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- Volume 1, Issue 1, 2012
Punk & Post-Punk - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2012
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2012
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Negotiating the Punk in Steampunk: Subculture, Fashion & Performative Identity
Authors: BRIGID CHERRY and MARIA MELLINSThe term ‘punk’ has become a highly contested and problematic label since its appropriation in the 1970s, when it was commonly used to describe music produced by many anarchic and irreverent bands. Subsequently, the term has been used to describe genres of fiction that juxtapose punk attitudes with cyberspace (cyberpunk), extreme gore (splatterpunk) or anachronistic technology (steampunk). Although originally coined ironically, steampunk is a particularly interesting case of the wider meanings of punk in terms of a DIY ethos and a rejection of social norms. Drawing on surveys and analysis of online discourses and presentations of self on the one hand, and the responses collected from in-depth interviews with steampunks on the other, we set out the ways steampunk has evolved into a performative style subculture associated with recognisable fashions and lifestyle accessories. Focusing specifically on fashion and music, we analyse steampunk as a subcultural constructor of identity, articulating complex discourses concerning gender and class. The pleasures of steampunk lifestyle are associated with the rejection of contemporary lifestyles and social mores, and a return to ingenuity, craftsmanship and invention, and a real-world acting out of imagined histories. Whilst the steampunk ethos revealed in the desire to reclaim clothing and technology is organized bricolage as opposed to the chaotic anarchy of punk, steampunk, like punk, rejects the norm, and makes a display of difference. The activities of the steampunk community not only intersect with punk and alternative music subcultures, but also exist in the intersections of subculture and fan culture.
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Can I Have A Taste of Your Ice Cream?
By LUCY O’BRIENThis article will explore the gender politics of post-punk in Leeds in the early ‘80s. It links the brutalist architecture of the university (now listed buildings), with the rigorous sound of Gang of Four and Delta 5, and how that reflected the austere mood of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. It will also look at how radical feminism flourished in a post-industrial city affected by the National Front, the Yorkshire Ripper and an aggressive male culture, and how it found a soundtrack in female post-punk bands like Delta 5 and the Au Pairs.
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From ‘London’s Burning’ to ‘Sten Guns in Sunderland’
By RUSS BESTLEYThe punk movement between 1976 and 1984 represented a distinct period in the development of youth culture in Britain. Whilst certain principles paralleled earlier generations and youth movements, they were married to an outspoken ideology that declared ‘anyone can do it’ and an overtly nihilistic attitude toward the music industry itself. This led to a situation where ‘anyone’ did, in fact, ‘do it’, and the resulting deluge of independent, do-it-yourself records, concerts and networks of activity threatened to seriously disrupt the commercial stability of the popular music business, albeit temporarily. This period also saw a shift in power from traditional centres of production to smaller, independent hubs of operation with often clear local agendas. The relationship between popular music, geographical location and notions of authenticity is long-standing though discourse on the subject has been largely overlooked in favour of a style and authenticity debate centred on youth cultures and subcultural groups (Hebdige 1979; 1988; Marcus 1989; Home 1995; Muggleton 2000). Although Jon Savage (1991) does make a case for the punk Diaspora from 1978 onwards, the process is still described as one-way in that authentic punk styles originating in London filtered out to the provinces. Much the same case was made by Dick Hebdige, who attempted to validate his own position regarding what he describes as ‘originals’ and ‘hangers-on’, while Dave Muggleton adopted a more pluralistic attitude towards individual modes of ‘authentic’ participation. However, these models are all based on the perceptions of those involved in subcultural groups, and the physical geography of their locations relative to a perceived ‘centre’ is not discussed in any detail. This article explores the relationship between punk aesthetics and graphic identities across the wider regions of the United Kingdom. UK punk has often been portrayed as London-centric, with an occasional ‘nod’ to a small number of other major metropolitan centres, such as Manchester or Leeds; but little attention has been paid to more local interpretations of punk and post-punk styles, or of the groups and clusters of individuals from further afield who responded to punk’s initial call to arms to ‘do it themselves’. Examples of punk output reflecting a connection to geographical localities and regional cultural histories are highlighted; and the sense that often small-scale local agendas operated alongside and in parallel to both national and international punk development is explored. This sense of local identity played out in record sleeves, lyrics, song titles, band names and graphic identities of groups and labels across the UK.
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Kids’re Forming Bands: Making Meaning in Post-Punk
More LessAs a critical category, post-punk is sufficiently diverse that its organizing principle is not to be found in its stylistic unity. As a set of musical styles, its organizing principle is not audible. Nonetheless, I propose that its core exemplars represent a coherent movement, in the art-historic sense. Within popular music, post-punk represents a shift away from punk’s romantic expressionism to a modernist commitment to use verbal-musical interplay for the expression of ideas, particularly the idea of democratization. As a working out of aesthetic theory, its commitments correspond closely to Immanuel Kant’s model of genius.
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‘A fanzine of record’: Merseysound and mapping Liverpool’s post-punk popular musicscapes
Authors: BRETT LASHUA and SARA COHENThis article focuses on one particular fanzine – Merseysound – and how it provides a grassroots account of Liverpool’s post-punk scene over a three-year period (1979–1982). The fanzine draws attention to the material and historical context of the post-punk scene and provides a rich and detailed mapping of the performance venues connected to it. This article begins by introducing Merseysound and explaining how it was produced. It is then divided into three sections in order to consider how the fanzine: (1) chronicled the emergence and development of Liverpool’s postpunk music scene and connected it to conventional narratives of urban decline and renewal; (2) promoted the idea that the scene had one core venue; and (3) mapped other venues connected to the scene and relations between those venues. The case of Merseysound shows that fanzines are a useful historical resource for research on punk and post-punk. They provide a record of local punk and post-punk scenes but they were also active agents within those scenes, helping to create the groups, identities and ideologies involved. In this way fanzines can highlight the complex and dynamic relationships between music and place.
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Beth Ditto and the Post-Feminist Masquerade; or How ‘Post’ can Post-Punk Be?
More LessThis article explores the elaboration of a post-punk and queer performativity by US indie group Gossip. In particular, it elaborates on Angela McRobbie’s concept of ‘post-feminist masquerade’ in relation to the group’s frontwoman, Beth Ditto. The group has from the start claimed affiliation to the punk underground, and in particular to 1990s riot grrrl, a movement of women’s bands who entwined punk strategies of reversal in clothing and musical codes with a feminist awareness of the need for women performers to rewrite accepted notions of female performativity and musicianship. Ditto in particular has engaged in a dialogic relationship with the legacy of riot grrrls via her femme persona and her fat-affirmative statements. Engaging with post-feminist landscapes of femininity, from nude photo shoots to advice columns in G2, Ditto’s public image embodies the complex legacy of feminist struggles for public representation interpreted through the representational strategies of punk; at the same time, Gossip also engage in a refashioning of the language of women’s punk in a post-feminist era.
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