Essay: Punk – a rebellion against Capitalistic control?

Punk music originates from mid-70’s America, with roots in ‘Trash Culture’ of the 60’s and the Underground Rock movement of the 70’s. Punk emerged in the music scene in New York City’s Lower East side. Some of the bands associated with the newly emerging genre of music were, The Ramones, Television, Blondie and many more. However, Punk music, and subsequently the image which accompanied it, didn’t really gain any international attention until it’s emergence in the UK around five years after its inception, partly due to the behaviour the Sex Pistols; other notable Punk bands were, The Clash, The Damned, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the all-female group The Slitz and many more. The UK Punk subculture and its unique image, had borrowed aspects from other cultural and social progressions. Punk was largely influenced by 50’s Rock n Roll, Glam Rock of the early 70’s, Pub Rock, Garbage Rock which was based in the USA in the 60’s, and Prog-Rock, which Punk held a kind of hostility towards. With bands such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys employing an extended structure, higher levels of musical complexity, experimentation with studio techniques and sounds, and taking influences from more classical forms of music in their albums, Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Pet Sounds. In complete juxtaposition and in retaliation to the Prog-Rock style, Punk was of short, fast and made its point obviously through a simple song structure (Crossley, 2008). The anarchistic musical style conveyed the ideology of punk, that supported un-biased, democratic and non-hierarchical social structures. The fact that Punk featured a Do-It-Yourself attitude when it came to the production of music was interpreted as a rebellion against Capitalistic control. Whereas the overall sound of the music and its lyrical themes portrayed class-based defiance surrounding the economic instability in Britain during the 70’s (Phillipov, 2007).  The political climate of the 70’s and 80’s influenced and shaped the way in which the Punk movement formed in the UK. In 1972, under the leadership of Prime Minister Edward Heath, Bloody Sunday occurs, in which 14 unarmed men were killed by British soldiers during a Civil Rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland. This led to the signing of the Sunningdale Agreement in 1979.  In 1973, Heath took Britain into the Common Market, or the EU. However, on the domestic front inflation led to confrontations with trade unions. Energy shortages related to the oil crisis resulted in a large portion of Britain’s industrial sector having to work a three-day-week in order to conserve power. 1974 saw Wilson voted in as PM, and he pledged to re-negotiate with EEC/EU for a better deal for Britain, as well as whether the country should leave the EU or not. They all voted stay, as an attempt to stabilise the economic turmoil occurring in the UK during this decade (Pierce et al., 1983). Unemployment was at a high and inflation rates reached 24%, and national debt was also increasing in 1975. It is at this point in British history were Punk emerges as the first-wave.
James Callaghan takes over as PM in 1976, but he had trouble running a majority government, losing the Labour party’s three seat lead, which resulted in deals having to be made with the smaller political parties. However, by autumn of 1978 the economy was beginning to recover, through economic growth and a decrease in inflation by 10% but unemployment was still in the millions though (1.5 mil). Callaghan dealt with the countries long term difficulties, which involved pay restraints, in 1979. Even though it had operated with success for four years, Callaghan assumed it would work for a fifth and attempted to hold pay rises by 5% or less. Trade Unions rejected the continued resistance in pay rises, which led to the Winter of Discontent, a succession of strikes throughout the Winter of 1978/79. Although it paralysed the country trade unions secured higher pay for their workers, at the cost of Britain’s political reputation. Margaret Thatcher became the UK’s first female Prime Minister in May 1979, at the height of the Northern Irish Troubles. Groups such as the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombed and attacked Britons in a position of power, including Thatcher herself in 1984. INLA and provisional IRA prisoners go on hunger strikes in 1981 for the second time in a five-year protest against the British governments to withdraw Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. Thatcher continued her policy on Ulsterisation, believing that the unionists of Ulster should be the driving force in defecting Irish Republicanism. Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, leading to Thatcher sending a large military force. Almost a month later, British forces recaptured Port Stanley and Argentina surrendered. In 1983 unemployment in the UK reaches 3 million and the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) proposed the Britain abandon its nuclear deterrent, despite the threat of nuclear war from the Soviets. In 1984 the national miner’s strike began in response to the closure of coal mines by the government. Riots and the miner’s strike continued for a year, until the National Union of Mineworkers were forced to give up without a deal being made. This marked the beginning of a new economic and political culture in the UK based on the small government intervention in the economy and reduced dominance of trade unions. The Anglo-Irish Agreement, which brought the Dublin government into the peace process, was signed in 1985. The agreement was met with angry protests from Irish unionists, who held demonstrations, marches and strikes. However, by 1987 unionists had conceded that their campaign had failed and the Anglo-Irish Agreement went through.
Punk music can be identified by its high energy performances, over amplified three chord guitar sections and harsh vocal. The songs were played quickly at ‘breakneck’ tempos, which was heavily influenced by the Ramones. The vocals were usually sung in a hoarse and rasping shout and never really deviated from the spoken vocal range of the vocalist. The lyrical content was often quite blunt and confrontational, frequently commenting on social and political issues, based on the view point that established social conventions were hypocritical and stood in the way of the harsh truth of real, everyday life. Popular songs that featured these themes include the Clash’s Career Opportunities and Chelsea’s (later Generation X) Right to Work, both release in 1977 and featured the issue of unemployment, which was on the increase in the UK at this time. In the early years of British Punk, its goal was to outrage and shock mainstream audiences, for example the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen openly vilified Britain’ political system and Voidoid’s Love Comes in Spurts, which covers anti-sentimental representations of relationships and sex, a them which became common in the Punk genre. Although from the outside Punk was seen as a belittlement of serious matters due to the impressionistic adoption of rage and violence, which resulted in the messages within Punk songs and the community which grew from the musical style being ignored and labelled as nihilistic and destructive or troublesome. However, when looked at from the inside, Punks use of violence through its music, was as a performance, which reflected an exaggeration of the everyday struggles faced by many in the late 70’s; as well, this performance of violence became a crucial medium in the disruption of the ridiculing effects of day to day life associated with a capitalist society (Dunn, 2008).
Punk was an outspoken subculture in Britain which aspired to modernise and reinstate working class values in the Rock n Roll genre. The British class system was largely based on visual appearance and empirical distinction between people. A cultural concept relating to the clothes worn by a person, the way a person spoke (accent), and the values a person had both as part of a collective and individually. Rock music had already started to break down the barriers of taboo concepts such as gender, sex and drugs, race and religion with an amount of political influence coming from Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard. Punk became a response to increasingly irrelevant content in Rock of the 70’s, as well as the cultural and corporate climates surrounding the genre as more Rock musicians seemed to distance themselves from their audiences. Artists such as the Beatles, The Rolling stones and The Who, were all seen as rebels against the standard practices at the time of them starting out, and were now all wealthy celebrities. Punk music gave a voice to the youth of the UK, with which they used to rebel against conventional norms and the society that had largely ignored their welfare and political interests. A few of the jargon used to describe Punk are, anarchy, pop, and violence (Simonelli, 2002). These, amongst others, were utilised as part of the Punk subculture’s opposition to the notions of Rock and its over commercialisation in the mainstream and authority which had effectively led to the high unemployment and civil unrest that had left youths of this era with a sense of abandonment. Topics which commented on the mess that was Britain’s political, economic, social and cultural issues were often featured in Punk music.
Early Punk Fashion included the adaptation of everyday objects such as safety pins, electrical and duct tape, which were used to hold together ripped clothing. Ordinary or plain items were embellished with the use of marker pens or paint. Bin liners were sometimes used as dresses, skirts or shirts and more safety pins would have been employed alongside razor blades as items of jewellery along with chains and fish hooks. As well as all this, Punk included the leather, rubber and PVC paraphernalia associated with sexual fetishisms such as BDSM and S&M through the use of dog collars and fishnet tights or stockings. The inclusion of provocative symbols, such as an encircled ‘A’, which stood for Anarchist, and in early Punk fashion the swastika; in later forms of Punk fashion Nazi symbols are not as widely used, as a large majority of modern Punks are strictly anti-racist. These embellishments were mostly worn for shock value much like the names of many Punk bands and the lyrical content they created. Hairstyles were generally appeared to be ungroomed and were often kept short. Hair was sometimes dyed bright colours and styled into spikes or mohawks, which was representative of a blatant rejection of the long-haired looks of the hippies and the elaborate 70’s Rock, Glam Rock and Disco styles. For a similar reason, the flared jeans/trousers worn by hippies were also rejected with Punks instead opting to wear straight skinny or tight fitting ‘Drainpipe’ jeans, plaid or tartan trousers, and kilts or skirts. Foot ware ranged from high-cut Chuck Taylors (converse trainers), military boots, motorcycle boots and the most popular choice, Dr. Martens boots (Crossley, 2008). In the UK during the 70’s, Punk fashion was heavily influenced by designs and clothes by Vivienne Westwood and Malcom McLaren, who was the manager of the Sex Pistols. These items were sold at McLarens shop, SEX, which specialised in fetish and bondage wear and the designs featured confronted social and sexual taboos.
Punk was used as a form of rebellion against the establishment of Rock music, a common description of this genre. However, Punk was also a rebellion against the establishment as a whole in Britain. Punk focused on political challenges left unaddressed by Rock, resulting in a large percentage of punk musicians becoming associated with left-wing political views; however, the Punk political ideology featured concerns such as individual freedom and liberty, anti-authoritarianism, the DIY ethos, non-conformity, anti-corporatism, and anti-government. Early Punk is known for expressing nihilistic and anarchist views using slogans such as “No Future” which originated in the Sex Pistols God Save the Queen (Simonelli, 2002). The Punk subculture also tackled issues of sexism, by giving female musicians and fans the opportunity to be heard through the medium of music and self-expression thanks to the Punk identity and fashion. Through music women were able to shed light on the issues of sexual politics and female Punks like X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene had a chance to expand on topics like the pressures faced by young girls from television, magazines and other forms of media. Punk as a movement in the UK and its ‘anyone-can-do-it’ attitude opened the doors for female contribution in music of the 70’s, which paved the way for female musicians in future generations like Annie Lennox, Courtney Love, Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and later Acts like the Spice Girls (Wald, 1998). Punk was in stark contrast with the Rock and Heavy Metal scenes of the 70’s, because instead of being male dominated, Punk encouraged female participation. The 70’s saw the most political unrest with regards to women’s issues; abortion laws were relaxed (in England) and the opposition to racism and sexism was forcefully demanding. These issues unified both genders within the Punk movement, influencing major bands such as The Slits. For some in the Punk subculture, body and gender representation was seen as a political statement and following the ideology of non-conformity they rebelled against what it was to look normal. Men would utilise female fashions and women would employ male fashions. There were some who used this as a chance to explore androgyny, much like the androgyny featured in Glam Rock. Ironically, it would have been considered normal within the Punk community to see men wearing ripped skirts, fishnets and make up, as well as women with shaved heads and heavy combat boots (Simonelli, 2002).
Punk do-it-yourself ethos bled over from its own movement and into independent music production. American and British record companies began to invest in new studio equipment, meaning the older became available for the independent music producers to hire or buy. The DIY attitude encouraged band and entrepreneurs to join the recording industry. London’s Stiff Records are credited with releasing the first Punk single, New Rose (1976), from the Damned, and the Buzzcocks were the first group to release an EP, Spiral Scratch (1976), through their own independent label, New Hormones. The increasing popularity of Punk music throughout the 70’s meant that established record companies began to take notice. Punk offered a new market of youth consumption that the bigger companies could make a profit from; it didn’t take long for major UK labels to start signing bands, with the Sex Pistols being the first to enter a contract with EMI in 1976. By 78, most of the UK’s most popular Punk artists had been signed, including The Stranglers, The Clash, The Jam, Generation X, The Vibrators, and even the Buzzcocks eventually signed to United Artists. This mass signing by major labels made the Punk scene into a commodity of commercialisation, making it mainstream and subjecting the movement to a lot of external attention, which morphed this rebellion into exactly what it was rebelling from, mainstream media and normality. The smaller independent labels were hit hard by the major labels effectively raiding them of the more profitable bands and some became nothing more than scouting agencies under the major labels, others, however, closed down. A few survived though, and took the Punk scene underground while the mainstream capitalised on the new commercialised and mutated style of Punk known as New Wave.
By the end of the 70’s, the Punk movement had split into different cultural groups with equally different musical styles such as New Wave, Post-Punk, Hardcore, Oi!, Anarcho-Punk, Pop Punk, Electro, and Synth-Punk. To explore a few of these, New Wave was aired on MTV’s network in 1981 and included the more commercial dance-oriented rhythms and pop styles in its music, which was played by bands such as The Police, Blondie, and Talking Heads. Post-Punk took a more experimental direction, with less pop and more dark and abrasive elements, which reflected an anti-establishmentarian position much like its predecessor, Punk Rock. Hardcore was a distinctive style of Punk, which features fast beats, screamo vocals and politically aware lyrics. Pop Punk emerged in the late 70’s when UK bands the Buzzcocks and the Undertones began combining their original Punk Rock style with Pop style tunes and lyrical content. Some of Southern California’s Hardcore groups began to employ a more melodic style alongside their aggressive and heavily political style. Bands such as the Queers and Screeching Weasel influenced bands who were major players during the Punk revival of the 1990’s, such as Greenday, the Offspring and Blink-182.