At 01:04 PM 3/9/99 -0600, Kelly wrote:
>See, now, and I thought the whole *point* of punk was to *not* be able to
>play well. I am not being facetious here. I thought the general punk
>stance was "F**k this elitist, bourgeois, closed music system. We're gonna
>play even though we don't know how, and maybe that'll turn the world of
>music on its ear, and even if it doesn't we'll have a good time with our
>mates making a whole lot of noise. Being all tied up in technique and
>knowing how to play is for wankers. Tear up everything."
Well, that WAS part of the ideology of the thing. But one thing I'd say is
that it's been a little bit overstated since then--that is, the point
wasn't that you didn't have to know how to play your instrument but that
you didn't have to know how to play the kinds of comparitively complex shit
that, say, ELP played. Punk was three-chords simple, in other words, but it
didn't necessarily reject basic competence.
The other thing to note, of course, is that Steve Jones and Mick Jones and
The Ramones and whoever else really could play their "simple" music pretty
damn well, especially after their first albums when all that touring forced
them to, uh, practice night after night. --david cantwell
