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- Volume 6, Issue 1, 2017
Punk & Post-Punk - Volume 6, Issue 1, 2017
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2017
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‘Moderne Muziek’: Vinyl magazine and the Dutch post-punk movement
More LessAbstractThe Dutch music magazine Vinyl was launched at a chaotic party on 14 February 1981, at the newly opened ‘Schafthuis Royaal’ club in the squatted former-NRC building in the centre of Amsterdam. Vinyl presented itself as the champion of a new musical development unfolding in the Netherlands – ‘Ultra’. Ultra, standing for ultramodernen, was a term that described a number of young Dutch bands who made avant-garde, post-punk music, most notably Minny Pops, Mecano, Plus Instruments, Minioon, Mekanik Kommando, The Young Lions and Tox Modell. Ultra was visible mainly in Amsterdam, but also had a strong presence in cities such as Nijmegen, Eindhoven and ‘s-Hertogenbosch. From that February 1981 issue (preceded by a taster incorporated into the first edition, known as the ‘Zero Issue’ of December 1980), Vinyl rapidly expanded, reaching print runs of 15,000, including a print run of 3000 for an English language edition during its second year. At its peak in the mid-1980s, albeit with a more populist editorial policy, Vinyl was an established presence in the European alternative music press and referenced by the likes of BBC Radio 1 deejay John Peel. The magazine ran until February 1988. Taking a selected number of early editions of the magazine, this article looks to show how Vinyl carved out a distinct post-punk identity for itself and its readers in the Netherlands of the early 1980s. And, by using comparisons with contemporary articles on the Dutch post-punk scene in the British music press, the article will show that Vinyl (often driven by unaccommodating domestic circumstances) looked to promote an apolitical, transnational post-punk agenda.
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Digging up the dead cities: Abandoned streets and past ruins of the future in the glossy punk magazine
By Ian TrowellAbstractThis article excavates, examines and celebrates the short run of the magazines Punk’s Not Dead! (a single issue printed in 1981), Punk! Lives (eleven issues printed between 1982 and 1983) and Noise! (sixteen issues in 1982) as a small corpus of overlooked dedicated punk literature – coincident with the UK82 incarnation of punk − that takes the form of a pop-style poster magazine. This revisiting is undertaken with three key aims: to re-assert these resources back into both the punk historical canon and the general history of pop music literature, to provoke a critical discussion of what their existence might imply, and to take a more detailed look at the iconographic construction of the images in what are essentially photograph-driven poster magazines within a wider music-media climate of carefully crafted images. In examining the images it identifies three predominant themes: the street, the apocalypse and the graveyard, respectively mapped across from the genres of Oi!, street-punk/UK82 and positive-punk/goth that are covered in the magazines.
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‘Ours is a strange pornography’: Reflections on performing punk in academia
By Tom AstleyAbstractWhat is the place of punk in ‘punk studies’? How can we write punk, rather than just write about punk? Can we do this in a way that is more than performative affectation? More than just a(nother) punk cliché? Do we owe a sense of authenticity to our subjects in academic writing on punk? This article offers a critical reflection on a conference paper ‘performed’ as an attempt to address (rather than answer) these questions. I discuss the processes of writing, editing and presenting this article in a way that attempted to ‘show’ punk, not just ‘explain’ it. In so doing, I hope that I can open up a discussion about performance in academia more generally.
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Ethics and practices in American DIY spaces
More LessAbstractThe history of punk and its subgenres is, in part, a history of DIY spaces and the influences these spaces have on punk and the DIY scene at large. A better understanding of the ethical guidelines of DIY venue organizers would provide insight into the practices of these venues by providing a glimpse into the motivating factors behind these actions. To approach these issues, this article utilizes existing research to examine current DIY practices and their relation to punk culture, as well as defining the primary ethical guidelines in the DIY scene, followed by new research into these issues. In this study, I spoke with eleven different organizers of long running DIY spaces around the United States. These interviews revealed an overwhelming drive to construct DIY venues as inclusive spaces that provide resources for a variety of communities. In practice, however, the heightened sense of alignment between organizations and artists reported by the participants alludes to a lack of diversity amongst the viewpoints of those within these communities.
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Discriminate me: Racial exclusivity and neoliberalism’s subcultural influence on New York hardcore
By Alan ParkesAbstractWhile research on neo-liberal policy exposes its influence across economic, political and social lines, scholars often fall short of examining policy implications for minority groups and youth cultures. In the 1970s and 1980s, New York City officials and elites challenged years of Keynesianism that represented prevailing post-World War II economic ideology, prompting underfunded municipal programmes and rising unemployment that subsequently ensured racial segregation. New York City’s condition weighed heavy on youth cultures that arose from urban declension in a city recognized as an international tastemaker. While punk, in the 1970s, in part symbolized the city’s cultural influence, by the early 1980s, hardcore, punk’s more aggressive successor, became a reaction to New York’s waning state. Hardcore represented youth culture navigating economic and social conditions in an era of postwar de-industrialization and rising conservativism. Nonetheless, hardcore bands’ pleas for unity in defiance of neo-liberal policy fell short of offering an escape to the pervasiveness of economic conservativism that purportedly ensured New York’s rise from economic crisis. Like business in Lower Manhattan, whiteness defined hardcore. Highlighting the shortcomings of New York hardcore through examination of its whiteness in spite of calls for inclusivity reveals a deep-seated relationship between youth culture and prevailing economic and political policy. Pleas for inclusiveness met a scene that limited participation through maintaining racial exclusion. Ultimately, hardcore’s inclusive ethos failed to materialize into the physical space the subculture occupied, exposing a subcultural representation of the segregation that marred New York beyond the scene’s walls.
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Anarchy in Japan’s film industry: How punk rescued Japanese cinema
By Mark PlayerAbstractWhen punk impressed itself upon Japanese youth culture in the mid-to-late 1970s, it arrived at a time when the nation’s film industry was in crisis. The major studio system that had presided over film production for several decades was in serious decline, curbing opportunities for the next generation of filmmaking talent by ceasing to take on new apprentices. Inspired by the ‘do-it-yourself’ ideology surrounding the emerging punk scene, young, aspiring filmmakers took matters into their own hands by forming small clubs to self-produce zero-budget short and feature-length films on their own terms, relying on friends, classmates, musicians and other hangers-on, and using increasingly accessible Super 8 and 16mm filmmaking equipment. In doing so, punk-inspired jishu seisaku eiga (‘autonomously produced cinema’) became an exciting nonprofessional alternative to the stagnating professional studio system, with many of its amateur participants going on to become influential professional figures within the Japanese film industry of today. This article seeks to provide an exploration of punk’s overlooked emergence in Japan, its impact on (and synthesis with) jishu film production, it being a catalyst for important aesthetic and generic schisms such as ‘cyberpunk’, and how it ultimately mobilized Japanese cinema to rejuvenate itself.
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Spectral transmissions: All-night television’s role in the formation of first-wave punk aesthetics
By Tony McMahonAbstractIn this article, I examine all-night television’s role in the formation of first wave punk aesthetics in Melbourne, Australia. I argue that the confluence of two events – the commencement of all night television transmissions and the emergence of punk – contributed to a Bourdieuian habitas that exerted a hitherto unexamined influence on the music of the time. Drawing on personal experiences, Greil Marcus’ examination of unknown connections between ‘punk’ practitioners, and the work of Pierre Bourdieu, I conclude that all-night television transmissions played an important and as yet unacknowledged role in shaping the Melbourne music scene of today. In addition to this, I suggest that all night television is a lens through which further examination of punk in other areas – both geographically and philosophically – can usefully be explored.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Mike Dines, Mike Diboll, Russ Bestley and Rich CrossAbstractBeyond No Future: Cultures Of German Punk, Mirko M. Hall, Seth Howes and Cyrus M. Shahan (eds) (2016) London: Bloomsbury, 170 pp., ISBN: 9781501314087, h/bk, £74.00
The Aesthetic of Our Anger: Anarcho-Punk, Politics And Music, Mike Dines and Matthew Worley (eds) (2016) Colchester: Minor Compositions, 322 pp., ISBN: 9781570273186, p/bk, £18.00
Post-Punk Then and Now, Gavin Butt, Kodwo Eshun and Mark Fisher (eds) (2016) London: Repeater Books, 302 pp., ISBN: 910924273, p/bk, £8.99
Gee Vaucher: Introspective, Stevphen Shukaitis (ed.) (2016) Colchester: Firstsite/Minor Compositions, 143 pp., ISBN: 9781570273155, p/bk, £20.00
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Gig Reviews
Authors: Rich Cross and Gerard EvansAbstractVi Day, Another Winter of Discontent Festival, The Dome, The Boston Arms, London, 19 February 2017
Grow Your Own Records Mini Festival, Dublin Castle, London, 26 November 2016
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Exhibition Review
By Ian TrowellAbstractCOUM Transmissions Exhibition, Humber Street Gallery, Hull, UK, 3 February–22 March 2017
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