Punk is an Attitude

Let’s say your father was a punk, or maybe he wasn’t.  He might have been a metalhead.  If he were in his teens in the late 70s, and now in his mid-forties, then there’s a pretty good chance he wasn’t into chart-toppers like Donna Summer, Barry Manilow or The Bee Gees.  Regarding the latter, hopefully he still doesn’t have disco compilations in his collection or albums from The Commodores.  Surely you agree a lot can be gained by casually perusing an album collection, whether your friends or deal ol’ dads.

Back in the seventies, coming as you recall immediately after the Vietnam-induced 60s (and thus the Hippies), many laws were still in their infancy with respect to enforcing the consumption of both drugs and alcohol.  Many dads today can undoubtedly relate to notorious stories involving parties down long and dark dirt roads, crazy concerts or camping trips – long before the era of Girls Gone Wild and the video camera.  Nonetheless, old and dusty photo albums will confirm an illustrious recent past filled with long-forgotten friends and fading memories.

Punk is an attitude, not a musical style.  The word was first popularly heard, in terms of derision and social class, was in The Wild Ones – a film made in the 50s starring the punk of all punks Marlon Brando.  He did what he wanted to do, and got paid for it.  This is an aspiration many of us have, including those aforementioned dads.  Imagine, doing what you want to do, and getting paid for it.  Some dads couldn’t let go of that idea, and still can’t let go.  It’s a great ideal, and why presumably other than a love of music, a lot of dads still play in bands these days.

The argument rages today among various factions within the music industry about the origins of Punk Music, a “who came first?” argument in reality.  It’s easy to settle and the answer is that it was imported to North America along with The Sex Pistols, band literally created by Malcolm MacLaren and Bernard Rhodes targeting a disenfranchised youth and a vehicle to sell a style of clothes.  At the time, there were a lot of metal bands enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame and egotistically dropping incredibly long guitar and drum solos into their works.  Many bands simply were instrumental and enjoyed the augmenting effects of mind-altering drugs.

Smoking was permitted indoors in the seventies; from airplanes to coffee shops, and movie theatres to hockey arenas.  Concerts were thus very smoky affairs and very popular.  Similarly live events and nightly shows helped cement distant friendships and lifestyles.  I graduated from university in 1981 and shortly thereafter (well, a couple of years later) I was managing the Elbow Beach Hotel in Bermuda.  Go figure.