It's been 24 years since Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols sang ``no future for you,'' to the disillusioned and embittered everywhere.
The punk rock movement was as much about economics as it was about entertainment.
Just like its trading partner to the West, the US, the 1970s were hardly boom times for the UK economy. Rising unemployment and falling living standards inspired musicians, who took their rage into the recording studio.
It all started even sooner in the US with acts like The Ramones, The MC5 and The Stooges. Before anyone knew what hit them, one of music's darkest and edgiest genres was giving voice to the disheartened.
The lack of such a movement today makes one wonder about all this recession talk in the US. Not that songwriters or recording- industry moguls are arbiters of changes in the business cycle, but history is rich with examples of angst-ridden music bombarding the airwaves during times of economic duress.
We saw it in the mid-to-late 1970s, when anxiety over an energy crisis, recession and currency volatility morphed into punk rock. A dozen years later, as stagnation threatened, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden brought us the grunge movement and marked the official end to the brightly colored, Day-Glo-happy 1980s. Long before that, there was the swing music craze of the 1930s, which grew out of Depression-era stress. While it was eventually welcomed by the mainstream, it was first seen as a rebellion against hard economic times.
Sensing any of this today? Topping the Billboard charts are sugary, love-is-alive-and-well boy and girl bands. Sharing the spotlight with *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys are Britney Spears and Destiny's Child and their ilk. There's little socio-economic frustration in the tunes of Jennifer Lopez, Moby, Ricky Martin or Sugar Ray.
Ten years ago, Nirvana's raspy-voiced frontman, Kurt Cobain, seemed to absorb an entire generation's pain and throw it back at them. The group's 1991 album Nevermind became an unofficial soundtrack for Generation X.
Yet rebellion isn't about screaming incoherently into a microphone, wearing plaid flannel shirts or stage diving.
In the 1950s, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis personified rebellion. In the 1960s it was Bob Dylan and John Lennon. In the high-unemployment 1980s, weary Americans found solace in Bruce Springsteen and in bands like The Replacements.
The same was true of rap music, a gritty and potent genre that came from the inner cities. Its in-your-face, this-is-the-way-life-is-on-the-streets sensibilities resonated and gave voice to an aggrieved swath of the American population. The gloom and darkness of gothic rock also emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s via the pained sounds of Bauhaus, This Mortal Coil, Alien Sex Fiend and Dead Can Dance.
Socio-economics made its way on to the mainstream rock and pop charts too. In the early 1980s, Springsteen released The River, a haunting album about lost dreams set against the backdrop of economic stagnation.
Next came Billy Joel's Allentown, which highlighted the plight of the nation's steel industry and John Mellencamp's Scarecrow, which addressed hardships facing farmers. The rock band Rush explored the difficulty of making ends meet in Subdivisions, while Billy Bragg brought attention to the plight of blue-collar workers.
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