European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 27, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A future for Punk Rock the sex pistols Johnny Rotten left the clash above and the ramones in their heyday. A amp is a u is that generation Back again by . Cons1dine Baltimore Sun a t first it seemed just a string of unconnected incidents some so Small that the average pop fan might not even have noticed them. For instance the Buzz Cocks reunited Las summer. Mainstream America May have yawned with indifference but for those with memories of nights spent dancing to the likes of orgasm addict it was a Welcome blast from the past. It was much the same when the original members of the damned got Back together. Who could help but look Back fondly upon a band which not Only recorded the first English Punk record but also had a drummer with worse Teeth than Johnny Rotten a but when talk of a sex pistols reunion began making the rounds things suddenly seemed More serious. Retrospectives by the ramones the clash and wire Are in the record stores alongside Archive style reissues of old albums by killing joke stiff Little fingers and Richard hell amp the void ids. Don Letts the Punk Rock movie is out on video. A a bib s alumni package featuring the ramones Blondie a Deborah Harry and talking Heads spinoffs casual gods and the Tom Tom club is out on tour. Could it be Punk Rock nostalgia it seems almost a contradiction in terms. Punk after All was one of the least sentimental movements Rock Ever spawned. Quot no Elvis beatles or the rolling stones Quot spat the clash and generation x agreed answering the who s Anth Emic my generation with a dismissive Quot your generation Don t mean anything to  naturally it goes without saying that the Punk movement never did deliver on its Promise of revolution. All the lumbering dinosaurs Punk rockers once railed against a performers like Pink Floyd Paul Mccartney Rod Stewart the grateful dead a remain entrenched in the Rock n Roll pantheon. If anything most have actually increased in popularity. But for a fair number of today s 30-ish Rock fans songs like Blondie s Hangin on the Telephone Sioux Sie amp the banshees Hong Kong Garden the clash s White Man in Hammersmith palais or the ramones Sheena is a Punk Rocker mean infinitely More than Brown sugar or nights in White Satin. Granted Many pop fans remember Punk Only As a fashion statement a matter of Green mohawks ripped to shirts and dog collars. Never having heard the music a not knowing a Ray spex or the adverts thinking that the dead boys was a cheap horror flick or that television was what you watched mtg on a All they knew was How Punk looked from the outside. But from the inside Punk was something else again. For one thing it was astonishingly hopeful music. That May seem an Odd thing to say in Light of its knee Jerk nihilism from Richard hell s declaration of a Blank generation to the sex pistols insistence that there was Quot no future no future for you Quot but it is True nonetheless. Punk Rock May not have believed in . Foreign policy i m so bored with the .a. By the clash or the Sanctity of the English monarchy god save the Queen by the sex pistol but it did believe in the Power of Rock a no Roll. In fact that was one of the things that made the music seem so angry in the first place. How so because on a very Basic level Punk was an attempt to return Rock to the Basic energies that made it matter in the first place. Punk preferred thrash Over Flash intensity Over virtuosity. It reduced everything to the Basic values of harder faster louder simpler. Of course harder faster louder Are relative terms. When the sex pistols recorded holidays in the Sun in 1977, the band s raucous attack seemed like a slap in the face 12 years later when skid Row covered the song it sounded Tike mainstream Metal even though the Tempo and guitar sound were identical to the original. Simplicity on the other hand endures. Listen to any classic Punk recording today and what seems most striking is not its audacity but its Economy. Initially that was seen As a sort of Rock primitivism but Hindsight suggests something else. Listening to Early recordings by the ramones Blondie and the clash what comes through is not just an embrace of Rock verities but a rejection of ornamentation and elaboration. Punk was the product of a do it yourself mentality it believed in Rock music not Rock stars. And for a moment it worked a it really did seem As if one chord wonders and three minute heroes could bring the Rock establishment to its Knees. We All know what really happened though. Punk May have shaken up the status quo but it never really changed it. For the most part the Rock establishment Rose to the Challenge with Little difficulty. Some bands most notably the who with who Are you and the rolling stones with some girl seven benefited from the process. Punk on the other hand fell apart. Once poly Styrene seemed sarcastic when she screamed Quot i am a cliche a but any punker who made a similar statement in the mid 80s was simply being honest. That is not to say that Punk was mistaken in what it stood for or that the spirit of �?~77 should be forgotten if anything the incredible vitality of those records stands As proof to the contrary. But nostalgia no thanks. Rather than reminisce Over what was or what might have been a better Way to pay tribute to what Punk stood for would be to focus on what is or what ought to be. And while that does not exactly demand that we throw away those old records it is Safe to assume that anyone who still sees the sex pistols As Rock s be All and end All never really understood in the first place. Page 16 a a a the stars and stripes wednesday june 27,1990