il punk è sociologicamente interessante
...a questo proposito, ecco un articolo piuttosto interessante, anche se OT rispetto al discorso di Briano (scusa)

PUNK AND AUTONOMIA.
Introduction
In 1978 Crass produced a poster that said: "Germany got Bader-Meinhof, England got punk, but they can't kill it." I want to put forward the idea that it is far more analogous to punk to say Italy got Autonomia. 1977 was a year of explosions of creativity amongst sections of youth in England and Italy. In Germany it was a year of repression, of the closing of space. This contemporaneity triggers questions about potential similarities but also masks huge differences between the Italian movement of '77 and the emergence of punk rock in Britain. Punk's emergence at the heart of the Anglo-American music industry ensured the rapid dissemination of its innovations and a widespread and enduring influence. The Autonomia movement's roots however lay in a much more heated and sophisticated political environment (...)

Punk as self-valorisation
Taken a-historically the Italian movement of mass occupations, demonstrations and riots doesn't have many surface similarities with the development of punk rock in the UK. There is some resemblance between punk and the Metropolitan Indians but the history of the two countries developed quite separately. At the time Italy was treated as exceptional, particularly the longevity of the movement (Hardt, Vianno, 1996) There doesn't seem to be any direct circulation of influence between the two movements, at least not until the eighties when punk and autonomist influence fused in many countries, most influentially in the Dutch squatters' movement and the German Autonomes. In Italy punk was an influence only when its popularity and use as a point of unity helped restart a movement grounded in autonomist ideas based around the Centri Social, "self managed, occupied social centres" in the early eighties (Wright, 2000). However for both countries, and international capitalism as a whole, the mid seventies were a time of dramatic change. The oil crisis of 1973 signalled the beginnings of the end of the post-war settlement. capital was embarking on a project of restructuring which would undermine Keyenesian policies based on harnessing old forms of working class power.
Punk was a media aware, self-conscious and self mythologising movement from its birth. Trying to disentangle the story and meaning of such a complex and varied set of experiences is only complicated because our experience of it now is so mediated. The Autonomia movement was just as complex and given the lack of English language history it is possible to outline the bare bones of the story in only the most general and provisional manner. Punk's over-analysed status, if anything, makes it more difficult to give a definitive portrayal. Recent writings about punk (Sabine, 1999) have tended to further problematise this situation by asserting that the most 'part time' punks experience was just as authentic and valid an experience of punk as John Lydon's. Of course there are many 'lines of flight' from punk. However if we return to autonomist theory being one of pragmatics, the ultimate resort is not to a claim of authenticity but to one of efficacy.

One of the useful things about looking at punk as a moment of self-valorisation is that it emphasises the continuities amongst struggles that might not be apparent. One of the questions that has always been contentious is whether punk was a reaction against or a continuation of, the

cycle of struggles of the sixties. Of course this comes down to how you interpret the sixties. Autonomists have interpreted them as the development of needs and desires that went beyond those that could be provided by the post war settlement. As Negri and Hardt says in a recent book: "'Dropping out' is really a poor conception of what was going on in Haight Ashbury and across the United States in the 1960's. The two essential operations were the refusal of the disciplinary regime and the experimentation with new forms of productivity." (Hardt, Negri, 2000 P274) These struggles disrupted the post-war regimes of discipline, refusing the mass factory and nuclear family structures and favouring the sort of immaterial and mobile productivity that was taken up in distorted form as the new productive paradigm for capitalism.

Jamie Reid's famous slogan "Never trust a hippy" was aimed first and foremost at Richard Branson (Reid, Savage, 1987) but it did sum up a generational anti hippy feeling. As sixties veteran Caroline Coon says: "I hadn't expected to see the idealism of my generation denigrated with such aggressive negativity. When these boys were slagging off hippies, I realized they had grown up reading about hippies in the tabloid press, and what they were doing was spouting "the shock and the filth" of the hippies. So I said 'The gutter press did to the hippies what they going to do to you'"(Savage, 1991 p.231)

However punk was a continuation of many of the sixties ideas and themes in an anti sixties form. What punk was reacting against was the recuperation of the sixties struggles. It was the continuation of 60's counter cultural ideas in the form of a nihilism against that media creation: hippy. [color=orange]What punks tended to object to in hippy were the fakes, the falseness and totalitarian niceness that hippy had been reduced to;[/color] symbolised perhaps by the yellow smiley face logo. On Jamie Reid's poster for American punk band the Dead Kennedys record "California Uber Alles" the smiley face is portrayed as masking the threat of a laid back Californian style of Fascism. This seems iconic of a certain theme in punk; the assertion of social realism against the superficiality of the smiley face. This was after all a time when the recomposition of capital was making the smug self satisfaction of recuperated hippy unsustainable.

The form this reaction took was a nihilistic rage against the failings of the previous generation. The rejection of hippy can be seen in the earliest manifestations of punk around the club CBGB's in New York. Stylistically this was represented by short spiky hair and straight trousers, 'like trouser like mind' as Joe Strummer said (Sabine, 1999 p.6), but also by a stylised urbanism, violence and unpleasantness. This rejection of hippy certainly wasn't alien to the sixties counterculture. The San Francisco Diggers staged its mock funeral in 1967, proclaiming "the death of hippie, devoted son of the mass media" (Lee, Shlain, 1985 p.191). However in the CBGB's scene the negation of hippy sometimes slipped in to reactionary and even racist postures(Bangs, 1990).

In London there were a group of people gathered around the Sex Pistols who were still enthused by the libertarian spirit of May 1968. Arguably it took this reconnection of punk to its more radical predecessors to bring out the revolutionary potential in punk. The influence of Situationist ideas is

usually traced through Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid's association with the group King Mob in the early 1970's (Savage, 1990). King Mob contained members who had been expelled from the Situationist International for being too influenced by the "street gang with an analysis" (Vague, 1997 p.130) Black Mask Group, later called Up Against the Wall Motherfucker.

Congregating around the Sex Pistols were others influenced by the sixties: Sophie Richmond had been involved in the Situationist magazine and printing press Suburban press with Jamie Reid but she had also previously been involved with the libertarian socialist group Solidarity. Others include Bernie Rhodes the Clash's manager, John Tiberi the Sex Pistols Road manager and Fred Vermorel, friend of McLaren's and publisher of the pro-Situationist magazine "International Vandalism". Vermorel later said of the situation: "The whole Pistols thing was basically a Marxist conspiracy, which sounds ridiculous but that's what it was. You had Jamie Reid, Sophie Richmond and Malcolm sitting around talking radical politics, about how to radicalise this and that, how far can we go with this and that." (Vague, 1997 p.135)

The level of influence they had on the band is contentious but they clearly provided a milieu of ideas around punk when it was being created and songs were being written. The affinity between punk and the ideas circulating some years earlier in King Mob is clear. Practising an active nihilism, outrageous plans were mooted, including blowing up a waterfall in the lake district as a protest against romanticism. Reflecting the attitude: "Better to be horrible than a pleasant altruistic hippy, as a kind of undialectical over-reaction to hippy."(Wise, D. Wise, S. 1996 p. 66). This nihilism was also apparent in punk, as indicated in its name. In the early seventies Chris Gray a member of King Mob had circulated the idea of creating "a totally unpleasant pop group" (Wise, D. Wise, S. 1996 p. 67). He never got further than some graffiti proclaiming the Chris Gray Band but the idea was one of the many threads which fed into the Sex Pistols. It was planned as a critique of consumerism, an expose of the rubbish capitalism will commodify, an unveiling of the workings of the music industry and a repudiation of its artistic pretensions. The idea's influence can be seen in McLaren's retrospective interpretation of punk as a swindle perpetrated on the music industry. The Pistols as the anti Bay City Rollers, a playing back of the right wing press's interpretation of punk, the media unwittingly creating its own worst nightmare (Savage, 1990).

Of course punk was more than just the machinations of a few manipulators. A group of suburban and inner city teenagers were already exploiting the gaps in pop culture to create their own style and way of life. The untutored genius of Johnny Rotten's persona is one of those things that just cannot be planned. That's the problem with the 'punk as con' narrative, the Sex Pistols were too good. Their critique was so strong it undermined all previously existing pop culture, including the position of political rock (Garnett, 1999). Greil Marcus argues that "the Sex pistols made a breach in... pop" (Marcus, 1989 p.3). By undermining the conventions of pop and rock the Sex Pistols opened up a huge liberating space. Musically, by refusing to learn to play their instruments properly, punk broke down the conventions that had straight-jacketed musicians. By demystifying culture punk created a space for an explosion of self activity. People were inspired to form their own bands, create their own fanzines or outfits or put on their own gigs. The legacy of the empowerment people felt is still with us. As Punk journalist Richard Boon says: The threat posed by earlier punk was that intelligent young working class people would throw off the shackles of oppression! and step into history!" (Savage, 1991 p.397)

In this sense punk can be seen as a moment of self-valorisation analogous to the Metropolitan Indians in Italy. A powerful self constituting experiment in new ways of being. Punk, through records, fanzines and gigs, can be seen as a point of deterritorialised unity amongst a constituency subject to the atomising effects of an increase in youth unemployment (3). The ethos of 'Do It Yourself' entailed a creativity outside the realm of work. This refusal of work extended to the unemployed: after all the work of the unemployed is to look for work and act as a downward pressure on waged workers demands. The point of unity provided by punk was shown most dramatically when the Sex Pistols record "God Save the Queen" reached number one during the Queens Jubilee week. The fact that name of the record was famously blanked out of the charts listings is indicative of the important role it played in representing subjectivities excluded from official discourse.

One of the strengths of Self valorisation as a concept is its awareness of its own limits. If we take Marxism as an immanent critique of capitalism then its application to struggles that push beyond capitalism is limited. Projects of self-valorisation must be grasped in their own terms. What autonomist Marxism can do is identify the scars that projects of self-valorisation bear from their birth within capitalism. As Harry Cleaver (1992 p.134) puts it: "We craft autonomous environments and activities but we do so in spaces scarred by capitalist exploitation and with commodities and personalities at least partly shaped by the process of valorisation." When applied to punk this can help identify the scars of its birth in the music industry and clarify some of the directions that it was pushing in beyond the industry. One of those scars upon which punk would flounder was its inability to move beyond the rock band form.

Part of the motivation for punk was the experience of sixties rock stars disappearing into stadiums and achieving demi-god status. Punk at its best contained a thrust towards breaking down the separation of band and audience. A line traceable back to Lautreamont's demand for a "poetry made by all" (Marcus, 1990 p.240). This thrust is identifiable in the early gigs when the audience was as important as the bands in creating the style and the attitude of punk. Indeed the audience one week would form bands and be playing the next week. Indicative of the cultural empowerment set off by punk. However unable to shed the form of bands, gigs and records the demands of the industry and capitalist valorisation gradually reasserted itself.

From a feeling of bands being in it together as part of a movement there was already a creeping elitism by summer of 1976 as bands started jockeying for position in the queue for record company interest (Savage, 1991). Punk's inability to escape the scars of its birth in the music industry resulted in it having a partial critique of capitalism. Unable to see clearly beyond its origins punk posited an opposition between Independent and Major record labels. Although Independents can provide valuable space and many not for profit record companies still do, 25 years of hard experience have shown small record companies to be subject to the same disciplines as larger ones. This is not to say that if only punks had been better Marxists they'd have found a solution to these contradictions. There are no pure self-valorisations. However the autonomist identification of these contradictions as rooted in capitalist discipline helps undermine the false line in the sand between Independent and Major that is still being drawn today.

The Sex Pistols position in the mediated belly of the beast was heightened to crisis point after their appearance on television with Bill Grundy. Many of the complexities and contradictions of punk were flattened. The space that had been opened up was narrowed by the dispersal of punk's ideas through the mediated form of the tabloid story. But as Jon Savage comments:

"That point is reached when the mass media take over, a necessary process if that movement is to be pop. Within this transaction, simplicity is inevitably imposed on complex phenomena, but there is also a fresh burst of energy released with unpredictable, liberating results." (Savage, 1991 p.278)

The Sex Pistols fought against the process of mediation by avoiding being pinned down, hiding their influences and dodging an easy identity but still the breach they had made was to some extent closed by 1979. However even in mediated form the message of punk was powerful enough to provoke a new wave of creativity that reached into even the smallest towns of the UK. After the destruction of the Sex Pistols and the co-optation of punk bands into the history of rock there remained enough space to provide new waves of self-valorisation. Punk itself couldn't have existed without the self valorisations of the sixties. Both practically, widespread squatting in London was a material precondition of punk, but also the theoretically. "While it may no longer have been 'realistic' to 'demand the impossible', the memory of having envisioned the impossible remained palpable. It was this that perhaps made the politics of punk possible" (Garnett, 1999 p.24).

In turn the space and subjectivities developed in punk provided the basis for new struggles and self valorisations. Of most note amongst the second wave of punk bands were Crass. By "making the first, and only, concerted attempt to work through the nihilist archetypes of the time" (Savage, 1991 p.481), they created the subculture of Anarchopunk and helped form lines of dissent that lead directly into the anti-capitalist struggles of the last few years. Of course this is only one of the lines out of the chaos of contradictions in punk. A line can also be drawn from the nihilism of punks negation of hippy through right wing punk bands to neo-Nazi white power rock scene of today (Sabine, 1999). A line for which the category of self-valorisation might not be so useful.

"A lot of the people in cultural studies these days kind of remind me of the FBI in the fifties: They find subversion everywhere." (Marcus, 1991 p.28) While autonomist theory does see subversion everywhere it avoids the uncritical and unspecific idea of subversion to which I think Marcus is referring. One of its strengths is that it enables the analysing of links between struggles in the cultural sphere and those outside it. Applying autonomist theory to punk shows the links between two quite different movements. Looking at punk as a moment of self-valorisation is useful in separating its more utopian impulses from the disciplines to which it is subjected by capitalism. Viewing Marxism as a critique immanent to capitalism helps identify the limits of its usefulness for analysing culture.

ma io propio non li vedo i padri del punk gli stones...poi il discorso di ricchi e famosi che centra.....ricchi o non ricchi è che oggi gli stones non sono più creativi come un tempo tutto quì...ma questo vale per tutti! i troggs non mi piacciono eccetto qualche pezzo....jagger odia exile forse perchè è troppo Richards....speriamo che non lo rovini il discolo..

d'accordissimo con te,Wicked...Non e' una questione di soldi...E' che x un motivo o x un altro,con la fine dei '70 se ne sono andati i capolavori e la "voglia" di sperimentare, di reinventare un genere, di rischiare...Pero' sono convinto, e accidenti se lo sono,che se pungolati nel modo giusto o presi nell'orgoglio, i nostri saprebbero tirar fuori ancora un paio di dischi coi controcoglioni...Smanie moderniste-remixiste di Michelino e salute di HUMANRIFF permettendo...

Sono d'accordo con te e.. non preoccuparti,sono molto bene accetti gli interventi come i tuoi.

Capisco che tu non li consideri padri del punk ma sulla ricchezza e la fama hai frainteso. Gli snob odiano i gruppi celebri e ricchi come Beatles e Stones e sovrastimano gruppi minori per essere ontrocorrente. E' la sindrome di Scaruffi. Non stavo parlando degli Stones di oggi.
Per me oltre alla musica degli stones del periodo Let it bleed-exile sia su disco che live è punk il fatto che Richards grondasse di sangue dalle dita al termine di una seduta di registrazione del 69, è punk la modalità con la quale Richards surriscaldava gli amplificatori nel 1971 per Sticky fingers per trovare un'ennesima distorsione, è punk la cantina in costa azzurra in cui venivano registrati brani senza che gli strumenti fossero perfettamente accordati e mixando e producendo il disco in modo grezzo, è punk lo stile di vita di Richards e compagni tra vasche piene di alcol, eroina per endovene, orge in aereo, letti in fiamme, tv giù dalle finestre e droghe varie nascoste negli strumenti in una ex villa nazista. Poi ad ognuno la sua opinione. Invito comunque ad ascoltare Jumpin jack flash in una versione live del 70 e paragonarla a Search and Distroy: io non ci vedo una differenza così notevole. Comunque quello che volevo dire è che tra Chuck Berry e gli Stones c'è un grande salto, una rottura; tra gli stones e i Pistols no. Gli stones sperimentali hanno innovato il rock grazie a Brian Jones: ma questo è un altro discorso. Gli stones con Taylor hanno fatto cose non troppo originali e innovative ma toste e dure come poche nella tradizione che porta dal garage al punk.

bellissima descrizione!
ineccepibile

Eppure io trovo che alcune influenze anche musicali ci siano nell'epoca fine anni 60. penso ad esempio a stray cat blues. Loro certo non cercavano di essere punk, ma la canzone è bella acida, ho letto da qualche parte che si ispiravano ai velvet undergrund. Ad esempio citadel mi ha fatto sempre pensare ad una canzone con toni decisamente punk, anche helter skelter dei beatles oppure rip this joint, all down the line. E' tipico rock dei RS naturalmente ma gratta ed è ruvido come dovrebbe essere una canzone punk. Naturalmente è solo una mia impressione.
Con questo non voglio dire di certo che sono dei precursori del punk, però tra la sterminata discografia ci scappa anche qualche pezzo di questo tipo.

non riesco a vedere nulla di punk negli stones, nè nelle sonorità nè nello stile....se punk sono le dita insanguinate di Richards dopo aver suonato allora sono punk anche le mie braccia bruciacchiate dopo aver stirato una tonnellata di camicie di mio marito....
:wink:

Ciao... dicevo oltre alla musica... e poi ho parlato di eroina, letti in fiamme e altre amenità. Se suoni con ritmi serrati e riff tirati pezzi come rip this joint per me sei punk pure tu...

Parlavo di alcune canzoni, non del repertorio generale. Non si possono certamente identificare i Rolling Stones come precursori del punk. Però anni dopo, nell'epoca punk, si suonava e si cantava in un certo modo. Trovo che alcuni pezzi degli Stones siano cantati e suonati come li avrebbero cantati e suonati dei gruppi punk. Ma ripeto è una mia personalissima impressione.
Ripeto, Citadel quando l'ascolto, per me è una canzone che si avvicina decisamente allo stile punk. Ma nessuno di loro voleva essere punk, non esisteva. La registrazione di Exile, al di la del contenuto, ha influenzato certamente una infinità artisti, questa è storia.
Tuttavia non è assolutamente un disco punk o grunge.
Però è indubbio che sia servito molto negli anni a venire, ha fatto scuola a molti gruppi anche negli anni 90, vedi il fenomeno grunge.
Io trovo che si possano cogliere innumerevoli sfumature ed intuizioni nel loro repertorio e gruppi rock di vario genere, negli anni a venire, hanno utilizzato, estrapolato, radicalizzato, e fatto l'uso che ritenevano opportuno delle idee di Jagger Richards e soci

penso che carla dica una cosa giusta.....comunque ripeto gli Stones non hanno niente ma propio niente di punk! Richards è Tutto fuori che punk( vorrei riccordare che a Richards gli stanno pure sui coglioni punkettari ) ....ma che centra il stile di vita quello che fa ecc.! non pensare che gli Stones hanno inventato tutto loro...anzi spesso si son dovuti adattare ai tempi...vedi some girl( quì ci potrebbe anche essere del punk..) vedi undercover ecc. ecc! comunque vabbè la pensiamo diversamente :wink:

Però Briano, per la cronaca, i Rolling hanno avuto uno stile di vita in un certo modo molto prima che nascesse il fenomeno punk.
Che poi questo loro modo di essere si associ al punk che è nato dopo è un altro discorso.
Voglio dire che Richards ha vissuto in un certo modo, ma non ha mai ostentato la sua tossicodipendenza, semplicemente appariva così come era e non ha mai voluto timbrare politicamente il fenomeno Rolling Stones, tantomeno Jagger, così come ad esempio hanno fatto i Clash.
Il fenomeno punk trovo che rimarcasse decisamente un modo di vivere e di suonare, lo caricava e lo ostentava.
Gli Stones al contrario non hanno mai voluto rimanere incastrati ad un clichè, qualsiasi esso fosse. Sono stati sempre molto attenti a respirare l'aria che c'era in giro e a cambiarla nel giro di poco tempo.
Non avrebbero mai potuto essere e proporre soltanto uno stile musicale, oggi sarebbero vecchi.
Invece come vediamo, sono una freccia nel tempo

hai detto tutto(anche con gli interventi precedenti).concordo in pieno

Ma io non penso che gli stones abbiano inventato tutto. Non hanno inventato il rap, la cucina genovese, il metal, la samba, il comunsimo, la disco, l'aviazione inglese ma con la produzione del periodo taylor hanno concorso alla creazione della tradizione che ha portato al punk. I sex pistols sono cresciuti ascoltando gli stones.Gli stones di fine anni 70 si adattano alla disco music e al punk, èvero ma io non HO MAI PRESO IN CONSIDERAZIONE IN QUESTA DISCUSSIONE GLI STONES POST 73 CHE NON MI INTERESSANO PER NULLA. Gli stones di exile non si adattano ad un bel niente ma gettano le basi per la semplificazione punk. Che gli stones abbiano concorso alla creazione della musica punk è fuori discussione: possiamo discutere in che grado: io ritengo molto tu poco. Ma dire che Richards non ha elementi punk non è un'opinione ma un'asserzione del tipo la terra è piatta o 2 più due fa 5. Richards all'uscita del movimento punk ha dischiarato "noi facciamo punk da 20 anni". Poi che i clash li prendessero in giro insieme a Elvis e Beatles è perché nel 77 gli stones non erano più a certi livelli non c'entra nulla perché sto parlando del periodo 69 73. Per la stessa ragione i Pistols chiamavano gli stones "vecchie scoregge" e gli rubassero in casa ma ciò non toglie che li prendessero ad esempio. Poi ti ripeto gli stones sono uno dei gruppi di riferimento degli stooges padri innegabili del punk (pensa a I Wanna be your dog). E perché? Perché la teoria di Richards del riff senza assolo, dei due accordi e un buco del culo, della mancanza di tecnica, del piglio grezzo e pressapochista, della ricerca della scordatura e della distorsione sono protopunk. Poi possiamo diveregere su quanto siano stati influenti. Ma questo è un altro paio di maniche. Accetto benissimo che mi si dica che sono stati poco influenti sul movimento 77 e infinitamente meno degli Stooges. Ma che non abbiano nulla di punk no.

giusto quello che dice the worst! :wink: