The Genreration Game: Punk, Ep. 1
One of the more fascinating aspects of following music over decades is the arrival of new genres to add to traditional genres of for example rock, pop, soul, country and blues. Hip-hop, trip hop, acid house, Americana, indie, alt-folk, neo-jazz to name but a few to emerge over the years.
Our new regular series The Genreration Game sets out to compare two songs from the more traditional genres sometimes separated by up to fifty years. Our first episode takes in the genre of punk / post-punk.
The Ramones in concert in Atlanta’s Agora Ballroom in 1979. © Tom Hill/WireImage
Punk was a movement that established itself in the UK in the long hot summer of 1976, but perhaps punk music's roots are to be found over the pond on the East Coast of America where glam rockers The New York Dolls, then Television and The Ramones were beginning to make a name for themselves between '74 and '75. The Ramones debut album appeared a few months before The Sex Pistols’ classic Never Mind the Bollocks album. From opener “Blitzkrieg Bop” through to the closer fourteen tracks later, the album lasted barely twenty-nine minutes and only one of its tracks was over two and a half minutes long. This was exactly the kind of brevity fledgling punk acts in the UK aspired to, tired and bored as they were with the corporate direction of mainstream rock with its 40-minute live drum solos, or rock operas on disc and progressive albums with one track per side. The UK’s youth were ready to dance and sing and no band encapsulated this joy as much as aforementioned Ramones with their catchy choruses and nods to Spector and Beach Boys. The track “Pinhead”, a song about the search for belonging despite outward differences, appeared on their third album and includes possibly their most famous singalong chant 'Gabba Gabba Hey' on the fadeout! Live gigs took on an urgency not seen since Bill Haley's day as chaos reigned in the front row with bouncers ejecting over-zealous fans. And the gloriously simple lyrics 'I don't wanna be a pinhead no more, I just met a nurse that I could go for' were perfect for the new thriving '77 scene.
2018 song “Danny Nedelko” by IDLES takes on a different theme, while retaining an undeniable singalong quality. This was songwriter Joe Talbot's attempt in a post-Brexit world to alert us to the trials and tribulations of migrants who at that time were finding themselves on the move across Europe, and for us to appreciate their contributions. The Danny in the song is a Ukrainian migrant who was and probably still is a good friend of the songwriter. So, how did IDLES want us to celebrate Danny and the thousands like him? Well, by giving us one of the great crowd-pleasing singalong football chant-esque songs of recent years. Who cannot be carried along, find themselves pogoing away or head banging, as some of us did to “White Riot” back in '77, as Talbot screams out the chorus of ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ah, ah, ah, ah / Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ah, ah, ah, ah / Danny Nedelko’? What the world needs now more than ever is for people of different backgrounds to be able to come together, and what better way to do it than having us all jumping up and down and singing Danny's name as one as if he had just scored the winning goal in the cup final!
Dee Dee Ramone and 'brothers' Johnny and Joey would all leave us in their fifties, but their legacy is forever spawning the new wave and indie movements that followed. IDLES, meanwhile, continue to go from strength to strength. In 2024, the Bristol band released their fifth studio album Tangk. Gabba Gabba Hey indeed!