rant · moment 7 of 19
Punk Rock Nostalgia and Corporate Co-optation
from We're Gonna Get Ours · #37
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
2 minDiscussion of whether the punk and art scenes (Sex Pistols, Lou Reed, Patti Smith) were ever as authentic as remembered, and how technology and corporate culture have killed underground scenes.
- 17:17Modern art galleries and punk aesthetics are nothing like the actual punk scene felt
- 17:33Tim questions whether Lou Reed and Patti Smith snapshots represent the whole 1970s scene or just fragments
- 17:55A lot of early punk rockers were transient middle-class kids whose fathers worked for IBM, trying to piss off their parents
- 18:06Sex Pistols bassist wrote a book revealing they weren't poor—just middle-class people with safety pins
- 18:27Technology and corporate structure immediately co-opt everything that tries to go underground
- 18:42Tim jokes that punk rock would actually be cool if you could only find it on the dark web
Sex PistolsLou ReedPatti Smith