Punk style song analysis
View more presentations from hyoung69
“Ghost Rider”/ Suicide:
Suicide—formed
in New York in 1970—was composed of vocalist Alan Vega and synthesizer/drum
machine player (a sort of proto-dance-DJ?) Martin Rev. The band draws their
name from a Ghost Rider comic titled,
“Satan Suicide.” Although they never garnered much commercial success, Suicide
was hugely influential to modern indie rock, post-punk, and electronic music.
Musicians from The Jesus and Mary Chain to Bruce Springsteen cite the band as
an influence, and in fact Bruce Springsteen has covered Suicide songs in the
past. Suicide is largely notable for being the first band to advertise
themselves as “punk music.”
The song “Ghost
Rider” clocks in at 2:35, and is characteristic of the band’s subtle yet
spastic style of music. Rev’s steady electro-groove changes little throughout
the course of the song, providing the base for Vega’s random, jerky lyrical
delivery. The length and lyrical content of the song (“America America’s
killing its youth”) are certainly punk, and the band was notorious for their
violent, confrontational performances. This, I think, “cancels out the
synthetic nature of the song to make it solidly punk.
“Blue Monday”/ New Order
Following
the 1980 death of lead singer Ian Curtis, Joy Division was no more. However,
the proto-Goth electro-rockers quickly re-emerged onto the music scene, reborn
as New Order. Unlike the sulkier, more rock-influenced previous incarnation of
their band, New Order embraced the synthesizer and, eventually, the dance
floor.
“Blue
Monday,” released in 1983, is notable for being the best-selling 12” single of
all time. This is largely due to its cutting edge, dance-floor ready beats and
moody synthesizers. The vocals, in this song, are somewhat secondary to the
beat, which is a style emulated by much modern electronic music. The song takes
a whopping seven minutes and twenty-five seconds to complete its run, which is
about five minutes too long for a punk song. “Blue Monday” is definitely an
electro postpunk song. The lyrics are heavy, and seem to be offering a
criticism of society and an older generation (“those who came before me/lived
through their vocation/ from the past until completion/they will turn away no
more”), but there’s nothing terribly punk about the style of the song or the
band. New Order was hugely influential on the modern dance and electronic
styles of music, as with many of their postpunk contemporaries.
“Love Meant to Die”/Jazz Destroyers
There
is virtually no information on the Jazz Destroyers available on the Internet,
which speaks to the obscurity of the band. What I have gathered is that Jazz
Destroyers come from the oddly-rock-and-roll city of Cleveland, and that they
functioned in some capacity during the 1980s. They were composed of Dave E.
McManus and James Ellis. Other than that, the band may or may not actually
exist, as far as the Internet is concerned. The band obviously never achieved
any sort of notoriety; it wasn’t really clear to me whether they actually even
released an album.
The
song “Love Meant to Die” is a paltry 1:24 in length—perfect for a punk song.
The song is composed of sloppy, horrible guitars with gargled, tuneless lyrics
about death and society thrown over the top (“I tried so hard to live with a
love that was meant to die,” “In the terminal of pretty dreams/everybody loves
you when you’re lying”). The last twenty or so seconds of the song feature a
distorted, harder instrumental breakdown as the song dissolves into chaos. The
whole affair is rather punk, in my opinion. The band name is certainly punk
enough—the concept of destroying jazz was something that punks were all over.
The song also seems to be mocking jazz, in a way; the song features some random
mouth noises that could be interpreted as perverted scatting. Additionally, the
song is a bit of a distorted, disgusting mess—as was the punk scene in general,
really.
