Punk

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Punk rock is an anti-establishment rock music movement with origins in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia around 1974-1975, exemplified by bands such as the Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Damned, and The Clash.

The term punk is used to describe the associated subculture, involving youthful aggression, specific clothing styles, ideologies, and a DIY (do it yourself) attitude. The cities of London, Sydney, New York City, Washington DC, Los Angeles and Berkeley have been key locales for punk bands, venues and audiences.

Characteristics

Punk bands often emulate the bare musical structures and arrangements of 1960s garage rock bands. This emphasis on accessibility exemplified punk's DIY aesthetic, and contrasted with the ostentatious musicianship of many of the mainstream rock bands popular in the years before the advent of punk. In 1976, the English punk fanzine Sideburns included drawings (later reproduced in Sniffin' Glue) of three chords, captioned: "This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band". Typical punk instrumentation includes a drum kit, one or two electric guitars, an electric bass and vocals. Drums typically sound heavy and dry, and often have a minimal set-up — with a snare drum, one mounted or standing tom, one floor tom, one bass drum, hi-hats, one or two crash cymbals and a ride cymbal.

In the early days of punk rock, musical virtuosity was often looked on with suspicion; complicated guitar solos were considered self-indulgent and unnecessary, although basic guitar breaks were still common, even in early punk songs. Bass guitar lines are often basic and used to carry the songs melody, although some punk bass players such as Mike Watt put greater emphasis on more technical bass parts. Guitar parts tend to include highly-distorted power chords, although some bands take a surf rock approach with lighter, "twangier" guitar tones. Production is minimalistic, with tracks sometimes laid down on home tape recorders. Punk vocals sometimes sound nasal, and are often shouted instead of sung in a conventional sense.

Most punk songs have a verse-chorus form and a 4/4 time signature. Punk songs are normally about two and a half minutes long, but can be merely a few seconds. Punk rock tends to have faster tempos than the rock bands who came before them. Drum beats are usually simplistic, with quarter note grooves and not very technical bass or snare drum patterns. However, in hardcore punk the drumming is considerably faster and quite technical.

Read more at Wikipedia.org