21st Century C

Abstract

C has only a handful of keywords and is a bit rough around the edges, and it rocks. You can do anything with it. Like the C, G, and D chords on a guitar, you can learn the basic mechanics pretty quickly, and then spend the rest of your life getting better. The people who don’t get it fear its power and think it too edgy to be safe. By all rankings, it is consistently the most popular language that doesn’t have a corporation or foundation spending money to promote it.1 Also, the language is about 40 years old, which makes it middle-aged. It was written by a few guys basically working against management—the perfect punk rock origins— but that was in the 1970s, and there’s been a lot of time for the language to go main stream. What did people do when punk rock went mainstream? In the decades since its advent in the 1970s, punk certainly has come in from the fringes: The Clash, The Offspring, Green Day, and The Strokes sold millions of albums worldwide (to name just a few), and I have heard lite instrumental versions of songs from the punk spinoff known as grunge at my local supermarket. The former lead singer of Sleater-Kinney now has a popular sketch comedy show that frequently lampoons punk rockers.2 One reaction to the continuing evolution would be to take the hard line and say that the original stuff was punk and everything else is just easy punk pop for the masses. The traditionalists can still play their albums from the ’70s, and if the grooves are worn out, they can