Bad Religion's SUFFER album as template for modern punk

[budda12ax7]

Released in 1988 I believe....the template for modern skate punk/punk....the Epitaph punk sound. Cali punk sound??
Very imitated sound since....maybe classified as pop/punk....the 2 min songs...standard tuning, Beatles harmony vocals...song writing formula (6).

Did this record change punk from something to something else??

[cestlamort]

Maybe!
It did lay the foundation for the Epitaph sound.
I still remember making a tape of Suffer / No Control / Against the Grain. It all fit on a 90 min cassette (and each CD was at the decidedly non-Dischord pricing of $13.99 or $14.99).

I always forget to include “dear mother mercy can your loins bear fruit forever / is your fecundity a trammel or a treasure” to my lists of greatest rock lyrics. It did probably boost my SAT by 20-30 points.

[zhivago]

In my view it was a turning point...certain punk, in a way, felt "smarter" after that point. All the key changes etc...great album that I still spin up to this day, decades and decades after first hearing it as a teenager. I think Fat Mike from NOFX has openly said Suffer was the basis of the NOFX sound.

[JSett]

I believe that era of Bad Religion and Descendents set the bar for both of the dominant strains of punk to come after that. Smart punk and Dork Punk.

I'm not sure much could escape the influence of those two.

[interceptör]

Don't know, but would love to learn.

As a side note: I hope I won't get tarred and feathered for saying this, but unless you count Iggy & the Stooges* as punk, I'm pretty sure BR's Recipe for Hate is the earliest punk album that I've loved so much that I'd crank it on repeat for days on end.

Man, I need to get my hands on those books that were mentioned in the other BR thread.

* or Nevermind

[interceptör]

I believe that era of Bad Religion and Descendents set the bar for both of the dominant strains of punk to come after that. Smart punk and Dork Punk

I dunno, the dichotomy's almost as old as punk itself: Ramones and the Clash spring immediately to mind.

[JSett]

I believe that era of Bad Religion and Descendents set the bar for both of the dominant strains of punk to come after that. Smart punk and Dork Punk

I dunno, the dichotomy's almost as old as punk itself: Ramones and the Clash spring immediately to mind.

Meh, The Ramones were a Doo-wop band with distorted guitars, The Clash only really had a punk 'sound' for 1 record then it progressed back to their roots of pub-rock. I love both bands but I would say they're not remotely as important to the dichotomy of which you speak. Not different branches of the same tree... more different trees in the same forest at best.

But as I said, I never stated Descendents and BR started it, just that they set the bar in the mid to late 80s.

Plus, The Stooges, New York Dolls and Death were the real first punk bands anyway (The Kinks ad MC5 too a little). The Ramones get credit for something they shouldn't.

[interceptör]

Meh, The Ramones were a Doo-wop band with distorted guitars

* sniff * Truest words the internetz ever saw.

But as I said, I never stated Descendents and BR started it, just that they set the bar in the mid to late 80s.

Yes, I know, but the second I hear a second of Green Day (just as an example), I start to think how fucking annoying the Ramones were. (Although, for some reason, I really like Poison Heart; I might even go as far as saying it's an important song.)

Plus, The Stooges, New York Dolls and Death were the real first punk bands anyway (The Kinks ad MC5 too a little). The Ramones get credit for something they shouldn't.

And here we have the second-truest.

[s_mcsleazy]

i kinda think suffer is one of the 2 albums that really helped shape what punk would become after the hardcore punk era. the other being 13 songs - fugazi.

[eilrahc]

Meh, The Ramones were a Doo-wop band with distorted guitars

I always thought they were more bubblegum pop with a harder edge, but really I think that's all punk was doing, bringing rock and roll around full circle to how it had been in the sixties before it got pompous and started taking itself too seriously. Not just the Ramones but the New York Dolls with their reverence of the Stones, and the Stooges and the early garage bands like the Sonics, and so on and so forth.

I think a now underrated influence on the west coast punk sound was the Weirdos. You listen to their first EP and you can hear where basically every LA punk band from the late seventies/early eighties got their sound.

[JSett]

Meh, The Ramones were a Doo-wop band with distorted guitars

I always thought they were more bubblegum pop with a harder edge, but really I think all punk was doing was bringing rock and roll around full circle to how it had been in the sixties before it got pompous and started taking itself too seriously.

Joey has been quoted saying that he just wanted to do a heavy doo-wop sound. If you listen to a lot of their early hits it's ALL over it. Little bits of Surf and Garage too, but the song structures, harmonies, melodies... straight up late-50s/early-60s Doo-wop to my ears.

[eilrahc]

Meh, The Ramones were a Doo-wop band with distorted guitars

I always thought they were more bubblegum pop with a harder edge, but really I think all punk was doing was bringing rock and roll around full circle to how it had been in the sixties before it got pompous and started taking itself too seriously.

Joey has been quoted saying that he just wanted to do a heavy doo-wop sound. If you listen to a lot of their early hits it's ALL over it. Little bits of Surf and Garage too, but the song structures, harmonies, melodies... straight up late-50s/early-60s Doo-wop to my ears.

Oh yeah, completely. And there's not too many degrees of separation between doo-wop and the Brill Building pop.

The other thing is that of course, the Ramones didn't exist in a vacuum, they were just the ones who hit it big and so ended up getting the credit. They weren't even the first CBGB/Max's Kansas City band to release an album, the Dictators put theirs out a year earlier, and I think the Fast put out a single around the same time as the Ramones began to break through. Again, both bands who borrowed heavily from early sixties pop, the Fast pretty much ripped off the Who wherever they could.

[stevejamsecono]

Oh man, I got a lotta hot takes on the musical evolution of punk and you guys are about to hear some of 'em. Apologies in advance for a lot of soap box showboating.

Released in 1988 I believe....the template for modern skate punk/punk....the Epitaph punk sound. Cali punk sound??
Very imitated sound since....maybe classified as pop/punk....the 2 min songs...standard tuning, Beatles harmony vocals...song writing formula (6).

Did this record change punk from something to something else??

Between this and The Descendents 'I Don't Wanna Grow Up' I think this is the correct, but not for the better, imo.

Prior to this, the more melodically-minded punk had quite a few sounds going for it. You could throw on the Go-Gos, X, Husker Du, Replacements, and a lot of other bands from the early-mid 80s that all clearly built off the Ramones/Buzzcocks model but brought their own sounds to the party.

After this, basically every punk band to follow kinda sounded the same from a production standpoint in terms of "humbucker guitar + Marshall amp" which isn't really unique to punk (surely most hard rock and metal bands had the same model), but combining that with a fairly limited set of musicianly influences and you got... well... what we got in the 90s and henceforth I guess.

I personally think punk music was a lot more interesting when it allowed a wider range of music into it. Sure, the Ramones were just 'heavy doo wop', but I think that is also what helps make their music sound classic and helped them fit into a larger continuity of rock music. I think you could say the same for a lot of the punk rock bands that allowed older or more diverse styles into their playing. I think the UK bands did this brilliantly a lot of the time and the US bands.... rocked and little else.

[budda12ax7]

Definitely created the EPITAPH sound...No FX, Pennywise, 30 Amp Fuse (not an Epitaph band)....but that style.

[JSett]

I agree. Those strains of punk certainly progressed into a very homogenized sound afterwards. I think the importance was the change in songwriting itself. There was still plenty of bands blazing their own trail - but mostly with the heavier side of punk. A lot happened in 88/89 that also affected post-hardcore and (original style) Emo.

I'm surprised it took this long for Husker Dü to be mentioned. I'd almost tag those guys and Descendents together as they certainly cemented a lot of the initial groundwork for pop-punk in the 80s (after the initial influx of poppier punk like the aforementioned Buzzcocks & Ramones) that then led onto Green Day etc. Those records were important to contributing to other bands emerging with darker and more intelligent songs - Face To Face for one, and the excellent sad-punk of No Use For A Name who, despite having that 'sound' of 90s Epitaph/Fat Wreck, steered away into a weird mix-up of punk and Emo that was nothing like the Punk/Emo mix of Rites If Spring etc.

It's a tightly-woven tangle of branches that join and split in many ways and keeping track is HARD.

The only musical family tree that is more complicated is the Metal one. Those guys are craaazzzy.