MUSIC

This selection of music expresses the ideas of the band – a mesh of lounge jazz from the 50s and 60s with the hardcore punk lyrics of the 80s. Why would anyone want to bring these two musical expressions together? Think about what punks became as they grew up, and how as many teens grew through punk culture into adulthood, they were greeted with a society of relative affluence and optimism brought on by the exceptionally abundant economy of the 90s. The more desperate times of the late 70s and early 80s from which punk evolved, promised a future grimly bridled with under-employment, inflation and a music culture controlled by a monopolistic recording industry. The 90s offered an explosion of new music culture, fusions of style, new distribution technologies for music and ideas, and ample choices for aging punks to flirt with becoming middle class. Punk performed in parody as lounge music was a way to reconcile the contradiction of values as one generation transforms through time.

This selection suggests that the angst that ignited punk was for some soothed by the pleasant haze of lounge. But did that anger disappear? Or was it simply repressed and subdued by the material distractions of the times?