PUNK ISN’T DEAD, YOU ARE (AGAIN)
Mar. 12th, 2013 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: Punk rock is bullshit.
So declares John Roderick of The Long Winters in a cover story for the Seattle Weekly that is a textbook example of what the children of the 21st century refer to as “flamebait”.
It’s worth pointing out at the start that Roderick isn’t talking about the music so much as the sociopolitical framework of “punk”:
Roderick then spends a good 3,000 words to illustrate his point – and defend it from the two most obvious responses: (1) “It’s supposed to be bullshit!” and (2) “Punk rock made my life bearable!”
My own response goes something like this:
It’s true that punk rock as a “thing” has been bullshit for a very long time, not least because of all the no-nonsense hardcore punkers who were (1) convinced that punk could change The System into some ideological utopia and (2) obsessed with countercultural purity, arguing incessantly over what was or wasn’t “true” punk. If any single thing disillusioned me about the punk scene, it was the attitude that it wasn’t punk unless Ben Weasel or Tim Armstrong or some random guy in Maximum Rock’n’Roll said it was.
Which is why, ironically, I never really fit in to a scene that was supposed to be accepting of all the misfits that couldn’t cut it in the popular cliques. In the end, for my money, the punk scene was just another clique with different entrance requirements (and better music).
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I bought into a lot of what passed for the punk “manifesto” when I got into the music in the mid-1980s: the whole DIY ethic, the fucking of Corporate Rock and the embracing of the misfits who couldn't cut the Jock/Cheerleader/Preppie/Yuppie scene. I’ll also be the first to admit that much of that ideology didn’t really hold up to real-world experience. Most ideologies don’t. The thing is, I learned from that. It played a part in shaping me into the person I am now. And I like to think I’m a better (or at least smarter) person as a result.
It’s easy to say punk failed as a sociopolitical movement. That much is obvious. Last I looked, THE MAN™ and his Corporate-Funded Greed-head Warmongering Patriarchic Infrastructure is still intact – more so than ever, in fact, to the point that “punk” is a section in hip clothing stores in shopping malls (and has been since pretty much the mid-90s).
For all that, however, I wouldn't go so far as to say punk rhetoric was a complete waste of time and energy, either.
For one thing, it pays to remember that punk was partly a nihilistic reaction to specific political regimes (namely, Thatcher’s England and Reagan’s America) when we all lived under the nuclear-powered fear and loathing of the Cold War and yr peers judged yr worth as a fellow citizen by yr bank account and yr designer jeans. The times demanded an antidote, if not a solution, and the punk scene was an almost logical (if naïve) outcome.
If nothing else, punk rock (in all its forms) provided a gateway for a lot young kids (including me) to discover that there was more to life than Top 40 Radio and middle-class conformity, and that it was okay to be different and do things on yr own terms, and that many of the mores, truisms and mechanisms of democracy, capitalism and conformity are self-serving bullshit.
Maybe you were never going to tear down the Corporate State® with that knowledge, but it’s better to at least see through the illusion than be manipulated by it. Put another way, as Henry Rollins pointed out a few years ago, it doesn’t matter if a car company uses a Stooges song to try and get you (a lifelong Stooges fan) to buy their product so long as yr smart enough to know that’s exactly what they're trying to do.
Anyway, the point remains that “punk rock”, for a lot of people, did more good than harm, even if all they got out of it was the chance to expand their cultural or sociopolitical horizons and challenge their worldview, and the knowledge that they weren’t the only freak in the world. That can only be a good thing.
All of which is the long version of what one guy already said in his response to Roderick’s article: punk was never just one thing, and its true value was inspiring creation and a broader view of the world, not providing listeners with a users’ manual for life or a workable manifesto for revolution.
So, basically, yes, punk rock is bullshit – but that doesn’t mean it served no useful purpose or provided no value to those of us who participated in it.
Of course, I can’t say whether it still serves that purpose in its current form in 2013. Probably not. But then it’s a different world, where digital technologies and social media make DIY music and discovering the world outside yr hometown even more possible.
Too bad most of it is in the form of apocryphal Facebook memes and hyperpartisan bloggery. Oh well.
I was a punk before you were a punk,
This is dF
So declares John Roderick of The Long Winters in a cover story for the Seattle Weekly that is a textbook example of what the children of the 21st century refer to as “flamebait”.
It’s worth pointing out at the start that Roderick isn’t talking about the music so much as the sociopolitical framework of “punk”:
What I'm talking about is "punk rock" as a political stance, punk rock as a social movement, punk rock as a fashion trend, punk rock as a personal lifestyle brand, and punk rock as a lens of critical appraisal. The shadow of punk rock has eclipsed countless new dawns under its fundamental negativity and its lazy equation of rejection with action.
Roderick then spends a good 3,000 words to illustrate his point – and defend it from the two most obvious responses: (1) “It’s supposed to be bullshit!” and (2) “Punk rock made my life bearable!”
My own response goes something like this:
It’s true that punk rock as a “thing” has been bullshit for a very long time, not least because of all the no-nonsense hardcore punkers who were (1) convinced that punk could change The System into some ideological utopia and (2) obsessed with countercultural purity, arguing incessantly over what was or wasn’t “true” punk. If any single thing disillusioned me about the punk scene, it was the attitude that it wasn’t punk unless Ben Weasel or Tim Armstrong or some random guy in Maximum Rock’n’Roll said it was.
Which is why, ironically, I never really fit in to a scene that was supposed to be accepting of all the misfits that couldn’t cut it in the popular cliques. In the end, for my money, the punk scene was just another clique with different entrance requirements (and better music).
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I bought into a lot of what passed for the punk “manifesto” when I got into the music in the mid-1980s: the whole DIY ethic, the fucking of Corporate Rock and the embracing of the misfits who couldn't cut the Jock/Cheerleader/Preppie/Yuppie scene. I’ll also be the first to admit that much of that ideology didn’t really hold up to real-world experience. Most ideologies don’t. The thing is, I learned from that. It played a part in shaping me into the person I am now. And I like to think I’m a better (or at least smarter) person as a result.
It’s easy to say punk failed as a sociopolitical movement. That much is obvious. Last I looked, THE MAN™ and his Corporate-Funded Greed-head Warmongering Patriarchic Infrastructure is still intact – more so than ever, in fact, to the point that “punk” is a section in hip clothing stores in shopping malls (and has been since pretty much the mid-90s).
For all that, however, I wouldn't go so far as to say punk rhetoric was a complete waste of time and energy, either.
For one thing, it pays to remember that punk was partly a nihilistic reaction to specific political regimes (namely, Thatcher’s England and Reagan’s America) when we all lived under the nuclear-powered fear and loathing of the Cold War and yr peers judged yr worth as a fellow citizen by yr bank account and yr designer jeans. The times demanded an antidote, if not a solution, and the punk scene was an almost logical (if naïve) outcome.
If nothing else, punk rock (in all its forms) provided a gateway for a lot young kids (including me) to discover that there was more to life than Top 40 Radio and middle-class conformity, and that it was okay to be different and do things on yr own terms, and that many of the mores, truisms and mechanisms of democracy, capitalism and conformity are self-serving bullshit.
Maybe you were never going to tear down the Corporate State® with that knowledge, but it’s better to at least see through the illusion than be manipulated by it. Put another way, as Henry Rollins pointed out a few years ago, it doesn’t matter if a car company uses a Stooges song to try and get you (a lifelong Stooges fan) to buy their product so long as yr smart enough to know that’s exactly what they're trying to do.
Anyway, the point remains that “punk rock”, for a lot of people, did more good than harm, even if all they got out of it was the chance to expand their cultural or sociopolitical horizons and challenge their worldview, and the knowledge that they weren’t the only freak in the world. That can only be a good thing.
All of which is the long version of what one guy already said in his response to Roderick’s article: punk was never just one thing, and its true value was inspiring creation and a broader view of the world, not providing listeners with a users’ manual for life or a workable manifesto for revolution.
So, basically, yes, punk rock is bullshit – but that doesn’t mean it served no useful purpose or provided no value to those of us who participated in it.
Of course, I can’t say whether it still serves that purpose in its current form in 2013. Probably not. But then it’s a different world, where digital technologies and social media make DIY music and discovering the world outside yr hometown even more possible.
Too bad most of it is in the form of apocryphal Facebook memes and hyperpartisan bloggery. Oh well.
I was a punk before you were a punk,
This is dF
