Punk: Chaos to Couture

[BainsBane]

Another reason to be jealous of New Yorkers.

Punk rockers wanted anarchy. They wound up with a $565 T-shirt. That’s the story told in a big new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York called “Punk: Chaos to couture.”

The exhibit, which opened to a crowded preview Monday, traces the unlikely merger of a movement known for primal music, drug-abuse and anti-establishment yells, with the glittering world of high fashion.

The collection in the elegant halls of the Met, just down from a gallery of ancient Greek sculptures, presents a veritable time capsule of the deliberately destructive, often self-destructive musical genre.


Shaky video clips of Sid Vicious and other rockers play on giant screens. The air fills with snippets of music and pearls of wisdom from punk’s gurus.

There’s even a life-size replica of the bathroom at the famed Manhattan nightclub CBGB, circa 1975. The room comes complete with the Ramones on the loudspeakers, “DEAD BOYS RULE” graffiti, and cigarette butts on the floor — something you’ll never see in New York’s smoke-free clubs today.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/06/new-york-art-museum-unveils-punk-chaos-to-couture-exhibit/

[DonCoquixote]

1. I laugh at this

Because a lot of the "punks" I knew in high school were a bunch of privileged kids who would not know oppression if it bit them in the ass. The whole "three chords and the truth" line was just an excuse for a bunch of idiots to scream and yell without learning how to play. Punk became Emo and Grunge, and those two spawned the crap rock/pop we have today.

Good riddance to bad garbage. And no,I am not an old fart, but someone who cheered when Hop Hop and Heavy Metal chased the Sex Pistols off the damned stage.

[BainsBane]

2. Patti Smith and the Clash

It wasn't all Sex Pistols. There was some great music. The Sex Pistols were a manufactured band, created by Malcolm McLaren. There is also a wider art movement connected with Punk. Patti Smith was close friends with Robert Mapplethorpe, as she chronicles in her memoir that won a National Book Award.

[BainsBane]

3. Horses

Patti Smith

[sufrommich]

13. I saw Patti Smith at Bookies in Detroit in the mid 70s.

Throwaway fact: She's a very tiny woman, for some reason,before that, I assumed she was very tall. I loved Horses.

[BainsBane]

16. I would love to see her

I ADORE Patti Smith.

[SoCalDem]

6. My middle son loved to wear his Goodwill stuff

his two preppy brothers did not approve

His favorite was a pair of work coveralls from a tire store with the employee's name on them "Gus".. He paid $2.00

[Javaman]

7. Meh.

chasing windmills.

[maxsolomon]

18. You sure sound like an old fart.

The Pistols broke up in January of '78. Zeppelin's last album was a year and half away.

So when did Hip Hop & Metal chase them off the stage, now? Rapper's Delight came out in 1979.

Screaming and yelling without learning to play, and releasing your own record documenting that, was an essential part of democritizing and reinvigorating Rock. There's a lot of early punk I don't listen to, even in my privileged youth, but I'd never call Crass, for example, a bunch of idiots.

[napoleon_in_rags]

4. That was a long time contradiction.

As soon as Doc Martin started selling $300 a pair boots, a fundamental contradiction was born between the punk-in-spirit and the punk-in-fashion. Those who spend more on punk clothes that an average joe shopping at Target, implicitly became part of the glam movement. Back in the day, I was proud to call myself a punk in spirit. To this day I think I went the right day in that divide.

PEace

[JI7]

5. these are people that view avril lavine and Pink as punk music

[Javaman]

8. punk ended the day when runway fashion embraced the safety pin. nt

[sufrommich]

10. Which was the day after Anarchy in the UK charted. nt

[Javaman]

11. Yup.

what I find really amusing about the music industry during that time, in regards to punk is, they loved the "rebel" part of it but failed to show the "gobbing" side of it. LOL

[sufrommich]

9. There is nothing under the sun that can't be

bought and sold by Madison Avenue.

[snooper2]

12. I credit Madonna for bringing 70's punk to an end

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Capitalism subsumes everything

There is no outside to it that it cannot eat. It is a fundamentally acquisitive system.

[Tikki]

15. PUNK...you know from 1976~1980 was very point specific...

LA sounded and yes,looked like this:

and this

and other communities had there look and sound..
But virtually all had the same message: I, you, they need to CHANGE what they are doing...it isn't working.


It was an amazing time.


Tikki

[Spike89]

17. What it became doesn't change what it was

Although distilling any art movement "to its core" is really a pretty silly exercise, there was a real point to the punk movement of the mid to late 70s. The music business was bloated at the time...acts were expected to fill massive stadiums or they weren't considered viable. Established super groups got virtually all the marketing money. Up and coming acts had an almost impossible task of filling big stadiums, putting on expensive theatrical pyro-filled sideshows, and "being huge" just to get started. Spinal Tap was hilarious because it was so close to the truth.

Punk was raw, primal rock and roll stripped of the glitz and commercial trappings. Of course success corrupted it, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a direct response to a corrupt and self-imploding music industry.