If teds can unanimously point to what’s wrong with punk sartorial style, I don’t think our views on the music is as negative, to the same extent; it is certainly more nuanced so I won’t presume to speak for all teds as to their feelings concerning punk music.
ASIDE ON CLOTHING DIFF and some similarities
In a LWT programme entitled ‘The Trouble with the Seventies?’ (aired on 3.Apr.1994), Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols said:
“To me the 70s can be split into two separate groups. There was up to the mid-70s with all the glam [rock] thing and then the punk thing came along. We was just tryin’ to get back to the 50s almost thing: the freshness and energy of rock’n’roll without all the crap that went with it.”
Funnily enough, glam rock in many ways (think of T-Rex) was also a return to 50s style rock’n’roll.
One of the differences between the punks and the teds was in their attitudes to the USA. The punks sang ‘I’m so bored with the USA’ while the teds dreamt of an almost mythical, certainly receding, American paradise. QUOTE IN TRANSLATION Jesse Garon’s 1984 ‘Teddy Boys’.
Fred Diaz comm: Punk was very limited in its musical range. There was only so much they could do in the ‘God Save the Queen’ style. The Punk bands that did not seek other musical forms became extinct quickly, including the Sex Pistols. The bands that survived and thrived (really very few of them) did explore and introduced other musical styles in their repertoire: Reggae, American Country, even pop. Examples are The Clash (Bank Robber), The Stranglers (96 Tears), Siouxie and the Banshees (Dear Prudence) and a few others. Then the youths who followed the fashion grew up, got jobs and had to become more conventional in their appearance. By 1980 it was all over in the UK. Then came electro-pop to put the final nail in the Punk coffin.
Post Comment