Fair enough; I’m finally feeling better after a truly shit week (physically as well as politically) so I can relate.
Feel better soon, and don’t let the bullshit get you down.
*hugz
Thanks, something new to look up on YouTube.
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Except for all those places it was not a working class movement at all.
I’m pretty sure historians have settled this matter that punk as a subculture finds its roots firmly in the working class of England. So unless you have some strong evidence to revise that part of its history then I’m not going to be convinced otherwise (considering I know people who lived it so it’s hard for me to be swayed).
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I was under the (non-expert) impression that NYC also claims to be one of punk’s wellsprings and that there’s been a bit of gentle (and not-so-gentle) rivalry with the Brits on that count over the years. Furthermore, the CBGB’s punk scene of the mid-to-late 1970s (think Television, Patti Smith, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Debbie Harry, etc.) was rooted in a mix of working-class and middle-class youth.
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But defaulting to others’ authority would be a bit reactionary. I see punk as being an egalitarian movement, which means recognizing the authority as what we embody and that we may choose to grant to others.
This is always a paradox when it comes to recognition in a “marketplace of ideas”, because those who strive to consolidate influence and capital will be more well known, despite that this process makes them less punk. It’s true of popular music generally, but especially where the stylistic innovations plainly occur on street level. The best strategy to be truly “popular” is to avoid cultural gatekeepers and centralized media, and just do what you do.
I agree that roots punk seems to ally nicely with anarchist and other egalitarian ideals, but the overlap is not complete. No doubt a lot of punk also grew out of garage bands, partying, and other backgrounds which could lend themselves to being more apolitical or conservative.
I just found this:
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Music critics were the first to start using the term “punk” in the very early 70s (Lester Bangs and Greg Shaw, primarily). Individual scenes (New York, LA, London) took that and ran with it. NYC did predate London, and used punk without much of a class connotation. London had much more of a class orientation, because people in London were much more class conscious than people in NYC or LA.
But the primary connective tissue is still the production of music and how it’s made. Bottom up production techniques (recording music oneself or getting on a punk label in the 80s) was more important than left-center-right politics, IMO.
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Perhaps, but I would say that a distinction between the production/distribution and politics might be artificial, or at least arbitrary. If it’s got a definable ethos, and yields subcultures, I’d say that qualifies as “politics” according to my criteria.
It reminds me (indirectly, I know you aren’t like them!) of when I argue against “anti-SJW” kids on YouTube who agonize over any critique or context of contemporary media with cries of “WHY can’t we just enjoy Hollywood entertainment products in a vacuum without politics?” (shakes fists at the sky). In many ways any art or interactions are going to be inseparable from politics.
When I was in Boston in the 80s-90s our apartment had so many parties that my friends and I would meet punks on the street across town who were on their way to our place just in case there was anything happening. When your household amusement gets so “big” that there are often hundreds of people there, becoming its own community, then suddenly you are involved in “community relations” with neighbors, city hall, police, etc. A few years later in NYC, among a more freetekno crowd, it was guerrilla theatre. We’d show up at a somewhat secluded spot with a generator, PA system, decks and laptops to create a musical/cultural space for an hour or two, pack up and split. The city wouldn’t dream of giving us permits even if we could afford them.
So, trying to identify what we did with the media circus that passes for politics to most would be reductionist, and unnecessary. But even just the basics of doing what we did had very tangibly political aspects and implications, apart from organized campaigns and issues. But that process is what impressed upon me that everything we do together is politics.
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That’s true, but a ring winger and a left winger producing their own records, zines, and putting on their own shows are doing the same thing, but they have different communal aims, yeah? And it’s not necessarily “anti-capitalist” either. It can just be more small-scale capitalist. My point is that it’s not left-right politics like we tend to think. Yes, it’s political, but not along that spectrum.
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I’m related to a former member of The Fall by marriage. I can’t wait to talk politics with her now! Funny thing is she’s a doctor now! Who knew?
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Any ethos featuring this dynamic is inherently more left wing than right.
Left versus right can be reclassified as bottom-up versus top-down, IMO.
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Thanks for that post, its amazing that those words need to be said over and over and over again.
You woulda hated the punk scene in Austin in the 80s. Probably a quarter of the regular people were regular army. Good number of them were NCOs.
Old entertainers endorsing an old man. I do remember a genera attitude of “don’t take your political directions from entertainers” mentality in the scene.
Exhibit A
Authoritarian-socialists are almost always in the top-down category. Otherwise I agree.
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Yet we have right wingers in places like Britain seeing themselves as being on the bottom and doesn’t that hold true if the person believing that is working class and doesn’t have much prospects? It’s true the elite political class can exploit that, but a working class person doesn’t stop being working class just because they vote Tory or GOP. We can certainly think it’s against their economic interests, but if they don’t see it that way, that doesn’t make them some inauthentic puppet, I don’t think.
And it’s entirely true that in some places in Europe, expressions of white power were certainly banned. So, it allowed right wing bands to argue that they were going against the grain of the mainstream society. It’s BS, because Cold War European and American society were still full of racism, etc, but it was the argument they made.
It gets kind of tricky, but are people who are supporting authoritarianism always on the top? Especially when it comes to the music scenes we are discussing here? I see a struggle within these scenes. Just reading over Maximum Rock and Roll (which the editors had a definite left-wing tilt) sort of shows that, I think. The actually discussion of who is a punk and what a political punk view should be is kind of the thing that makes it punk in general (if that makes sense). And many punks have a pretty individualistic core, I’d say. As things go into the 80s and 90s and you start to get a well developed neo-nazi skinhead movement, I do think you see less HARD right wing punks identifying as such, and they start to identify as neo-nazi skinheads instead (with their own labels, zines, etc).
It’s entirely true, at least from what I see when I look at the sources. Eastern European punks more often than not completely rejected any political orientation, because their youth culture was expected to be entirely political (preparing for the day when they become full participants in communist apparatus).
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In Dallas, Austin and NYC during that time frame I knew “right wing” punks and skinheads who were most definitely not of the white pride/neo-nazi type. Good skinhead friend in Austin who was one of the Army punks, the white pride crew would try and recruit him then end up plastered on the walls because he didnt cotton to that nonsense.
Interesting. To bring another Austin example:
Sure. I knew some skins and not all of them were racist, some were, though, for sure. But there is little doubt that many white supremacists became skinheads and that the culture was a recruitment tool. William Pierce (not himself a skinhead, of course) founded Resistance Records for example, specifically to serve as a recruiting tool. And the roots of skinhead movement go back to the late 60s and aren’t generally racist (since these guys were listening to Jamaican dance hall music), though it was always self-consciously class centric (maybe less so in the US).
I do wonder what role the several films about neo-nazi skins had on that dynamic - Romper Stompers, the Believer, American History, later, This is England - on the conceptualization of all skins = racist jackholes?
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Couldn’t the same be said of Alternative Tentacles or the Crass label from the other POV?
Yeah but the JA/UK thing is totally different and probably shouldn’t be part of that same conversation. In the US anyway there was barely any recognition of Ska or other Jamaican sounds of the 60s besides calypso which wasn’t really of JA origin anyway.
BTW, quibble point, “dance hall” doesn’t come around as the specific name of a style of JA music till the 80s and didnt get heard really at all in the US until after the very late 80s or 1990 or so. Sort of a post facto to hip hop.
Hmm those are all kinda post facto to the perception by my figuring. Theres a whole lot of retconning about the various punk scenes by those who were never there but want to make a name for themselves on the backs of those who were. Why should this part be any different?
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Hm. Interesting way to think about this. Do you think that Jello or Crass were attempting to sway people politically? Of the two, I’d lean more towards Crass doing that then Jello. But Jello certainly is a political operative. Do you really think he’s the same as someone like William Pierce, though, even though I know you don’t’ agree with him politically?
But the skinhead movement has origins in the UK and influenced other skinhead movements around the world yeah? American and Australian skins were directly influenced by British skins - even if the local scenes were unique to themselves:
As for influencing American music, what about Marley’s popularity in the us or the influence of Jamaican on early hip-hop?
Romper Stompers probably influenced a 90s wave of skinheads (I know this from people directly, anecdotal though it is), but I’d be more inclined to agree with you about the other films. This is England was sort of loosely based on the director’s own experiences as a young man in the 80s (maybe I’m misremembering that, because I can’t find a direct reference to it).
Someone is always wanting to retconn something or other.
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I had a similar “yeah! But…” reaction.
OTOH, is the dictatorship of the proletariat top-down or bottom-up? Any true democracy is going to end up being dominated by the working class, just by sheer weight of numbers.
Stalinist autocracy is top-down, but that ain’t the only option.
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I didnt mean to draw a line of equivalence, but yeah, political records either way.
Im a whole lot less certain of drawing a line between the UK Ska scene (1st or 2nd wave, either one) and any flavor of 80s and beyond punk skinheads. That may be a fine book and all but it seems to me to be too big a leap. By my knowledge the JA music influenced crowds in the UK stayed along their own genre lines. The mix with the punk scene there (The Clash, Adrian Sherwood & the On-U Sound family, etc.) is known.
Thats another road entirely. Bob Marley & The Wailers go back to the Ska/Rocksteady era in JA. Their records were known in the UK but it wasn’t until Chris Blackwell of Island records seriously revamped their sound by speeding it up and making it more rock oriented that they got any attention in the US.
Remember also that in the US, his music was basically “stadium rock” or even just plain stoner rock and he was dead by 81 so little influence/intersection with 1st wave punk. At least by my knowledge American punks were mostly confused by The Clash’s stuff with Mikey Dread and didnt known that Pressure Drop or Police & Thieves were covers of reggae hits. Me personally it was Clash & On-U Sound stuff that led me to the dub/reggae sound but my interest in those records wasn’t widely shared.
As for early hip hop, sure the genetics are there but you don’t hear the sound of dancehall coming back to influence the US until KRS-ONE or Snow…
I’ll trust your word on that.
True that!
Johnny Ramone didnt think so
Agnostic Front as well
Michael Graves is known to be “rather conservative”
http://flavorwire.com/325091/10-surprisingly-conservative-musicians/10
Of course there was FEAR/Lee Ving, The Vandals and a few others and some smaller bands I forget. Not a lot but not unheard of either.
Somehow this got me reading about Gang Green and came to this line:
Jello Biafra tried to teach them his political views, and they responded by dedicating “Kill A Commie” to him.
Also @Mindysan33 I found this comment in an old Reddit thread discussing Tim Yohanan of MRR intentionally using the zine to promote bands with political views he agreed with and not covering bands he didnt agree with.
