Punk Now!!

Description

Punk Now!! brings together papers from the second incarnation of the Punk Scholars Network International Conference and Postgraduate Symposium, with contributions from revered academics and new voices alike in the field of punk studies. The collection ruminates on contemporary and non-Anglophone punk, as well as its most anti-establishment tendencies. It exposes not only modern punk, but also punk at the margins: areas that have previously been poorly served in studies on the cultural phenomenon. By compiling these chapters, Matt Grimes and Mike Dines offer a critical contribution to a field that has been saturated with nostalgic and retrospective research. The range and depth of these chapters encapsulates the diverse nature of the punk subculture – and the adjacent academic study of punk – today.

Foreword

Acknowledgements                

Introduction by Mike Dines and Matt Grimes

Punk Rock: Radical Politics, Radical Aesthetics or Just the Same Old Game? – Pete Dale

Pay No More than 45 Copies: The Collection Legacy of the Crass Record Reality Asylum (1979) – Alastair Gordon

‘What About a Future?’ Punk As History and Document – Alexander Hay

A Graphic Representation of Mutual Influence in Contemporary Punk Rock – Michael Blaß

GVA HxC: Appropriation, Adaptation and Evolution – A Contextual Observation of Geneva’s Hardcore Scene – Bastien Piguet and Mike Dines

Radioactive: DIY Punk Networks and the Evolution of Radio in the Digital Age – Charlotte Bedford

‘Ain’t What I Call Oi!’: How Politics Have Shaped the Modern Day Scene – Bethany Kane 

Exploring Social Capital in Youth Cultures: A Study of the Punk and Hardcore Scene in a German Major City – Raphael Kösters

Bloody Bloody Belgium: Reflections on a Unique International Punk Scene – Roy Wallace

Special Stew: Punk and Irish – Michael Mary Murphy

All Punks Hate Bastards: Investigating Punk’s Anti-Police Engagement – Amy Corcoran

‘I Think I’m Dumb’: Or, Punk’s Productive Shame – Brian James Schill   

Bright Writing: David McComb’s Heartbroken Landscapes in Song and the Contemporary Punk Field – Tony McMahon

Call it Crass but There Is No Authority But Yourself: De-canonizing Punk’s Underbelly – Matt Grimes

Punk Rock!! So What? Negotiating an Exhibition of Punk Art and Design – Russ Bestley

Sujets

• Styles
• Genres
• Popular Culture
• Performing Arts
• MUSIC
• Hágalo usted mismo
• Multiple signal classification
• Oi
• Punk
• Cultural Studies
• Do it yourself

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 19 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789381764
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2020 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2020 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2020 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Russ Bestley
Cover image: Sarah Dryden
Copy editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Faith Newcombe
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78938-174-0
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78938-175-7
ePub ISBN: 978-1-78938-176-4
Printed and bound by TJ International, UK
To find out about all our publications, please visit
www.intellectbooks.com .
There, you can subscribe to our e-newsletter,
browse or download our current catalogue,
and buy any titles that are in print.
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
In memory of Dave Laing RIP (1947–2019)
Acknowledgements
Our thanks go to all the contributors to this book and to those who attended the 2nd Annual Punk Scholars Network International Conference and Postgraduate Symposium , at Birmingham City University in 2015. Thanks, too, to Roger Sabin for the foreword and Russ Bestley for the book cover design. Special thanks go to Tim Mitchell, Faith Newcombe and the rest of the team at Intellect, whose unwavering support in the realization of this edited collection has been, and continues to be, exemplary. We would also like to thank the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research at Birmingham City University for supporting the hosting of the 2nd PSN Conference . Thanks go out to all the peer reviewers; your insightful and supportive comments have added to the quality of the outputs in this collection. Finally, we would like to thank the editorial team at Punk & Post-Punk journal and our comrades at The Subcultures Network for their continual encouragement and support of the Punk Scholars Network, and the scholarly study of punk rock.
ONWARD AND UPWARDS!

– The Punk Scholars Network. Keeping it punk since 2012.
About the Punk Scholars Network
Since its inception in 2012, the Punk Scholars Network has expanded its membership and activities through conferences, symposiums, publications, talks and exhibitions, whilst seeking to maintain its original aim as an international forum for scholarly debate. It has also held a long-standing commitment towards the nurturing of research – not only in terms of post-doctoral output – but also through pedagogical and academic support for postgraduate and undergraduate research students – whilst encouraging and supporting non-academics to pursue and develop their interests in punk scholarship.
www.punkscholars.net
www.facebook.com/groups/157886251064866
Contact: [e-mail]
Contents
Foreword
Roger Sabin
Introduction
Mike Dines and Matt Grimes
1. Punk Rock: Radical Politics, Radical Aesthetics or Just the Same Old Game?
Pete Dale
2. Pay No More than 45 Copies: The Collection Legacy of the Crass Record Reality Asylum (1979)
Alastair Gordon
3. ‘What About a Future?’: Punk as History and Document
Alexander Hay
4. A Graphic Representation of Mutual Influence in Contemporary Punk Rock
Michael Blaß
5. GVA HxC: Appropriation, Adaptation and Evolution – A Contextual Observation of Geneva’s Hardcore Scene
Bastien Piguet and Mike Dines
6. Radioactive: DIY Punk Networks and the Evolution of Radio in the Digital Age
Charlotte Bedford
7. ‘Ain’t What I Call Oi!’: How Politics Have Shaped the Modern Day Scene
Bethany Kane
8. Exploring Social Capital in Youth Cultures: A Study of the Punk and Hardcore Scene in a German Major City
Raphael Kösters
9. Bloody Bloody Belgium: Reflections on a Unique International Punk Scene
Roy Wallace
10. Special Stew: Punk and Irish
Michael Mary Murphy
11. All Punks Hate Bastards: Investigating Punk’s Anti-Police Engagement
Amy Corcoran
12. ‘I Think I’m Dumb’: Or, Punk’s Productive Shame
Brian James Schill
13. Bright Writing: David McComb’s Heartbroken Landscapes in Song and the Contemporary Punk Field
Tony McMahon
14. Call It Crass, but There Is No Authority but Yourself: De-canonizing Punk’s Underbelly
Matt Grimes
15. Punk Rock!! So What? : Negotiating an Exhibition of Punk Art and Design
List of Contributors
Foreword
Roger Sabin
The book you are holding is the outcome of an academic conference, contains essays from an academic journal, and is intended as the first volume in an academic book list (cue celebratory bottle of ‘Punk IPA’!). The academy’s deal with punk, it would seem, is done. But still there are detractors – especially among punk fans and independent scholars who don’t believe the two should mix; who, indeed, may feel that they are antithetical. It’s not difficult to find arguments about the undesirability of offering something so ‘subjective’ to ‘objective’ analysis, the alienating nature of academic jargon, and the horror of submitting a (supposedly) ‘anarchic’ and anti-establishment form to co-option by capitalist ‘thesis factories’.
Those kinds of worries are not new. Twenty years ago, I edited an academic book about punk, which I’m gratified to learn is now seen as belonging to a small number of texts which were foundational for ‘punk studies’. 1 It was entitled Punk Rock: So What? (Routledge, 1999), and the book in your hand is connected with it. To explain: the Punk Scholars Network (PSN) conference in 2015 at Birmingham City University featured an exhibition of punk graphics entitled Punk Rock!! So What? and a parallel conference theme exploring ‘Punk now!!’. I’m flattered to say that the exhibition and conference were framed as a look back at my book, combined with a snapshot of how punk studies had developed – and this current book is the result.
It would be tempting to claim that there’s an unbroken line between my book and this one (along with all the other amazing work that is happening in the field). But that’s not quite right. The truth is that Punk Rock: So What? was seen by its publisher as an anomaly: a deviation and a distraction; an eccentric text that might grab the attention of a few reviewers, but which had no purchase in academia and was possibly never likely to have (of course they wanted to make a profit, and hoped it would be adopted on courses, but the universities were not ready for punk studies, and a ‘general readership’ was part of the gamble).
Routledge had previously published Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style , but that was a different prospect. Hebdige came up with a theory about the way subcultures developed, and although punk was part of the discussion, the focus was much more on cultural studies. It justifiably did well, but Punk Rock: So What? was in no way envisaged as a sequel. Nothing was meant to come of it. And, to be honest, nothing did – until a new generation of academics emerged in the 2010s who actually had the guts to call themselves ‘punk scholars’ (a phrase none of us used in 1999) and create a network.
I read my introduction to Punk Rock: So What? again, just to get a sense of how things have changed. In it, I map my frustrations with the shape of the book – that it is not more international, that Crass and hardcore don’t get much of a look-in, and that zines and body modification are not included. Fair enough. The book couldn’t do everything. But even so, the contents are horribly focused on the United Kingdom and the United States, ‘punk’ still seems to mean 1976–79 (despite a disavowal in my introduction), there isn’t an equitable gender split in terms of contributors, the perspective is typically heteronormative (despite, I have to say, real efforts to counter this), and ‘race’ is dealt with basically in terms of ‘racism’. I’m proud of the book, but it’s obviously of its time.
Fast forward to Punk Now!!, and it’s clear that ‘punk’ has acquired a far greater set of meanings than it had in 1999. Not only are the gaps in my book being addressed, but new and important research questions are being asked. This is about more than reassessing the past: it concerns seeing punk as a vibrant global subculture in the twenty-first century. Punk Now!! ’s contents list attests to where punk studies are, and where they may be going – highlighting methodologies, perspectives and self-reflexive takes on ethics that would have been (largely) missed or unknown when I edited my book. As an aside, the references to the Internet reveal another huge (and terrifying) change since then.
So, what of the naysayers? The folk who’d gob on any connection between the academy and punk? Who would argue that it is not an ‘authentic’ position to try and study punk? To be fair, the Punk Scholars Network has always had a policy of reaching out beyond the universities, and that is entirely admirable. And the issues of jargon, and the status of the modern university within neo-liberalism, have been confronted head-on. These are valuable efforts to bridge the gap – but it’s still there. When Punk Rock: So What? came out, fans baulked at the criticisms of their favourite bands, and at challenges to received narratives (especially that the politics of punk may not have been as ‘progressive’ as some vested interests wanted to insist – I remember being harangued over the phone about this). That sort of response will greet Punk Now!! , I’m sure – probably over Twitter this time round.
But there will be many more readers for whom the book is a window onto an incredibly exciting world of intellectual engagement with a cultural force that has changed – and continues to change – fashion, literature, art, graphics, film, the media, politics and, of course, music. Wasn’t being critical a