2. PERF2065 MUSIC:
STYLE & GENRE
WEEK FIVE | POST-PUNK
NEVER MIND WHAT'S BEEN SELLING / IT'S WHAT YOU'RE BUYING
3. TODAY… Punk gets revised by other
punks.
Mid-1980s to present.
The beginning of what exists
at the moment. All of this
informs how music works
online aka American
entrepreneurialism.
4. THIS WEEK
• Post-punk, Hardcore,
Grunge and Riot Grrrl
• Post Subcultural Theories
about music.
5. THE “END” OF PUNK
• Jan, 1978: The Sex Pistols break-
up / A year later Sid Vicious is
dead.
• Punk has become static: an
image, a sound, an attitude, a
place (to some degree)
6. POST-PUNK (OR ‘NEW WAVE’)
• Punk’s DIY – often bricolagic –
approach applied outside the strict
dictates of raw, primal garage rock.
• “The post-punks set forth in the
belief that ‘radical content
demands radical form’” (Reynolds)
16. AMERICAN HARDCORE (STYLE)
•Standalone singer / shouting & screaming
•Distorted guitars/ bass / drums
•Fast / short / loud
•Rhythm to the fore / less harmony and
melody
•Homogeneous
17. AMERICAN HARDCORE (INDUSTRY)
•Largely ignored by industry
•DIY / Separatist
•Built out underground touring in the
US
•Occasionally commercially viable as
recorded music
18. AMERICAN HARDCORE (SOCIAL CONTEXT)
• Ronald Regan is president of the US
• It’s the 80s / decadence / cocaine
• UK ‘Punk’ has devolved in nihilistic
junkie music / Post-punk is too arty
• Everything perceived as too soft (aka
‘feminine’) thus macho shirts-off
hardcore
22. THEN IN THE LATE 80s
SOMETHING WEIRD HAPPENED IN
SEATLE…
23.
24. SCENE INSTEAD OF SUBCULTURE
• “Cultural space” = collaboration, cross-pollination,
trajectory, specificities rather than legacies and
histories.
• Will Straw and Barry Shank formalize it.
• There’s no magic solutions in scene: the scene is
‘articulated’ (noticeable) because individuals and
groups vibe off each other the location
• Starts to really ramp up in popular music studies in
the early 90s.
25. GRUNGE SCENE (AMERICA’S UK ‘77 MOMENT)
• Sound: detuned guitars, slower bpm,
melodies, metal-inflected, heavy
• Industry: buys in / pivots investment away
from glam-metal into grunge
• Social: 80s revisionism, advocacy of
feminism, but pre-internet , peak old
media in many ways
•And as always, the margins respond the
centre…
26.
27. RIOT GRRRL (FEMINIST PUNK)
• Sound: a return to punk’s early primal rock
orthodoxy
• Industry: a self-imposed media blackout, DIY media
favoured (zines)
• Social: 90s grunge has lots of women involved but
is still male-dominated and is getting pretty Rock
and Metal, rather than Punk
• Still echoing, maybe louder than ever: Sleater
Kinney, Beth Ditto, Camp Cope
