ARE YOU A POST-VOIDOID ???

Do you even know what a Voidoid is?
If you describe yourself as a PUNK in your statz, you probably should.

Imagine the year 1977.
You probably weren't born yet, but you can still try to imagine. It was an important year in the history of punk: punk rock, punk clothes, punk style. In the late '70s, bands like The Sex Pistols and The Jam in England and The Ramones, Patti Smith, and Richard Hell & The Voidoids in New York started recording loud, abrasive, obnoxious songs that became the foundation of all punk that followed. The emphasis in this music was on attitude and noise, not sounding musical. That's why punkers' parents are always saying,''TURN IT DOWN!''

THE SEX PISTOLS are probably the most notorious early punk band, but when the Pistols released Nevermind the Bullocks,here's the Sex Pistols
in 1978, other groups had already begun combining chainsaw guitar sounds and razor-sharp rhythms to create head-banging songs. So let's put on our space-travel suits and go back to New York City in the late '70s to see how THE RAMONES , one of the most influential early punk bands, were rocking.
AT RAMONES CONCERTS (often held at the now-famous New York Club CBGB), jumping up and down pogo-stick-style qualified as dancing. Veterans of the mosh-pit in the '90s might say, "So what? I did that at Lollapalooza." Back then, however, this was a totally new way of dancing. The music demanded it. Super-fast drum beats push the pace in songs like ''BLITZKRIEG BOP'' and ''BEAT ON THE BRAT''.In these punk songs, it's the guitar and bass that have to keep up! The Ramones' lyrics (D-U-M-B!/Everyone's accusing me./I don't want be a pinhead no more!) are as simple as their guitar chords, expressing a boredom with city life and high school. By contrast to The Ramones' deliberate dodo-ism,
New York singer PATTY SMITH and the band RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS
were a little more intellectual when they were punkin' out. Patti Smith and Richard Hell were both poets before and during their early recording days. New York punk music was loud and antagonistic, but singers like Smith and Hell added to it readings from poets like William S. Burroughs and the Frenchman Rimbaud. When you're rocking out to albums like Smith's Horses, and The Voidoids' Blank Generation, remember that New York punk had a lot on its mind besides bursting your eardrums.

AS THE NEW YORK PUNK GROOVES CROSSED THE ATLANTIC ,it was the caustic sounds and messages of urban angst that were picked up by English youth who took up punk music and style. Of course, the pierced, dyed, and ripped punk style that you know and love also took off in England in the late '70s. The economy was bad in England then, and young people's hopes of employment were low. The music of THE SEX PISTOLS & THE JAM reflected the hopelessness of life in the city, and safety-pin-pierced ears and twelve-inch-high purple mohawks symbolized punks' disregard for the conventions of society. ''GOD SAVE THE QUEEN'' one of the Sex Pistols' most famous songs, was a scathing criticism of English tradition. To their credit, punks also expressed a desire to change the way that people lived and worked. Punks in England wanted their ripped clothes, gravity-defying hairstyles, and angry slogans to shock the middle and upper classes of British society out of complacent lifestyles. Did you know that your Kool-Aid-dyed green hair contained that history and message?

BY THE LATE 80's punk had hit hard in Los Angeles, where bands like
X & THE MINUTEMEN were adding complexity to hard punk sounds.
The Minutemen, led by bassist Mike Watt, combined punk with funk on tracks like
''POLITICAL SONG FOR MICHAEL JACKSON TO SING'' and ''THE BIG FOIST''.
X took a different route, adding the delicious harmonies of Exene and John Doe to fast punk in ''THE HUNGRY WOLF'' and ''LOS ANGELES''

The result was a more musically developed L.A. sound. "Punks aren't dumb," Mike Watt insisted, and the proof is in the versatility that punk music has shown over several decades.

The pierced nose, dyed bangs, and baggy clothes that many young '90s punkers sport represent a longer tradition of youth angst than you may be aware of. A couple of decades ago, those clothes signaled a real anti-establishment message, and it is only because of the early punkers' relentless in-your-face attitude that the general public has gotten used to seeing people on the bus, in the grocery store, and on the sidewalk with these rebel styles. It's because of these fore-punkers that you can go to the mall with purple hair without being hassled. There are lots of punk bands from the '70s and early '80s which deserve exploring if you are interested in how punk has developed from its rough, minimalist beginnings to the slicker, more polished punk albums produced today.