Punk pathetique

Punk pathetique was initially an attempt to characterize a group of London bands that embodied Cockney culture with a Dickensian working class attitude.

According to Bushell: During 1980, hooligan audiences, especially in South East London, found new live laughs in the shape of Peckham-based piss-artist pranksters Splodgenessabounds, whose brand of coarse comedy and punk energy scored three Top 30 singles that year.

Tongue in cheek, I dubbed them "punk pathetique" along with equally crazy bands like Brighton's Peter and the Test Tube Babies and Maccam jesters the Toy Dolls.

But the punk pathetique movement spawned not only Splodge, but also such joys as the Toy Dolls and Peter and the Test Tube Babies, and it still has an impact today.

[3]Other punk pathetique bands included Television Personalities,[4] Half Man Half Biscuit, the Shapes, the Gonads,[5] the Adicts,[6] Notsensibles, Auntie Pus, the Postmen, Desert Island Joe, the Hoopers, Pierre the Poet (Garry Butterfield), Paul Devine, Lord Waistrel & the Cosh Boys, Stephen Louis Knoche Jr & His Raging Cronies, the Alaska Cowboys, Patronage, Percy Throwers Man Eating Plans, SexyCows, the Orgasm Guerrillas, the Implications, and Doughnut & the Donor.

Toy Dolls, Peter and the Test Tube Babies, the Gonads, Splodgenessabounds and Auntie Pus & The Men From Uncle continue to tour and record.

In Germany, the similar Fun-Punk genre emerged in the mid-1980s as a response to hardcore punk, which at that time was marked by political correctness and negative imagery.