On Youth, Bands and Songs:

PUNK STORIES
Carles Feixa
University of Lleida
INTRODUCTION
1. Youth:
Identities
2. Bands:
Soundscapes
3. Songs:
Lifeworlds
The Triple Nature of Youth
1. Youth as
Social Condition
2. Youth as
Cultural Image
3. Youth as
Marketing
Target
The Triple Nature of Music
1. Music as
Merchandising
2. Music as
Lifestyle
3. Music as
Symbol
The triple nature of Punk
1. Punk as
music
2. Punk as
attitude
3. Punk as
ideology
The Punk Triangle
(Social)
Histories
(Academic)
Stories
PUNK
(Individual)
Lifes
Greil Marcus
Music seeks to change life;
life goes on;
music left behind;
this is what it is so we can
talk
Enrique Gil Calvo
The music is a clock that, for many people,
usually stop: as in detective novels can
identify the time of the crime by the victim
stopped clock, the stopped clock of the
musical memory of an adult person allows us
knowing exactly when that person becomed
an adult
WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS
George Harrison, 1968
I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold
your love
They bought and sold you.
I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don't know how you were inverted
No one alerted you.
I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all...
Still my guitar gently weeps.
Os miro a todos y veo el amor dormido
Mientras mi guitarra llora suavemente
Miro el suelo y veo que se ha de barrer
Y mi guitarra llora suavemente
No s porque nadie te ha dicho cmo
mostrar tu amor
Te compraron y te vendieron.
Miro el mundo y veo que da vueltas
Mientras mi guitarra llora suavemente
De cada error sin duda aprendemos algo
Mientras mi guitarra llora suavemente
No s cmo pudieron distraerte as y
tambin pervertirte
No s cmo alguien te trastoc as
Nadie te avis
Os miro a todos y veo el amor dormido
Mientras mi guitarra llora suavemente
Os miro a todos ...
Y mi guitarra llora suavemente
PUNK HISTORIES
The Original Punk
UK
USA
The Global Punk
The Local Punk
Spain / Catalonia / Euskadi
Mexico
Porto
(Hebdige, 1983: 94)
The punk were not only the response to the
increase of unemployment, to the change of the
moral basis, to the rediscovery of misery, of
depression, etc, they also dramatised the so-
called decadence of England by constructing a
language in opposition to the predominant
rhetoric of the Establishment of rock & roll,
relevant and stuck to the ground (this explains
the curses, the torn clothes, the lumpen
attitudes). The punk adopted the rhetoric of crisis
and translated it into tangible terms
Punk Legacies
Punk-Rock
Hardcore
Cyberpunk
Trash
AnarkoPunk
Squatters
etc
PUNK STORIES
The Historical Tale
The Artistic Tale
The Countercultural Tale
The Music Tale
The Subcultural Tale
The Futurist Tale:
Dandy-Flaneur-Punk
(Rou, 1986: 42).
The punk is the son of the consumption
society of the second half of the XXth Century.
He adores industrial, non natural products
offered by the market: synthetic materials,
plastic objects, hair dying, food colourings and
junk food. Even the drugs they take are
essentially chemical. They reject the hippies
marihuana or other natural products and
gladly take as many pills as they can
(Canevacci, 1990: 151-2).
Hes found in those young people from the square,
who dress in black and who reject the future,
acceptance and equal treatment. Maybe a coincidence
has been found between similar ways of suffering,
which has developed a sense of existential identity,
rather than a solidarity between diverse subjects This
breach has an analogy with the crisis of these
generational layers that seem to mortify their own
body, who dress in mourning black as a distinction, as
extreme chromatic signal for the eye of whoever,
walking past, believe to be colourful or normal. The
pierced ears, the short pointy hair, the torn jeans, seem
to advertise an inner anguish similar to the flaneurs
Dada-Surrealism-Punk
(Canevacci, 1993: 145).
The young punk experience the symbol crisis
derived from the proliferation of eloquent,
ventriloquist signals. This anticipates from the
sub-cultural side what the post-modern
architecture will be The de-symbolisation finds
the ground for its development in a type of
communication based on the crisis of the written
discourse-reflection language, and on the
supremacy of figurative, visual and audition
forces The radical inventive of vanguards
(futurism, dadaism, surrealism) meet the youth
experimentation
Beat-Hippy-Punk
(Racionero, 1983: 95).
In spite of the formal differences, these groups
coincide in putting forward the problem of leisure
in modern industrial states. Whether they
marginalise themselves in a voluntary way in a
humanistic otiumcum dignitate, like it is the case
of beatniks, or they are victims of forceful
unemployment like many punk, marginalised
groups have learnt lifestyles that could lead to
leisure societies All social systems keep the
seeds of their possible evolution in a seedbed of
marginalised that play the social role of the
Courts buffoon
Rock-Pop-Punk
(Yonnet, 1988:133)
While rock'n roll takes place between two people
(when dancing) and is expanded through the
group, which has a leader and explicit, clear and
functional hierarchical relationships (role
specialisation) and while pop culture develops
community structures with often implicit and
mobile definitions that abandon individuals to
polyvalence (of social and sexual roles), punk
suggests a furious individualism, the rejection of
all group coactions and the transgression of any
taboo
Skinhead-Rastafarian-Punk
(Hebdige, 1983: 96-70
At a certain level, the Punk admitted openly the meaning of
contact and exchange [with the reggae], taking it to a
political engagement (participating in the campaign Rock
Against Racism and fighting the influence of the National
Front in working class areas). But at a deeper level, this
association has been retaken with a strongly white and
English music. Certain characteristics were taken directly
from the typical style of the Rude Boys and the Rastafarian.
For instance, one of the typical punk hairstyles, consisting
in a hard vertical crest held with Vaseline, hair lack or soap,
looked like dreadlock type black hairstyles. Some Punk had
Ethiopian colours and the Rasta rhetoric started to spread
in the repertories of groups like Clash, the Slits)
Hybrid futures
Punk-Hardcore-Cyberpunk
Punk-Trash-Techno
Punk-Cholo-Skato
Punks-Anarko-Okupa
Punk-Posh-Fresa
etc
PUNK LIFES
Life Stories
Life Crises
Life Portraits
Life Chronotopes
Life Revolutions
Life Evolutions
The British Model:
Johnny, the Rotten
or Sid Vicious and Nancy
The Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen"
We're the flowers
in the dustbin
we're the poison
in your human machine
No future
no future for you
no future for me
The Catalan Model:
Felix, the Punk (1985)
All that appears against something
is a mirror of that something
You go through lots of cultural and aesthetic
things. You fancy some of them. Ive been
through, dont know really: jipis, jevis, punkis...
(hippies, heavies, punks...) More than trends, they
are music tastes that you relate to a style, a
philosophy. In the end you find out that all styles,
all philosophies try to break with a really bent
society. All that appears against something is a
mirror of that something. So a society that
produces really decadent groups, well, must be for
some reason, maybe its mirror of what society
forces to.
La Polla Records,
"Nuestra alegre juventud
Qu podemos hacer con tanto dinero?
Qu podemos hacer con las ventajas
sociales?
Vamos dejando nuestra alegre juventud
Qu ms se puede pedir!
Nuestra alegre juventud!
The Mexican Model:
Pablo, el Podrido (1990)
To be a punk
Many guys didnt consider, dont consider, and
wont be considered themselves as Punks. When
you do somethink that is unusual, suddenly people
say: Youre so punk, ero!. There are different
form to answer. A lot of guys say: Youre gey
(stupid)!. Other guys la hacen de pedo (react
badly): !Chinga tu madre (!Fuck your mother!). I
used to say: I`m Mr. Nobody, mhijito (my son).
Dont compare me with something. For many
guys (to be a punk) is not their life, but for others
there is: to stay with the gang its a best moral
suport that to stay at home: its really like a
second family
WHETHER I AM OR I AM NOT A PUNK
Ive been thinking recently whether I am a punk or not. I
used to dress a lot worse, and now Ive changed. The
marriage and fatherhood made ma change a little. But I
also have depressions. For the last couple of weeks Ive
been having some terrible nightmares. On the first dream, I
was in the street with Diablillos. I was looking at the crosses
and thinking how the kids had been killed, and then I could
hear a buzz pulling me. In another dream I was standing on
top of one of the pyramids we have in Mexico. It was the
time of the Aztecs and I was dressed as the chief of the
tribe
I dont know where my life is getting, and my mind is a
chaos: my wife, being a punk, the eclipse is gone, the baby.
Theres no future, but Id like my son to have one...
(Podrido, "Urbanicidio)
Hoy
Me he visto al espejo
Un rostro irreconocible
Mi cerebro est apestado
Mi aliento olvidado
Hoy
No estoy muerto
Cuerpo viviente
Mentalidad destruida
Lucha ignorada
Escape de la realidad
Muertos sin vida
Es lo que somos
Manejan nuestra voluntad
Como aduendose
De nuestros actos
Mientras en nuestras vidas
Escombros de la mierda
Tribus Urbanas vs Chavos Banda
Tribus urbanas:
Context: political democratization,
Form: transclassist milieu,
Place: urban centre
Chavos banda:
Context: economic crisis
Form: corporate groups
Place: periphery,
From stigma to emblema
From hybrid identitites to plural worlds
Punk Futures: Felix
Now I am an older teen
Va cambiando la vida y el
mundo. Cambi el punk por el
rocknroll. Ahora soy un
adolescente de avanzada
edad. He dejado el bar este
ao: prcticamente lo que he
hecho ha sido alargar la
adolescencia. Durante muchos
aos he seguido siendo
adolescente: la vida de noche,
la vida de bar, el rocknroll,
siempre relacionndome con
gente ms joven. He ido
creciendo, pero los clientes se
iban yendo, iba viniendo gente
nueva. Lo normal es que la
gente del otro lado de la barra
cambie.
It is changing lives and the world.
I changed the punk rock'n'roll.
NowI'man older teen. I left the
bar this year pretty much what I
did was prolong adolescence. For
many years I have followed as a
teenager: night life, bar life,
rock'n'roll, always interacting
with younger people. I have been
growing, but customers were
leaving, new people was coming.
Typically, people on the other
side of the bar changes.
Punk Futures: Pablo
They see me as Don Pablo (2004)
Mentally, Im still a punk. Im still a social fighter, Ive always
been. And until the day I die Ill fight against all injustice
that affects the human condition After youre 24 you start
changing. I was a cholo for a while: being cholo is to being
mad, dressing baggy clothes, having a beard, wearing a
scarf, making hand gestures, wearing a hat and dark
glasses.
In this district the see me as Don Pablo, as a man, not as a
chavo any more.. Chavos are now 13, 14 and you cant play
with them. Where I was born, every one knows me as el
Podrido and as a punk. Where are the Diablillos? Many got
married, another one is still in the rock and roll thing, but
on his own. You still like the Punk, but youre on your own;
youre not with your gang of 30 or 40.
Forever young?
There are going to be other youth gangs, but theres still
going to be repression, at the technological level also.
Youth is going to exist forever, children will grow. Theres no
way to know what the future will be, you see every day as it
goes by, but we cant figure out what its going to be. I was
at a party one month ago. I was with a friend of mine, and
all of a sudden I hear... bang!... and he fell on the floor. Hed
been shot. You see him die, the ambulance gets there, and
nobodys seen anything... Im not afraid, but who knows
when it may happen. Thats life. Youve got to look after
yourself, and when the time comes... Im not going to forget
anyone, its like Eskorbuto when they sing: When I go / I
wont forget you. Or Siniestro Total Im gonna dance on
your grave...
CONCLUSION
The Dialogical Punk