" Like a horse race, the punk player was supposed to take the lead, but was killed by heroin and fell. In the end, everyone else overtook us, and we never reached the end. ”
" American punk is mostly for fun and do whatever you want, while British punk is more political. American punk Caucasian music is strong, and British punk is more reggae. ”
- "Punk is a tool for carrying the power of evil animals." ”
"Punk became very masculine, very violent, and I reacted like a wild animal on stage, and was later able to even punch out an 'audience' close to me without singing the wrong lyrics." ”
- "Punk is a gift. As soon as you want to sell it, it disappears automatically. ”
" Green Day said not to tour and not to watch Titanic. The day they boarded the tour bus, I gave them a poster of Titanic. Now both are alive. ”
……
Iggy Pope
The above is from punk, a four-part documentary co-produced by Iggy Pop and fashion designer John Varvatos, featuring Wayne Kramer (MC5), Johnny Rotten, Marky Ramone (Raymonds), Henry W. Bush, and Johnny Rotten. Henry Rollins (Black Flag), Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day)...
In this 200-minute brief punk oral history, the "old men" sit on various leather sofas to rewind history, and the fished out past is stirred up in the empty industrial space. But everyone can see that such memories of the past are the opposite of punk.
Punk is violent, fierce, short, instinctive outburst, and these old punks with wrinkled faces, or fat bodies, or both, have been refined by time into the embodiment of wisdom and calmness. They recounted to the camera what had been repeated countless times in interviews, looking more clearly at the rise and fall of punk over time, as natural as observing celestial motion and the changing seasons.
Looking back at the documentaries of that year, there is often such a strange and huge contrast. The young people in the data image and the middle-aged and elderly people who are narrators are completely at odds, and only the faint visible similarities and vague names reveal their relationship.
The documentary also made a quirky design: let the interviewees play other punk band discs on vinyl records. One by one, the camera clips shake their heads with the music and slap the knots, and a warm and intoxicated expression appears on their faces. When the music stops abruptly, they return to the real space and continue the rhythm of the narrative.
"Punk" is not made for veteran enthusiasts, and it is certainly not for young people. Veteran enthusiasts have long been familiar with such a broad combing. The old punks look now, if they show it to the younger ones, they will certainly scoff, let alone sit down and watch their "documentary". So who was it filmed for? The audience must no longer be young, but at least have heard of "MC5", "Sex Pistol", "Black Flag", "Nirvana", "Green Day", know the difference between "punk" and "rock", yearn for the "punk spirit", have had the experience of inner strength collision, want to spew out.
Now that wave is long gone, as Darryl Jenifer, the impressive band Bad Brains in the film, puts it, "It's not that I didn't like punk later, but it was the period that ended naturally." This is the time to watch nostalgia. At the end of the film, the old punks have said encouraging words one after another, about the punk spirit, punk is not dead, punk is especially important today, in fact, there is no need.
Because it traces a brief history of punk with facts to convince the viewer that it, like any cultural phenomenon, rises and falls from time to time. Today there will no longer be young people with a hormonal glut like carrying a bomb that can explode at any time, and will not play "live music". Punk cannot be bred in an era when everything is convenient. At least there will be no more punks of that generation, because the scenes no longer exist, and the film is named at the beginning, the birthplace of punk, New York in the 1970s, with a garbage mountain of 10 meters high and the streets full of danger. Such harsh environments and a bar called CBGB, coupled with the comic magazine run by "white garbage", became a hotbed of punk.
Punk Holy Land CBGB
Primitive punks didn't require technical and stage performances (and despised them), embracing "pure rock". MC5's Wayne Kramer wanders the fringes of the underworld, lives in Detroit, a more dangerous place than New York, and was once whimsical about selling drugs to raise a band, resulting in a 4-year prison sentence.
The first episode is about the rise of punk in the United States and the death of heroin, which nearly wiped out the entire army. CBGB became a punk hub, but at best it had the influence of a few hundred enthusiastic "viewers" every night. Finally, "Raymonds" flew to England to try his luck. Sure enough, punk was hugely popular in the UK (like many other undesirable music in the US).
The second episode is about British punk, tracking how it went from being a child in the United States to venting excess energy and getting seriously in another country.
Fashion also changed with the spread of punk in the UK. Suddenly, everyone wants to dress differently. Punk has no iconic dress, only hollow-minded and unusually dressed youth. Together, they push punk to extremes. Fueled by the media, punk has been linked to various actions related to "vomiting". Drug use before going on stage has taught many punks a bitter lesson, and beer is more and more. The more we drank and the more we sprayed, the "more the audience loved us".
The "sex pistol" took advantage of the wind and brought punk back to the United States. This time it wasn't hundreds of spectators anymore, and america's young men vaguely learned about punk, shaped its image according to their own understanding, and brought more intense physical conflict to the punk scene.
When the fat, well-behaved, and gloomy Johnny Rodton looks back at the camera to recall the early death of Sid Vicious and says "I miss my friends" in a very slow voice, the camera sends the self-destructive but radiant Sid back to the audience. Dead stars are far more attractive than old stars, and Sid's images on stage are the epitome of punk, like a meteor that never looks back.
Johnny Rowton
Old photo of Sid Withers
Episode three, hardcore punk. After Sid's death, the sex pistol disbanded, "as if the air around it had been sucked out." Johnny Lawton recounts that every time he returns backstage after acting, he is "like he has died seven times, full of self-doubt", and is doomed not to last. At the same time, punk musicians developed ways to deal with live violence. The lead singer of "Black Flag" looks middle-class in front of the camera, and his eyebrows flutter to describe the stunt he has practiced while singing and accurately punching back close people. He was like a thug, naked on stage, twisting violently while singing, becoming an excellent footnote to punk animalism.
Another charismatic character in this episode is Daryl Jennifer of the band Bad Brain. He flipped like Bruce Lee on the stage, not understanding music theory and only basing on the combination of dots, lines and surfaces on the piano. "Bad Brain" came out in the punk world dominated by white men, and the unique dashing talent of reggae and punk plus black people surprised the white punk musicians on the stage, and after the performance, they stuck to the "bad brain" like a fart worm. Darryl is particularly fresh among the old punks in the film, which must have something to do with his interest in punk that scurryes like the wind.
After the enthusiasm subsided, he did not deliberately retain it, and his teammates allowed the "bad brain" to become a legend of short-lived existence.
In the fourth episode, punk enters the era of pop punk. In the pre-Internet era when radio was king, the music of each city became its own genre. Lonely Seattle, people who have been there will understand why the music is somber there. "People can only play music in the room", where the handsome Kurt Cobain was born. Kathleen Hannah, a female punk who is close to him, is an aging actress in front of the camera, but she is a member of the female punk band "Bikini Killing", and has devoted her life to fighting against the ugly view of "women are stupid, weak, and bad".
Kurt Cobain
"Green Day" lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong, who appeared later, was described by his colleagues as a "slightly twisted Beatles" and "lost but loving". They are the superstars of punk history, truly bringing underground culture into the big stadiums. But "Green Day" makes an impression only of the touring bus, the Titanic poster and the TV interviews Armstrong gave, acting like a fledgling shy star.
This treatment may be intended to fit the theme of the episode: once something cool becomes popular, the magic is lost. The "Green Day", which has been very successful on the pop stage, is just a little ridiculous traitor in the punk field.
There's a saying that the coolest punks are actually women, like Patti Smith. In the punk that appears on camera, it is also a woman who tells the truth. Catherine Hannah is not inspirational, she points to the camera and says, "If punk turns into a documentary, into a bunch of old melons farting and talking about prehistory, it's going to die." Punk is not history, it's what little kids are doing. Renovating the past into the future is the value of looking back at it all. Never sanctify it. Once this happened, Punk lay down completely in the coffin. ”
Patti Smith