Punks are a youth subculture that has appeared in the United States and Great Britain and has become very popular throughout the world. This subculture is closely related to the corresponding musical direction. The first punk bands played fast, driving music that combined with protest and rude lyrics. And the fans of these groups had a striking appearance and defiant behavior.
The history of the word and the first punk bands
Even in Shakespeare's play "Measure for Measure" the word "punk" is found - that's what cheap prostitutes are called there. Much later, this word acquired another meaning - "garbage", "dirt".
In the early seventies, punk began to be called strange music played by some rock bands. Soon, those who listened to this music (usually it was youth from the workers' quarters) were also called punks.
As examples of punk bands of the "first wave", we should mention such groups as "The Dumned", "Sex Pistols", "Ramones", "The Stooges". Each of them brought something of their own to the punk subculture. Let's say the leader of The Stooges Iggy Pop was the first to practice stage diving, that is, to jump from the stage into the crowd. In addition, the “trick” of Iggy Pop was that he performed with a naked torso and often inflicted injury on himself during the concert.
As for the USSR, here punk rock appeared in 1979. It was then that Leningrader Andrei Panov, nicknamed Pig, together with friends created the group "Automatic Satisfiers" (which is actually a translation of the phrase "Sex Pistols" into Russian). For a long time this group (which is not very surprising) remained in the deep underground and only at the end of the eighties entered the Leningrad rock club.
Ideology and principles of punk subculture
In fact, punks never had a single ideology. But at the same time, they have some principles, for example, the DIY principle ("Do It Yourself" or "Do it yourself"). In other words, when they create their work, they prefer to rely on their own strengths, which, in theory, allows them to remain honest and independent, "not for sale."
And the representatives of this subculture are characterized by a critical attitude to literally everything that surrounds them, disregard for the norms and stereotypes that are imposed by society, pretentious aggressiveness, perception of freedom as the main value, etc.
It is worth mentioning the attitude of punks to politics. Everything is ambiguous here. Punks can both engage in active political protest and be apolitical. There are entire subgenres of punk music that have nothing to do with politics, such as horror punk.
