Punk & Post-Punk - Volume 3, Issue 3, 2014

This article examines the construction authenticity of a particular UK DiY punk scene. Using ethnographic data gathered in 2001, it examines members’ reference to broader ethical ideological themes through an analysis of their interviews. I offer the model ‘Distinctions of Authenticity’, which identifies four key component strategies at work in the pursuit of self-authentication that have purchase for future work on punk authenticity studies. This model challenges reductionist models of a singular punk authenticity. In doing so it presents an approach to overcome what are identified as key gaps in subcultural research left by both traditional (BCCCS) subcultural research and later post-structuralist accounts that do not fully take into account the workings of micro-discourse in maintaining and constructing subcultural punk authenticity.

Even though the production of fanzines precedes the emergence of punk, the truth is that it was with punk that the fanzines become relevant as a space for freedom of thought and creation, as well as an alternative to the conventional media. Since the 1970s, the fanzines’ universe has expanded thematically and stylistically, and also in its territorial coverage and in the communicational supports used. In this article we adopt an approach that goes beyond the Anglo-Saxon reality and intend to look at fanzines as ‘communities’ founded around a cultural object, which have produced texts, photos and other materials regarding the Portuguese punk scene from the late 1970s until now. From a large set of fanzines we will analyse the ways of production, design and typography, the main themes, distribution channels, bands, the scenes and lifestyles covered in them. In this study, we consider fanzines to be an alternative media that, from late modernity, is able to reveal the punk movement and the DIY ethos associated with it. We seek to understand fanzines’ relevance to the Portuguese punk scene context, both past and present, and we also identify some patterns of evolution and change.

In Fresh Fruit, Dead Kennedys, like Joan Didion in Democracy (1984) and Thomas Pynchon in Vineland (1990), examine the American cultural landscape through the lens of an exaggerated and victorious totalitarian political regime as a way to investigate the failures of past cultural protest movements. Though Dead Kennedys and these authors may disagree on whether resistance to such a regime is futile, they can agree that recognizing the methods by which the society of the spectacle operates is the first step towards dismantling it. Fresh Fruit enters into a literary dialogue taking place throughout the last official decade of the Cold War, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, continuing throughout Reagan’s re-election in 1984, and ending after his presidency. Seeing Fresh Fruit in dialogue with these literary traditions, I propose that what the album adds to the cultural conversation taking place between these mediums is how it subverts the society of the spectacle. While Vineland (1990) and Democracy (1984) contend with the threat of gradually becoming a part of the society of the spectacle, Fresh Fruit seeks to arm its audience against that threat with the tools of resistance in the form of musical performance, lyrics and album artwork.

Karl Marx once wrote that ‘men [sic] make their own history but they do not make it in the circumstances of their own choosing’. This article studies the lyrics of the widely respected Californian punk band Rancid. With the Marx quote in mind, the expectation is that Rancid will address the social and political conditions of the (post-)modern, post-communist world whilst retaining some of the left-wing, quasi-Marxist radicalism that is now an established part of the punk rock ethos (neo-Nazi bands aside). It is argued that Rancid has an ‘emotive proletariat spirit’ that identifies with San Francisco’s East Bay region as a place of working-class, oppositional ‘otherness’, and with a globalized proletariat exploited by global capital and authoritarian regimes (see Rancid’s songs on Africa and China). The band critically examines aspects of life in quasi-communist countries such as China and Cuba in a manner that is devoid of much of the romanticizing of Third World Communism present in Joe Strummer of the Clash’s earlier punk world-view and mythology. Consistent with the present age, there is no expectation in Rancid of any future utopian socialist society and this point also distinguishes Rancid from the Clash, with whom they have frequently been compared.

Martyn Bates is currently ‘semi-retired’ from performing, although he continues to be active as both a songwriter and solo artist, plus working as of the influential post-punk duo Eyeless in Gaza (with Peter Becker). Author of three books of lyrics (A Map Of The Stars In Summer (2008), Plague of Years (1997), Imagination Feels like Poison (1996)), Bates continues to create new work – with a slew of both new and archive material currently being readied for release on his own ‘fiercely independent – to the point of invisibility’ imprint Ambivalent Scale Recordings. Bates also works in conjunction with the former architect of World Serpent Distribution, Alan Trench – ‘Twelve Thousand Days’ – with Trench producing Bates’ Spring 2014 released solo album Arriving Fire. Among a slew of genre defying musics, Martyn Bates has also produced three pioneering albums (Drift, Passages and Incest Songs) of ‘isolationist’ folk song stylings with Napalm Death originator Mick Harris.

Punk Goes Science: The Academic Punk Bibliograp hy, Vasileios Yfantis Charleston: CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 122 pp., ISBN: 9781505752342, p/bk, £9