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Originally Posted by candymoan
what about their impact.. without either band, would there be a punk scene that transformed music? without the DIY ethics, there would be no sonic youth..
what do you think?
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I've always found this line of thought to be somewhat anachronistic - I don't really see what the punk bands 'changed' exactly. I wasn't there at the time, so it's taken as read that I can't comment with any orthodoxy; interestingly, the people I know who are most dismissive of the 'punk changed the way we look at music' type idea are people who were there at the time and grew up. Most of that generation are heading towards being grandparents.
The main problem I have is that the punk narrative tends more to inhibit music more than it does liberate it - I think the DIY ethos pre-dates Punk, you can take that all the way back to Jazz and beyond. I've got a fair few 40's and 50's Jazz records which are, if not self-produced and totally DIY, then at least they are a couple of kids giving it a bash, having a laugh, and fidlling about with the mechanics of song-form. Admittedly, the better stuff is always the more tutored types, but still, DIY is not something exclusive to punk.
The Pistols stole most of their riffs from the Faces, the Clash from what ever was in vogue, although they did know their reggae, I'll give 'em that. SY may have been interested in the Punk bands, but I think what separates them from NOFX or whoever is that they have clearly taken in lots of stuff, yr Creedences, yr Krauts, yr Jazz and whatever else.
In fact, this is my problem with a lot of punk - there is this stifling sense of orthodoxy around the scene which means that a lot of it has been using the same structures, chords and ideas for around 30 years now, which strikes me as worse than the Prog which it so-say stood against. The 'punk spirit' is, to me, just the general spirit of creativeness, common to any generation (in the era of recordings at least).