The ghosts of punk still haunting today's bands

Nirvana bassist Krist Noveselic told Rolling Stone Magazine that punk anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit was "all about the mass mentality of conformity," and when he did, he was summarizing a culture, a movement of people and ideas that revolted against the mass production of sameness. And while the video was in rotation day in and day out on MTV -- alongside the accessible, mainstream pop videos of the time -- Punk made another definitive indent on the music history time-line. But before 1991 when Nirvana made their mark, Punk rock, as a sub-genre of rock, established itself mainly in the U.S. and the U.K. during the mid-70s with its grassroots take on music and culture - an appeal that largely took shape with ideas of anti-establishment as well as album production and show promotion without major label help. And by 1976, The Ramones, New York's answer to London's The Clash, punk took off, promoting ideas of anarchy and anti-authoritarianism. Though most of the punk scene blossomed mainly in local circuits, many were intruiged with this new musical thought process - musicians with opinions - something renowned music critic and journalist Lester Bangs wrote about often.

In a Lester Bangs 1980 interview featured from a fanzine, Loser Friendly, on cousincreep.com, Bangs spoke of the music occurring after punk had its major reign. Asked whether music meant anything, Bangs said, "No, I see it as meaning very little at the moment because none of the groups are about anything. If you think about it really, the original groups that came out of CBGB's around 1975 and 1976 -- Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, The Ramones, Talking Heads -- they meant something. They had something to say. They all had something unique to say and a unique way of saying it. And the original groups in England The Sex Pistols and The Clash ... I don't see hardly anything happening now. I mean a group that call themselves 'Robin Lane and the Chartbusters? I don't care how good their music is. Why don't they call themselves 'We Want Money'? Their just saying 'we want to sell records we want to be rock stars.'"

Later, in 1981, Bangs turned in a blank ballot for the Village Voice Pazz and Jop Critics' Poll, specifying the "worthless state of rock and roll," according to an essay, "The Short, Turbulent Life of Lester Bangs" on Dancingaboutarc.com.

He went on to say that mutations of punk that formed sub-genres, like New Wave, and other forms of music had very little to provide at the time: "New Wave has terminated in thudding hollow Xeroxes of poses that aren't even annoying anymore," he wrote. "Rap is nothing, or not enough. Jazz does not exist as a musical form with anything new to say. And the rest of rock is recycling various formulae forever. I don't know what I'm going to write about - music is the only thing in the world I really care about - but I simply cannot pretend to find anything compelling in the choice between pap and mud."

But history repeats itself: much of the same ideology is seen today with sub-genres like emo --inducing strands of screamo and hardcore-- that has taken form after the mid-90s during the reign of Nirvana and similar grunge bands whose foundations were rooted in punk. Though the debate over punk's current existence remains, the progression of sounds shows the influence punk has had over music genres during the past decades. The early 80s saw new wave and glam rock taking shape out of punk, while the 90s gave birth to alternative and post-punk. Bands' sounds traveled even farther away on the punk spectrum, giving way to pop punk, mainly made popular by bands like Blink 182 and Green Day. Any by the early 2000s, many bands took the pop-punk sound and and merged it with grand choruses, love-sick lyrics and specific vocal stylings to create emo and screamo.

The consideration of music of as a fragment of a time and place may keep "punk," like other genres (acid-rock, jazz-rock fusion, prog-rock) as a sonic artifact of the past, though with the influence over music punk has had, it may be dead in theory, but it's ghost is very present.

"The real issue to raise is not only that people continually listen to classic punk like the Ramones, Sex Pistols, the Clash, Bad Brains, and so forth, but that they keep picking up guitars and making music and wishing that they were those bands. The idolization of the music hasn't died down one bit, and that's what's given us Green Day, against me! and the Dropkick Murphys," cinemablend.com said.

And though much of Gen-Y has come to define 'punk' as NOFX, The Offspring and Sum 41, their bands' musical genetics still nod toward the past. "So maybe people think that the punk genre is diminishing in quality," cinemablend.com said, "but then you can listen to against me!'s "Reinventing Axel Rose" and remember that all hope is not lost."