Punk Music. We Heard It, But Did We Listen?

The 1970’s brought out a style of music that had a message previously unknown to us.  It was the message of a young, disenfranchised and angry portion of the populace who gave us an up close view of what it is like to feel utterly hopeless in society.  It may have been the first and the last time in history that the poor were really taken notice of.

It sprang from the east coast of America with The Ramones, where someone offhandedly called them “a bunch of punks in a punk band.”  That person meant it as an insult but the term stuck and gave us some of the best protest music that the world would ever see.  Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and a host of other protesters of the previous decades would never get our attention the way that punk did.  Our eyes were well and truly opened by their sound and appearance, but did we take their message literally? Did anything really change in a society that devalues the lower to middle classes?  Did any of the listeners or the performers themselves take up the ball and put the message in a form of creating real change?  A few did, but not enough.

It wasn’t long after The Ramones and Patti Smith took their grievances set to hard rock and roll and unleashed it upon a hungry English audience that a multitude of young Brits took the torch and ran for their lives with it.  England was set ablaze with a generation of people who recognized the angst and found a forum for their own grievances.  The music can be listened to now and it hasn’t lost any of its flavor.  It is not dated and passé like many styles of music have become.  Truly it is more relevant than ever in 2014.  The problems of the poor and disillusioned are still with us.  Why didn’t we take the message and work for the change that was so desperately needed then? 

An Australian group called Midnight Oil that wasn’t necessarily considered punk but sprang from the same decade and the same angst with society is still to this day working with music but also law and politics to right some wrongs and keep our eyes open to the fact that we still don’t have it right.  Front man for the Oils, Peter Garrett in particular is still keeping up the fight. The Oils did get noticed here in America back in the 80’s but never to the degree that they were known on their home turf and possibly Europe.  Honestly, there was a real bias against punk and hard rock in the heartland of America by radio stations that refused to acknowledge its existence.  Many young Americans had never heard of The Ramones unless they lived in a coastal area.  When the Sex Pistols went on tour here the blinders were pulled off when the news stories of their concerts began to come out, but Middle America did not want their young to be corrupted if they could help it.  You had to raise some real hell to get noticed in many areas and the Sex Pistols provided that hell whether it was intentional or not.  Bless them, and rest in peace, Sid.  Their name alone made sure that they got some attention.

I have no idea if Peter Garrett of the Oils knows anything about his astrological chart and I don’t know if he went back to his past and discovered his true self early on enough to put his inborn gifts to work and try to make a difference.  Is he a psychic or a mystic? I haven’t a clue, but he is doing the work tirelessly to this day whether he is performing on stage or speaking in government.  For those who haven’t yet figured out what they are here for, I write this blog.  It isn’t easy to see your rightful place early on when struggle and survive is foremost on your mind.  I do not fault the creators of punk music for not going on, after music styles started to change on them, into politics or civil service.  To this day many of them are still struggling in life.  Groups like The Damned are still trying to keep the torch burning in a world that doesn’t necessarily know where they came from.  Those of us who do know are still playing their music, though not necessarily on vinyl or a cassette tape. More like on our iPods and Pandora or Spotify. I understand that they still tour sometimes.(Consider coming to Memphis, guys.)  What I wouldn’t give to attend a concert of theirs!  But touring is expensive and people are mean and apathetic sometimes.  Think of the recent difficulties that Morrissey has had on his current European tour. 

Music and politics may not be your niche in life but you have one.  You are not put here to sit back and let the world provide you with luxury.  That is the idle rich.  I’m guessing that their purpose is to show us what the hell not to do and give us the incentive to figure out what we are here for.  The Disney-Pixar film Wall-E is a cute but frightening scenario on what is likely to become of us in the age of electronics that do so much for us.  Truly, it is only the poor and disenfranchised that are really capable of seeing what is wrong in the world.  You cannot see it from a vantage point above it.  The problem is that you must know who the hell you are and what you can logically do in the world to keep it from destroying the best of us. You can’t do it from the top and you can’t do it from the bottom.  Either position can mask the truth too easily.  There are millions of us in that place in the middle where we are the most likely heroes because we know intimately what is wrong.  We live it, everyday, just like the Punks did.  They may not have had the answers to the problems that they were calling attention to but what is in their charts would probably speak very loudly.  They may have only been the spokespersons.  In a balanced world there are the communicators, the organizers, the builders, and the leaders.  Which one are you? When they issue the call do you know where your place is in the need?  Please find it.  Dave Vanian cannot keep singing Smash It Up forever waiting for you to figure out why things need to be smashed up! Look again at what people have said in the past.  They warned us. The problems are still here.