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song about their hatred of police, “This fucking city is run by pigs/They take
the rights away from all the kids/Understand we’re fighting a war we cannot
win/They hate us, we hate them/We can’t win, no way.”
Less harsh, but no less punk, was Patti Smith, probably the most gifted art-
ist to come out of the punk movement. Smith deliberately did “things to
make people upset” and was visibly involved in movements against nuclear
power and war. Smith’s tone, though she wrote songs like “Rock ‘n Roll
Nigger,” was generally less harsh, and perhaps her most notable effort was
“People Have the Power,” written at the end of the Reagan era: “And the
armies ceased advancing because the people had their ear/And the shepherds
and the soldiers lay beneath the stars/And my senses newly opened/I awak-
ened to the cry/The people have the power... /The power to dream/to rule/
to wrestle the world from fools.” Though never as well known as Dead
Kennedys or Smith, another band from Washington D.C. made its mark in the
punk era, Fugazi. Fugazi held contempt for the music industry so never
signed a major recording contract, and charged $5 for their shows and $8 for
the CDs. Fugazi likely took its name from a phrase used in Vietnam, “Fucked
Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In,” though Ginsberg in “Howl” used the phrase
as well, “who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and
sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the
crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox... .”
While punk had a clear presence on the American music scene, it remained
marginal. Acts like the Dead Kennedys or Black Flag not only wrote songs
that would never get played on radio or TV, but they also rejected the com-
mercialism and consumerism of the music industry. And by the early 1980s,
music was more integrated into capitalist culture than popular culture, espe-
cially with the debut of MTV. In 1977, Warner Amex Cable in Columbus
Ohio developed a channel called “Sight on Sound,” where they would show
concerts and music-oriented shows. On August 1st, 1981, Warner reformatted
the channel and named it Music Television, hence MTV, and played “Video
Killed the Radio Star,” by an unknown band called The Buggles. The song’s
title was prophetic. Music was now more a television, not radio, medium.
Where musicians would break through and become famous because their
songs were played on radio and became popular, now acts had to perform in
videos to get attention and airplay. MTV made stars out of acts like Duran
Duran, Bon Jovi, and Madonna—who combined catchy pop songs with well-