[leemcalilly]

Boy do you not understand punk:

“Punk mostly wasn't very good at all, because it was fashion and performance art and social criticism and musically quite conservative and dull in addition to being amateurish”

That is just an objectively wrong worldview—that Punk was just fashion and a mostly dull, amateur genre.

And I agree with everything you say about Prog.

Go listen to Pink Flag by Wire. It basically is Prog, but stripped all the way down to pure elegance and irony, imbued with the attitude of the earliest rock and roll. Still fresh today.

So many great bands and classic albums. Were the beatles and elvis proto-punk, or were the clash and ramones early rock and roll?

The kinks you really got me, the stooges search and destroy. You’re right Led Zeppelin is silly next to that.

But dull and amateurish, no way. That’s the mindset of someone with a narrow palette.

Good thing Punk is the ultimate palette cleanser. The smartest genre of music we’ve created yet.

[shrimpx]

> That is just an objectively wrong worldview—that Punk was just fashion and a mostly dull, amateur genre.

It was dull and amateurish and "not very good" if you take "good" to mean the intricate, virtuoso, polished mainstream music that punk forcefully rejected.

Also "smartest genre of music" is a stretch. You'd have to justify that in dimensions beyond music, like its impact on society/culture. The pinnacle of musical achievement cannot be 3-chord music.

[UncleMeat]

> The pinnacle of musical achievement cannot be 3-chord music.

Why not? Harmonic difficulty isn't a virtue. Jazz musicians were doing one and two chord and they are criticized for being obtuse.

Heck, difficulty in general isn't a virtue.

[shrimpx]

I agree that difficulty isn't a virtue, and I'm a big fan of minimal art and music, but I don't think 1-4-5 power chord music is the pinnacle of musical achievement. But I think those simple songs were extremely powerful in their cultural context and the rejection of norms that they represented.

That said, though, a lot of what is considered "punk" today abandoned those simplistic song structures of the 60s lo-fi/garage/protopunk (Stooges, MC5, Sonics, etc.) and started doing intricate and musically-complex studio productions. Including the band "Wire" which the comment I was replying to hails as a high achievement of punk.

[CPLX]

Explain to me the difference between search and destroy and the immigrant song in a way that clarifies how they are categorically different.

[jaxelr]

> Good thing Punk is the ultimate palette cleanser. The smartest genre of music we’ve created yet.

Heavy metal would like a word.