Why do people always confuse NW and Post-Punk ?

[Clifford Darling]

^ I see what you're saying. Right now I'm listening to The Fixx's first album "Shuttered Room," which came out in 1982. I always considered it "New Wave" because The Fixx got lumped in with "New Wave," but I could just as easily call it a stylish rock album.

[EccentricSage]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Clifford Darling[/i]
<br>"Punk" was an entirely negative genre more concerned with calling people "poseurs" than making interesting art. There was also an ass-kicking macho streak in it. Lots of male aggression.

Well, that gets tired fast. I listened to the Sex Pistols to hear what they were all about, but I don't think I've listened to "Never Mind the Bollocks" more than twice in my life. I find it's not interesting music, and that's Sex Pistols at their most listenable.
[/quote]

Yeah, I baught a Sexpistols album for the cultural/historical relivence of punk and the backlash against it... The music is shit, though. The documentary I saw revealed the experiment that this band was to be a far more interesting peice of work than any of their music. Yet all these kids on Youtube fight over what is real 'punk' and give negative points to people who point out that they were created to be a clothing advertisement. Hilarious. Punk's core values... such a joke.

I'll have to check out the other bands you mention. I was too young in the 80's, so everything is still new to me.


[quote][i]Originally posted by Bad Penny[/i]
<br>Very interesting discussion, and I'm in strong agreement with Miami's post.

Post-punk was not a reaction against punk. In essence, it grew up in sympathy with punk. That's always been my main argument against Reynold's thesis. It's all very well employing hindsight, but in those very fertile years around 78/79 and onwards, the retrospective generalisations now current simply didn't apply.

I'd back up Miami's examples and add a few more. The Undertones, for example - I remember writing something about them and one of the band members reacted with horror when I inadvertently used the term 'new wave'. To them, the term was a betrayal of the punk ideal which they'd wholly bought into. Whereas someone like Bid of the Monochrome Set believes that 'new wave' was the umbrella term derived from French cinema that actually encompassed everything that subsequently evolved, including punk. Most American punks, like the Kennedys (well, specifically Biafra), view the term new wave as a surrender of core values to commercial instincts.

The added complication is that, in the UK, the term 'independent' (and its diminutive 'indie') crosses all over the musical genres as a technical classification that ultimately merged into a musical one.

And there are bands that fit all four of those categories (punk, post-punk, new wave, independent) to a degree, depending on where your prejudices are. Joy Division spring to mind. They'd probably fit 'alternative' programming as well - though I've always found that term largely meaningless. Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains etc etc were always just rock bands to me, so the idea that 'alternative' denoted some kind of additional cultural cache was faintly ludicrous.

While it is useful to re-define these things, my caveat is that, as several posters have illustrated, trying too hard to do so risks overlooking the fact that there was a great deal of fluidity and confluence at play. Like SG's point about Comsat Angels - depending on which point you chanced on their output, you'd draw very different conclusions on what they represented and where they 'belonged'. The same is true of The Thompson Twins, Flying Lizards, or even Altered Images. Or how about Scritti Politti, etc etc.
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I want to thank you and all the people you're responding to in this thread. I've been puzling over this issue ever since I encountered people argueing about it on YouTube. I hadn't realised how much termoil there had been in the movement, splintering it into all these diferent clasifications. In hindsight it seems silly to dwell on, yet I can see why bands at the time got pissed off about termanology. Still, what a headache now. lol I just hope fans and bandmembers alike will be forgiveing of younger fans like myself who realy haven't a clue who liked to be called what.

BTW, I remember Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots were from the Siatle Underground... I remember them identifying themselves as such, and as a form of punk. I think it was the media that called them Indi (wich was rediculous) and Grunge. I remember Kurt saw the term Grunge as the comercialisation of what his music had stood for. It seems like this patern occurs over and over again with every new musical movement, to the point where now the industry can even fake a movement, thus giveing us Emo. [xx(] Alternative I always took to be those realy mellow rock bands of the mid 90's. *shrugs* I could be wrong. I can't put my finger on it, but there was something cohesive about the style of Alternative rock at least at that time. I agree Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple don't fit Alternative as much as rock. Hell, I think Pearl Jam's songs easily fit in on a classic rock station now that they are no longer the new big thing.

I realise that's all a tad OT, but since it came up, I couldn't resist the chance to be of some use. lol


I guess generaly, after the fact it becomes a bit pointless to get caught up over termanology, since if one wre to say Siatle Underground, no one would know you meant Grunge. Likewise if we're to say Synth Pop, Goth Rock, Post Punk, New Romantic how many people will have any clue WTF we are talking about? I think I'd just sound like a wannabe eletist if I talk like that. But I'll gladly look to those who lived these movements for guidance.

Hm... on the topic of diferent countries identifying bands by diferent genres, I know some of the Japanese bands influenced by punk, synthpop, new wave, goth, etc. are a lot less particular, because the media in Japan had no flipping clue what they were talking about. I remember reading a translation of a Buck-Tick interview where one of the members was trying very hard to explain to the interviewer that B-T didn't invent their sound and look, but that they were inspired by many diferent Western bands. (Buck Tick were always very honerable about giveing credit where it's due. ) They only used the terms New Wave, Punk, and Goth. Though I know in Japan bands like Soft Ballet are called Synth Pop.... wich took some gfigureing out from me as they weren't very pop at all... lol... It's all very confuseing. Hm. Actualy I remember a Greek B-T fan claiming to have lived in Japan calling B-T synth Pop even though early B-T didn't have any members that played synth. So there's a lot of termanology confusion across language barriers.

I'm rambling teribly, sorry.