Simon Reynolds' "Rip It Up & Start Again" is overall an excellent book, but it proposes to cover "post-punk" and absolutely omits Bauhaus and devotes maybe 4 paragraphs to Killing Joke in the "Goth" chapter of the 200_page book! Come on, now!
Philip, you said: "Punk really evolved through the 80s and into the early 90s and then all the experimentation suddenly died"
I agree -- in a SENSE -- with the "all the experimentation died" after the 80s, which was the golden era of hc/punk.
Part of this is because what was considered punk in the 80s fractured into so many subgenres in ther own right that "experimental punk" in reality became grunge, indie rock (arguably started by Husker Du's _Candy Apple Grey_), riot grrl, post-hardcore (Fugazi, Seaweed, Jawbox), post-rock (Neurosis), powerviolence, grindcore (Napalm Death) etc., as opposed to simply hardcore punk proper. Fractiousness as the rue of the day. Slow, shitty metal like Earth Crisis started getting called "hardcore." So was rap-metal like Downset. It was so nebulous in the 90s because it all pulled apart, and yet also seemed to collapse.
I wrote about this at cultpunk.com and now is one of the times I wish I has not taken down the site. However, I also had either a script bug or hack attack that deleted 1/2 of my articles there, and I lost permanently some pieces I spent a lot of time on,t hat will never be replaced.
As of this past decade (are they called the noughties? What is the 1st decade of this century called?), a real kind of resurgence of hardcore punk that directly traceable to 80s hardcore seemed to happen. Itbegan with some bands like Career Suicide and The Exploding Hearts who sounded like they were newly discovered bands from 1981. The bands had taken pains to reproduce the stereo sound quality, instrument sounds, etc., of the early, dirty hc punk EPs.
Simultaneously, "dark d-beat hardcore" had come into its own and a whole cadre of bands like Wolfpack/Wolfbrigade, Tragedy, Ambulance, Summon the Crows, Muga, World Burns to Death, and From Ashes Rise just burst on the scene with a new kind of gloomy-heavy, driving sound that employed consistenty Minor Threat-like drum patterns but with bass-rich, bottom-heavy production values unheard in earlier attempts at punk. World Burns to Death's 2002 "Sucking of the Missile Cock" LP is some sort of pioneer in this new kind of dark, thrashing, modern-sounding, political hardcore, and even presciently predicted a new war in Iraq for 2003. The liner notes quoted Susan Sontag and Istvan Mezsaros yet the music had recognizable Minor Threat and Negative Approach influences.
This is a World Burns to Death official video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWfU5eBQVOY
This was when the mainstream-y music press were cumming all over themselves about bands like Arctic Monkeys and Wolfmother. There was just a huge gap. By the same token, every band and his grandma claimed to have a "punk influence" or "punk roots" -- and this continues to this day, regardless of what the actual music sounds like. I got so many promo CDs when I had http://www.cultpunk.com up and running that ALL claimed to have "punk roots" but which had no identifiable connection to the genre otherwise. Alt-mainstream msic journaism flirted with liking Mika Miko and Be Your Own Pet, but quickly abandoned them as they went on to the next ephemeral music fad.
As far as "experimental" goes - check out Fucked Up's "The Chemistry of Common Life" LP from late 2008; The Conversions' "Prisoners Inventions" LP; Giant Haystacks; "We Are Being Observed"; or the Red Dons' "Death to Idealism," all from within the past 2 years. They are not by-the-numbers stuff. Giant Haystacks were even compared to the new coming of Gang of Four or something.
This is Giant Haystacks live in 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6z9Cxj9xKM
:)
-B.
Philip Pilkington wrote:
"What really vexes me is that, while I like all the vulgar 'spit-on-your-own-mother' sort of stuff, punk really evolved through the 80s and into the early 90s and then all the experimentation suddenly died. Some of the links I was throwing around there would be good examples of this. Crime and the City Solution and The Birthday Party are good examples, but not just Australian stuff. This happened loads of places. Cop Shoot Cop were a New York outfit if I recall correctly and they did some really interesting..."
Mike Beggs wrote:
"See I would call this stuff 'post-punk', which is quite a broad label covering music that emerged out of the same milieu as turn-of-the-80s punk but with more experimental momentum in all kinds of interesting directions. Simon Reynolds' book 'Rip it Up and Start Again' is really good on the whole picture in the UK and US, and he traces the lines through it to quite..."