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“The word ―punk, first made an appearance in music journalism in a 1970 essay, ―The Punk Muse: The True Story of Protopathic Spiff Including the Lowdown on the Trouble-Making Five-Percent of America’s Youth‖ by Nick Tosches in Fusion‖ (Van Dorston). Lately, with arrival of the first punk rock bands, the word ―punk‖ became a label for the whole music genre, lifestyle, subculture, fashion and art.”
“As a matter of fact, punk not only does include music, it is associated with the whole lifestyle and subculture. Punk rejects all of the trends (in relation to the current age), therefore punk had to come up with its own particularities and ideology. Nonetheless, opinions of the individual punks can differ because punk acknowledges originality as the highest value, whereas several punk attributes keep persisting and could be labelled as the punk main features and activities.”
“Punk rock is energetic and attention-getting music although it is very easy to play. 1970s‘ punk music developed from rock and rock‘n‘roll to ―a construction which took a basic version of the rock sound, mediated through heavy metal‖ (Griffiths 559), however, today‘s punk music is divided into many subgenres which either differ a great deal from the first punk sound or they maintain the original style. Generally, a genuine punk music is based on three chords only and most punk musicians do not even know the music stave or they began to learn how to play an instrument after they had joined a band. Sideburns, the 1970s‘ punk fanzine, enriched its first issue with three pictures of A, E, G chords and the sentence: ―This is a chord, this is another, this is a third, now form a band‖ (Moon et al.) which signifies that everyone can do it.”
“DIY is the acronym for ‗Do it yourself‘ and it is a phenomenon connected to punk. History of the phenomenon is probably as old as humankind itself, because our ancestors had to know how to make instruments or useful things needed in household, however, after the industrial revolution, most people forgot it simply because they could buy the needed things, which was easier, faster and sometimes also cheaper. But for the ordinary people, who had not so much money to buy every month something new, conditions were hard therefore after the WWII, various manuals how to improve the living appeared and the term ‗DIY‘ started to be used in connection with them. In the 1970s, western countries were not very prospering mainly because of two oil crisis which happened in the decade. It was a period of high inflation and unemployment and for the United Kingdom; it meant the end of welfare: ―By 1973 the long period of economic prosperity was coming to an end. By the spring of 1975 unemployment had climbed to 1 million. It was over 5% of the workforce‖ (Lambert). For a young working-class punk teenager, it was a time of no opportunities to buy new clothes in McLaren‘s boutique, so they had to ‗do it themselves‘. Deborah Harry, although she is American, was not much wealthier too when she was interested in punk: ―Nobody had any money, so the look was all about creating a personal style‖ (8). Besides clothing, punks were creating underground music magazines called fanzines which were made by fans for fans”
“The term ‗fanzine‘ was firstly used for magazines concerned with science fiction literature but with punk they ―experienced a big boom‖ (Vedral and Vyhnálek 49, translation by A.Š.). ―One of the first fanzines was directly named Punk and its first issue was released in January 1976, New York‖ (Vedral and Vyhnálek 49, translation by A.Š.). Fanzines were an alternative to more expensive mainstream magazines and usually cost no more than one Pound or one Dollar. They were generally related to a local region where they were being written. Among punks, fanzines were preferred to the official press because they were cheaper and because they were being compiled by young people who listened to punk and knew the vicinity and what punk teenagers wanted to read: ―The most well-known British fanzine was named Sniffin’ Glue and was in its time more influential than great musical journals‖ (Vedral and Vyhnálek 49, translation by A.Š.). If a fan wanted to make a fanzine, he or she would have to manage to have access to two necessary objects – a printer and a photocopier. Then, it was needed also to have talent for writing and graphic design. Many fanzines were in fact collages created from the newspaper cuttings and simple pictures and articles made by fans. Some fanzines did not use the prefix ‗fan‘ because they were more concerned with politics and according to them, the prefix ―refers to pop culture and dull cheering‖ (Vedral and Vyhnálek 49, translation by A.Š.), so they preferred to use the term ‗punkzine‘. Nowadays, most new fanzines are accessible from the internet, so they have lost their paper form and turned into e-zines. ”
“The differences appeared also between the punks who were interested in punk bands of the first generation and the punks of the following second generation. The Sex Pistols became very famous and influential, they earned a great amount of money and their photographies kept filling up newspapers. Thus they became a part of mainstream which was not good because they became something they had rebelled against. Some punks started to blame them for the popularity and by this blaming they created conditions for a new development of punk in the 1980s. Newly formed bands tried to preserve the original punk ideas; they did not want to turn into commercial celebrities like the Sex Pistols did: ―In the early ‘80s, punk music went underground, but its – 24 – influence remained. Its DIY ethic lived on in the indie scene (i.e. independent scene – the bands who cooperate with low-budget record labels and try to keep their autonomy from big corporations, note by A.Š.), which maintained an ‗us and them‘ relationship with the pop mainstream‖ (Chick 278). Moreover, punks witnessed how were the Sex Pistols destroyed by their own fame, how did the members become involved in a lawsuit with their manager and how were Sid and Nancy spending money on heroin, so the new bands tried to avoid that. Besides street punk and Oi!, hardcore punk emerged in the United States as a response to the first-generation punk and quickly and easily spread out to Europe.”
“Today, most punks respect the original attitude, they do not listen to famous and rich bands, they are not materialistic and they support non-profit institutions engaged in activities which they like. Nevertheless, there are punk teenagers who do not work, but they spend their parents‘ money on expensive clothing and accessories that look like they are punk but in fact they rather are not punk because of the high price. Such young people also visit punk concerts often, but they usually stop listening punk before they become adult. In fact, most punks stop listening punk before they become adult because punk is obviously tied to youth, however, in this modern capitalistic consumerist society, punk is a good way to start maturing because it shows to the young that they do not have to be dependent on big corporations, if they do not want to, and that they should start to think about the government because when they become adult, they will feel the effects of ill-considered actions of politicians. To conclude, it does not matter that punk is related only to youngsters in most cases because they are the people who can change the future. It is their future and punk really bid them to make it better and put their own opinions across.”
lozmulhearn 