Dead Punk
A good review from The Reader’s Fall Book Issue:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/fallbooks07/punk/
A subject close to my heart and forever frustrating, punk rock writing has always rubbed me six kinds of wrong ways. I loved punk as much as the next white suburban kid, but the hipper-than-thou bullshit and “it’s all about brotherhood and not selling out” illusion combine to piss me off quicker than anything punk ever claimed to rail against. Where is the line drawn between making a living off one’s art and selling out? Who gets to decide? The same mohawk wearing dullards I see on the Belmont el stop, sporting a tired look and unable to think of anything original? If so, then I’ll gladly say once and for all that punk is very fucking dead. It was killed in the most Nietzschean manner. And this book’s thesis that punk was intentionally unmarketable, while perhaps true a long time ago, is ridiculous. I’m hard pressed to think of a more enduring fashion.
The problem is that people want to romanticize trends, which is fine but let’s remember that punk, as beautiful a thing as it could be, had few innovations, and those were far between and endlessly copied. It’s dead. Call it death by emulation.
Going to dig up some 7 Seconds records and listen to them on the way to Starbucks and remember fondly how young I once was.
Ciao.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/fallbooks07/punk/
A subject close to my heart and forever frustrating, punk rock writing has always rubbed me six kinds of wrong ways. I loved punk as much as the next white suburban kid, but the hipper-than-thou bullshit and “it’s all about brotherhood and not selling out” illusion combine to piss me off quicker than anything punk ever claimed to rail against. Where is the line drawn between making a living off one’s art and selling out? Who gets to decide? The same mohawk wearing dullards I see on the Belmont el stop, sporting a tired look and unable to think of anything original? If so, then I’ll gladly say once and for all that punk is very fucking dead. It was killed in the most Nietzschean manner. And this book’s thesis that punk was intentionally unmarketable, while perhaps true a long time ago, is ridiculous. I’m hard pressed to think of a more enduring fashion.
The problem is that people want to romanticize trends, which is fine but let’s remember that punk, as beautiful a thing as it could be, had few innovations, and those were far between and endlessly copied. It’s dead. Call it death by emulation.
Going to dig up some 7 Seconds records and listen to them on the way to Starbucks and remember fondly how young I once was.
Ciao.
posted by ZombieDante at 12:46 PM
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