct any bands from the hard core wave or later (no Dead Kennedy’s, no Bad Brains, no Black Flag, no Crass, no Fugazi or Minor Threat) or no weirder, early punk bands (no Slits, no X, no Black Randy, no Germs, no Suburban Lawns, no Nuns, no Raincoats, etc).
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I have, but it was years ago.
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Thankfully, I was increasingly inquisitive, and had a high school friend whose dad was divorced and lived in L.A. Every summer, he was able to hit Tower Records.
In Kansas, we’d raid the “cutouts” bin for cheaper rates on vinyl, especially bands that were rather unpopular in the Plains States. I remember finding some great gems, like the Flying Lizards, Gary Numan/Tubeway Army, pre-Heaven 17 – Human League, Joy Division, or the Cure’s first EP with the close-up fly on the front. To get more for our money, we’d tape each other’s albums.
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Postcards from the USA:
Follow up:
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