the hippies had spread their ideas and propositions of love, harmony, equality and justice, a revolution for peace, for over a decade, and the punks were fed up with this. this is tracable if one looks at some of the songs of that era. take "sonic destroyer" by the band rocket from the tombs, and then by the band dead boys, with its lines of "i don't need anyone[...]don't need no human race[...]don't even need you too".
this was written just a few years after woodstock and the high point what is now called "flower power". it's the complete opposite of anything the hippies stood for. no more coming together and being in joy and harmony.
no more idea of a community of peace and progress. the antithesis of any sweet&nice hippie song.
it's also clear in "final solution", a song played by (again) rocket from the tombs and pere ubu. "don't need no cure - need a final solution". again, a line that would fit not nicely to hippie concepts.
the dreams and ideals of the hippies had turned to dust and withered away. they turned out to be something that could not easily be put into reality, not something that could be put into practice, in the end.
so the punks rebelled against this. they attacked the ideologies of the hippies and left them behind. yet there was also something else in punk. punk was amongst the first modern subcultural movements that criticised the concept of *ideology* itself, that turned against any *ideology*. punk bands sometimes used communist and rightwing symbolism at the same time, to show that every ideology in the end is devoid of meaning, and dangerous if followed with fanaticism.
now the problem of punk was that punk itself was and turned into an ideology very quickly. certain ideas, attitudes, hairstyles and clothing became and were a doctrine for punks, and punk became just as conformistic as any other braindead political movement. instead of following society, they followed the just as boring ideals of their "scene".
yet i think there was also something else in punk, a spark, that managed to break free of any ideology...
this rare, sugarsweet, happy-melancholic nihilism that one sometimes can feel at punk concerts...
so punk challenged ideology and failed in the end. what could come after this? punk had the most radical and extreme ideology then - against everything society and the "western world" stood for. how could you top this?
easily. drop ideology all together.
this is what techno did.
techno tried to break free of any ideology and launched a full-on attack on them.
one should maybe look at the situation in music at the time techno came around, especially in the subculture.
indie bands were hyped, the shoegaze sound was starting to grow. bands with elegic, over-produced songs, with "deep", intellectual lyrics, tales of tragic love, worries, melancholy.
techno had nothing of this. just dance to the beat, man! just stop worrying, enjoy your live, enjoy this momement.
this is something the rock crowd never forgave techno. that techno never cared about the "deep" issues of life, but unlike disco, which these people somehow justify and enjoy, that techno, basically, conciously decided to reject them. enjoy the lasers and the synth stabs and please don't talk or worry too much.
this can be seen in, for example, the use of samples of political speeches or philosophical text, that were common in early techno productions. unlike earlier music with similiar things, there was no intent to make the listener actually engage in politics and no need for him to follow a specific philosophy.
it is often overlooked how ultimately nihilistic techno in its consequences was.
the guy on the dancefloor at 6am doesn't care about anything in the societal world anymore, he is in his own world.
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