Punk!

It's thirty years since Punk was born, they say. I was never into it. Revolting against some established pomposity was probably somewhat ok. But the Musical Stupidity through which it was so predominantly revealed was simply stupid. Utter unskilled musicianship was a tremendous letdown for me. Stupidity is stupidity even if you call it revolt... In the summer of 1977 I was already into Frank Zappa, Jethro Tull, Modern Jazz and Classical music. How could I go backwards, intellectually, and try to be musically stupid? I just could not do it. Some of my friends were really into Punk. They liked the energy and revolt. They were not stupid. And the combination of it all - friends liking such musically meaningless noize, me thinking it soo stupid - was very puzzling for some time. I really tried to learn to like and understand Punk but to no avail. I even had some bands with my punk-loving-friends. My friends couldn't play any instruments - and of course we played gigs. They mostly turned into comedy acts. But fun we did have!

During the 1990-ies came Neo-Punk. And that was the time J-V began to learn to play guitar. He got intersted in Punk. And it was again puzzling for me. Neo-Punk-Rockers were lots of more musically talented than the original ones during the 1970-ies. But still no virtuosos. Some thinking and I got this evil plan and bought a CD-collection of Original Punk for J-V. When I gave it to him he was very delighted... After a couple of minutes of listening to those Original Punk Bands from the seventies he came to me and said: " They are so lousy players..." And that was that.

Juha H.