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Friday, March 31, 1978
University Daily Kansan
Punk rock popularity limited in Lawrence
Staff Writer
By SUSAN WOODARD
Deaf School, the Clash, Talking Heads,
Stiff. Dead Boys, Devo, Iggop, Pop, the Jam.
The Ramones, the Stranglers, Slaughter
and the Dogs.
These groups and others are the heralds of a new form of music proudly titled the New Wave by its devotees, flatly labeled punk rock by the media.
While punk rock may be making it big in England on the coasts, in Lawrence its popularity is limited to a small, devoted group, more likely to show up at record counters than to sport green hairdos and safety-pin earrings.
Sales of punk records amount to only 10 percent of total record sales at Kieser, according to data from the Recording Industry Association.
buy there. However, he said that sales of
unk records were increasing.
Mike Schmidt, program director of KLWN (FM 108), said his station had played only one song which could even remotely be heard in the studio down" by Tom Petty and the Hartbreakers.
Schmidt said that although he had gotten some requests for punk songs and liked some of the music himself, the low record sales kept him from programming it.
"It stiffed," Schmidt said. "In radio lingo that means it went down the tubes. Sales were down; telephone requests were negligible."
"I can't play it just because a handful of people like it," he said.
KJHK (FM 91) does play punk and has even devoted a weekly, two-hour show "The Invasion."
Gregory Walstrom, who allegedly wrote a bad check at the Town Shop, 839 Massachusetts Avenue in his right to a public auction in Douglas County. District Court yesterday.
Art fair planner waives hearing
Walstrom is on the advisory board of the Society of Art, which recently approached the Student Senate for funding for an art festival. In February, he had asked the Department to rent the Douglas County fairgrounds for the outdoor festival the last week of May.
The Society of Art is officially recognized by the Office of Student Affairs.
Walstrom allegedly had a check for
$174.40 returned by the Douglas County State Bank in January, His trial date was set for May 1 in division A of the District Court.
The county commission was advised yesterday by its counsel, Dan Young, that if the commission were unable to fund, the commission could deny the group use of the fairgrounds. Fairground policy states that because students have other places to use, they don't need to use them.
Peter Whitenth, who owns the Town Shop and also is county commission chairman, abstained from the commission's discussion about the fair.
music director for JKH, said that the amount of punk played during regular programming was left to the discretion of the disc jockeys. He said that punk amounted to no more than 15 minutes an hour on JKH.
So far, no pank bands have visited Lawrence, not that there aren't those who
Curtis Reinhardt, manager of the Lawrence Opera House, said that the Jam, an English punk band, had originally a concert at the Opera House for January.
Reinhardt said he had quite a bit of initial response to the concert, though he had advertised it lightly. The group canceled it, but Reinhardt said the calls kept coming.
"People are still calling from as far away as Denver on that show." he said.
There are no true punk bands in
there and play punks in
there and some professors be New York.
Steven Greenwood, singer with the local group Thumbs, said his band played some tuner by Elvis Costello, an English punk rocker. He said responses to his group had
been varied and that audiences ranged from 50 to 400 people. But he said that a dedicated group of about 40 people showed up wherever the band had played.
Karl Helfman, bass player for Millionaire at Midnight, said he considered his band as New Wave. But he said, the band did not draw punk audiences, just ordinary people.
Part of punk's failure to catch on in Lawrence may be purely geographic, according to Alex Seago, assistant instructor of western civilization from London.
"Punk isn't indigenous to here," he said. "Johnny Rotten didn't come from a rural area; he came from central London. What punk rock is really about is an attack on the social order—the grayness, frustration and boredom of urban society."
Another reason may be punk's dependence on live performances. The movement supposedly grew up in New York City when groups, such as Patti Smith and the Ramones, were playing in CBGB's, a small bar in the Bowery.
According to Seagou, punk is more adaptable to punk music, not recording instruments, and performs balls.
The first thing a punk fan does when asked to explain his music is to denounce the label
more easily disseminated in larger cities and smaller continents.
The media and commercialism have taken their toll with the punks. Such store as Saks Fifth Avenue have offered ripped jeans, high-waisted shorts and 150 and gold safety pins costing up to $100.
Sequoia said the commercialization of punk had turned it into a fad and killed it as a
The significance of the safety pin, according to Newsweek, was born when Sid Vicious of the now defunct Sex Pistols mended a shredded pair of jeans with 200 safety pins. The safety pin has since become the symbol of the punks.
--the energy that brought rock 'n' roll to prominence in the late '90s and early '90s. It is called a return to simpler, looser music, but it can call 'good, old, three-chord rock 'n' roll.'
"Once something is commercialized, it becomes meaningless," he said. "Punk rock is dead now. There will be something new next year."
Yet fans welcome punk as a resurgence of
The anger and violence of punk often are attributed to the frustrating economic conditions for young people, especially in England. About half of the jobless there are teenagers as compared to U.S. teenagers, which only 18 percent of the unemployed.
Anger at the system is reflected in such punk lyrics as "God save the Queen, she no human being," which caused the Sex Pistols to be banned in England.
Whether punk rock will be dead in a year or will spur rock 'n' roll to new heights is not certain. Equally uncertain is whether punk will ever catch on in Lawrence.
Reinhardt said that now there was not enough of a market for punk in Lawrence to merit bringting groups in. If Lou Reed, whom some punks have taken as a model, wanted to give his band some punk, Reinhardt said he might consider bringing some punk bands to the Opera House.
VISIONS the way to see and be seen 806 Mass. 841-7421