Being one who has lived through the classic punk scene myself... I have my own ideas about music and the continual waves of resurgence and reincarnation.

Music to me is a living entity and will mutate over time... even if it is being held in constraints. Music will always be influenced by what is in the here and now.

I believe there will be many reincarnations of punk music with added new styles and ideas. It's good that you know the foundation that this music was created on. I myself knew quite a few musicians from the Dead Kennedys to Flipper, and it's good to know where, how and why this music was created.

I also believe that a come back would have to include what is currently happening in society and the world at large. That is what I remember the most from classic punk... the message.

Iggy Pop,Jello Biafra, Lux Interior,Joey Ramone...with guys like these, how can it NOT have a come back. I'm going to make sure my great grandkids 50 years from now will know thy punk!

I do agree that punk is coming back. Lately among teenagers, I am seeing a revival of The Ramones especially. I personally can't wait for the return myself. :)

I think it is, and I think it's been on the upswing for a few more years than that. One of my daughter's pre-pro ballet school classmates is the daughter of one of the Zero Boys. After a decade or more disbanded, they started performing together again a few years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDUZ8DJbhE

The drummer is my daughter's classmate's dad.

Personally, I think that once specific music styles from specific periods of time have faded and passed on into the ether, they don't tend to "come back", at least, in the purest sense of the phrase. Punk of the '70s into the '80s describes a very particular moment in time where there was this raw energy and snarling resentment felt by youth culture after the peace/love generation of the '60s had burned out. There were a lot of ideas and causes championed by punk of the '70s and '80s, most of which do not have the same relevance or an entirely different significance today. The music itself has simultaneously become so co-opted and bastardized as well as inventively woven into subsequent music movements, it's hard to see a full-on punk revival that might match the gut-pounding grit of "classic punk".

Don't get me wrong, it's totally sweet to see Iggy Pop and Joey Ramone still getting out there and doing their thing, but they've transformed since their earlier days. I'm not sure the artists of old still could have the same impact and immediacy as they used to - especially in our little corner of time. Doesn't mean it can't be just as good or better then their classic punk-era work, it's just different. As it was said, music evolves and fragments with the times, so it's my belief you'll have two possible outcomes: a punk revival which has a heavy stigma of nostalgia and a furthered evolution of punk music styles hybridized into new forms of music (both inventively and lazily).