Introduction

You've been lied to. Our forefathers created this thing we call RocknRoll. It was awesome. Kids learned how to play the guitar and smoked a lot of dope, some even got laid. It was rebellion. It was loud. It was an incredible amount of fun. But somewhere down the line, actually from quite early on, people actively tried to destroy it. I'm not talking about angry parents who hated that noise. I'm talking about the evil bastards in suits that tried to make a buck off of all this. This wasn't a bad thing. It had to happen, and probably got more music in more folks hands. Problems started happening after a lot of people started sobering up, growing up, and stopped trying. They got complacent. Boring. They forgot the anger, the vast Teenage Wasteland of Pete Townsend or the blasphemy of Dylan going electric. The effect of a monolithic music industry and a rapidly dying sense of creativity nearly killed our beloved RocknRoll. Luckily a few crazy art students and burnouts in New York managed to find it again in something they called Punk. It was cool. It was even louder, weirder, and crazier than those smelly dirty jerks in tie dye could even dream of. But that aint what this blog is about. That was just the beginning. It was like the Alamo or the Easter Rising. It was what shook everyone up, but the bulk of the fighting would be done after. I'm here to tell you about that, the independent, free wheeling word of PostPunk. The alternative music of the 80s that fought a war in sweaty dark venues filled with tattooed crazies punching each other to secure a space, both in our heads and in our wallets, that would make any music available to you. Yeah, I'm telling you that Hardcore, Goth, New Wave, and a bunch of weird Punk was made so that you can have your funny little jazz fusion country dancecore band. They bore Indie into the world so that bands didn't have to follow the mainstream of singles on the radio. There could be niche bands that did whatever they wanted. And that is because of PostPunk. I will try to outline an argument in about fifty albums from 1979 to 1989 explaining how this happened. There will be additional posts about other music phenomena in this realm. Thrash Metal, Hip Hop, Industrial, Emo, and others play a part and deserve the time and thought needed to understand why the hell they exist, and how it affects the music you listen to today. So, stay tuned. Week 1 will be up in a bit, and the rocking can begin.