70s crap

[Sherwood, Harrison]

Quoting Andrew:

>Anyway, I really liked lots of the lousy musician stuff. Even Sham 69
>sounded quite good live. You really really had to be there. I don't
>think I have met anyone of my generation from the US who has
>understood how much the whole thing was wrapped up with British
>culture.
>-------------------------------
>Andrew--

>From: 	RR.TFCNY at mail.fdncenter.org
>
>Would you agree with those who, when punk re-emerged in the U.S. (at 
>least in the pop conscious when Nirvana exploded in 91), claimed that 
>final the conditions were right (stagnant economy, no jobs, slackers, 
>etc) or similar to, Britain in the 70's where punk emerged?  Seems most 
>US attitude toward punk then (and even today) was more a thing to latch 
>onto not a reflection of actual lives lived day to day. 

Yabbut, yabbut, whose life are we talking about, here? _Which_ lives?
We're a much more heterogeneous society than that Britain: Who _were_
the American punks in 1977?

Answer: art-school dropouts and self-styled Urban
Guerrillas--intellectuals, in other words, manifestly NOT disaffected
working-class kids on the dole. This is what I was driving at in my last
post about the cultural differences between American and British punk:
They were vastly different beasts because they arose from vastly
different impulses. Get right down to it, they don't even _resemble_
each other very much--there's an ocean of difference between them in
aesthetic and political sensibility. Politics Hates Art. Art Hates
Politics.

> We americans 
>needed someone to write "I'm So Bored with the U-S-A. Unfortunately, it 
>wasn't an American 

"I wouldn't live there/If you paid me..."

Seems to me the very existence of proto-punk scenes like CBGB and
Cleveland and Detroit was a fairly unambiguous statement of unpatriotic
sentiments. The very fact that American punk is missing a Big Singalong
Anthem like "Anarchy in the UK" or some such, tells us something, don't
you think? 

This also conjures questions about the nature of boredom and the
rebellion it engenders: Britain's arose out of deprivation; America's
out of superabundance. Fair summary?

"Here we are now, entertain us..."

Harrison

>