Boil punk rock down to its essence,
and it’s basically just faster, louder
Chuck Berry riffs. This statement is not
intended as a denigration. I love fast,
loud Chuck Berry riffs as much as the
next guy (a lot more than the next guy,
actually). I have long been a proponent
of the theory, however, that for all the
doors that the punk rock revolution
of ‘77 broke down, and as great as
bands like Sex Pistols and Damned and
The Ramones were, it was the bands
that followed in their wake that really
mattered musically. In many ways, punk
rock was just classic rock in different
clothes, garage rock with more politics
and sneering. It had verses, choruses,
bridges, familiar chord progressions,
hooky melodies, and even the
occasional guitar solo.
Punk didn’t really get interesting from
a musical perspective until it became
post-punk, a transition which happened
almost immediately. Just as some of
the punk movement’s pioneering acts
were achieving popular notoriety and
starting the downward spiral into
self-destruction, irrelevance, or both,
post-punk bands began popping up,
combining the attitude, ethics, and
political and social vitriol of punk
rock with a much more diverse range
of musical influences and stylistic
approaches. Post-punk was smarter,
artier, more musically adventurous, and
pulled as much from jazz, funk, reggae,
electronic music, and the avant-garde
as it did from all the various branches
of rock music. Musically speaking,
post-punk was the real punk ethos fully
realized.
Post-punk is still very much with us
today. Its influence continues to be felt
in just about every current form of rock
and popular music, and there are still
plenty of bands playing in a distinctly
post-punk style all over the world
(some of them have even experienced
mainstream success). From a guitar
perspective, post-punk introduced an
approach to rhythm, timbre, texture
and atmospherics that completely
changed the concept of the guitar’s
role in rock music. It was no longer
merely a barre-chords-and-solos game,
the guitar could now function like a
percussion instrument or a synth. It
could scratch and sting and bludgeon
just as well as it could create subtle
shifts in mood and atmosphere. Post-
punk guitar could be funky, abstract, or
heavy in equal measure, sometimes all
in the same song.
For the studious and well-rounded
modern rock guitarist, a familiarity
with the post-punk guitar approach
is crucial. The pioneering players of
the genre have wielded enormous
influence on what we do now, how we
think about tone, and how we use and
abuse effects (a point that should be of
particular interest to Tone Reporters).
So if you’re not hip to post-punk, now’s
the time to get hip. Allow me to get
you started off on the good foot. Here
is a short list of essential post-punkers
that every guitar player should listen to.
ToneReport.com
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