Most fans learned about the genre from its East Coast movement and from widespread media coverage of early British punk. Though punk's dates of popularity in Texas are debatable, several frames of reference are useful. Punk includes numerous subgenres, including "skate punk" (referring to punk's embrace of skateboarding),"hardcore," "cowpunk"(incorporating country and western themes and fashions), the less definable, experimental "art" punk, and other styles. Several new wave acts from Texas caught brief national attention, such as Joe "King" Carrasco and the Crowns from Austin, and the Judy's from Houston. Punk's more commercial, less angry face was new wave, though the terms were often interchangeable and vague.
Subject matter in punk songs is widely varied, though revisited themes are politics (usually leftist, though there were also right-wing sentiments), sex, and anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian sentiments. Influences ranged from garage rock and roots rock to electronic music, folk, soul, rhythm and blues, and even antithetical Top 40 pop music. Generally considered a reaction to mainstream rock-and-roll, punk placed great emphasis on personal expression and anti-professional or amateur approaches to making and performing music.Īlthough most Texas punk music is represented by three-chord songs with a fast tempo and emphasis on the downbeat, the eclecticism of the genre permitted many different variations and styles.
Punk rock, a music phenomenon of the 1970s and 1980s that had its roots in the late 1960s and early 1970s, continues to influence musicians today.