Post Music Post - Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 10:00 AM
I remember back in secondary school, music was just music. Be it Green Day or the Backstreet Boys, they all just did MUSIC generally, no genres whatsoever. That's in my own little world of course.
Then as my knowledge of music expanded, and as i listened to different bands, I discovered music could be categorised into genres, loyal to the compulsive nature of man to categorise almost everything in the world. Basically, whatever sounds "nice" and "wuss" goes under the pop category. Add electric guitar to a "nice and wussy" sounding song, and it's called pop rock. Anything with bite and kick it in, it's thrown into rock. Anything else that cannot be categorised in this 3 groups, alternative. Of course, note, 1) I'm excluding dance/hiphop/r&b from this particular post for simplicity's sake, 2) categorising is still done in my own little world at this point.
Life was simple, up to the point when i realised all these things can be sub categorised in millions of other categories, i.e. grunge, punk, ska, hardcore, funk, and the list goes on.
The genre which interest me most was post punk and post hardcore. Not that i'm a huge fan, but more of the name of the genre fascinates me. Btw, Fascinate = dunnoe wth it is.
So i did a little reading up on wikipedia (wat else?) and jsut to share a bit on my findings, little history lesson for those as puzzled as me:
Punk rock saw a great following in the mid-1970s, where bands like the Ramones, The Clash, The Sexpistols and many many others reigned in the music scene. Punk pride itself in its simple chord progressions and melodic tunes, something which was challenged in the late 1970s, hence the rise of the post punk era. Post punk can be described as "synthesised", "new wave", where synthesisers and sythensised drumbeats can be heard often. Classic example of a post punk band is Joy Division, the guys who came up with Bizarre Love Triangle and Krafty.
Note, within post punk itself, there are subcategories (surprise surprise) such as new wave, alternative, hardcore etc. Hardcore, a post punk genre, is basically very passionate, or emo as the kids call it these days, songs about political stuff, i.e. Black Flag. Alternative, this is one huge subcategory, so i'[m not gonna talk about it.
The punk rock bands whom we're more familiar with today, Green Day, The Offsrping, are part of the punk revival in the early 90s. And the post punk revival, brought about bands like the New York outfits Interpol and The Killers and Britain's Franz Ferdinand.
Post hardcore are sung in extremes, either whispers, intense loud singing or even screaming. What differentiates it from its parent is that it is sung intensely, yet there's a unique controlled release of tension, that sort of feel to it. Rather than the mai-tu-liao-ji-tao-hood appraoch of hardcore. And yes, this brought about screamo too. Anyway, an example of post hardcore, Thrice and Funeral For A Friend.
There are really much much more to talk about, you should go check out wikipedia on the history of music. Very interesting.
Lastly, i just want to point out, My Chemical Romance IS NOT gothic rock. They're just pop rock. Ok, maybe alternative rock. For the deprived kids out there with black eye liners going around claiming they are "emo", a.k.a Paul Twohill, go get yourself a ticket to the Cure concert, and only then you can claim to be a gothic rock fan. MCR, puhleeze -
