ngw

Dude, every now and then I think about opening the page, I get the emails. And, regularly, you involve me. Don’t make up crap, come on, I’ve never bored anyone with my stories, I just explained some things in response to your blatant and now proven ignorance. You should thank me, you know how it is, a young guy spending his life on a site and dropping 10,000 comments for 90 reviews surely must not have a full life. But whatever, we’re talking about the same person who knows my musical tastes by heart because I always comment on the same genre (totally false, by the way). Too bad he says it in a review of the Area, amidst the obvious laughter from everyone.
And to be fair, if your plan is to provoke, get 400 comments of laughs, and at the same time sit in front of the computer with a dumbfounded look from all the embarrassing moments you’ve collected, great job, total success.

1) The Sex Pistols lacking what distinguishes a musician? That’s your phrase, certainly not mine, and objectively false. How can Johnny Rotten revolutionize the dark wave if he is "lacking what distinguishes a musician"?
2) Major label music: this is almost grotesque. Let's take a look at some of these majors? The Pistols have already been mentioned, the Clash are on CBS (critically lambasted at the time), other 77 English punk bands, I think of Sham 69, even on "Borstal Breakout," incredibly produced by the Cale that was being discussed (clearly a loser, a music killer) and the Damned, on "English Channel." Dead Kennedys? Cherry Red, Faulty Products, Alternative Tentacles, Manifesto Records, once again incredible majors. Minutemen? SST, another major founded in 1978 by a member of Black Flag (the ones who stayed atop the charts worldwide for 7 months, LOL!). This SST is particularly interesting because it has all this low-quality punk in its catalog and made "without thinking too much about it": Husker Du, Black Flag, Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth, Bad Brains, and Dinosaur Jr. Let's continue, shall we talk about Operation Ivy (future Rancid)? The economic giant Lookout! Records, no less. I'm getting tired, but believe me, it's really hilarious to see punk as a doll in the hands of the majors; punk is historically self-produced. MacKaye, whom you just called non-punk, founded his own label, Dischord. Just think about those people. Out of curiosity, I looked up the bands that the majors like: Pink Floyd are on EMI/Columbia, Jethro Tull EMI/Columbia/Chrysalis (because apparently these characters who live for art are particularly Renaissance in renegotiating contracts), Genesis on Virgin/Decca/ABC, King Crimson Virgin/Island/Warner, Soft Machine Virgin/Columbia/EMI, EL&P Manticore/Island/Rhino. Really curious. In my humble opinion, you really should get informed because you are making quite a few mistakes. Your view of punk is simplistic; you simply have not understood the phenomenon and have reinterpreted it through your limitations. Feel free to think what you prefer, but as a musician, you should be a bit more open and less prone to these clichés that, frankly, are embarrassing.

Listen, first of all, calm down because you’re drooling, and secondly, you’re completely making up a good part of what you’re saying. It’s actually the same old story, which by the way shows exactly why no one gives a damn about progressive anymore: you’ve thoroughly worn everyone out, both musically and as healthy carriers of the One Unmistakable Musical Truth (and with what results, oh my god, with what results). The fact that you blame punk for the commercialisation of music and its transformation into a market only demonstrates how little you understand this market, markets in general, and music. Music became a mass market long before the arrival of the Sex Pistols, just to say, in their debut year, Abba were all the rage. Meritocracy has nothing to do with it; the music market *is not* defined by musicians but by record labels, being a market, it tends to give people what they want. Starting from this reasoning, even if I were to accept the crazy names you associate with punk (even the Tokio Hotel, 100% melodic music), should I also be angry at Motown and gospel for various Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera? Of course not. All musical genres have dignity, highs and lows. Throwing everything into the same pot based on clearly unspecified criteria and launching into childish and generalist discussions isn’t very serious, and certainly not worthy of someone who apparently feels part of an "elite." Punk has its highs too, and a less distorted view of this genre would certainly give you advantages. Instead of wasting your time spewing anger towards a band of four losers, who are still around and absolutely pathetic, you could listen to an Zen Arcade or an Operation Ivy or a Double Nickel on a Dime. Zen Arcade in particular is a crossover between hardcore and psych, it could therefore gain some success. And this, if I may say, is *pure musical meritocracy*, as well as a mature discussion, where you don’t lump everything together and tend to improve yourself.
Regarding Avril Lavigne, it’s the same old story that anyone attached to music knows by heart, as well as being purely a commercial issue. Someone innovates, take Joy Division for example, give the record label a decade to notice, the band gets signed, the music is cleaned up (look at that, the JD sell 1/10 of their present-day clones), and then it’s launched using distribution and publishing to pump the music into the heads of young idiots. Avril Lavigne has the riffs and look of punk, but she lacks the incendiary attitude, which isn’t a small thing for someone who claims to be the "queen of punk" (poor Siouxie, what have they done to you). Unfortunately for her, and for anyone who understands music at all, punk has already said everything it needed to say and has died with an effect inversely proportional to when it was born, without being a nuisance.
By the way, simplifying your reasoning even further, you argue that any band with any kind of musical merit has nothing to do with punk, even in truly striking cases like Minor Threat (LOL - but you do know that if MacKaye hears you, he’ll put his hands on you, right?), and if it’s meaningless trash, then it’s punk. Oh well, maybe along with music school you could have taken a few lessons in demagogy because if these are truly your arguments, a fan of Tokio Hotel could wipe the floor with you, just to return to the meaningless trash.
Finally (I’m fed up and I’m no longer of the age to respond point by point), maybe you’re the one who doesn’t know John Cale well, because it seems he played with a gentleman named Lou Reed, who didn’t learn to play guitar in 50 years, in a band where he was the only one with any sort of musical knowledge. Revolutionizing music.

Control is derived from the biography written *by his wife*, who wasn't even there during that concert.

No sorry, Curtis was actually following the Sex Pistols; maybe it's better if you do a little research (but maybe I've already said that).

1) Ian Curtis convinced himself that he could sing in a band after a Sex Pistols concert: Joy Division formed during the aftershow. A superficial listen to Warsaw makes it clear what influence they could have had on the band (along with Bowie, Iggy Pop, and many others, no one doubts this).
2) I don’t think your view of what I wrote is particularly shareable; I don’t see the shadow of predestination in my words, quoting from the comments: "The reason for their success is that they were in the right place at the right time." I never spoke of injustices; honestly, I don’t know what you read. They were punks and behaved as such—would that there were more of them, instead of all these little pricks with 5 kg of hairspray on their heads to make a mohawk.
3) Your view of punk is simplistic and stereotypical: I don’t think you’re in a position to judge, knowing only three random bands, presumably without actually understanding them. If you had a deeper knowledge, you wouldn’t speak of a lack of "passion, sacrifice, and dedication" in front of people like Husker Du, Minor Threat, Black Flag, and a truly enormous number of bands. It’s still interesting to find someone convinced that punk has killed anything: by all means, I’m honored, but it’s quite certain that prog committed suicide, failing to represent the common sentiment of Thatcherian England and Reaganian America. As for sales, we’re on the brink of disaster; I couldn’t name a single major punk band that has sold as much as one of the lesser albums by Pink Floyd: you mention the Clash, Ramones, and Sex Pistols? I have my doubts. Apparently, you see some kind of rivalry in "pogo," which makes me suspect you don’t know what it is: what would these "attacks" be? Megalomaniac concerts? What does that mean? It seemed to me that those who had the mega special effects during concerts were different from the Sex Pistols—they played in dives and under pseudonyms.
The Dead Kennedys at the opposite end of "modern punk rock"? Who would be the musicians of "modern punk rock"? The last time I checked, punk reached its peak and completeness in 1984 (with two double albums that you obviously know, since you speak of the genre with such fervor: Zen Arcade and Double Nickels on a Dime); do you have different information, or is 1984 "modern"? I’m sorry (I deliberately skip the joke about Berlusconi, frankly out of place), but you don’t know what you’re talking about, and frankly, when one pretends to talk about "musical values" and high ideals, flaunting culture at every turn (!!!), one could take the trouble to build that culture or at least have enough of it not to fall into the grotesque with unacceptable comparisons. Speak less and listen more, obviously without offense and/or malice.

Explain to me, where would I have been partial? I listed a series of facts, with a very limited number of opinions. Where would the "distorted" view of reality be? I honestly didn't even mention prog, except in passing and indirectly, without giving any opinion about it, especially because I rarely found a progressive listener who could engage in a serious discussion without bringing up technique – a rather amusing point, given that there are only a couple of legendary bands, like Velvet Underground and The Beatles, that were incapable of handling their instruments – or insulting their own intelligence with childish behavior. In short, I would leave out the jabs and various airs of superiority in a review where your peers demonstrated such culture and respect, especially because I don’t know if anyone has told you, but music is music, and the first not to disdain prog were precisely the punks, with crossovers that 1) you definitely don't know 2) the critics definitely love.

In theory, the Wire are good, the Buzzcocks are not. Still, it's pointless to waste time; there’s a good chance that someone has only heard Ever Fallen in Love by the Buzzcocks and 154 by the Wire. He completely misses the concept of "movement"; if two records have similarities at any level, someone must have copied from the other (even if it's from gentlemen like Devoto and Newman).

And how do you know that I am ignorant about music in general? The only certain and proven fact so far is that you wrote a review (quite trivial and childish, by the way) talking about things you don't know at all.

Bullshit: the first EP by the Buzzcocks is from 1976, Pink Flag is from 1977. This is yet another load of crap from the carnet; I think even kids know that the Buzzcocks were among the first, unlike Wire. As for the rest, who gives a damn, it's now common practice to take the name of an album and toss a handful of adjectives around just to sound important. The theory about Wire is interesting too, if only it were true. They formed in 1976, the same year the Sex Pistols debuted, who got together with the arrival of good old Rotten in 1975. Honestly, I don’t mean any harm to you, but you say too much, all aimed at promoting your quirky ideas and tastes. If you really wanted to talk about the subject, you’d be more honest; that's why after a while people get tired of listening to you.