imo, people who speak ill of going mainstream prolly only listen to mainstream bands; and are now of the thought they know what's up. i listen to underground music basically my whole life; you know. bands w/ not much more than just a few 7"s out, and i could care less about any other band that has gone mainstream. i think having threads like this are self-defeating. who cares about mainstream or not. listen or don't. turn off the radio and mtv and the mainstream will fall off.

punk should never have been mainstream

True punk is never mainstream but pop punk is...

name one true punk rock band who is mainstream? and im not saying someone like the sex pistols or the ramones or anyone like that i want to know a real punk rock band

Just about every single band from the first wave of punk who were all signed to major labels and regually had chart hits.

like who? you didnt name off a single band

Even pop-punk isn't main stream, if you're talking the POP charts. That's the real meaning of mainstream. Something that has a chance in hell of winning a grammy. Anything else is not really mainstream. Profitable maybe, but not mainstream. There's very little punk music doing particularly well in the mainstream popular music charts. Fact.

The Damned , The Banshees , The Clash , The Stranglers , The Buzz****s , Magazine , The Ruts f*ck there are loads of them , how many do you want?

Ha! I'm having more or less the same debate as this, only in the Ramones/Pistols thread. :)


*goes to post in the unpopular music opinions thread

Haha.
main·stream /ˈmeɪnˌstrim/ [meyn-streem] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. the principal or dominant course, tendency, or trend: the mainstream of American culture.
2. a river having tributaries.
–adjective 3. belonging to or characteristic of a principal, dominant, or widely accepted group, movement, style, etc.: mainstream Republicans; a mainstream artist.
4. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of jazz falling historically between Dixieland and modern jazz; specifically, swing music. Compare traditional (def. 4).
–verb (used with object) 5. to send into the mainstream; cause to join the main force, group, etc.: to mainstream young people into the labor force.
6. to place (handicapped students) in regular school classes.
–verb (used without object) 7. to join or be placed in the mainstream.

Hmm. Now
Punk Rock is an anti-establishment music movement that began about 1976 (although precursors can be found several years earlier), exemplified by The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. The term is also used to describe subsequent music scenes that share key characteristics with those first-generation "punks". The term is sometimes also applied to the fashions or the irreverent "DIY" ("do it yourself") attitude associated with this musical movement.

So basically for Punk to be "mainstream" they couldn't be anti-establishment which means that by definition they couldn't have been Punk in the first place. Therefore "mainstream Punk" is not even Punk.

Make sense?