70's - Punk

“Punk rock is an anti-establishment rock music genre and movement that emerged in the mid-1970s. Preceded by a variety of proto-punk music of the 1960s and early 1970s, punk rock developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Groups such as the Ramones, in New York City, and the Sex Pistols and The Clash, in London, were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement. By 1977, punk was spreading around the world.”
(Quote taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_rock)

Punk rock has been a massive influence in music history, it brought a certain different way of looking at music and style to what had been seen before. This genre of music really became big in the mid 1970s but it can be traced back to as early as the 1950s from rock n roll so it has been a huge influence throughout the past 50 years. To where punk originally came from, well that’s where the dispute begins. Some people say that punk first started in America and others say that it started in the UK but I personally think that it was a mixture of the too that gave us the genre that happened.

Punk took a very different approach to music than what other bands were at the time, they were not interested in what people thought of what they were doing, they were making music that they liked, that they wanted to make, and was often political or trying to send a message across about something that they felt strongly about.

The line up to most Punk bands were an electric guitar, bass, drums and vocals, sometimes they used other instruments for certain effects etc but nothing really that fancy. The music at the time was very fancy with long solos and punk took it back to the very basics, having shorter songs, the traditional verse chorus lay out, using 4/4 time signatures and using very straight forward riffs. The vocals were not very demanding and were more shouted than sang which all added to the effect of the genre. Some people call punk the ‘three chord genre’, this being because a lot of the songs were that simplified that bands took three chords to write a whole song.

The people and musicians who associate themselves with Punk quite often have a very original style in their clothes and hair, and punks are very stereotyped. They are known to customise their jackets, trousers and shirts with studs, spikes, safety pins, band logos etc, quite like the glam rock era they have big hair but punks have it more colourful and spiky. Most would say punks dressed this way to be their own person and well yes they are customising their own clothes and making it more individual but they are still just following a trend so I would not really agree that they are trying to be something unique, they were different in their own way from what was around at the time but all together, within the genre they were just all the same.

“Punks seek to outrage propriety with the highly theatrical use of clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, tattoos, jewellery and body modification. Early punk fashion adapted existing objects for aesthetic effect: ripped clothing is held together by safety pins or wrapped with tape; ordinary clothing is customized by embellishing it with marker or adorning it with paint, safety pins and razor blades are used as jewellery. Leather, rubber, and vinyl clothing are also popular.”
(Quote taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_subculture#Fashion)

“Some punks style their hair to stand in spikes, cut it into Mohawks or other dramatic shapes, often coloring it with vibrant unnatural hues.”
(Quote taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_subculture#Fashion)

I choose to write about the genre Punk for my 1970s blog because it was the genre that appealed most to me and the genre that I thought I knew the most about already but I was also interested in finding more out the history of Punk and what it was all about.