Punk and its Fallout

Centred in London, Punk exploded into life in late 1976, a lot of good singles, not so many good albums, a well deserved kick up the arse for a complacent music business. Overall not much of the actual punk music will stand the test of time, but what it did do was create an attitude and environment in which suddenly everything was possible. You didn't have to be a musical genius to write a good song. This DIY ethic followed later by the availability of cheap synths suddenly unleashed previously undeveloped and unseen talent on an unsuspecting music business from all sorts of places. Some of them (shock horror) were actually from places outside of London! The realisation that there really were no rules caused all sorts of interesting things to happen. The experimental fringe was what particularly interested me, not the millions of three chord imitations of the Pistols and the Clash. Singles were very much the medium of the time, I bought lots of them during that first rush of energy. Listening to John Peel in between the pure punk and the reggae were some very interesting sounds.

Joy Division brought a more gothic, introspective feel. Pere Ubu seemed at times mad, then threatening, then weird, then funny, and most of the time like nothing you'd heard before. The Pop Group introduced funk and dance rhythms into the equation along with the occasional jazz reference. The Gang of Four brought fractured, dissonant, yet not quite pop songs with serious political content. Some bands were guilty of taking themselves a little too seriously, I think the only ones who didn't were Pere Ubu to whom it all seemed so natural.

A journalist once described their singer David Thomas rather astutely as "The musician with the most open nerve endings since Captain Beefheart." It's gratifying to see how many of the people I've just mentioned cite Beefheart as an influence, and acknowledge him as a one off, an icon, a genius. I'll leave Beefheart for another day.