I've always wondered, what makes a genre a genre?

What makes "grunge" so special, that people call it grunge and not just "hard rock" or "punk" What makes punk punk, and how does a punk band like Sex Pistols differ from a heavy metal band like Metallica. What makes death metal what it is and so on........

Discuss away! :) :mrpimp:

:| :eek:

Wow, great response................i thought there were peopel in here who liked rock? :|

Hugo, hermolt, LB, rhizome, Ice.....?..C'mon guys...

Umm..I would define it but im too lazy to type too much...:( :$

Originally posted by Dragan T
:| :eek:

Wow, great response................i thought there were peopel in here who liked rock? :|

Hugo, hermolt, LB, rhizome, Ice.....?..C'mon guys...

hehe sorry mate I am actually still thinking it over, more in terms of the 'labelling' and its social context, because I am not a musician so can't define it in those terms. Don't worry, I will post my thoughts, they are slowly working themselves out.(H)

Originally posted by rhizome17
hehe sorry mate I am actually still thinking it over, more in terms of the 'labelling' and its social context, because I am not a musician so can't define it in those terms. Don't worry, I will post my thoughts, they are slowly working themselves out.(H)

ok cool........ :mrpimp:

Originally posted by Dragan T
:| :eek:

Wow, great response................i thought there were peopel in here who liked rock? :|

Hugo, hermolt, LB, rhizome, Ice.....?..C'mon guys...

What about me you punkass biatch? Where's my name in the list!!! :f***:

Well to be honest I never really got what "grunge" meant. For all I know, Nirvana was the only band who "made" it, and after that everything coming from Seattle was grunge, even if it was a symphonic orchestra.
So grunge basicly is nothing but a term for the whole hype around Nirvana. The "grunge" look/fashion is pathetic anyway. All in all I never knew why Nirvana were grunge. I don't know any other band that made the same sort of music as they did, so with Nirvana a whole new genre of rock music was born. They slowed down the pace of punk, added a Beatles-like melody to it, a generation picked it up it up and the media needed a name.. that's probably how it went, grunge was born.

So there you have it. Call 1-800-ASKMAARTENFORMOREDEFINITIONS and I'll spit out some more punchlines.
Calls cost no more then €20 per minute.

Originally posted by mhflierman
What about me you punkass biatch? Where's my name in the list!!! :f***:





That's because THAT list only consisted of people that don't smell of broccolli! :f***: :crazyboy: :D

Originally posted by Dragan T
That's because THAT list only consisted of people that don't smell of broccolli! :f***: :crazyboy: :D

Oh god no..... :kader: :crazyboy:

Ok to start off I am just lifting this from http://starling.rinet.ru/music/temp/genres.html and it is only relevant to describing 'punk'. To tell the truth, I am not really a fan of the term myself, especially becuase it gets thrown around very loosely these days. I don't think all this recent 'pop-punk' stuff deserves the term punk to be associated with it. To me 'punk' is an attitude, and I am sorry but I fail to see how Blink 182 and Sum 41 show any evidence of that attitude (I should be writing this in the 'Avril' thread but wtf). The young whipper-snapper pop-punk fans may disagree with me there, but again wtf. There is a reason why 'pop' is the first word of popular punk. Yes the Sex Pistols were manufactured, and the fact is their music is quite poppy imo. But I guess at the end of the day they breathed new life into the music industry, whereas the pop-punk genre is just the acceptable version that gets served up to the kids of today. Pretty much like everything really, be it the acceptable face of war etc. anyways...
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Punk

Someone once said that how you define punk says more about you and your view of music more than what punk actually is, and it's true that many people basically make punk fit any square peg they feel is convenient. It has been not unreasonably argued that Arnold Schoenberg was the first punk because his 12-tone system introduced atonality to modern Western music. However, you have to draw the line somewhere, and for the purposes of this page I am going to define punk rather narrowly. It was a specific movement that occurred separately in the mid to late '70s in New York and London, coming to a head in 1977, otherwise known in the history books as the Summer of Punk. Too much has been written about the most overanalyzed period of rock history, but I'll try to condense the basics as best as possible. The '77 punk groups generally offered intense hostility and nihilism as their pose (and it indeed was a pose), dressed funny to offend straights, played basic three-chord hard rock completely devoid of the blues (their motto was, "Anybody can do it!", and the Adverts boasted that they were "One Chord Wonders"), ranted psuedo-politically about alienation, and kept all their songs short sans wank-off solos so you wouldn't confuse them with ELP. Punk was a much-needed alarm clock to the bloated corpse of rock'n'roll, but in the end it too became just another tired genre, as demonstrated by the generally abysmal '90s punk bands. It's no accident that the vast majority of the original '77 punk bands all recorded only one (or maybe two) albums of pure punk and then moved on with their lives. For example, look at what happened to the three arguably greatest British punk bands: the Clash became an immortal classic rock band; the Buzzcocks refined their psychedelic power-pop style; and the Jam took their place as the reincarnation of everything great about the '60s British Invasion, modernized for jaded youth. Few of the early CBGB's/Max's Kansas City bands from New York would be called punk today, except for the Ramones - Blondie, Television, Patti Smith, and the Talking Heads are why the term New Wave was coined, even though they started out as "punk". By the end of the '70s, punk rock had splintered off into several dozen directions, most of them interesting, directly inspiring nearly all of the great rock music of the next two decades.

Leading Acts: The Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones, the Jam, Generation X, the Damned, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, the Buzzcocks, Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers, Wire.

Roots: Garage Rock, Proto-Punk, Glam Rock, Heavy Metal, badly misunderstood sociology of the Situationist variety, disgust with the disco, soft rock, and bloated corporate rock that polluted the '70s

Key Album: The Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. It's not the best punk album, but this is the band around which the punk movement generally revolved (even if they certainly weren't the best).

Suggestions for further reading/viewing: Geez, where to begin. Every pushing-40 hipster in the U.K. has their own book detailing the punk movement - just browse through your local bookstore. Start with England's Dreaming by Jon Savage.

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