THE PUNK READER -
RESEARCH TRANSMISIONS FROM THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL -
MIKE DINES, ALASTAIR GORDON, PAULA GUERRA
Published in 2017, another more than welcome collection of scholarly debates from the Punk Scholars Network going under the title The Punk Reader - Research Transmissions From The Local And The Global. As declared on the back cover, the aim is to 'explore and critically interrogate punk culture in relation to contemporary, radicalised globalisation'. Well, whatever floats your boat is what I say. Some might argue, of course, that an academic study of the so-called 'punk phenomenon' isn't warranted and is in fact, anathema to the very idea of punk. But it's horses for courses at the end of the day.
Punk was never a closed shop or an exclusive gentlemen's drinking club even if some people tried their hardest to make it so. No, punk was a free-for-all, meaning if you wanted it as a space to sniff glue and bang your head against a wall then that's fine. If you wanted it as a cultural equivalent of the Baader-Meinhof Group then that's fine also. And if you wanted to come along with your clipboard and your pen, take notes and compose a revolutionary thesis on what you observe, then all power to you. Punk isn't mine to claim as my own and neither is it yours. Punk is all of ours. Apart, obviously, from Richard Branson's. He can fuck right off.
Where punk was born as in New York or London is a timeless question but The Punk Reader isn't concerned with that. Instead, it's more interested in where it's gone to and where it's at. You see, punk nowadays is global and is all the more better for it. On its inception, like an incurable ever-mutating virus, punk spread out from the major cities and into the towns; its different strains erupting gloriously throughout the UK, North America, the whole of Europe, and the Far and Middle East. Admittedly, there's still yet to be an Eskimo punk band but give it time.
One of the multitude of questions this all led to was that of 'authenticity', and straight off the block this is what co-founder of the Punk Scholars Network, Alastair Gordon, races into with a keenness of mind and a passion of lovers. And where do questions of authenticity tend to lead to? Why, to Chumbawamba of course, with them from their very start being representative of 'anarcho-authenticity' up until their signing to EMI.
'Bare faced hypocrisy sells records' as one particularly grieved punk wag put it on a record of the same name in regard to the Chumbawamba/EMI debacle but one of the things that Gordon makes clear in his chapter is that the world is not black-and-white even though 'bare faced hypocrisy sells records' is a very true statement to make - and not only in regard to Chumbawamba.
Ah, Crass. Our let's pretend passport to perversity. Crass: like Morrissey's Manchester - so much to answer for. Their ghost haunts the pages of The Punk Reader like smoke lingers round your fingers and it's a legacy earned, a legacy deserved, and a legacy of resonance that reflects well upon those whom they've influenced. Those such as the punks of Groningen, in Holland, for example, of whom Kirsty Lohman writes of in her chapter in the book.
But then it was always going to be a match made in heaven when it came to the Netherlands and punk, particularly when it came to Dutch squatting history and the Crass vision. And indeed, Groningen was one of the handful of places Crass back in 1980 ever played outside of the UK.
A country they never played, however, is Malaysia although according to Marco Ferrarese in his chapter, you might think Crass were in residence there as the anarcho punk aesthetic is the signifier of Malaysian punk authenticity to this day, right down to the black clothes and the use everywhere of the same font Crass used on their record sleeves.
An important point in regard to global influence is raised in the chapter by Augusto Santos Silva and Paula Guerra to extinguish any ideas of punk being a form of cultural imperialism or as some sort of 'British invasion'. Instead, the term 'cultural syncretism' is used, meaning multi-cultural cross-pollination, resulting in punk mutations with 'substantially different attributes to the original version'.
If you think of punk as being a form of Chaos Theory where the flapping of a butterfly's wings on one side of the world causes a tornado on the other side, then it starts to make sense. Unlike the expanding symmetry of fractals, however, where a fractal reproduces its same self into infinity, punk bears localised hybrids. Like strange flowers born from seeds blown on a breeze. Is it any wonder why those of an academic bent might find punk such a thing of interest?
For all that, it's easy to criticise The Punk Reader for its general aesthetic as in being a very dry read, but then dryness is almost the very nature of most academic writing and it's hard to break out of that without diluting the whole purpose of it. Without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's also always very obvious whenever a thesis attempts to break out of its academic mode into a more flowing and easier-on-the-brain format as it often comes across as a sort of insult, as if the writer or editor is dumbing everything down to make it easier for non-academics to understand. Well, as Dean Friedman almost said, academics can thank their lucky stars we're not as smart as we'd like to think we are, or else they'd all be out of a job.
At the end of the day, academic writing in regard to punk is a niche space and there's room for it, and it's a more than welcome inclusion onto the sprawling tapestry that punk has become. In fact, anything that instigates or invites critical thinking of any sort should be welcomed for as Johnny Rotten once said of the Sex Pistols: 'We make people think, and that's dangerous - for those who'd like to make us morons.'
John Serpico
