From Cubist Castle 04.17.09: The Evolution Of Punk Part 1 - A Prologue
Posted by Jon Kinsey on 04.17.2009
In the first part of From Cubist Castle's retrospective on punk rock, I try to distil the essence of punk and take a look at a couple of guys who were "punk" before the term existed.
Since my mid Nineties musical awakening, some things have come and some things have gone. There are bands who I obsessed over in the early days who I now barely listen to, just as there are styles of music I wouldn't have touched with a bargepole when I was younger, which I now count among my favorites. One thing has always stood out and stood true though, standing like a beacon, never faltering, never wavering and that is my love of punk rock. For the next four weeks, I'll be taking a look at the evolution of a genre, from its painful conception, right the way through to its Mid Eighties decline.
Before I do that though, I thought I'd take a little detour and look at what it is that makes the punk mythos as indelible and noticeable as it has become. Some people would suggest that punk is, quite simply, a musical style that lasted for little over a decade. Full stop. I'm inclined to disagree with these people. For me, while the musical legacy of punk rock can be summed up in that way, I believe that "punk" in the global sense is more than a genre of music. It is an attitude, a state of mind. And I think that it is a trait that can be traced throughout history. The original punks didn't come out of Forest Hills in 1974, or out of Ann Arbor a decade before. As a phenomenon, it's much older than that.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we can trace this mythical Punk ethos, we must spend some time distilling the essence of the meme. If punk can be a state of mind, then what is it? To me, it is all summed up in one word – anti-establishment. While the folkies tore up the rulebook and attempted to bring down government with tar and feathers, the punks just wanted to burn it to the ground. Making people in authority feel guilt and shame for the perceived crimes that they may or may not have perpetrated wasn't the style of our target group. Their rebellion was not against a particular government or institution, it was against governance generally. While the Sex Pistols are most associated with co-opting the concept of anarchy into music, it is seemingly omnipresent.
While many players in the punk scene didn't necessarily have an overt political message, their very presence was anti-establishment. Even if they did not sing of destroying the monarchy or collectivizing the farmlands, they existed, and in doing so offended the powers that be. Declaring yourself "punk" was in and of itself an anti-establishment message. As The Damned put it, by throwing your hat into that particular ring, you were framing your manifesto, which was very often nothing more than the desire to take expected societal roles and "smash it up."
So while people may claim that punk is a relatively recent phenomenon, they are of course not strictly correct, at least when it comes to the prevailing mentality behind the music. So many historical figures were imbued with the drive to defy the Establishment, to offend those in power and to topple the accepted societal order. When Watt Tyler led the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, he led a charge not only against the oppression of the feudal masters, but also against the very fabric of the status quo. A challenge to feudalism was a challenge to society as a whole, since the entire mechanism of mediaeval governance relied upon the performance of your feudal duties. When Lord Byron decamped to Greece to fight against the Ottomans, he had, in effect, exiled himself from Britain at least in part because of his political radicalism. In addition, he cared little for the prescribed behavior of a man of stature, his rebellion was not so much rising against the establishment, but readily ignoring it. His sexual appetite was legendary, causing him to embark on affairs with married women, sodomy and, if you believe certain interpretations of his personal letters, incest. In a society that prided itself on its modesty and chastity, such behavior from a landed aristocrat was incendiary. The longer you look at it, the more clear it is that the tinderbox concept of the punk scene has been with us for centuries; it was only logical that its anarchic sentiments would eventually make it into the sphere of music.
To meet my favorite unlikely punk though, we need not travel very far. In fact, the 1950's will do very nicely. Might I introduce you to a man who, despite surface appearance, was a clarion call for disestablishment. A man who was satire before the term had been properly coined in a modern context, a purveyor of parody before parody became flogged to death. A man who, if performing today would be deified by a legion of fans yet is largely forgotten, a footnote in the annals of history, despite being one of the most important musical performers of the middle part of the last century. Ladies and gentlemen, might I introduce you to Mr Tom Lehrer.
Lehrer was as close to being an establishment figure as it was possible to be. Born into a middle class Jewish family, he was educated at a prestigious Connecticut prep school before reading Mathematics at Harvard. After graduating magna cum laude at just eighteen years of age, and securing an MA a year later, he moved to Los Alamos, where he worked as a nuclear researcher, before being headhunted by the National Security Agency.
Not the sort of person you would necessarily credit as a source of anti-Government satire, and yet one of the best there has ever been. It was his ability to feed off his experiences in the wheelhouse of the American war machine, coupled with a burgeoning songwriting predilection that dated back to his undergrad days that gave us one of the most extraordinary bodies of music of the last century.
All of this is all well and good, but we are writing about punks, right? Absolutely. Lehrer's anti establishment song writing put him thirty or so years ahead of the curve. Not until Jello Biafra emerged in the early 1980s did popular music have anything remotely similar. Lehrer, much like Biafra, was able to interweave painfully clever observations and caustic political criticism, often in the same song, frequently in the same lyrical frame. This in and of itself would usually be enough to seal your place in history, but Lehrer went one step further. Many of the topics and subject matters of which he wrote were entirely taboo in 1950s America. Consider this, the "Vatican Rag"
To us, with our legacies of thrashcore, speed metal and industrial, this may seem pretty tame. When Lehrer debuted that song in the early Sixties, he did so in a society that was overwhelmingly Christian. It was as incendiary in its own time as the Sex Pistols releasing "God Save The Queen" in Jubilee year. The only difference between the two is that Lehrer, who was seen as an intellectual, was ignored by the people who stood to be most offended by his work. Even so, the well educated, liberal minds who listened to his songs felt a great deal of discomfort when this one popped out of the woodwork. There are scattered tales of the song and, on occasion, Lehrer himself being banned from towns and cities and the Catholic Church (or local branches thereof), even threatened to ex-communicate people for daring to listen to it.
Lehrer would frequently turn his attention to a topic that was obviously close to him – nuclear proliferation. As a young scientist, he went to Los Alamos wide eyed and optimistic about the possibilities afforded by nuclear fission. By the time he left, he had become jaded by the concept of a weapon that could wipe out the entire planet. Songs such as "So Long Mom" and "MLF Lullaby" weren't so much protest songs (a genre of music frequently lampooned by Lehrer) as open challenges to the Government who he believed had lost the plot as far as nuclear policy was concerned.
His songwriting became increasingly politicized as his career progressed and at times he seemed to write in open defiance. Here was a man who, by this stage, was lecturing Mathematics at one of the world's most prestigious Universities, writing songs deliberately designed to antagonize the institutions that surrounded him. His catalog, even when it wasn't politicized, was deemed to be immoral with its references to prostitution, masturbation, sexually transmitted diseases and licentious Boy Scouts. This was still the 1950s, remember, when these concepts were not explored behind closed doors, let alone in popular verse. Lehrer has always maintained that one of the proudest moments of his musical career was a review in the New York Times which postulated that "Mr. Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste" – a clear indication that he was doing his job properly.
As US politics became more absurd, the need to lampoon it was less pronounced. After all, the best satire of American government was frequently provided by the government itself and, as the Sixties wound down, the curtain fell on Lehrer's musical career – razor sharp, acid tongued, gut-achingly clever and now largely forgotten. As the sun set in Harvard though, it began to rise all around the country. Bands were starting to realize that with a couple of chords and a bad attitude, it was possible to dent the façade of the Establishment. A new mood was taking hold of the musical underground. Punk was slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.
Join me next week when I will be taking a look at the bands that shaped what would become the punk scene – it's Protos and Pioneers.
