Evolution, my friends, is a seriously complicated thing. And in mainstream pop culture, evolution is a process that is heavily regulated and at times even forced. But it’s not the usual preteen demographic who falls prey to the ever-changing face of MTV.
Look further and you will see the change evolve in the “counter culture.”
Let us go back to the ’70s. Names like Donna Summer, Olivia Newton-John and Gloria Gaynor may be the first to pop into your head. Disco was in, John Travolta was hot and there was more feathered hair than there ever should have been. Young people slow danced to ABBA and made out to Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light/Let Me Sleep On It.”
On the flip side, the ’70s brought us the Sex Pistols who ushered in, while not completely single-handedly, a new form of expression and an entire “counter culture.” The music was abrasive, the band’s on and off-stage antics were brash and these boys were anything but quiet. The “punks,” who derived their name from the derogatory term used to describe them, were proud to stand up against what everyone expected of them. They spit, swore and smoked with no inhibitions. They stood for something and that “something” was to be the exact opposite of everything.
Now, in the interest of not sounding completely pretentious, I’ll spare you the whole history of “punk” music.
Instead, let us fast forward to 2001. Slowly, some punk music had lost its edge and became more approachable to the mainstream. Maybe it was the bad boy with a heart of gold appeal that increased the popularity or maybe it was just natural progression, evolution if you will. But whatever it may be, 2001 ushered in “All Killer, No Filler,” by those four crazy Canadians, Sum 41, and so opened the Pandora’s box of punk in the mainstream. There were predecessors, blink-182 and Green Day for example, but when you get right down to it, Sum 41’s first single, “Fat Lip,” with lines like “I’ll never fall in line/Become another victim of your conformity,” might as well been called “Oh my God, I’m so punk rock.”
Again, in the interest of not sounding too elitist, I will not take the usual “selling-out” stance or even begin to talk about the legitimacy of “the scene,” but whatever you want to call it, Sum 41 paved the way for all sorts of crappy bands, like New Found Glory and Good Charlotte, to constantly show their ugly mugs on my TV and plague my radio waves with their God-awful music.
Though this new punk may be a far cry from what punk used to be, these newcomers bear enough semblance to the old form to discredit any true remaining followers of the modern movement. However, there are still some noticeable differences. Instead of concentrating on any relevant or even taboo subject matter, today’s mainstream, and I use that term to describe any artist that can be found heavily on MTV or on Top 40 radio, cashes in on the “My girlfriend broke my heart and it hurt my feelings” audience out there.
To attempt to garner an iota of integrity, you may even see these artists attempt to do their one obligatory “no one understands you because your parents got divorced/you got picked on at school/your mom made you shave your mohawk, but don’t give up hope” anthem.
You may recognize these sorts of videos because they’re usually punctuated with cut shots of random, acne-ridden teenagers.
So now what happens when the “counter culture” becomes the mainstream culture? Apparently, the mainstream culture, in turn, becomes the “counter culture.”
Counter culture today has evolved into quite the opposite of what punk used to stand for. Instead of telling responsibility to go “feck off,” in true Sex Pistol style, the modern counter culture follower has been intellectualized.
You’ve seen them, you know you have. I’m sure you could pick them out of a line-up. They wear plastic-rimmed glasses and nice sweaters and they read Jack Kerouac. They are the kind of kids who may still have long hair, but you could bring them home to meet mother.
Not surprisingly, just how punk was the answer to the disco dance craze, dance music is the answer to new punk. Taking pages from ’80s new wave, bands like the Postal Service, the Faint and Le Tigre are infusing dance into their music. Where there used to be a “mosh pit” or “slam dancing,” is literally now almost exclusively dancing. Also artists like Mates of State and Rilo Kiley make music that is so cute and innocent, that it could not be further removed from its punk-rock ancestry.
The question is now, how long will it be before this new dance music is integrated into mainstream and evolution takes its toll once again.
— Bobby Hankinson can be reached at [email protected]
