The slow death of punk

A slightly whiny essay in the Guardian by Jonathan Harris tells us that British rock is doomed! Doomed! I tell ye. For evidence he holds up Franz Ferdinand: “well-adjusted, polite, and politically inert.” They won the Mercury Prize the other day, and gave a thankful, modest acceptance speech, instead of, I guess, hurling the award at somebody. Harris’ main points seem to be that life under Blair and New Labour hasn’t been sufficiently horrible enough to produce the proper rage-filled conditions condusive to punk. You could ask that question of America too, as we’ve been far worse off under Bush, but where’s the music? Perhaps music as an outlet of outrage isn’t working anymore in a world of street protests, Internet, flash mobs, and MoveOn. Young musicians are more apt to blame their parents than society for their ills (hence the awful whinge-punk of Blink 182 and others).
Now, an artist like Elvis Costello always wrote about both, the external society and the internal hell of relationships, but he, like others, were able to understand that both were the same thing, essentially. “Emotional Fascism,” as Costello originally titled Armed Forces in 1979. So possibly one reason this isn’t happening anymore is that we can’t make the connection. The machine of society runs quietly in the background…