Winner take all.

I cannot vote until you tell me whether The Birthday Party--who relocated to London after all--qualify as "Brit punk." If so, the Brits win. Any category featuring The Birthday Party automatically wins.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:I cannot vote until you tell me whether The Birthday Party--who relocated to London after all--qualify as "Brit punk." If so, the Brits win. Any category featuring The Birthday Party automatically wins.

What he said.

The moved to London from a former British prisoner colony.
On the Nuggets box set, the Brits, Aussies, and Euros all get lumped into one set, and the US gets it's own.
Ergo, The BP are honoraries, which means UK wins.

Then ya got your Gang Of Fours and yer Wires, not to mention your PiLs...

-A

I accept the Nuggets rule until a UK person objects.

BP and PiL are not Brit-Punk. The UK Subs are brit punk, Sham 69, The Damned, etc.

GBH, Broken Bones, Exploited are Brit Hardcore.

Minor Threat, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, NA, Necros, Angry Samoans, Zero Boys, Dead Kennedys, etc., destroys Brit Punk, much as I like the latter.

Plus, Touch and Go, SST, Dischord, and Alternative Tentacles laid alot of groundwork. Alot.

80s US HC. I would have been a LOT more conflicted had it been 80's UK HC vs. 80's US HC, just based to the greatness of early Discharge and GBH.

American Hardcore with it's early narrow set of criteria was the death of Punk Rock. I'll go with the entertainment of British Punk Rock.

US hc hands down.

Without a trace of doubt in my mind, US hardcore wins this hands down.

The best that the best british punk bands had to offer was a furious live experience. They all still became crap on their major label deals or otherwise just wrote crap after crap to feed to their green and black spiked piss-soaked 'fans'. British punk was probably something awesome for about ten minutes in 1976.

US hardcore was the first time that bands decided to really be what they were saying they should be. Independent. Putting on their own gigs, releasing their own records, making networks. And being truly fucking ferocious. And then when ferocity became expected, doing something unexpected.

Etcetera.

The reason it was called hardcore punk is all the answer you need.

Anyone here "been there" when any of these two eras were happening?

I suppose it's all better in restropect through the rose-tinted glasses and all. But my experience in the Midwest in the period that spawned American Hardcore was that a lot of the element of originality and "fun" took a back seat to "Reagan Sucks" style political spewing, self-important seriousness and musical stagnation.

On the other hand, some truly great bands passed through that phase such as the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Big Boys, etc. At the time they were considered "hardcore" and oddly enough so was my former band, but these bands all strayed from the boring thrash formula. The bands that continued on with super-fast speeds and hoarse yelling-guy vocals became stuck in a rut of genre.

There were many many bands that weren't "hardcore" that contributed to the networks, independent labels and press.

Sure, just like British Punk was exciting for a couple of years, (or ten minutes..) same goes for American Hardcore.
And just as many of these Hardcore bands ended up putting out crap on big labels to feed their close-cropped 'n short-pants wearing fans.