A genre of rock started in the 70s and lasted through the 80s. There are still some punk bands now, but they are very scarce.

The media tries to tell you that punk is listening to My Chemical Romance or dressing in all black, etc. However, true punks dress according to their whim and listen to whatever they want.

Emo kids are just pseudo-punks. Don't let them convince you that they are individuals, because emo is the mainstream trend of 2005. True punk has no set style or gimmick.

Contrary to what alot of people think about punk rock, it isn't a completely individualistic musical movement with no rules or boundries. If this were true, than pretty much anything could be punk rock, so long as the musicians intent was not adhere to any rules while composing the music. This would mean that classical, folk, new wave, pop, heavy metal, or any combination of the above, or a completely new genre of music never heard of before could all be punk. Bands such as mr bungle or fantomas who incorporate many genres into their music, and seem to never have two songs that sound the same should than be considered more punk than the ramones or the sex pistols, since they conform to no previous musical standards. The truth is that Punks tend to be very rigid about what they consider to be punk or not, more rigid than alot of people who listen to music other than punk. As soon as someone playing punk rock tries to incorporate some other genre into punk you'll here people say, "that's not punk, that's pop punk or new wave". Punk rock began, and is still considered today to be fast loud 3 chord rock and roll music characterized by either nihilistic lyrics about sex, drugs and violence, or some kind of anarcho-communist utopia. Some punks will say to you out of confusion that bands like avirl lavigne or simple plan aren't punk rock because they don't write their music or cause they are just playing music to conform to the rules of the masses, but who the hell are they to say that avril lavigne doesn't really believe what she's writing or playing is good, and she's just conforming to the masses. The fact is that Avril Lavigne will never be punk, not because she's dishonest, writing music just to make money and please people, but because she doesn't wanna have sex with a dog, drink whiskey by the gallon or shoot up heroin like dee dee ramone, iggy pop, sid vicious or captain sensible. Or Start some kind of anarchist or communist utopia like the clash, crass, dead kennedy's or bad brains. People get all caught up with the saying and doing whatever you want aspect of the music, but not enough on doing something that actually distinguishes you from the crowd, such as smoking crack, not brushing your teeth, living in a jungle, being an angry hippie ect.