A Quote by Boy George
The 1970s was probably the most exciting decade to be a teenager, from discovering Little Richard at the end of the 1960s to glam rock to punk rock to electro music. So much happened in that 10-year span. There were so many musical revolutions. Some were happening at the same time. You had disco going on behind punk. You had Michael Jackson. You had the Sex Pistols.
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Punk was sort of an angry stance against things that had happened just before, against the pop of glam rock, against progressive rock. Music had become very staid and it was about the playing and people obsessed. Eric Clapton was God and we needed an enema within the art form, and punk did do that.
The music industry went through such a strange stretch in 1977, especially in this country, with the whole punk rock thing coming about. Punk was rebellious-and justified in that response-but it had very little to do with music, and so it created a highly-charged but frighteningly floundering atmosphere that I found very, very disheartening. Musical quality for me has always been an important part of rock'n'roll-and winning recognition for that has long been an uphill battle all the way. Punk seemed like rock'n'roll utterly without the music.
As a late teenager, the punk movement pushed me further. In particular, the Clash, which happened to leak through the time of disco, showed me that there was this cross-cultural sound that could cut across genres and audiences. Like punk was to disco, rap music was a rebellion against R&B, which had adopted disco and made it worse.
Prog-rock and concept records and some ambitious projects were kind of anathema post-punk. They were destroyed with the advent of punk rock. You don't necessarily need to have a degree in music composition to play in a rock band anymore, which is a great thing.
Punk rock has never really had much patience with musical virtuosity. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say that for most of its history, punk has been actively hostile to virtuosity.
I had to get a driver's license and drive to St. Louis to find the punk-rock scene that was happening there. And there was a punk-rock scene. It was sweet. It was real. It was like everywhere else in the county. It was a handful of people who were feeling the same pull, and, of course, it was like the Island of Misfit Toys in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer [1964]. Just the freaks, the fags, the fat girls, the unbelievable eccentrics .
Punk changed everything. It blew away all the dull, pompous stuff that happened before, like glam rock. Kids were getting involved in causes like Rock Against Racism and they needed music that reflected that. Something similar was happening in comedy too, with the Comedy Store and the alternative scene that I got involved in.
I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.
In the 1970s, we had Carl Sagan, and he was so suave with his turtleneck and his tweed jacket. And he was, you know, he made science look cool. And in punk rock, we haven't had that. We haven't had the Carl Sagan of punk.
When Punk Rock happened, it created an opening in the culture... it made it ok to think you could play music, even though you had no musical training.
My first passion was running: I excelled at that starting till the end of the high school. I pretty much cover about 20 miles a night on stage. I basically rechanneled all the athleticism and adrenaline, and everything that's exciting about sports into music. That was my secret weapon, because in Ukrainian punk rock scene - where everything was very gloomy - being athletic was not cool. I didn't publicize anything about my sport past, but I rolled in onstage with a background nobody had, and I became instantly recognized as the wildest performer in the punk-rock scene.
Punk rock, to me, was always outsiderness. When I first saw large-group-scene punk rock, I was repelled by it, because there were way too many people who agreed with each other.
Even though were not the most punk rock band, the way weve done things is pretty punk rock. Just kinda say it with a big middle finger to the record labels and do it ourselves.
Three-6 Mafia, we were always doing different kinds of things, and we like rock music, we like whatever - not saying they was rock, but they had a little rock-n-roll with some of their music, a little rock with it.
I had a band called Infectious Grooves back in the Nineties. That music was really a mixture of styles, and we had some stuff that was punk rock, ska, but then we had a lot of funk in there.
Is punk rock really music, or is it really just an attitude? I get into that discussion with people all of the time. I personally consider be-bop jazz to be punk rock. And prog rock would definitely fall in that category too.
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