Punk Crock
November 20, 2015 7:45 AM Subscribe
Punk, we greasy teens soon learned, was once the rightful province of a worthy few able to discern reality from simulacrum, irony from sincerity, punks from poseurs, shit from Shinola. Punk was diametrically opposed to massification; like an ailing Victorian child, it would die if exposed to the slavering crowd.
I was too young and too unwilling to be a groupie to get into any of the clubs in L.A. in the latter days of punk (1983ish), but I listened to the music and read through the ads in the L.A. Weekly for the clubs like my life depended on it.
While I liked Please Kill Me, I loved We Got the Neutron Bomb. It was all of those antics I was lusting over when I could make it over to Melrose from the deep valley. Unfortunately, the way women were treated in the punk scene was pretty disgusting and the idea that I would have to fuck someone to get into Raji's was revolting in a way that wasn't punk at all. Oh bondage, up yours, indeed.
Fave line from the article: "Although Please Kill Me raised more Talmudic debates about punk authenticity than it resolved..."
posted by Sophie1 at 8:12 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
While I liked Please Kill Me, I loved We Got the Neutron Bomb. It was all of those antics I was lusting over when I could make it over to Melrose from the deep valley. Unfortunately, the way women were treated in the punk scene was pretty disgusting and the idea that I would have to fuck someone to get into Raji's was revolting in a way that wasn't punk at all. Oh bondage, up yours, indeed.
Fave line from the article: "Although Please Kill Me raised more Talmudic debates about punk authenticity than it resolved..."
posted by Sophie1 at 8:12 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
1992, the year in which two punk-inspired records, Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten
LOL
posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:14 AM on November 20, 2015 [15 favorites]
LOL
posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:14 AM on November 20, 2015 [15 favorites]
Interesting, and at the same time mostly unrecognizable.
For every Patti Smith or Debbie Harry, there were dozens more strippers and groupies whose value was bound up in the accessibility of their ladyparts and their willingness to spend their tips on intoxicants and crash pads for the boys onstage.
Actually, plenty of the "strippers and groupies" became musicians and artists, or already were musicians and artists making rent by stripping. I think there's this really reductionist narrative about early punk because a lot of people assume that no one can be both a sex worker and an artist at the same time, and as a result, various gay men and women get written off as hangers-on. There were tons and tons of women, for instance, who, okay, weren't Debbie Harry but were in small bands.
I'm a teensy bit older than the author. The punk that I experienced had elements of purism to it, but for the most part it was liberating; basically, yes, there were record nerd assholes who would make fun of your taste, but where was this not the case in the early nineties? There was also an immense amount of art and an immense respect for knowing stuff, partly because there was no internet. If you had troubled to make yourself an expert on, say, the political situation in Burma or the history of radical puppetry in Europe, people thought that was cool.
I think our different experiences may be because I was going to shows in a milieu that was basically tiny labels and riot grrrl. Again, plenty of assholes, plenty of problems, but...almost all the old school punks I hung out with were jerks, just real jerks. They were not nice to me or my friends. But even though they were real jerks, they still brought us along places, shared information, lent us stuff [when someone lending you an album or a book was a big deal]. Ideologically, cutting people out of the loop wasn't cool, because punk was about rejecting the kinds of clique-y judgements that mainstream people made.
On one level, I regret wasting so much time with people who were incredible asshole dudes, but I also have to recognize that my life is much, much better and richer now because I got to do so much stuff and go so many places. It would be great if people could not be assholes and offer others access to artistic and cultural experiences of dazzling excitement and richness, but looking back I still feel I'm better off.
I think there's sort of an...average? narrative about punk - that really does map onto some common experiences! - that's about how it was all about purists and nerding out over CBGBs and/or going to Green Day shows. I think that's a super nineties experience, because when you were a teen in the nineties, that was what you could experience unless you were fortunate enough to have a lot of autonomy and/or live in the city. If you were really going to a lot of basement shows and so on, even if you were in LaCrosse, that's a really different experience from living somewhere where the only subcultural stuff you have is at the level of Green Day concerts. I think that the experience of people who are really enmeshed in punk-rock-as-cultural-production is very different from the experience of people who access punk mostly through buying albums and trying to figure out how to look punk. But this is very much an access issue, not a matter of individual choice.
I look back and honestly, we made a lot of stuff. Even I made a lot of stuff, and I'm kind of a klutz. I made zines and stencils and stencil tee shirts and comics and a floppy stripey hat - nothing startlingly original, but that was precisely the point because making stuff was just what one did. That changes the experience a great deal.
posted by Frowner at 8:17 AM on November 20, 2015 [20 favorites]
For every Patti Smith or Debbie Harry, there were dozens more strippers and groupies whose value was bound up in the accessibility of their ladyparts and their willingness to spend their tips on intoxicants and crash pads for the boys onstage.
Actually, plenty of the "strippers and groupies" became musicians and artists, or already were musicians and artists making rent by stripping. I think there's this really reductionist narrative about early punk because a lot of people assume that no one can be both a sex worker and an artist at the same time, and as a result, various gay men and women get written off as hangers-on. There were tons and tons of women, for instance, who, okay, weren't Debbie Harry but were in small bands.
I'm a teensy bit older than the author. The punk that I experienced had elements of purism to it, but for the most part it was liberating; basically, yes, there were record nerd assholes who would make fun of your taste, but where was this not the case in the early nineties? There was also an immense amount of art and an immense respect for knowing stuff, partly because there was no internet. If you had troubled to make yourself an expert on, say, the political situation in Burma or the history of radical puppetry in Europe, people thought that was cool.
I think our different experiences may be because I was going to shows in a milieu that was basically tiny labels and riot grrrl. Again, plenty of assholes, plenty of problems, but...almost all the old school punks I hung out with were jerks, just real jerks. They were not nice to me or my friends. But even though they were real jerks, they still brought us along places, shared information, lent us stuff [when someone lending you an album or a book was a big deal]. Ideologically, cutting people out of the loop wasn't cool, because punk was about rejecting the kinds of clique-y judgements that mainstream people made.
On one level, I regret wasting so much time with people who were incredible asshole dudes, but I also have to recognize that my life is much, much better and richer now because I got to do so much stuff and go so many places. It would be great if people could not be assholes and offer others access to artistic and cultural experiences of dazzling excitement and richness, but looking back I still feel I'm better off.
I think there's sort of an...average? narrative about punk - that really does map onto some common experiences! - that's about how it was all about purists and nerding out over CBGBs and/or going to Green Day shows. I think that's a super nineties experience, because when you were a teen in the nineties, that was what you could experience unless you were fortunate enough to have a lot of autonomy and/or live in the city. If you were really going to a lot of basement shows and so on, even if you were in LaCrosse, that's a really different experience from living somewhere where the only subcultural stuff you have is at the level of Green Day concerts. I think that the experience of people who are really enmeshed in punk-rock-as-cultural-production is very different from the experience of people who access punk mostly through buying albums and trying to figure out how to look punk. But this is very much an access issue, not a matter of individual choice.
I look back and honestly, we made a lot of stuff. Even I made a lot of stuff, and I'm kind of a klutz. I made zines and stencils and stencil tee shirts and comics and a floppy stripey hat - nothing startlingly original, but that was precisely the point because making stuff was just what one did. That changes the experience a great deal.
posted by Frowner at 8:17 AM on November 20, 2015 [20 favorites]
Also, on the "nerding out about CBGBs" level: what one hears is that early punk scenes in different cities were really different in terms of the level of political engagement, the level of interest in art-in-general, the tolerance for/validation of violence and the treatment of women. LA, by all accounts, sounds spectacularly shitty, and I think the San Fran/Berkeley scenes were kind of in response to that - all that Larry Livermore kill 'em with kindness stuff and, in a different way, the Dead Kennedys.
posted by Frowner at 8:20 AM on November 20, 2015
posted by Frowner at 8:20 AM on November 20, 2015
The old Baffler introduced me to the idea that you will pay to have your rebellion sold back to you. It's been a pretty useful guide.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:27 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by benito.strauss at 8:27 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Punk was over in '78
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:30 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:30 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
I remember fucking hating Please Kill Me because it basically starts with the MC5, spends a bunch of time on the Doors, and dissolves around the time the NYC scene really gets underway, and so very, very much of the book is about, to steal from the Dead Milkmen, people seeing Andy Warhol at a really chic party. Which, if it billed itself as a history of proto-punk and punk's very, very earliest days, would've been fine, but the attitude taken by the author is basically that punk ended around 1977 or so and oh hey, just now in the mid 90's people are starting to think punk might be cool again. To focus so narrowly on a particular time and place and just pretend the ensuing decade and a half of worldwide scenes and rapid evolution never happened because Legs MacNeil stopped paying attention (*cough*) seemed then and seems now like some grade-a horseshit, like somebody who can't believe the world exists outside himself. I'm always happy to see that shitty book torn a new one.
The only one I recognized was Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Is it telling that the author thinks of him as "Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers" and not "Flea from Fear"?
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:32 AM on November 20, 2015 [7 favorites]
The only one I recognized was Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Is it telling that the author thinks of him as "Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers" and not "Flea from Fear"?
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:32 AM on November 20, 2015 [7 favorites]
Punk was over in '78
Maybe white punk was.
posted by blucevalo at 8:32 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Maybe white punk was.
posted by blucevalo at 8:32 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
In my experience punks are obsessed with the question of exclusion. Shibboleths abound, everyone is watchful for signs of poseurs, imposters, undercover cops, lifestyle tourists, and hypocrites. And the claims that punk died on a specific date are yet another exclusion, a squinted eye turned to the would-be member of the community.
At the same time there is an evangelism, a desire for inclusion and radical equality. A desire to recruit and convert.
posted by idiopath at 8:37 AM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
At the same time there is an evangelism, a desire for inclusion and radical equality. A desire to recruit and convert.
posted by idiopath at 8:37 AM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
(I read the old Baffler because one of my co-punks lent me a copy. The Baffler was a must-read in our circles and could be purchased at several local punk rock spots.)
Punk does a lot of things. Trying to say whether something is "punk" or not is a bit like trying to say whether something is "rock and roll" or not. For my particular milieu, punk was definitely contoured by the fact that almost all of us were lower middle class people who were [often very unexpectedly, not as a question of "which college will you go to"] able to attend college, and many people were heavily involved in old hippie stuff because it was left wing. It was pretty standard that there would be punks who were really into the May Day puppet parade, or Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater - all of which derive from Bread and Puppet. A lot of people had cut their teeth on anti-nuclear activism, or abortion-rights activism - many people who had gotten their first exposure to all kinds of conventionally middle class/educated-people-things by meeting richer and older people through social protest. So there was this particular pre-existing social/political stance, and there was this heavy engagement with art. Not that most of us were particularly compelling as artists, but there was this assumption that making radical art was important and interesting, and that there was a long history of this.
So that's my punk. Miley Cyrus can never be punk in this sense, because the philosophy that undergirded my experience with punk is fundamentally anti-capitalist and basically anti-American. But a case can be made, certainly.
posted by Frowner at 8:37 AM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
Punk does a lot of things. Trying to say whether something is "punk" or not is a bit like trying to say whether something is "rock and roll" or not. For my particular milieu, punk was definitely contoured by the fact that almost all of us were lower middle class people who were [often very unexpectedly, not as a question of "which college will you go to"] able to attend college, and many people were heavily involved in old hippie stuff because it was left wing. It was pretty standard that there would be punks who were really into the May Day puppet parade, or Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater - all of which derive from Bread and Puppet. A lot of people had cut their teeth on anti-nuclear activism, or abortion-rights activism - many people who had gotten their first exposure to all kinds of conventionally middle class/educated-people-things by meeting richer and older people through social protest. So there was this particular pre-existing social/political stance, and there was this heavy engagement with art. Not that most of us were particularly compelling as artists, but there was this assumption that making radical art was important and interesting, and that there was a long history of this.
So that's my punk. Miley Cyrus can never be punk in this sense, because the philosophy that undergirded my experience with punk is fundamentally anti-capitalist and basically anti-American. But a case can be made, certainly.
posted by Frowner at 8:37 AM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
“If you can talk about it,
it ain't Punk.
If it has a name,
it's just another thing.”
— Ron Hogan's Tao, run through s/Tao/Punk/g.
posted by scruss at 8:45 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
it ain't Punk.
If it has a name,
it's just another thing.”
— Ron Hogan's Tao, run through s/Tao/Punk/g.
posted by scruss at 8:45 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
"Yes that's right, punk is dead,
It's just another cheap product for the consumers head.
Bubblegum rock on plastic transistors,
Schoolboy sedition backed by big time promoters.
CBS promote the Clash,
But it ain't for revolution, it's just for cash.
Punk became a fashion just like hippy used to be
And it ain't got a thing to do with you or me." - Crass, 1978.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 8:59 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's just another cheap product for the consumers head.
Bubblegum rock on plastic transistors,
Schoolboy sedition backed by big time promoters.
CBS promote the Clash,
But it ain't for revolution, it's just for cash.
Punk became a fashion just like hippy used to be
And it ain't got a thing to do with you or me." - Crass, 1978.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 8:59 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Declaring punk's death is a proud punk tradition. Just like saying when punk's peak was, even as that peak keeps moving forward in time. Which should be proof positive that punk doesn't die; it just changes form over time.
undercover cops
This is not an entirely unfounded fear, as many punks were involved in activism, which has had more than its fair share of infiltrators.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 9:08 AM on November 20, 2015
undercover cops
This is not an entirely unfounded fear, as many punks were involved in activism, which has had more than its fair share of infiltrators.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 9:08 AM on November 20, 2015
I'm making no judgments in that description - simply stating that the punks were vocally concerned about these things. I was in at least one punk community that was infiltrated by cops.
posted by idiopath at 9:33 AM on November 20, 2015
posted by idiopath at 9:33 AM on November 20, 2015
this sort of pseudo-intellectual bilge periodically spews from the pens of the anxious post-youth, desperate to ascribe deep meaning and relevance to what they are or were fond of, not yet having glimpsed the reality of themselves and their culture being just one more chunk of flotsam headed for the cataract.
now that's punk.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:34 AM on November 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
now that's punk.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:34 AM on November 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
The writer complains that punk was mostly over by the time that she hit high school in 1992, which confuses me since Riot Grrrl was still going strong then.
... and even more confusingly, she points to Ian Svenonious' brief reign as the Sassiest Boy in America as her coming of age moment. DC punk and its affiliated scenes (Olympia, Chicago, San Diego, etc.) had their failings, but they were still - at least to me, and I'm just a little older than the author - vital and inspirational in the early 90s, and producing a lot of music and art.
Even better - and especially in DC - they pointed in a lot of directions at once to older countercultures that they were an extension of - it became pretty clear that "punk", whatever it was, wasn't distinct from, say, the hippies, and that we had both the same opportunities and the same liabilities that they did. Which is to say, it wasn't worth getting too worked up about "selling out" (though many people did get worked up about that), because it was going to happen in some cases - you could use this thing to genuinely change your life in fundamental, revolutionary ways if you wanted to. We were exposed to older people, both in person and through media that punk pointed us to, that had.
"No future" was just Malcolm McLaren's cynical marketing. Meanwhile in '77, John Lydon was proselytizing for Tim Buckley, Can, The Creation, Beefheart, Neil Young, and the Third Ear Band - in other words, the great, weird stream of the past of which he was a part, and that PiL explicitly aimed to tap into. So just don't worry what it's called, or how other people who don't share your values are using it - focus on what it can help you to do.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:04 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
... and even more confusingly, she points to Ian Svenonious' brief reign as the Sassiest Boy in America as her coming of age moment. DC punk and its affiliated scenes (Olympia, Chicago, San Diego, etc.) had their failings, but they were still - at least to me, and I'm just a little older than the author - vital and inspirational in the early 90s, and producing a lot of music and art.
Even better - and especially in DC - they pointed in a lot of directions at once to older countercultures that they were an extension of - it became pretty clear that "punk", whatever it was, wasn't distinct from, say, the hippies, and that we had both the same opportunities and the same liabilities that they did. Which is to say, it wasn't worth getting too worked up about "selling out" (though many people did get worked up about that), because it was going to happen in some cases - you could use this thing to genuinely change your life in fundamental, revolutionary ways if you wanted to. We were exposed to older people, both in person and through media that punk pointed us to, that had.
"No future" was just Malcolm McLaren's cynical marketing. Meanwhile in '77, John Lydon was proselytizing for Tim Buckley, Can, The Creation, Beefheart, Neil Young, and the Third Ear Band - in other words, the great, weird stream of the past of which he was a part, and that PiL explicitly aimed to tap into. So just don't worry what it's called, or how other people who don't share your values are using it - focus on what it can help you to do.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:04 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Borked a link - the second one was supposed to point here.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:36 AM on November 20, 2015
posted by ryanshepard at 10:36 AM on November 20, 2015
I once accidentally provoked Neko Case into a Twitter rage by praising "Please Kill Me." Her issues with the book were basically a) Legs is a starfucker and b) as PG notes, roughly, much of the material is "did you hear who did what to whom, happens all the time."
Without expecting to be able to accurately summarize her view, I understood that her general frustration with books about scenes is that the music per se is usually left out. After some back and forth my takeaway was that she actually meant the process of creating, recording, and performing the music as well as consuming it. We did kiss and make up and I think it's an interesting perspective. Although as the man once said, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
I still admire the book, though. It's not really a history of a scene, or even Legs' social journal. It's a novel constructed entirely from the voices of interviewees in which the primary subject is a love story between Dee Dee and Connie, and the city itself is a character. It's Joe Gould's never-completed act of recording, shaped into a narrative.
posted by mwhybark at 10:44 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Without expecting to be able to accurately summarize her view, I understood that her general frustration with books about scenes is that the music per se is usually left out. After some back and forth my takeaway was that she actually meant the process of creating, recording, and performing the music as well as consuming it. We did kiss and make up and I think it's an interesting perspective. Although as the man once said, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
I still admire the book, though. It's not really a history of a scene, or even Legs' social journal. It's a novel constructed entirely from the voices of interviewees in which the primary subject is a love story between Dee Dee and Connie, and the city itself is a character. It's Joe Gould's never-completed act of recording, shaped into a narrative.
posted by mwhybark at 10:44 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Which should be proof positive that punk doesn't die; it just changes form over time.
Kind of like Jimmy Buffett fandom.
posted by thelonius at 10:55 AM on November 20, 2015
Kind of like Jimmy Buffett fandom.
posted by thelonius at 10:55 AM on November 20, 2015
like an ailing Victorian child
"... and even more confusingly, she points to Ian Svenonious' brief reign as the Sassiest Boy in America as her coming of age moment. DC punk and its affiliated scenes (Olympia, Chicago, San Diego, etc.) had their failings, but they were still - at least to me, and I'm just a little older than the author - vital and inspirational in the early 90s, and producing a lot of music and art. "
I think you're missing the connection precisely because you are older than the author. Her coming of age was hearing about Svononious in Sassy — she wasn't indoctrinated into the secret knowledge of her contemporary punk.
"Again, plenty of assholes, plenty of problems, but...almost all the old school punks I hung out with were jerks, just real jerks. They were not nice to me or my friends. But even though they were real jerks, they still brought us along places, shared information, lent us stuff [when someone lending you an album or a book was a big deal]. Ideologically, cutting people out of the loop wasn't cool, because punk was about rejecting the kinds of clique-y judgements that mainstream people made. "
Part of the mythos of punk, at least when I was coming up a few years after, was that punk encouraged you to be as much of an asshole as possible, to everyone, all the time, both in the thought that the abrasive nature would scare off the poseurs, and to reach apotheosis of its nihilism.
"Declaring punk's death is a proud punk tradition. Just like saying when punk's peak was, even as that peak keeps moving forward in time. Which should be proof positive that punk doesn't die; it just changes form over time."
Just wait until you hear about jazz!
It is also dead.
"So that's my punk. Miley Cyrus can never be punk in this sense, because the philosophy that undergirded my experience with punk is fundamentally anti-capitalist and basically anti-American. But a case can be made, certainly."
Once upon a time, Cyrus's rebellion would have been described as "rock and roll," with her attacks on bourgeois values or whatever. That "punk" in this sense is indistinguishable from the earlier "rock and roll" implies that it's not a meaningful description. But who knows — maybe she's destroying her body in a k-hole for her next album. That'd be pretty punk.
(For all of this, I think that it boils down to "punk" is "cool" in Hipster, but "hipster" is "uncool" in Punk.)
Anecdote explaining my current positioning: I've always been into music, especially weirdo music. I used to work at Kinko's with a guy who was also way into music, a guy who was a couple years older, went to my high school, and was way cooler. But while he was way into music, he was only way into punk, specifically HARDCORE. We'd both be there, making our zines, lamenting the rise of screamo, and he'd always be trumping my punk knowledge. And for a while, I'd try to catch up since he knew about all sorts of cool shit — Samoans and Cromags and Laughing Hyenas etc. — but after a bit, I just didn't care anymore. Most hardcore bands are functionally interchangeable for me. And so while he's no doubt still doing solid work on the minutiae of the Chicago 1984 van scene, I don't give a shit if he thinks that the first Go-Gos album is sell-out bullshit — I like it, fuck him. PUNK ROCK.
posted by klangklangston at 11:06 AM on November 20, 2015
"... and even more confusingly, she points to Ian Svenonious' brief reign as the Sassiest Boy in America as her coming of age moment. DC punk and its affiliated scenes (Olympia, Chicago, San Diego, etc.) had their failings, but they were still - at least to me, and I'm just a little older than the author - vital and inspirational in the early 90s, and producing a lot of music and art. "
I think you're missing the connection precisely because you are older than the author. Her coming of age was hearing about Svononious in Sassy — she wasn't indoctrinated into the secret knowledge of her contemporary punk.
"Again, plenty of assholes, plenty of problems, but...almost all the old school punks I hung out with were jerks, just real jerks. They were not nice to me or my friends. But even though they were real jerks, they still brought us along places, shared information, lent us stuff [when someone lending you an album or a book was a big deal]. Ideologically, cutting people out of the loop wasn't cool, because punk was about rejecting the kinds of clique-y judgements that mainstream people made. "
Part of the mythos of punk, at least when I was coming up a few years after, was that punk encouraged you to be as much of an asshole as possible, to everyone, all the time, both in the thought that the abrasive nature would scare off the poseurs, and to reach apotheosis of its nihilism.
"Declaring punk's death is a proud punk tradition. Just like saying when punk's peak was, even as that peak keeps moving forward in time. Which should be proof positive that punk doesn't die; it just changes form over time."
Just wait until you hear about jazz!
It is also dead.
"So that's my punk. Miley Cyrus can never be punk in this sense, because the philosophy that undergirded my experience with punk is fundamentally anti-capitalist and basically anti-American. But a case can be made, certainly."
Once upon a time, Cyrus's rebellion would have been described as "rock and roll," with her attacks on bourgeois values or whatever. That "punk" in this sense is indistinguishable from the earlier "rock and roll" implies that it's not a meaningful description. But who knows — maybe she's destroying her body in a k-hole for her next album. That'd be pretty punk.
(For all of this, I think that it boils down to "punk" is "cool" in Hipster, but "hipster" is "uncool" in Punk.)
Anecdote explaining my current positioning: I've always been into music, especially weirdo music. I used to work at Kinko's with a guy who was also way into music, a guy who was a couple years older, went to my high school, and was way cooler. But while he was way into music, he was only way into punk, specifically HARDCORE. We'd both be there, making our zines, lamenting the rise of screamo, and he'd always be trumping my punk knowledge. And for a while, I'd try to catch up since he knew about all sorts of cool shit — Samoans and Cromags and Laughing Hyenas etc. — but after a bit, I just didn't care anymore. Most hardcore bands are functionally interchangeable for me. And so while he's no doubt still doing solid work on the minutiae of the Chicago 1984 van scene, I don't give a shit if he thinks that the first Go-Gos album is sell-out bullshit — I like it, fuck him. PUNK ROCK.
posted by klangklangston at 11:06 AM on November 20, 2015
The peacepunk kids I grew up with were basically anarchist hippies—one part safety pins and Food Not Bombs patches and pleather jackets, one part LSD and dreadlocks and cuddle piles. Those guys were pretty sincere about the radical inclusion thing.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 11:41 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by escape from the potato planet at 11:41 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Just like saying when punk's peak was
Was it when I was 14? I bet it was when I was 14.
(There's an insecurity in the search for punk authenticity that isn't, I think, present in any other popular music. Maybe that's because it defines itself as anti-[capitalism|normality|straights], but the centre always consumes popular subcultures. Gotta keep moving).
Punk became a fashion just like hippy used to be
Yup.
posted by Leon at 12:38 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Was it when I was 14? I bet it was when I was 14.
(There's an insecurity in the search for punk authenticity that isn't, I think, present in any other popular music. Maybe that's because it defines itself as anti-[capitalism|normality|straights], but the centre always consumes popular subcultures. Gotta keep moving).
Punk became a fashion just like hippy used to be
Yup.
posted by Leon at 12:38 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Was it when I was 14? I bet it was when I was 14.
I was 14 in 1978, so that works for me.
posted by octothorpe at 12:46 PM on November 20, 2015
I was 14 in 1978, so that works for me.
posted by octothorpe at 12:46 PM on November 20, 2015
Actually, I think the way one narrates punk has a lot to do with personality - does one default to the "and you're all just a bunch of childish hypocrites, let's move on" or does one actually try to explain what the experience was and why it was important or moving? Honestly, I get a little tired of the "I used to really care about punk rock but now I see that it was just stupid because we thought we were opposed to the squares but we really were the squares, man" narrative; it seems so stupidly reductionist and dismissive, and it doesn't seem to describe either my own experience or what I see of the kids today who play music, go to shows, etc.
posted by Frowner at 12:49 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 12:49 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
My favorite example of that was the guy complaining about how punk rock didn't equip him to be a success later in life. Which... yes?
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:57 PM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:57 PM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
Or maybe the it's a matter of what your experience with punk was - I mean, I'm sorry that your experience with punk was, like, buying Green Day CDs and arguing about Fugazi set lists, but that doesn't sum up everyone's experience by any means.
posted by Frowner at 1:00 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Frowner at 1:00 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
My favorite example of that was the guy complaining about how punk rock didn't equip him to be a success later in life.
Depends on how you define "success", I guess - given that my generation's fate seems to involve an endlessly declining standard of living ending in scavenging and poverty, I'd say punk rock prepared me to succeed pretty well. I mean, hell, we almost made an entire culture out of stuff we found in thrift stores and the garbage.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:19 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
Depends on how you define "success", I guess - given that my generation's fate seems to involve an endlessly declining standard of living ending in scavenging and poverty, I'd say punk rock prepared me to succeed pretty well. I mean, hell, we almost made an entire culture out of stuff we found in thrift stores and the garbage.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:19 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
For every Patti Smith or Debbie Harry, there were dozens more strippers and groupies whose value was bound up in the accessibility of their ladyparts and their willingness to spend their tips on intoxicants and crash pads for the boys onstage.
FWIW, I didn't read this as a slam on the women, but rather a slam on how the men in the scene treated them. It's an ooky feeling to realize that people who you view as equal tie your own value to your fuckability and support of their needs.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 2:38 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
FWIW, I didn't read this as a slam on the women, but rather a slam on how the men in the scene treated them. It's an ooky feeling to realize that people who you view as equal tie your own value to your fuckability and support of their needs.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 2:38 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, for all that punks would decry "rock star bullshit" you'd best believe most of them were/are no better.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:48 PM on November 20, 2015
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:48 PM on November 20, 2015
Punk died on August 25, 1900.
Cute, but punk actually died on December 22, 1985.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:51 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Cute, but punk actually died on December 22, 1985.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:51 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
I can remember when I put aside the flannel and doc marten's (es?) - when, for the third year in a row, I hear the exact same speech, from the exact same guy (barring age, as a river it flows), at the Anarchist's Book Fair.
I said to myself, 'if these fellas (gender irrespective) are just all wishing the world were filled with them-clones, how would it be?'
Chills, I tell you, chills. As one of the beard-stroking grey-faces I was warned about, I quietly abhor what could have been.
posted by LD Feral at 3:32 PM on November 20, 2015
I said to myself, 'if these fellas (gender irrespective) are just all wishing the world were filled with them-clones, how would it be?'
Chills, I tell you, chills. As one of the beard-stroking grey-faces I was warned about, I quietly abhor what could have been.
posted by LD Feral at 3:32 PM on November 20, 2015
I wish punk rock were as much fun to listen to as it is to argue about.
posted by jason's_planet at 4:05 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jason's_planet at 4:05 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Punk is doing fine. Here's Dog Party covering Los Angeles by X. They're 15 and 17, they've got 4 albums out and have opened for The Aquabats and are cooler than most things out there. The Isotopes sing songs about baseball and are great live. MAXIMUMROCKNROLL has a podcast every week with all the punk stuff that's going on in the world right now. There's a whole mess of really good shit out there if you're willing to stop whining and take two secs to look.
posted by Zack_Replica at 4:33 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Zack_Replica at 4:33 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
Honestly, I get a little tired of the "I used to really care about punk rock but now I see that it was just stupid because we thought we were opposed to the squares but we really were the squares, man" narrative
I feel like this narrative is meant more to comfort the speaker than to convince anyone else, though. Boomers, for all the mass market flower power nostalgia during the 80s, still practically danced on the grave of the 60s. Even my streetfighting, union organizing dad loved Huey Lewis' "Hip To Be Square" and Billy Joel's "Angry Young Man". Taking the position that you once used to be wild and free and gave a shit about things but then you "grew up" is a very neat and tidy way to deflect criticism, real or imagined, about the choices you made later in life.
But more so, it's the flip side of the subcultural "we are true to ourselves, they are sellouts" mentality. If you had that kind of fortress mentality when you were in it, than to leave the subculture, it must be because you sold out. Ergo, selling out has to be defended, and what better way than to dive right the fuck in head first and disavow everything you once believed in as youthful folly. That is, instead of accepting the messier conclusion that people are confronted with different choices as they get older, and that you can actually refine and nuancify your points of view, build upon them even, so even if you're not a part of a particular scene anymore, the principles that drew you into it still guide your life, just in different ways than they did before.
Anecdotally, most of the people I grew up with in the hardcore scene who later adopted this kind of "I grew up" mentality were fucking poseurs. They enjoyed the clothes, or the partying, or the reactions they got from parents, but never abided the words of wisdom of Mssr Biafra: "You ain't hardcore when you spike your hair if a jock still lives inside your head." The people I knew who were drawn to the principles though? They've gone on the apply those principles to how they continue to live their lives. One of them is a freelance archaeologist. Like volunteers his time and efforts on digs, fending off poachers, for little to no compensation other than the satisfaction of helping bring something wonderful to light. I think that's punk as fuck.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:34 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
I feel like this narrative is meant more to comfort the speaker than to convince anyone else, though. Boomers, for all the mass market flower power nostalgia during the 80s, still practically danced on the grave of the 60s. Even my streetfighting, union organizing dad loved Huey Lewis' "Hip To Be Square" and Billy Joel's "Angry Young Man". Taking the position that you once used to be wild and free and gave a shit about things but then you "grew up" is a very neat and tidy way to deflect criticism, real or imagined, about the choices you made later in life.
But more so, it's the flip side of the subcultural "we are true to ourselves, they are sellouts" mentality. If you had that kind of fortress mentality when you were in it, than to leave the subculture, it must be because you sold out. Ergo, selling out has to be defended, and what better way than to dive right the fuck in head first and disavow everything you once believed in as youthful folly. That is, instead of accepting the messier conclusion that people are confronted with different choices as they get older, and that you can actually refine and nuancify your points of view, build upon them even, so even if you're not a part of a particular scene anymore, the principles that drew you into it still guide your life, just in different ways than they did before.
Anecdotally, most of the people I grew up with in the hardcore scene who later adopted this kind of "I grew up" mentality were fucking poseurs. They enjoyed the clothes, or the partying, or the reactions they got from parents, but never abided the words of wisdom of Mssr Biafra: "You ain't hardcore when you spike your hair if a jock still lives inside your head." The people I knew who were drawn to the principles though? They've gone on the apply those principles to how they continue to live their lives. One of them is a freelance archaeologist. Like volunteers his time and efforts on digs, fending off poachers, for little to no compensation other than the satisfaction of helping bring something wonderful to light. I think that's punk as fuck.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:34 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
"Actually, I think the way one narrates punk has a lot to do with personality - does one default to the "and you're all just a bunch of childish hypocrites, let's move on" or does one actually try to explain what the experience was and why it was important or moving?
Honestly, I get a little tired of the "I used to really care about punk rock but now I see that it was just stupid because we thought we were opposed to the squares but we really were the squares, man" narrative; it seems so stupidly reductionist and dismissive, and it doesn't seem to describe either my own experience or what I see of the kids today who play music, go to shows, etc."
Innit "I used to really care about punk rock but now I see that it was just stupid because we thought we were opposed to the squares but we really were the squares, man" kinda reductive itself?
I guess part of it is that I've just gotten suspicious of both the idea of singular narratives and a lot of the underlying faith in an individualistic model of anti-capitalism, which kinda goes well with listening to punk.
I also grew up in a time when hip hop was emerging into the mainstream, and I remember a lot of the Does It Punk being really reactionary — and I remember how a lot of ostensibly anti-capitalism rhetoric was tied into that, along with earlier dismissals of disco and New Wave. Right after that, indie crashed on Napster shoals and getting paid to make music meant For Jettas By Jettas.
(Re: The narrative of punk:
A year or so back, a coworker of mine asked me to make her a mix of a bunch of post-punk stuff, and this discussion just made me turn it into a youtube mix.)
posted by klangklangston at 12:59 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Honestly, I get a little tired of the "I used to really care about punk rock but now I see that it was just stupid because we thought we were opposed to the squares but we really were the squares, man" narrative; it seems so stupidly reductionist and dismissive, and it doesn't seem to describe either my own experience or what I see of the kids today who play music, go to shows, etc."
Innit "I used to really care about punk rock but now I see that it was just stupid because we thought we were opposed to the squares but we really were the squares, man" kinda reductive itself?
I guess part of it is that I've just gotten suspicious of both the idea of singular narratives and a lot of the underlying faith in an individualistic model of anti-capitalism, which kinda goes well with listening to punk.
I also grew up in a time when hip hop was emerging into the mainstream, and I remember a lot of the Does It Punk being really reactionary — and I remember how a lot of ostensibly anti-capitalism rhetoric was tied into that, along with earlier dismissals of disco and New Wave. Right after that, indie crashed on Napster shoals and getting paid to make music meant For Jettas By Jettas.
(Re: The narrative of punk:
A year or so back, a coworker of mine asked me to make her a mix of a bunch of post-punk stuff, and this discussion just made me turn it into a youtube mix.)
posted by klangklangston at 12:59 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
I find it weird that MetaFilter has so many descriptivists when it comes to language, but when the word being discussed is "punk", everyone turns into prescriptivists. The meaning of the word "punk" has changed over time, as have many words. Arguing about when "punk died" has nothing to do with when punk died, it's just "when did the word stop being used for the definition I like the most".
posted by Bugbread at 6:56 PM on November 23, 2015
posted by Bugbread at 6:56 PM on November 23, 2015
"I find it weird that MetaFilter has so many descriptivists when it comes to language, but when the word being discussed is "punk", everyone turns into prescriptivists."
I take your point, but: 1) Punk's always had a big prescriptivist streak — the righteousness is always immanent; 2) punk's never really had a coherent definition to begin with. So it's not surprising that a bunch of different people comport with 1 while coming from 2.
posted by klangklangston at 10:36 PM on November 23, 2015 [2 favorites]
I take your point, but: 1) Punk's always had a big prescriptivist streak — the righteousness is always immanent; 2) punk's never really had a coherent definition to begin with. So it's not surprising that a bunch of different people comport with 1 while coming from 2.
posted by klangklangston at 10:36 PM on November 23, 2015 [2 favorites]
Wow, Dog Party are great! Thanks!
Yeah, they're pretty fun! I'd say that their album 'Lost Control' is a good place to start listening.
posted by Zack_Replica at 12:38 PM on November 24, 2015
Yeah, they're pretty fun! I'd say that their album 'Lost Control' is a good place to start listening.
posted by Zack_Replica at 12:38 PM on November 24, 2015
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