Yes, I’ve read it.
2 Likes
I though he’d died ages ago.
Well, perhaps this whole wank fest should have. The world is burning, and we’ve got aged punks born just at the right time still happy they thumbed their noses in just the right direction. Do they think they’re f’n roll models?
1 Like
No kidding, his name’s Johnny Rotten, not Johnny Affable
5 Likes
2 Likes
‘Generation Terrorists’ for their punk roots, or ‘Everything Must Go’ for mainstream appeal.
1 Like
Tangentially, I can also highly recommend “Ska’d for Life: A Personal Journey with The Specials” by “Gentleman” Horace Panter; my Uncle Dave gets a mention 
Is that twenty years ago? [Checks… Yup, nearly. Feels old…]
Odd, how that works. People discussing Black Flag in 1984, etc. - nothing. Johnny Rotten’s Country Life Ad is 20 years old - Nurse, where are my pills?
2 Likes
I saw PiL in concert. Johnny was able to pull the audience by a string, throw them around and then push them back. He had a brilliant stage presence.
2 Likes
He pretty much told everyone he did it for the money to put PiL on the road.
That was a great tour most fans thought they’d never get a chance to see, myself included. Love & Rockets came to Detroit twice not too much later. One of the concerts was a Toys for Tots toy drive. The price of my ticket was a $20 tub of Legos. At all 3 shows, I distinct impression that Daniel Ash fuckin’ loves playing in Detroit.
5 Likes
Were Love and Rockets still bringing out the Bubblemen for the encore?
2 Likes
No I think y’all might be on the same page… that’s why I’m not sure about the PiL and SY albums being punk as they were removed (by time, distance, or deliberate effort) from the punk scene.
That professor (Nehring) distinguished between (what he called) the avant-garde, which was art with a social/political motivation or component: dada, surrealism, futurism (so not just on the left), constructivism, Situationist Int’l, and including punk (the Greil Marcus book mentioned earlier was one of our assigned readiings). Modernism, on the other hand, is art for its own sake, and elitist (purposely or not). E.g. Finnegans Wake, prog rock. Sometimes it went from elitism into misanthropy e.g. Yeats, Baudelaire. (Again, according to Nehring.) He suggested that’s how someone like John dos Passos ended up on the political right: he was elitist all along.
They were on the edge of breaking up, so no.
1 Like
Here’s a tribute I did a while ago-
1 Like
4 Likes
I’m not sure I’ve personally ever heard PiL referred to as punk, as it’s more post-punk… kind of the same with SY, but more art punk.
You can see that in the English esoteric underground scene, too, the same sort of elitism.
3 Likes
This was pretty great. It seemed pretty clear to me that Lydon was basically taking the piss out of everyone – and it also seemed pretty clear that everyone was perfectly willing to play along.
I always felt that punk was the kind of art-form that took itself very seriously but was led largely by artists that didn’t take themselves very seriously. It seems like you just have to have a certain level of self-awareness and capacity self-referential humor to last in that world.
2 Likes
I guess this confuses me, because the art form can’t take itself seriously (because it’s not conscious), and if the practitioners are for the most part not taking themselves seriously… maybe it’s the music critics that took it so seriously? Or early academic engagement (like hebdige) that give it that air of seriousness? I would also say that first wave punks weren’t taking things seriously, but second wave punks (the hardcore wave) often were very serious…
First wave punks excelled at irony…
4 Likes
So many layers of reception and creation.
Some bands took it seriously and some didn’t, mixed with receivers who were also mixed.
And that’s before dealing with the people who were knowingly pretending to be either unserious or serious when they weren’t.
I think the “actively competing with and attempting to thwart your own public image” thing developed with Modernism until now. You can find lots of neat examples of it like Bob Dylan “going electric” to not be seen as a standard folk singer, and others, but I think punk really lived in it as a central preoccupation.
3 Likes
Perhaps it would have made more sense to say that the art form had a veneer of seriousness – much like a dark comedy. After all, so much of punk’s roots was all about challenging norms and The Establishment through shock tactics. You have to scratch the surface to realize that behind the shocking studded leather with pink haired exterior, things aren’t what all they seem.
I’d definitely say this – if you’re not “in on the joke”, it can be very hard to understand what’s actually going on.
(ETA: and thank you for challenging my assertions and keeping me honest – especially as you’re far more learned on this topic than most of us.)
3 Likes
