Who said this rubbish? “Punk is not a form of music.  It’s a fashion statement. If you wanna talk about real punk music, you’ve gotta look at people like the Who, the Rolling Stones…the people who initially had that kind of punk attitude, that right-up-in-your-face thing.  But they had a form of music to go along with it.  This sort of thrashing away on a chord and just screaming abuse through a microphone doesn’t constitute art to me.  You know, you can call anything art, right?  You say it’s art, it’s art.  But I don’t think the music will stand up in the test of time.  The fashion may.  It may be a fashion icon thing with the safety pin through the nose, the kilt, the stupid, spiky hair and all that.  But really, what does it stand for other than trying to jump on the publicity bandwagon to make money from rock music?  That’s all it was.  Then following that, it was a genre a week.  New Wave, garage.  There was a genre a week.”

Who said that?  Someone in assisted living?  Your grandma?  Some guy named Art Fart?  Was it said in 1977?  No.  This rant is from a recent interview with Greg Lake.  Now his vocals on the first King Crimson album were spot on.  And the first album from Emerson, Lake and Palmer was amazing.  But go three or four albums deep and you’ll see why we had to have punk rock.  Prog rock was its own worst enemy.  It went from a progressive, innovative form of rock to Spinal Tap.

Sour grapes much?  Over thirty years later and he’s whining about punk rock?  Please.  Talking Heads, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, XTC, Blondie, The Mekons, Devo, The Jam, Joy Division, Husker Du, Patti Smith, Television?  He doesn’t think they will stand the test of time?  Ooh.  That got my blood pressure up.  When’s the last time you put on their Love Beach album?  Look at my Facebook page picture and you’ll know where I stand.   He’s certainly entitled not to like punk rock.  Never pictured him pogoing to a Ramones record.  But to be so dismissive.  Bollocks.

The old joke about Mr. Lake’s band was, “How do you spell pretentious?  E-L-P.”  Guess it’s not just the music that crossed that line.