Emo Love

It’s punk Jim, but not as we know it….

Punk is still alive and kicking (literally!) even though we don’t hear about it so much in the mainstream, or see as many people standing around at the bus stop with pink mohicans anymore. Punk is a subculture with a rich history in music, ideologies, and fashion, and the whole punk scene is a mishmash of smaller subcultures with bizarre names, including ‘Oi!’ which embraces the street-level skinhead style of punk and involves an element of extreme right wing politics.

The punk movement fights an eternal war with all that is commercialization, but is inevitably bits get sucked off and appropriated into the mainstream. This can be seem in the fluffy kind of punk subcultures that are constantly emerging, such as MTV punk, or Punk Pop, which kindly leaves any attempt at serious politics and ideology at the door and just involves some rollicking good tunes from bands like Fall Out Boy and Blink 182.

Punk is all about subverting and rebelling, so a true punk band should have the word ‘anti-establishment’ somewhere in their album blurb, and most definitely should speak out in some fashion on contemporary issues and debates. All sorts of social and cultural problems such as unemployment and political idealism have been taken apart and criticised by punk bands, and the DIY aspect to this genre, with bands taking pride in producing and distributing their own music, has long provided an excellent and uncensored platform from which to attack the commercial mainstream.

Although technically the hey days of punk are over and we are now in a post-punk slump, true punk bands still exists in a variety of strange incarnations. Bands like Green Day and Bad Religion took the stripped down, fast and hard-edged style of punk and threw it into the mainstream, but inevitably were criticised for selling into the commercialism that they were meant to subvert. The underground punk scene still thrives, but as always you have to know where to look, and remember to leave the designer sport labels and gangsta bling at home!