Punk rock was a reactionary music and fashion statement of the mid-1970's, first appearing around 1976. The basic essence of punk rock was a reaction to what many young people saw as the exploitation of the young by big-business fashion designers and record companies. Punk rock typified itself in raw, energetic, amateurish music and home made clothes and hair cuts. The use of safety pins and bondage wear further illustrated the enslavement of the youth by business. However, within a few months the revolution had itself become fashionable, and fashion houses in London's Kings Road and elsewhere were selling the 'home made' fashions for inflated prices. Typical groups of the punk rock movement were Britain's Sex Pistols, Sham 69 and The Damned with many other bands soon following. Many of the bands had deliberately vulgar, shocking names such as 'Sex Pistols', 'Vibrators', 'Slits', 'Sham 69', 'Buzzcocks' and 'Guildford Stranglers' (later to shorten their name and achieve international fame as the 'Stranglers') in an effort to distance themselves from the cosy world of exploitative popular music and fashion that had preceded them. Many of the bands quickly became popular and just as quickly forgot their revolutionary roots and embraced the very exploitative culture they had originally opposed - the music then becoming known as 'new wave', most notably the Clash who had started as a true punk rock band, but quickly became a trendy, establishment band playing to the mindless youth that was just too happy to be spoon fed fashion and to accept what they were told. This disintegration and popularisation of the punk rock movement in itself gave birth around 1980 to a second wave of reactionary, political bands led by the anarchist band 'Crass' and the numerous fellow bands that recorded and played with them including 'Poison Girls', 'Zounds' and 'Conflict'. The punk rock movement was doomed to political failure from the start. The original protagonists over-estimated the
telligence of the youth at the time, and far from revolting against their exploitation, most of the followers of the punk rock movement did so for the very fashion it was opposing. This sad failure was recognised by 'Johnny Rotten', lead singer of the Sex Pistols, who, finally exasperated at the youth of the time, disbanded the Sex Pistols and started a new band called 'Public Image Ltd', the first words of its first song were 'you never listened to a word that I said, you only saw me for the clothes that I wear', a sad surrender to the hopelessness of trying to help the youth of the time. Research Punk Rock
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Research Punk Rock