Hearing punk as blues

Abstract

Punk is an extreme manifestation of the rock project, meaning that it depends on an association of raw and authentic expression with blackness, musically represented by particular approaches to the blues, combined with processes of white appropriation, transformation and obfuscation of those blues resources. Punk's powerful affect largely derives from the tension between punk's blues foundations and strategies that obscure its roots. Punk treatments and transformations of the blues include: (1) moving from multi-part, three-chord harmonic schemes to riffs and one-and two-chord vamps; (2) taking a new approach to vocal performance styles; and (3) retaining certain melodic approaches, such as the use of pentatonic scales and monophonic textures. Punk's complex relationship to the blues, including the history of negation and erasure, continues to be a central part of the punk aesthetic.Punk musicians (either self-identified or named as such by writers) such as the Sex Pistols, Damned, Electric Eels and Black Flag quickly settled on musical conventions,

Future Perfect: Imagination and Ideology

“…For example, improvisation with respect to blackness' modes of expression has been studied extensively in Black and Cultural studies as an exemplar of playing with the same thought in different ways. [2] [12] [19] If the content of, say, imagination or some object of the mind is functional, we can attend to issues of encoding infinite possibility with/in finite means for the functional-content of these objects are the zeros of these functions. [1] [4] Just as well, if in the philosophy of mind the question is how a finite vessel can retain large amounts of information in excess of its physical limits or recall it when appropriate, then here we propose a modular configuration in which the concept of mind is expressed by way of arrangements of the functional-content attained through abstracted experience and the range of those sets of arrangements' applications (=models' or images).…”

Riff Schemes, Form, and the Genre of Early American Hardcore Punk (1978–83)

“…As he notes, this model is characteristic of much blues music and blues-based rock songs, but may be found throughout the rock repertoire, including later rock songs that "otherwise bear few resemblances to the blues" (8) This is certainly the case with much hardcore music, as there are few other characteristics that link the two genres, at least upon first glance. See Rapport (2014) for a fuller discussion of the influence of blues music on punk and hardcore, as well as those artists' negation of such influences. Return to text 20.…”