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‘An Atmosphere Where Anything Is Allowed’: Patti Smith's and 1970s New York Punk

image of ‘An Atmosphere Where Anything Is Allowed’: Patti Smith's Horses and 1970s New York Punk

Punk rock reflected a social transformation in which music drove gender variance, and transgender visibility. Patti Smith's trajectory from the stages of absurdist queer theater to those of rock venues demonstrates the stylistic arch through which artists used punk rock as a vehicle of social critique and dissident culture in 1970s New York City.

Keywords: Beame ; gender ; Genderqueer ; Lindsay ; music ; New York City ; New York Dolls ; New York Punk ; Patti Smith ; Punk Rock ; Ridiculous Theater ; sounds of the city ; soundscape ; Stage ; streets ; The Ramones ; Urban decay

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References

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References

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     [Google Scholar]
  3. Austin, Joe (2001), Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City, New York: Columbia University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Bangs, Lester (1973), ‘Screwing the System with Dick Clark’, Creem, 1 November, pp. 46–48.
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  6. Biondi Martha (2006), To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Bockris, Victor and Bayley, Roberta (1999), Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography, New York: Simon and Schuster.70
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  8. Bottoms, Stephen J. (2006), Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
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  9. Bruzzi, Stella (1997), ‘Mannish Girl: k.d. lang – From Cowpunk to Androgyny’, in S. Whiteley (ed.), Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender, New York: Routledge, pp. 191–206.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Carter, David (2004), Stonewall: The Riot that Sparked the Gay Revolution, New York: St. Martin's Griffin Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. County Jayne (1995), ‘New York Punk’, D. Jeffcock (dir.), Rock Family Trees, Season 1 Episode 4 (22 July, UK: BBC).
  12. County, Jayne (1996), Man Enough to Be a Woman: The Autobiography of Jayne County, London: Serpent's Tail.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Echols, Alice (2010), Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Edgecomb, Sean (2017), Charles Ludlam Lives!: Charles Busch, Bradfor Louryk, Taylor Mac, and the Queer Legacy of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Firth, Simon (2007), Taking Popular Music Seriously: Selected Essays, New York: Routledge, p. 95.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Fletcher, Tony (2009), All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York, 1927–1977, New York: W.W. Norton.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Frith, Simon and McRobbie, Angela (1999), ‘Rock and Sexuality’, in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds), On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word, New York: Routledge, pp. 317–32.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Fritscher, Jack (1995), Robert Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera, New York: Hastings House.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Gavin, Peter (2006), ‘David Johansen on Cross-dressing & the “Third Sex”’, Bay Area Reporter, 18 July, http://www.ebar.com/story.php? Accessd 11 October 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Geffen, Sasha (2020), Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, Austin: University of Texas Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Gossett, Reina, Stanley, Eric A., Burton, Johanna and Phillips, Lisa (eds) (2017), Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Gottehrer, Barry (1965), New York City in Crisis: A Study in Depth of Urban Sickness, New York: Pocket Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Greenberg, Miriam (2008), Branding New York: How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World, New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Heylin, Clinton (2005), From the Velvets to the Voidoids: The Birth of American Punk Rock, Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Hiss, Tony and McClelland, David (1975), ‘Gonna Be So Big, Gonna Be a Star, Watch Me Now!’, New York Times, 21 December, pp. 213.71
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Jarek, Paul Ervin (2019), ‘The Sound of Subterranean Scuzz-Holes: New York Queer Punk in the 1970s’, Popular Music and Society, 42:4, pp. 483–500.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Johansen, David (1976), ‘The Punks Have It Out with the Notorious David Johansen’, Punk, 1:3, April, n.pag.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Kane, Daniel (2012) ‘“Nor Did I Socialize with Their People”: Patti Smith, Rock Heroics and the Poetics of Sociability’, Popular Music, 31:1, January, pp. 105–23.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. La Mama (1970), ‘Promotional Flyer: “Femme Fatale” (1970)’, OBJ.1970.0086, La Mama Archives, https://catalog.lamama.org/Detail/objects/802. Accessed 18 October 2023.
  30. Leonard, Marion (2007), Gender in the Music Industry: Rock, Discourses and Girl Power, New York: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Lewis, Abram J. (2017), ‘Trans History in a Moment of Danger: Organizing Within and Beyond “Visibility” in the 1970s’, in R. Gossett, E. A. Stanley and J. Burton (eds), Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, Boston: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. McLeod, Kembrew (2018), Downtown Pop Underground: New York City and the Literary Punk, Renegade Artists, DIY Filmmakers, Mad Playwrights, and Rock’ n’ Roll Glitter Queens Who Revolutionized Culture, New York: Harry N. Abrams.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. McNeil, Legs and McCain, Gillian (1996), Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, New York: Grove Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Petros, George (1993), ‘Jayne County: Transformer’, Seconds, 24, http://www.secondmagazine.com/articles/24-county.php [link no longer available].
  35. Reid, David (2016), The Brazen Age; New York City and the American Empire, New York: Pantheon.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Reynolds, Simon (2016), Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-first Century, New York: Dey Street Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Sandbrook, Dominic (2014), Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right, South Shore: Anchor Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Shaw, Philip (2008), 33 1/3: Horses, London: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Simon, Bryant (2004), Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Smith, Patti (1971), West Side Stories: Two Journeys into New York City, UK: BBC.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Smith, Patti (1975), Horses, USA: Arista.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Smith, Patti (1994), Early Work: 1970-1979, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Smith, Patti (1998), Patti Smith: Complete Lyrics, Reflections, and Notes for the Future, New York: Doubleday Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Smith, Patti (2010), Just Kids, New York: Ecco Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Stansell, Christine (2009), American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Strub, Whitney (2016), ‘From Porno Chic to Porno Bleak: Representing Urban Crisis in 1970s American Pornography’, in C. Bronstein and W. Strub (eds), Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Represented in the 1970s, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 27–52.72
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Summers, Claude J. (ed.) (2004), The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance, & Musical Theater, Jersey City: Cleis Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  48. Tochterman, Brian (2017), The Dying City: Postwar New York and the Ideology of Fear, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  49. Tosches, Nick (1976), ‘A Baby Wolf with Neo Bones’, Penthouse, April, pp. 124–26.
     [Google Scholar]
  50. Valentine, Gary (2006), New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop, and Others, 1974-1981, New York: Da Capo Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  51. Whiteley, Sheila and Rycenga, Jennifer (eds) (2006), Queering the Popular Pitch, New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]

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