Punk & Post-Punk - Current Issue

The article examines two recent memoirs by punk musicians, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry by Justin Pearson and The Spitboy Rule by Michelle Cruz Gonzales, and asks how do these works rethink the value and function of community in punk and what might be involved in recognizing friendship as something that can structure punk around altogether different operations than a notion of community presently does? The article contests a popular and scholarly perception that punk is best appreciated as a distinct community of outcasts, a view that justly recognizes that punk is much more than a failed social protest. Gonzales and Pearson challenge the assumption that punk offers a community for marginalized individuals, documenting the routine discrimination they faced from punks who prioritized uniformity and idealized norms of white male heterosexuality. Their memoirs examine how punk sometimes replicates the discriminatory social norms the authors encountered outside of the subculture and thus these works explore the limits of interpreting punk as a separate community. As an alternative, Gonzales and Pearson test out expressions of punk friendship that retain some of the optimism and sociability of punk while also remembering the centrality of relations of power that condition any practice of living with others.

This article argues that music criticism from the early 1990s was central to media backlash against feminism in this period. As Daphne A. Brooks has noted, music criticism remains widely untheorized, despite being so entangled with the sustainability of popular music. In this article, I give focused attention to a small body of critical writing, exploring the relationship between recordings and the reviews that describe and evaluate the music. I present a reading of backlash against the riot grrrl band Bratmobile from 1993 to 1994, including reviews from the zines Cake, Snipe Hunt, trust kill and Genetic Disorder as well as from Artforum, SPIN and Option. I apply Janice A. Radway’s concept of ‘rhetorical containment’ to this set of criticism, highlighting shared critical manoeuvres evident in the reviews. This builds on Peter Szendy’s idea of ‘punctuation’ as that which shapes phrasing in a dialogue; on one level, criticism of Bratmobile punctuated the musical releases by legitimizing them and by reinforcing key themes in the music. But the critics also undermined the band in ways both subtle and explicit. I conclude by suggesting that critical backlash against riot grrrl can be understood as a matter of power and solidarity, with every critical utterance containing elements of both.

This article analyses the Monte Paradiso hardcore punk festival in the city of Pula as an important subcultural event for the punk scene and its impact on tourism. The research aims to determine the importance of the festival in relation to tourism supply and the specific spatial features of this event. Pula was a military and industrial city, but it later became famous as a festival destination. In the summer of 1992, a group of punk enthusiasts organized the first Monte Paradiso festival. The event took place in an abandoned Austro-Hungarian fortress. That venue hosted the festival every summer from 1992 to 2000. The festival programme attracted numerous punk fans, but its impact on tourism was irrelevant. Since 2001, the festival has been organized in the Karlo Rojc Community Centre, housed in a former Yugoslav army building in the Monte Zaro urban district. The findings indicate that the festival has become a part of the city’s tourist promotion and the rebranding of Pula.

Formed in Evesham, Worcestershire, in January 1977, Satan’s Rats released three superb but commercially unsuccessful singles in a period of a little more than eighteen months before splitting up. Guitarist Steve Eagles, drummer Olly Harrison and bassist Dave Sparrow then teamed up with Wendy Wu (Wendy Yates) to form The Photos, a new wave group that achieved a major label record deal and went on to a measure of chart success in the early 1980s. The band has recently reformed with a new guest vocalist, Puss Johnson, under the moniker Satan’s Cats. Steve Eagles and Puss Johnson discuss punk histories, locality, punk and everyday sexism with Russ Bestley.

Review of: A Kiss across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and US Latinidad, Richard T. Rodríguez (2022)

Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 256 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-47801-858-2, p/bk, £17.59

Review of: Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity from Punk to New Wave, Simon Strange (2022)

Bristol: Intellect, 297 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78938-631-8, p/bk, £20.00

Review of: Goudvishal DIY or DIE! Punk in Arnhem 1977–1990, Marcel Stol and Henk Wentink (eds)

Ticehurst: Earth Island Books, 520 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-73979-557-3, p/bk, £24.99

Review of: SO36: 1978 BIS HEUTE, Sub Opus 36 e.V. (ed.) (2022)

Mainz: Ventil Verlag, 480 pp.,

ISBN 978-3-95575-165-4, h/bk, €36.00

Review of: PZ77: A Town a Time a Tribe, Simon Parker (2022)

Penzance: Scryfa of Linkinhorne, 392 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-83847-183-5, p/bk, £12.00

Review of: Rock Against Racism Live, 1977–1981, Syd Shelton (2022)

Southport, NC: Café Royal Books, 36 pp.,

p/bk, £6.50

Syd Shelton: Rock Against Racism, 1976–1981, Carol Tulloch and Mark Sealy (eds) (2022)

Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 187 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-64428-249-6, h/bk, £35.00

Review of: A Book of Days, Patti Smith (2022)

London: Bloomsbury, 400 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-52665-098-6, h/bk, £25.00

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, Bono (2022)

London: Hutchinson Heinemann, 576 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-52915-178-7, h/bk, £25.00