Punk: the power of music

When second wave punk-band, the Exploited, one of punk rock’s most loud and ferocious bands, sang “punk’s not dead” on Top of the Pops in the early eighties, punk indeed seemed dead and gone – both musically and as an ideal.

Many of the original punk bands had either split or had become commercialized. And the ones that hadn’t seemed rather stale and dishonest in their insistence on retaining a ‘hollier than thou,’ DIY, inverted snobbism, self-conscious pose.

The youth fashion and music of the New Romantic wave of pop music, excessive glamour and make-up, escapism and self-indulgence was slowly but surely taking over from punk – although youth culture and sub-cultures, like all culture, is obviously porous and interdependent. 

But that punk should be dead is only true if punk is seen in a generalised and superficial way.