students often look askance at me when I tell them punk is the most important musical gift from my generation to theirs. putting aside the question of whether punk is dead or not (it's not), it's the dominance of the diy movement within punk and anarchism that's more important than the anger and frustration so many think of if they think of punk rock at all.
malcolm mclaren's death last week reminded me, whatever else I might have thought of his skills, that his skill as a popularizer of punk remains untouched. whether through his fashions, his merchandising or his work as an agent, he set his teeth firmly into punk's flesh and howled. it was to make money of course, but it was also a movement in whose ethic that anyone can learn through trial-and-error to be better at what he tries that he believed. sex, the shop, was a do it yourself operation from the gitgo, and I'd argue his management of groups like the sex pistols, adam and the ants, the new york dolls or bow wow wow showed the same signs.
punk, I argue, is a very spiritual music and movement in its insistence that anyone, despite her addictions or illnesses or looks or lack of education, has a voice that deserves to be heard. contrast a good punk song (there are bad ones of course) with anything produced by the machine today and see the difference in articulation, focus and point. punk, for all its detractors' views of it as nihilistic, is optimistic: you don't sing songs about someplace you hate.
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