Punk

Quora Answer : I am not good at the guitar but I want to start. I heard punk is easy to play unlike the other genres. Why is that?

Jul 16, 2020

Punk tends to be musically simple.

But you ask "why"

It's not just by chance.

Punk's philosophy / ideology is anti elitist and anti hierarchical. A reaction against the "rock gods" of the 70s era.

The ethic of punk is "do it yourself". Don't wait around to be given permission by someone else. Don't worship the "special people" with the great skills. (Who are not so special after all)

Instead, what is important in punk is self-expression. The fact that you want to express yourself means that you have something to say and are worth listening to.

Punk's music reflects this philosophy. It's more important that music is (in some sense) authentic and reflects that desire for self-expression, than that it is "complicated". It's more importantly that you write the song with only 3 chords and have courage to go out and sing it, than that you wait around learning to compose and play more sophisticated music BEFORE you go out and play.

Punk is simple because it's meant to be accessible for everyone.

Quora Answer : How is the "punk rock" scene viewed today by music historians?

Jun 29, 2020

I think Brian Mcpherson has it right, though he's perhaps taking punk propaganda a bit too much at its own evaluation.

There's no question that punk "cleared a space" for new waves of popular music, from new wave / post punk itself, to new types of metal, to goth, to industrial / synthpop etc.

I wouldn't say that the prog and heavy rock that came before it was necessarily "unoriginal" or "elitist" or "bloated" (whatever that last word really means).

Obviously some rock was cliched or over-thought , but the good prog rock was a hell of a lot more inventive and imaginative musically than most of the punk. And there were very radical anti-elitists on the fringes of the prog scene.

But ... the mainstream pre-punk music had fallen into certain conventions. Both musically, and organizationally.

The most important part of punk was less the bands themselves than the new wave of indie record labels and zines springing up as part of the DIY ethos.

It's really this ecosystem of labels and studios and zines and record shops that enabled all the new experimental musics to appear.

Now arguably, that was as much a function of cheaper and more abundant recording technologies as it was about the music. And perhaps even if the sound of punk hadn't happened, then a DIY ethos could have come from a completely different musical scene. (And perhaps even was coming from those scenes ... it's just that punk was grabbing all the attention)

Nevertheless, punk did make a big thing of saying that self-expression was more important than technique. And that obviously gave courage to many people to try to make their own music, and who went on to do it wonderfully.