June Pulliam - Listen to Punk Rock! Exploring a Musical Genre

LISTEN TO
PUNK ROCK!

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LISTEN TO
PUNK ROCK!

Exploring a Musical Genre

JUNE MICHELE PULLIAM

Exploring Musical Genres

James E. Perone, Series Editor

Copyright 2021 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pulliam, June Michele, author.

Title: Listen to punk rock! : exploring a musical genre / June Michele Pulliam.

Description: Santa Barbara : Greenwood, 2021. | Series: Exploring musical genres | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020033566 (print) | LCCN 2020033567 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440865725 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781440865732 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Punk rock musicHistory and criticism.

Classification: LCC ML3534 .P84 2021 (print) | LCC ML3534 (ebook) | DDC 781.6609dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033566

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033567

ISBN: 978-1-4408-6572-5 (print)

978-1-4408-6573-2 (ebook)

252423222112345

This book is also available as an eBook.

Greenwood

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This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dear Reader:

I am sorry in advance that I did not include all of your favorite bands, in order, in this book.

Contents

A sk some music fans, and they will tell you that genre labels are rubbish and that imposing them on artists and pieces of music diminishes the diversity of the work of performers, songwriters, instrumental composers, and so on. Still, in the record stores of old, in descriptions of radio-station formats (on-air and Internet), and at various streaming audio and download sites today, we have seen and continue to see music categorized by genre. Indeed, some genre boundaries are at least somewhat artificial, and it is true that some artists and some pieces of music transcend boundaries. But categorizing music by genre is a convenient way of keeping track of the thousands upon thousands of musical works available for listeners enjoyment; its analogous to the difference between having all your documents on your computers home screen versus organizing them into folders. So, Greenwoods Exploring Musical Genres series is a genre- and performance groupbased collection of books and e-books. The publications in this series will provide listeners with background information on the genre; critical analysis of important examples of musical pieces, artists, and events from the genre; discussion of must-hear music from the genre; analysis of the genres impact on the popular culture of its time and on later popular-culture trends; and analysis of the enduring legacy of the genre today and its impact on later musicians and their songs, instrumental works, and recordings. Each volume will also contain a bibliography of references for further reading.

We view the volumes in the Exploring Musical Genres series as a go-to resource for serious music fans, the more casual listener, and everyone in between. The authors in the series are scholars, who probe into the details of the genre and its practitioners: the singers, instrumentalists, composers, and lyricists of the pieces of music that we love. Although the authors scholarship brings a high degree of insight and perceptive analysis to the readers understanding of the various musical genres, the authors approach their subjects with the idea of appealing to the lay reader, the music nonspecialist. As a result, the authors may provide critical analysis using some high-level scholarly tools; however, they avoid any unnecessary and unexplained jargon or technical terms or concepts. These are scholarly volumes written for the enjoyment of virtually any music fan.

Every volume has its length parameters, and an author cannot include every piece of music from within a particular genre. Part of the challenge, but also part of the fun, is that readers might agree with some of the choices of must-hear music and disagree with others. So while your favorite example of, say, grunge music might not be included, the authors choices might help you to open up your ears to new, exciting, and ultimately intriguing possibilities.

By and large, these studies focus on music from the sound-recording era: roughly the 20th century through the present. American guitarist, composer, and singer-songwriter Frank Zappa once wrote:

On a record, the overall timbre of the piece (determined by equalization of individual parts and their proportions in the mix) tells you, in a subtle way, WHAT the song is about. The orchestration provides important information about what the composition IS and, in some instances, assumes a greater importance than the composition itself. (Zappa with Occhiogrosso 1989, 188; italics and capitalization from the original)

The gist of Zappas argument is that everything that the listener experiences (to use Zappas system of emphasizing words)including the arrangement, recording mix and balance, lyrics, melodies, harmonies, instrumentation, and so onmakes up a musical composition. To put it another way, during the sound-recording era, and especially after the middle of the 20th century, we have tended to understand the idea of a piece of musicparticularly in the realm of popular musicas being the same as the most definitive recording of that piece of music. And this is where Zappas emphasis on the arrangement and recordings production comes into play. As a result, a writer delving into, say, new wave rock will examine and analyze the B-52s version of Rock Lobster and not just the words, melodies, and chords that any band could sing and play and still label the result Rock Lobster. To use Zappas graphic way of highlighting particular words, the B-52s recording IS the piece. Although they have expressed it in other ways, other writers such as Theodore Gracyk (1996, 18) and Albin J. Zak III (2001) concur with Zappas equating of the piece with the studio recording of the piece.

In the case of musical genres not as susceptible to being tied to a particular recordinggenerally because of the fact that they are genres often experienced live, such as classical music or Broadway musicalsthe authors will still make recommendations of particular recordings (we dont all have ready access to a live performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts