Badlittlekitten

The whole point of punk in the first place was its lack of exclusivity. Whether you were female, gay, geeky or lacking musical ability, you were welcome.

Ari Up of the Slits is a personal favourite. Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill/Le Tigre fame is also a legend.

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'Said do you feel it? Do you feel it when you TOUCH ME?. THERE'S A FIRE! THERE'S A FIRE!' The Stooges. Dirt.

https://soundcloud.com/bad-little-kittens
My Top 100 LPs
My Top 52 Indie Tracks Of The 21st Century (incomplete)

clutnuckle

Kim Gordon exemplifies the punk spirit better than any woman I've seen who plays in an 'actual punk band!!!'.

VEGANGELICA

A nice, succinct summary of punk, Badkitten!

I feel this short documentary below, featuring Vanessa Briscoe, is excellent, since it shows how she was just a regular person who sang. I'm fascinated by how her gentle, slow speaking voice with its Southern accent transforms into energized shout-singing on stage. Even she says she doesn't recognize her voice in recordings of her former band, Pylon!

It's a bit sad though. Her life has had periods far removed from music and she says in the video that at the time her job was to make copies (at a xerox store). The demise of bands and how they fall apart interests me, since it shows how music really is a performance art and without all these recording machines, it would just fade away immediately, gone forever.

Vanessa Briscoe:

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sleepy jack

Nausea and Contravene \m/

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VEGANGELICA

I checked out Contravene, sleepy jack, since I'd never heard of them. I am interested by what I learned and heard.

I didn't realize that anarcho punk is also known as "peace punk" and is "more for political change rather than anarchy that wants no government and total chaos throughout the land." Anarcho Punk. Also, Contravene's sound is definitely strong, and I like that. However, I'd like to hear more of their lyrics to decide whether I feel the band are going overboard in their pessimistic views and are incorrectly interpretating the causes of phenomena such as overpopulation.

Consider their song, "The Gift of Life." They make it sound as if overpopulation were due to people in power wanting more drones to work in factories etc. Yet the reality is that most population growth is due to people being in poverty in developing nations and relying on children for a future source of income for the family and security in old age. Poor governance and a history of being exploited by those in power, including industrialized nations, have led to the existence of numerous poor people with no social security, little health care, and few job prospects, so they have many children (many of whom may die due to diseases) in the hope that some of the children will survive to ensure the family is not completely impoverished.

I don't view these parents who are in poverty as being "manipulative" or players in a "perverted game of deception": they are simply trying to survive in horrible conditions of destitution, and it makes sense to have a lot of kids when few will survive to adulthood and children are the only type of security a couple can obtain in an economic system that provides few opportunities.

So, I feel the Contravene song is not a valid representation of the reality of population growth at all, although I feel the song *sounds* good:



Lyrics to "The Gift Of Life" by Contravene:
Contravene - The Gift Of Life? Lyrics

Currently over 6 billion people inhabit the planet earth
and with every hour, more than 10,000 people will be born
A gift that should be so precious is instead a perverted game of deception & control
Manipulative parents hellbent on success they could not achieve
Greedy corporations to bring them to their knees
A system based on murder to teach them how to kill
A false prophet to suppress their thoughts to teach them to deny free will
Text books filled with lies to distort their perceptions of reality
Television to rot their brains and fill them with banality
Consumer society to teach that money is success
Date rape ****ing culture to teach them the roles of sex
Daddy beats on mommy, thats the way it is
when he gets tired of that, he beats his ****ing kids
The gift of life, a precious act indeed, when a child is but a barcoded number in a system based on greed
They need bodies to fill the prison cells
They need bodies to fill the factories
They need bodies to fight in their ****ing wars
They need bodies to satisfy their greed
In their eyes a child represents a profit, not a life
A potential customer, a consumer to be used and thrown aside
We live in a world where people would rather close their eyes than ever admit that we're anything but civilized
A cycle of oppression based on rules that they define
Hatred, greed, destruction: will we ever see it die?
Is it really our nature to accept being blindly led?
And if that is our future, then the human race is dead.
There is no basis of life in our current state of living.
Currently over 6 billion people inhabit the planet earth
and with every hour, more than 10,000 people will be born
A gift that should be so precious is instead a perverted game of deception & control
Manipulative parents hellbent on success they could not achieve
Greedy corporations to bring them to their knees
A system based on murder to teach them how to kill
A false prophet to suppress their thoughts to teach them to deny free will
Text books filled with lies to distort their perceptions of reality
Television to rot their brains and fill them with banality
Consumer society to teach that money is success
Date rape ****ing culture to teach them the roles of sex
Daddy beats on mommy, thats the way it is
when he gets tired of that, he beats his ****ing kids
The gift of life, a precious act indeed, when a child is but a barcoded number in a system based on greed
They need bodies to fill the prison cells
They need bodies to fill the factories
They need bodies to fight in their ****ing wars
They need bodies to satisfy their greed
In their eyes a child represents a profit, not a life
A potential customer, a consumer to be used and thrown aside
We live in a world where people would rather close their eyes than ever admit that we're anything but civilized
A cycle of oppression based on rules that they define
Hatred, greed, destruction: will we ever see it die?
Is it really our nature to accept being blindly led?
And if that is our future, then the human race is dead.
There is no basis of life in our current state of living.

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sleepy jack

"In their eyes a child represents a profit, not a life."

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VEGANGELICA

Children represent all sorts of things to parents, sleepy, so this statement is false, I feel. Children in developing countries can both be seen as a profit *and* a life to the parents.

This isn't just true about kids in the developing world: most kids in the developed world are viewed by parents as future sources of security in addition to being appreciated as lives. I feel many people have children for the sake of the parents. Parents are not having children for the sake of the *children* since the children don't yet exist! At best, parents have children to express and amplify the experience of love they have as a couple, which is in a way a greedy thing to do even if it is well intentioned.

I feel the song is being too hard on people who have lots of children (those in the developing world); the song *ought* to be attacking those of us in the developed world who have even *one* child (such as myself), since that one child consumes the same amount of resources as approximately 10 children in Africa. What truly IS greedy is the desire of some developed countries' governments to increase the fertility rate so that there will be more children to pay social security for the large number of retiring old people. So, if that is the meaning of the song, then I agree. However, these babies in the developed world are not the ones who are part of the "overpopulation" problem alluded to in the song (in the first two lines), although they are part of the worldwide *consumption* problem.

My problem with the song is that it sounds like it is ranting without a clear target for the rant. Are they attacking overpopulation (primarily occurring the the developing world) or over-consumption (primarily occurring in the developed world)? Little poor children in Africa or India aren't consuming much, and their parents probably suffer from lack of education, illiteracy, etc....hardly fair targets of such heavy criticism. They are in need of help not blame.

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sleepy jack

I was quoting the song because I felt it was interesting you said it was wrong about third world situations, yet you've stated that the reason for children in third world countries is essentially economic security...as illustrated by the line "they represent a profit, not a life."

Anyway I think you're misreading the song. It's clearly more about Western civilizations, then the third world. Right after the 6 million, when the song begins to narrow in scope, they talk about Jesus, textbooks, television, consumerism, and date rape culture. These things are characteristics of developed nations, of the United States, not the third world.

What they're essentially offering is a Marxist critique of capitalism and it's effect on society. Corporations do view us simply as consumers, to purchase their products and keep the wheel of the free market moving. We are no better than barcoded boxes to them. That's all it's saying, and we're raising to exist in this economic paradigm. Most parents teach this kid that this is just how the world works (and it is.) All they're saying is generation after generation has been part of this machine. It's not a critique of the third world at all, in fact it's barely even about overpopulation (there's absolutely no mention of resources or how many Homo sapiens the Earth can support.)

All the thing is saying is economics is ubiquitous, but not only that it's destroying our souls.

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VEGANGELICA

I agree with all those critiques they make, for the most part. And it's true, I was led to think they were complaining about overpopulation due to the first lines, so you are right that I misread the song.

Still, I feel that even in developed nations children don't just represent profit to parents and corporations. Having a child is much more psychologically complicated than that. Also, many corporations exist for profit but not just for profit's sake: that money is used by people (employees, shareholders) to support their children and try to maintain a higher standard of living that hopefully translates into a more fulfilling life for children. Greed often exists due to love gone wrong, in which people want so much for those they love to have good lives that they aren't very concerned about the impact this has on others.

Certainly there is a lot of greed in the economic world, and governments exist in part, I feel, to help control that river of greed so that it doesn't suck from the poor and direct profits to the wealthy. Perhaps I just expect too much from an intentionally strident song: it can't comment on *all* aspects of a complicated social situation in its short time length.

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Gavin B.

Ari Up, founder of the groundbreaking female punk group, the Slits was one of my favorites. R&B and trip hop performer Neneh Cherry was a member of one of the last editions of the Slits when she moved from Stockholm to London in 1980, at age 14 to pursue a music career.

Even as Ari Up was a peer of John Lydon in the punk rock revolution, in an odd turn of events Lydon became Ari Up's stepfather when he married Nora Forster, a publishing heiress from Germany, some 14 years his senior, who was Ari's mother. It was Lydon that announced the death of Ari from an unspecified "serious illness" last October. Below is one of the many reggae influenced tunes by the Slits from their recent comeback effort. Ari is the one with the massive dreadlocks.



My favorite punk singer was Lora Logic of Essential Logic. Early on, Lora left X-Ray Spex over creative differences with Poly Styrene. Her new band Essential Logic is a far more interesting band than X Ray Spex but far less successful.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt