CULT ... and You Voted For That Guy

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. . . And You Voted For That Guy: 1980s Post-Punk and Oppositional Politics
Bradford Martin
Bryant College
Driving to school each morning, my kids and I listen to the most listenable radio station in town. I find it heartening that my preteen son favors the guitar-based, punk-pop of Green Day, Blink 182, and Sum 41, as opposed to the pumped-up machismo posturing of much of current hip-hop or cock-rock. Its affirming, perhaps even flattering, that my youngsters musical tastes reflect a continuity with my own, for whom the day the music died evokes Kurt Cobains suicide more than Buddy Hollys plane crash. Yet, I am also nagged by the remark of a friend of mine, a longtime veteran of a recently disbanded Boston band, who satirized contemporary punk-pops slickly produced and formulaic sound, observing: It just sounds like you put the money in the gumball machine, turn the crank, and out comes punk. As a cultural historian, I have a finely cultivated suspicion of declension narratives that assume a steady degeneration from some mythic rosier era, yet I also recognize a kernel of truth in my friends critique of punk-pop. From the beginning, punk music constructed itself in opposition to a number of forces. In the mid-1970s punk rock on both sides of the Atlantic opposed the seemingly discredited countercultural idealism of the 1960s and what punk musicians regarded as overbloated, pretentious, inauthentic, and mainstream rock n roll music. In the U.S., during the 1980s, the Reagan Administrations conservative social policies and rising militarism were targets for the rage of hardcore punk particularly and post-punk generally. In other words, there was an opposition in this kind of music and among its fans that tended to be outward-focused, directed at public life. Musicians and fans infused their personal frustrations over the nations dominant conservative direction with a politically oriented critique of that rightward trend. This contrasts with the current brand of punk-pop that mobilizes punks incisive tone largely in the service of personalized, inward-focused dissatisfactions.
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During the 1980s, post-punk music in the U.S. existed underground, enjoying only limited commercial success. While a handful of college radio stations disseminated the music, mainstream commercial radio ignored post-punk. Post-punk bands went virtually unrepresented in music videos, which exploded as a new popular culture medium in the early and mid-1980s. Yet, post-punk persisted through the 1980s as the strand of music that became popular as an alternative music, forging its way into the mainstream in the 1990s. This essay explores the musical and social factors enabling post-punk musicians and fans to develop an identity as a community constructed in opposition to the dominant musical, social, and political institutions of the time. Cultural scholars have examined post-punks/alternatives relationship to the recording industry, focusing on whether a commercially produced recorded music can be used to convey anti-capitalist ideology (Chapple and Garofalo, 300; Frith, 15863; Garofalo, How Autonomous, 7791). While I certainly want to acknowledge the profound influence of the means of production employed by vertically integrated media conglomerates have over what musics are available to consumers, this is not my central concern. Rather, I want to consider the question of what meaning fans themselvesand to a certain extent performers ascribed to their own experiences of the music. For this reason, I will concentrate on fan descriptions of live performances; discourse in fanzines; the cultural texts produced by musicians themselves, including music, lyrics, and writings; and contemporary accounts of post-punk and its fans from the music and popular press. Post-punk music constituted a form of oppositional culture, whose opposition focused in part on the conservative policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations. This opposition possessed both political and stylistic dimensions. People involved in post-punk did not dress the same way or share the same values as their peers who embraced the eras dominant social values. Post-punk fans often pursued jobs designed merely to pay the rent rather than career-oriented employment. They tended to oppose the authorities of all varieties, from the federal government to the local police. Yet it would be an overstatement to suggest a post-punk community unified in liberal-to-radical beliefs that conflicted with the decades dominant political culture. Certainly, some performers and fans within post-punk deplored, for example, the Reagan administrations intervention in Nicaragua. But what actions did they take to voice their outrage? Was opposition only ascribable to a minority of literate and politically
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sophisticated middle-class fans, or did post-punk fans of various social backgrounds share the same view (Bondi 2; Maximum Rock N Roll 23)?1 It seems entirely possible that many post-punk fans did not have an opinion one way or the other, whereas people who never attended a Black Flag or Sonic Youth show opposed militarism in more activist ways, such as demonstrations and tax resistance. Just what was the political content of post-punk? How did the way it was consumed and distributed address contemporary political discourse? Ultimately, multiple political impulses existed simultaneously among fans, exposing the gulf between culture and politics, and suggesting the extent to which a musical genre can unify its fans in many respects limited. Dick Hebdige argues that 1970s punk in England displayed a homology or compatibility between alternative value systems and the lifestyles of a group, finding a consistency between the trashy cut-up clothes and spiky hair, the pogo and amphetamines, the spitting, the vomiting . . . the insurrectionary poses, and the soul-less, frantically driven-music . . . of the punks (57). In the U.S., during the 1980s, post-punk was not anywhere near as unified either in its musical elements or sartorial style. Even if it were, there are limits on what level of political activism can be reasonably expected from a group of people whose identity is shaped by shared musical preferences. As one observer remarked: The problem with culture as politics is that it isnt (and almost never produces) the sort of action that not only challenges, but changes political structures (Wood 14). Post-punk did not foster the kind of critique that mobilized public opinion to oust Reagan or the first George Bush from presidential power. Prior to 1991, it did not achieve sales figures that might have conferred a modicum of social power upon even its most successful performers. Yet post-punk and its fans persisted throughout the 1980s despite the genres cultural marginality and in this persistence displayed certain recurring patterns of oppositional attitude and discourse. That, after 1991, post-punk succeeded in extending its cultural influence to the mainstream and diffusing many of these attitudes to a broader audience suggests the value of considering the historical context in which post-punk cohered. From 1980 to 1991, post-punk empowered its audiences by enabling communities of fans to explore identities in opposition to mainstream social and political mores. In making this argument, the author seeks an inclusive definitionnot just of politicsbut of community as well. The word community often conjures up positive connotations of egalitarianism
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and nurturance, but in fact communities are often defined relationally, by contrasting themselves with others on the outside looking in. The 1980s post-punk scene was not equally permeable to everyone; it sometimes demonstrated exclusionary impulses. Different subsets of post-punk, hardcore being the most obvious, periodically displayed hostility to those who did not live up to rigid strictures on punk authenticity. Excorporation from hardcore authenticity, whether because of accident, design, or self-selection, often correlated with lines of race, class, and gender, so that hardcore became coded as a white, working-class, male subculture. This problematizes any pretense to utopian notions of community that post-punk might have harbored and suggests that hardcore exclusivity, in particular, replicated some of the oppressions its politically oppositional rhetoric criticized. Yet on the whole, this essay will argue that post-punk displayed complex dynamics of race, class, and gender politics that over the course of the 1980s tended toward progressive political impulses. This impulse echoesfaintly at times, more forcefully at othersthrough the nuanced discourses on race in post-punk fanzines, post-punks halting steps toward musical hybridity, diatribes against privilege and wealth from bands and fans, and the emergence of a spate of all-women bands who demonstrated a rigorous attitude toward combating patriarchal assumptions in their self-representation as women musicians. Moreover, post-punk fans and performers shared a general distaste for the conservative social policies and militarist foreign policies of the 1980s. There is no evidence, for example, that post-punk fostered any community that might have called itself Post-punkers for Reagan. On the contrary, post-punkers tended to deplore Reagans policies when voicing their opinions. Opposition resided at the core of the identities fans of post-punk explored, opposition to mainstream culture, values, and politics. While an oppositional identity did not necessarily produce oppositional activism, post-punk helped its fans maintain attitudes of resistance in their everyday lives that constituted an important critique of the mainstream. As Greil Marcus has written, . . . while revolution made by music is a joke, rebellion sustained by music might not be . . . (912). The experience of 1980s post-punk fans shows how music sustained a rebellion whose reverberations echoed at the level of mass culture after 1991.
Defining Post-Punk
I use post-punk to refer to a wide variety of guitar-based musics, ranging from the stylistic minimalism of early hardcore bands like Black
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Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Minor Threat to the complicated aural arrangements of Sonic Youth. In terms of its fans, post-punk carries an association with white youth culture. Various observers have remarked that hardcore and rap emerged as analogous musical developments in the 1980s, each genre carrying its respective critique of Reagan era conservatism. But during the 1980s, post-punk, of which hardcore is a discrete subset, was only minimally racially integrated. If hardcore and rap formed analogous critiques of Reaganism, they were separate critiques with separate followings. While rappers Run-D.M.C. produced a pioneering rap/heavy metal hybrid song in 1986 with a remake of Aerosmiths Walk This Way, it was only after 1991, the year of the first Lollapalooza festival, that musical hybrids such as Anthrax/Public Enemy or Ice T/ Body Count that mixed elements of rap and heavy metal fully emerged (Bondi 225; Garofalo, Rockin 32564).2 Hence, despite the tendency toward musical hybridity by the end of this period, for much of the 1980s post-punk, and especially hardcore, represented forms of youth culture practiced mainly by white people. Inspired by the musical and attitudinal influences of 1970s punk, 1980s post-punk (including hardcore) had sufficiently established itself by 1983 that the music press began referring to post-punk as a discrete musical genre. A selective sampling of post-punk bands offers a sketch of the genres boundaries. The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and Minor Threat comprise a trio of influential bands associated with stylistically minimalistic hardcore post-punk that emerged in the early 1980s. These bands struggled to make post-punk music more accessible to fans, from the Dead Kennedys Jello Biafras infamous court battle with the Parents Music Resource Center to Minor Threats policy of playing exclusively in all ages venues (Ian MacKaye + Jeff Nelson). Sonic Youth and the Minutemen drew from some of punks raw materials and added various musical experiments and innovations to expand the genre. Members of Sonic Youth were associated with the No Wave musical movement and New York avant-garde composer Glenn Branca before starting the band (Macnie 14), while the Minutemen were once called Americas Most Conceptual Bar Band (Carson 81) The Minneapolis-based Husker Du began in 1981 as a hardcore band with a reputation for playing fast, then recorded the 1984 concept album Zen Arcade, about a day in the life of a skinhead, and ultimately signed with Warner Brothers in 1986 for its final two albums which interspersed acoustic ballads with distorted electric guitar songs. The Replacements and R.E.M. can help delineate the
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boundaries of post-punk, as both came from the small club, independent label roots that epitomize post-punk, yet both achieved popular acclaim well before the genres commercial breakthrough in 1991. The Red Hot Chili Peppers share similar underground roots but heavily rely on African-American musical forms, such as funk, rap, and hip hop, to create a sound that places them at an outer boundary of post-punk (Arnold 589).3 What ties these disparate bands together is less a shared musical aesthetic than a set of influences from 1970s punk, including: a do-it-yourself production ethos emphasizing artistic control and a low-fidelity sound rather than technological perfection; music featuring dissonant aural sounds that consciously challenged mainstream popular music; transgressive subject matter in the musics lyrics and in the visual images (such as cover or poster art) associated with the music; and live performances that attempted to bridge the physical and psychic distance between the performers and audience (Frith 15863; Heylin; Laing; Savage).4 Like 1970s punk, post-punk displayed a concern with going econo,5 cutting production costs by emphasizing the virtues of strippeddown independent production, and even establishing fledgling alternative distribution systems. Punk and post-punk formulated ideological justifications of their alternative way of making music. Simon Frith called this ethos a peoples version of consumerism, the idea that record buyers had a right to maximum market choice, that record buying should involve customer expression rather than producer manipulation (Frith 159). This unique version of consumerism was as central to 1980s postpunk as the 1970s punk Frith described. Since the late 1960s, independent record labels have increasingly served as a research and development function for the majors, who scoop up acts as soon as they reach a level of popularity that certifies them as viable profit producers (Garofalo, Rockin 367). Yet this observation probably reflects the point of view of the major record labels corporate ownership, more than that of the musics performers or its fans (Shank 21823). On the one hand, fans themselves recognized this trend, as one wrote in the Letter Section of Flipside in 1987 that the independence that punk bands once cherished is increasingly being lost as bands get popular and sign record deals. and yet, on the other hand, the loss of economic independence is implicitly contrasted with an earlier period in punk and post-punk in which independents could exert greater economic and creative control. The independent record distribution scene, the same fan letter continued, has just become a smaller model of the larger mainstream record
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market (Flipside 52). While these fans testimony indicates awareness of the growing dominance of the corporate model of making and distributing music, the regret this fan expressed in describing this transformation signifies the substantial meaning that fans invested in independent labels and distributors in the first place. A bottom up approach to post-punk suggests that fans themselves believed that they were making important consumer choices by buying independently produced records and that musicians believed they were challenging major label hegemony by making their music available through the independents. Certainly, a review of 1980s fanzines shows that the independent labels played to this ethos of ethical consumerism in their advertisements. When Catch Trout Records, a Charlottesville, Virginia independent, ran ads with the slogan CATCH TROUT . . . making music worthless again . . . , thus reclaiming worthless as a positive quality, the appeal was clearly directed at a fan sensibility that sought to resist commodification of its favorite music. Likewise, the distributor Rough Trades ads that proclaimed: Specializing in INDEPENDENT import and domestic Hardcore, Experimental, Industrial, Dance, and the Undefinable, suggest through bolding and capitalizing the word independent that independently produced music was a quality that fans valued and to which they attached meaning (MRR 58). The California mail order outfit Mamma Jammas gambit to sell its stock involved the promise of ALL YOUR FAVORITE *INDEPENDENT LABEL RECORDS & TAPES*C.D.S., again suggesting through the prominent size and capitalization accorded the words independent label records that independence constituted a quality that fans prized. Among what must be only a suggestive rather than comprehensive survey of this strategy of invoking independence in order to promote independent label fidelity in musical and purchasing loyalty, one ad stands out. The Las Vegas record store The Undergroundsought to sell the business with the following appeal: Since 1980, The Underground has been Las Vegas only alternative music store supporting the independent industry (Flipside 52). Presumably, what The Underground was selling as a business opportunity was its loyal customer base, a base whose coherence was defined by fans loyalty to the independent industry. Although it has been effectively argued that major labels exerted their hegemony despite independent production through their control of distribution, alternative distributors such as Mordam Records, Dutch East India, and Rough Trade persevered through the 1980s and beyond
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(Garofalo, How Autonomous 78; MRR 62).6 The story of Mordam Records in particular illustrates the incomplete nature of the majors hegemony over distribution. Ruth Schwartz founded Mordam in 1983, aided by the collaboration of the Dead Kennedys Alternative Tentacles label and Tim Yohannons preeminent fanzine Maximum Rock n Roll, and hoping to benefit from a strength in numbers philosophy that would allow independent labels and magazine publishers to band together under Mordams distributorship as a tactic for financial viability. Along with this economic strategy came a potent ideology of opposition to the majors: What independent music is about, is anger against major labels and the music business on all levels, Schwartz exclaimed in an interview. Schwartz elaborated by contrasting the mindset of personnel involved in independent music at Mordamwere a bunch of fans!with big major multimedia corporations, of whom she claimed: Theyre not there for the artists. Theyre not there for the artists fans (Sinker 10918). While it is easy to romanticize independent music personnel and fans heroic underdog7 status, their real commitment and stubbornness should not be overlooked amidst the obvious dramatic sentiment that pervades such populist language. Despite the fact that majors exercised the majority of control over what music was available to consumers throughout the 1980s, the marginal, but persistent presence of independent distribution constituted another site of opposition for post-punk and its fans. Another important legacy of punk for post-punk involves one of the musics most recognizable aspects: noise. Just as 1970s punk deployed a new kind of harsh guitar noise, from the Sex Pistols jagged chords to the Ramones primitive buzzsaw sound, post-punk also mobilized noise to its advantage (Heylin 166; Marcus 3, 21). The 1980s musicians as diverse as the Dead Kennedys and Sonic Youth self-consciously used noise, a jangling, aural buzzing, cacophony, as a signifying convention of the genre. To post-punk audiences, noise acted as a kind of rite of passage. In order to become one of the community of hardcore fans, it was necessary not only to tolerate the harsh dissonance of the music, but to revel in it. One scholar has even suggested that hardcore musicians perceived the political rhetoric of Reagan conservatism as noise, and developed a musical style that in effect critiqued this rhetoric by offering up its reflection as a musical convention of the genre (Bondi 225). Postpunk also borrowed from punks use of transgressive subject matter in lyrics, band names, and visual images that sought to shock middle-class
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sensibilities. Dave Laing observed that 1970s British punk bands and independent record labels inverted whatever was prestigious in the cultural mainstream, as punk bands featured names like The Damned, The Mutants, and the Snivelling Shits, while labels like Alien, Parole, and Rabid proliferated. Another obvious transgressive element of the 1970s punk, sexual fetish clothing and apparatus, sought to shock the mainstream by publicly parading fashion elements previously associated with sexual taboo, such as rubber trousers and studded bracelets, in order to demystify them by making them commonplace (Laing, 4850, 914; Savage 668, 92103). Punks transgressive subject matter reverberated through 1980s post-punk. Band-naming strategies illustrated this legacy, resulting in examples such as the Circle Jerks, Crucifucks, Social Distortion, the Dead Kennedys, and the Butthole Surfers. Visual images associated with post-punk ranged from the Butthole Surfers use of films depicting penis reconstruction surgery at their live shows to the all-women band L7s T-shirts that inverted sexual exploitation of women by picturing a dominating female forcing cunnilingus on a submissive male. Even artier post-punk bands like Sonic Youth performed songs that explored a fascination with the Manson family such as Death Valley 69 and Expressway to Your Skull, which was narrated from the point of view of a cult member and featured the lyric Were gonna kill the California girls.8 While using transgressive subject matter to register opposition sometimes proved problematic, as the musicians had little control over how their work was interpreted, in the context of the conservative 1980s lyrics could be transgressive simply by opposing hegemonic ideologies such as Reagan era militarism. Consider the lyrics of the Minutemens Themselves from their Double Nickels on the Dime album: All you men who work the land/Should evaluate yourselves/And make a stand/ Cant they see beyond the rhetoric/The lies and promises that dont mean shit /And all the men who learn to hate them. They keep themselves hidden away/they keep themselves upon the hill/ Afraid of the day theyll have to pay/for all the crimes upon their head . . .9
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Themselves fits into the Minutemens substantial repertoire of antimilitarist songs, its lyrics challenging the conservatism of mainstream rural Americans who voted for Reagan in large numbers.
Post-Punk and Its Fans
Punk also bequeathed to post-punk a tradition of musicians and performers who tried to reduce the physical and psychic distance between themselves and their fans. For instance, a Melody Maker article recounted an occasion when The Clash allowed an audience member who had been brutalized by concert security to come on stage and sing the vocals to the bands songs. For British society in the late 1970s, this action constituted a gesture of working-class solidarity by the band. It also represented punks reaction to 1970s mainstream rock music, which ranged the superstars with their banks of technology on the stage against the audience with nothing but expensively acquired ticket stubs (Laing 82). Punks do-ityourself ethos lessened the gap between audience and performer by eliminating technical virtuosity as a prerequisite for creating music; thus fans were encouraged to make their own music. This attitude was epitomized by a December 1976 illustration in the fanzine Sideburns that pictured three guitar chords, an A, an E, and a G, advising, This is a chord, this is another, this is a third, Now Form A Band (Savage 2801). This encouragement made fans feel that they were not so different from the musicians they enjoyed, and democratized attitudes surrounding music-making. Similarly, U.S. post-punk sought to make music and musicians more accessible to its fans. An editorial preface in the California fanzine Flipside bemoans the closing of one punk venue (Als Bar) and applauds the opening of an another (Godzillas) proclaiming: Bring punk back to the CLUBS where it belongs, fuck the arenas!!! (Flipside 29). In the 1980s, venues for post-punk bands offered a cheaper alternative to the high ticket prices charged by promoters of arena concerts featuring mainstream rock musicians. Post-punk fans usually experienced shows from a standing position with no assigned seating, allowing fans to roam around the club freely. In the most literal physical way, this shortened the distance between the closest spectators in the pit to the performers on the stage because there was no first row of seats to delineate where the nearest spectators should be situated. Standing spectators also allowed more fans to attend shows because the legal capacity of clubs expanded when there was no seating. Hardcore bands like Washington, D.C.s Minor Threat
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agitated for minors to be allowed into clubs that served alcohol to hear their music. In Washington, a compromise on this issue was reached and minors were allowed into the clubs if their hands were marked with an X, which meant that they were not going to drink. Later, the X mark took on symbolic importance as a ritual of fan solidarity in D.C.s hardcore community (Ian MacKaye + Jeff Nelson; Bondi 6). Post-punk fans demonstrated a general resistance to being categorized. When asked in a survey What are your three favorite bands?, several respondents who were self-identified post-punk fans refused to be pinned down, with responses such as Keeps changing regularly, Too many to mention, Dont play favorites with innovative music, and no favorites All faves, suggesting that the fans, out of respect for the musics diverse influences, did not wish to identify individual groups as representative of the genre. Instead, they took pains to demonstrate their openness to musical innovation, including blues, country/western, jazz, folk, classical, rockabilly, Brazilian, Cajun, and even Hawaiian Mambo, along with post-punk, among musical styles that inspired them (Martin 327).10 This reluctance to name specific bands as representative of post-punk contrasts with Robert Walsers heavy metal fans, who relished a section of his questionnaire which asked them to select bands who typified heavy metal (18, 1757). Post-punk fans also described their musical tastes in ways that signified opposition to the mainstream. For instance, they claimed a preference for listening to recorded music over listening to radio, demonstrating a tendency to resist music that was popular.11 Similarly, despite contemporaneity with the rise of MTV, anecdotal evidence suggests postpunk fans nearly unanimous rejection of music videos, which usually showcased commercially popular artists.12 Their rejection of radio and music videos in favor of recorded musicoften recorded on independent labelsindicated a preference for controlling what music they listened to at a given time, and showed post-punk fans resistance to the power of corporate institutions to shape their musical tastes. Instead, they insisted on the individuality of their musical preferences. When asked what elements of his favorite local bands music were most important, one respondent, a musician himself, cited Interesting and original arrangements. Another fan and guitarist listed her reasons for liking the Boston bands Letters to Cleo and O Positive as originality, different from the mainstream, fun. When presented with the somewhat open-ended question What are the most important elements of a good band to you?,
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answers often included responses such as originality and chutzpah, weirdness and originality, distinct band sound, and fuckedupness. Although one fan thought that beer was vital to a good band and another admitted a fondness for cute bands, musical originality was clearly prized among post-punk fans (Martin 327). Post-punk fans also valued sincerity and honesty, citing a sincere sense of abandon; attitude, honesty; and Music much more important than vocals/statement/posturing. Nice guys, as reasons to embrace their favorite bands (Martin 327). That the respondents frequently mentioned the importance of sincerity and honesty in live musical performance echoes Barry Shanks argument that: . . . the cultural function to which local music performance is put . . . results in a musical aesthetic organized around a postmodern concept of sincerity. Sincerity becomes a value that can only be signified through an evident resistance of the disciplinary restraints of the dominant culture. Yet, the articulation of this refusal through the commodifying structures of popular culture demands a certain disciplined acquiescence. For Shank, sincerity represents a signifier of oppositional culture in the context of a local live performance scene emphasizing its independence from the mainstream music industry (xiiixiv, 14660, 250). The extent to which this opposition can be made explicit, however, remains constrained and constricted, because local music, as a cultural practice in capitalist society, is circumscribed by the commercial dictates of local economies. Post-punk, however, furnishes numerous examples of local live music overcoming traditional commercial and social authorities, such as the night in December 1981 when a Social Distortion show that was broken up by police continued from the bands warehouse rehearsal space in the underbelly of Orange County, California (Flipside 29). Applied to post-punk, Shanks argument about sincerity in live performance suggests the parameters of opposition for the performers and fans associated with the music. While some post-punk fans and performers explicitly repudiated any engagement with politics, others considered themselves in the activist/musician mode, or saw their fandom itself as a type of political statement. Still others rejected any overt connection between music and politics, but believed post-punk could be an appropriate presence around sites of political activitysuch as benefit shows.
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Such ambivalence notwithstanding, post-punk musicians and fans tended toward rebellion against the dominant social and political ideals of the era of Reagan and the first George Bush. Often this rebellion proved inchoate, or did not take the form of activist political agitation, reflecting rather what Robin D.G. Kelley calls the subterranean forms of everyday resistance (44) that ultimately exert a subtle effect on power relations.
Post-Punk and Anti-Militarism
Post-punk opposition appears most clearly in its rejection of Reagan era militarism. As military expenditure rose and interventions in places such as Lebanon, Granada, and throughout Central America became commonplace, post-punk musicianswhen making their opinions knownconsistently opposed military aggression. One observer noted that anti-militarism comprises perhaps the most popular single theme in hardcore (Bondi 1012). While hardcores opposition to militarism may have reflected a self-interested desire to avoid military service, the theme of anti-militarism was sufficiently pervasive throughout post-punk to suggest considerable skepticism toward the dominant ideological culture. The 1980s cult of militarism extended beyond foreign policy makers into popular culture. Cinematic heroes, led by Sylvester Stallones Rambo character, glorified nationalistic violence. Tom Clancys novels of international intrigue such as The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising epitomized a wave of bestseller fiction that buttressed American patriotism against a Soviet menace that in hindsight proved near to its ultimate demise. Mainstream culture and politics embraced the dual ideologies of militarism and nationalism that post-punk sought to oppose (Gibson 6, 910, 3940; MRR 34). Post-punk and its audiences rejected Reagan/Bush conservatism in various and diverse ways. In 1981, the Dead Kennedys rewrote their song California Uber Alles and retitled it Weve Got A Bigger Problem Now. This song mentioned Reagan by name and deplored the implications of Reagans rise to power explicitly, featuring lyrics like Are you ready for the Third World War?/You too will meet the secret police/ Theyll draft you and draft your niece. . .Youll go quietly to boot camp/ Theyll shoot you dead make you a man (Bondi 5). That same year, in a visual indictment of the consequences of militarism, the cover of Husker Dus Land Speed Record pictured three officers overlooking several rows of military coffins with American flags draped over them (Husker Du, Land). The Circle Jerks Stars and Stripes (1982) highlighted the
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consequences of nuclear proliferation and chided Reagans supporters: Ha, ha, ha youre all gonna die/and you voted for that guy. (Bondi 11). While the songs lyrics are notoriously problematic as evidence because they often suggest multipleand even competinginterpretations, the lyrics above focus obvious sarcastic criticism and humorous irony on the U.S. governments militarism. Such irony commonly appears when postpunk addresses politics and reflects a legacy of 1970s punks critique of sentimentalism. Post-punk aesthetics allowed for disagreement with institutional authority but sought to avoid an easy connection to any specific political position, as for instance, the popular mythology of the 1960s had linked that decades counterculture with the antiwar movement. Even a band as overtly political as the Minutemen prefaced their 1986 live version of Little Man With a Gun in His Hand with irony: This ones for the Gorbachevs and the Reagans. . .May they sleep well tonight (Minutemen, Ballot). In addition to post-punk lyrics critique of militarism, post-punkers participated in more direct oppositional political activity. In 1982 and 1983, the little publicized Rock Against Reagan hardcore tour culminated with a Fourth of July concert on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Leftwing groups routinely erected information tables at hardcore shows (Bondi 11, 18). Robert Seidenbergs account of a 1985 Minutemen show at New York Citys Peppermint Lounge notes how the bands guitarist and songwriter D. Boon distributed U.S. out of Central America bumper stickers and encouraged fans to boo Ronald Reagan. (74) Fanzines, too, brimmed with fan letters opposing the conservative national political culture. A fan from Bloomington, Indiana who signed her letter Somebetty listed progressive organizations for fans to join such as Women Strike for Peace and Womens Institute for Freedom of the Press (MRR 62). A letter in Flipside from a fan named Jim deplored a trend he perceived in U.S. politics, citing abridgments of civil liberties such as drug testing and the use of police roadblocks to arrest drunk drivers; as well as military escalation he compared to Nazi era Germany. He ended his letter admonishing: Remember a vote for a Republican is a vote for War in 88. Ed Norton for President (Flipside 51).13 Jims letter illustrates his antagonism against the currents of American politics more clearly than a vision of any direction that opposition might lead. Significantly, his iconoclastic responsesuggesting that Norton, the simpleton character played by Art Carney on televisions The Honeymooners, would be a preferable presidential candidatemines popular culture for an alternative
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to Reagan. The declaration Ed Norton for President might alternately be viewed as a kind of daily act of rebellion, or emblematic of post-punks ironic fascination with pop culture kitsch, which often substituted for serious reflection on the possibilities of oppositional politics. Post-punks flirtation with kitsch, iconoclastic tendencies, and ironic irreverence complicate attempts to analyze fans politics. For instance, when asked Who is your favorite recent public figure? fans more frequently produced ironic responses drawn from popular culture and crafted for shock value, than actually going on record and claiming any individual as a legitimately progressive political force (Martin 327).14 These kind of responses obviously poked fun at the question, mocking the notion of reverence for public figures, but they also revealed a salient continuity among post-punk fans with the transgressive discourse of 1970s punk. In the context of responding to a direct request to address the relationship of music and politics, such answers constitute a repudiation of politics properly. Paradoxically, however, many post-punk fans did not hesitate to identify which political causes and issues they considered most important. Support for a pro-choice position on abortion rights emerged at the forefront of post-punk fans concerns, followed by funding AIDS research, environmental issues, better education, and cutting military spending. At the same time, fans rejected causes on the conservative agenda during the Reagan/Bush years, such as war on drugs, fighting crime, and cutting welfare spending. Post-punk fans ultimately exemplified ambiguous attitudes toward politics. In one sense, they displayed a gut-level impulse to reject any interest in politics perhaps suggesting that post-punk might be more accurately regarded as alternative rather than oppositionalyet upon self-reflection, fans often proved willing to identify specific political issues that they felt were important and even became engaged on their behalf. This ambiguity suggests a much more complex picture of post-punk fans than the mediated rhetoric of, for instance, Times 1990 cover story depicting the twenty-something generation as politically apathetic (Gross 5662). Post-punk bands and fans addressed issues at the intersection of music and politics in patterns that suggest ways to unravel this complexity. For instance, while fans tended to reject any connection between their favorite bands and the political causes that they personally deemed important, there were examples of post-punk fans who embraced bands associated with particular issues, such as a fan from Austin, Texas who identified Fugazi with pro-choice, poverty, and anti-police brutality issues
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and one from Boston who said Most of my favorite bands are involved with womens issues. The majority of post-punk fans approached the intersection of music and politics warily, revealing a discomfort with music that was intentionally political; while at the same time maintaining an openness to and acknowledgment of a relationship between music and politics. A Providence record store buyer typified this ambiguous attitude toward politically oriented music: I prefer music free of statements . . . Bands playing benefits or quietly making donations to pet projects/causes is fine. Singing about social/political issues that everyone already agrees on as if it were a bold or daring statement is silly. Singing a song against child abuse for instance . . . This fan cited his belief in the futility of bands playing overtly political songs, yet also affirmed musics legitimacy as an element surrounding political activity. Such an approach indicates an attempt to move beyond what might be described as preaching to the converted in favor of a political strategy that engages a broader audience than post-punk fans. Interestingly, this fan described his own politics as Democratic Far Left, suggesting a general trend among post-punks (Martin 327). While I certainly would not suggest that post-punk possessed a unified Democratic Far Leftist vision, I believe that Dick Hebdiges discussion of homology between alternative value systems and certain forms of musical culture sheds valuable light on post-punks relationship to politics. Hebdige defines homology as: the symbolic fit between the values and life-styles of a group, its subjective experience and the musical forms it uses to express and reinforce its focal concerns. Specifically, Hebdige claims that in both hippie culture and punk culture, stylistic, political, and musical elements meshed to give both subcultures coherence as a way of life that resisted mainstream society (567). While Hebdiges concept of homology may impose too great a level unity on post-punk culture, for the most part, post-punk fits in well with this model. It is difficult to quantify the extent to which post-punk resisted mainstream ideologies during the 1980s, but resistance was certainly present. For instance, post-punk fans tended to disagree with mainstream America on electoral politics. Asked to name their favorite recent President, post-punk fans almost universally eschewed Ronald Reagan and
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the first George Bush, while mentioning Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter considerably more often (Martin 36). Although this may suggest postpunks rejection of the conservative Republican aesthetic of the Reagan/ Bush era as much as an oppositional cast, post-punk musicians and fans grappled with a broader variety of issues than electoral politics, raising questions about power relations in American society.
Post-Punk, Difference, and Power Relations
Post-punk discourse habitually addressed matters of difference along lines of race, class, and gender. This discourse suggests, among other aspects of post-punk politics, that it is important to locate post-punk as a form of white youth culture. African-American performers and fans were a rarity in post-punk. Rachel Felders survey of alternative music contains a chapter on American Guitar Bands, featuring 40 bands that occupy similar musical territory to what the author calls postpunk (5983). No evidence indicates that any of these bands included a single African-American musician. Similarly, the American bands that Gina Arnold identifies as crucial in her chronicle of punk rock fandom from 1978 to 1991 are overwhelmingly white (3228). A review of some of the major fanzines during the 1980s shows that the only post-punk band containing African-American personnel that receives significant attention is the Bad Brains.15 While there were a few post-punk bands that had African-American members, such bands represented an aberration. Fanzine letters to the editor and casual observation of audience composition at live performances indicate that post-punks constituency was almost exclusively white. Yet post-punk musicians and fans were not indifferent to matters of race. On the contrary, racial issues generated significant and often conflicting discourse in post-punk culture. Letters to the editor in Flipside and Maximum Rock n Roll (MRR) consistently brought discussions of race to the fore. Often the letter writers were responding to letters that had appeared in previous issues, and, in this way, whole dialogues about race emerged in the fanzines. Significantly, the editorial staffs of Flipside and MRR tended to print letters from fans who criticized other fans for what they deemed unenlightened racial attitudes. Also, their editorial replies generally attempted to elevate or refine the level of discourse about race that appeared in the fan letters. In 1985, MRR featured several letters in response to an interview with the New York City hardcore band Agnostic Front that had appeared
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in a previous issue. Some of these letters defended Agnostic Front, claiming that they could not be held responsible for the right-wing politics of certain skinhead groups in New York. Tim Yohannans editorial reply, however, repudiated this defense of Agnostic Front, reprinting a section of an interview in which band members defended U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua as an appropriate response to Communist aggression. The final fan letter was from a British fan who criticized Agnostic Front for defending the racism of Great Britains right-wing National Front. This letter quoted a passage from the original Agnostic Front interview that amounted to a damning apologia for the National Fronts racism. By placing this British fans letter last in the series of letters about the Agnostic Front interview, MRR editors privileged this letter as the debates most authoritative voice. The next two letters went onto discuss racial attitudes in general; a letter from a Boston fan who played in the band Idle Rich implored readers to rebut racial slurs in order to influence peers, and a former racist skinhead from San Francisco explained why he renounced his racist gang and his own racist attitudes (MRR 23). Thus, the editors used their editorial power to shape racial discourse to condemn racism. The fanzines also portrayed racial prejudice as unique to a specific subgroup of skinheads in the hardcore scene. In 1987, fans formed a group called Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) to counter what they saw as the mainstream medias unfair characterization of skinheads as racist. As one female skinhead from Richmond, Virginia wrote: . . . Im sick and tired of being called a nazi and a white supremist by people who watched Oprah Winfrey and Morten Downey, Jr.!! (Flipside 57). While 1980s post-punk represented a largely white cultural form, a few people involved in post-punk self-consciously sought to change this. The allwhite Red Hot Chili Peppers fused elements of punk, funk heavy metal, and rap, expanding post-punk musically beyond its reality as a form that, drawing from 1970s punk, often bleached out black musical influences. The Minutemen similarly deployed bass and guitar riffs from jazz and funk, widening the parameters 1970s punk established. Members of Sonic Youth and Firehose collaborated as Ciccone Youth for a single album that combined punk and rap styles and covered hits by acts like Madonna and Robert Palmer, spoofing the artifice of mainstream pop. (Palmer, 97100). Organizers of the Rock Against Reagan concerts encouraged black rap and Latino bands to perform alongside white hardcore bands. Fans who witnessed Rock Against Reagans racially mixed musical lineups tried to
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influence fans in other cities to organize similar events and to get bands to perform at benefits for causes such as Anti-Apartheid groups and Chicano/ Mexican community centers to foster racial unity (MRR 33). While in one sense fan activism for events to promote racial unity indicated lingering racial discord, it also reflected a growing realization in post-punk culture that its progressive impulses would be better served by musical hybridity and social intermingling with black and Latino cultural forms and communities. If 1980s post-punk audiences and musicians were predominantly white, no such easy characterization existed along class lines, as young people involved in post-punk emerged from various social backgrounds. With reasoning that could equally apply to post-punk, Simon Frith has argued that 1970s British punk did not represent the uncensored voice of white working class consciousness as some critics claimed, but rather that punk music thrived in the interstices of the class structure. Frith wrote: . . . punks cultural significance was derived not from its articulation of unemployment but from its exploration of the aesthetics of proletarian play. This was the source of punk politics; punk was not the voice of unemployed youth but a strident expression of the bohemian challenge to orderly consumption (Frith 215, 267). Like its punk forerunners, post-punks class dynamics also reflected this idea of exploring proletarian play. During the era of Reagan and Bush, post-punk culture defined itself against a set of mainstream material aspirations driven by hyped media images of affluence and conspicuous consumption. Fanzines illustrated the dual post-punk ideals of anti-consumption and proletarian play. A letter to the editor in a 1985 issue of MRR from Doug, a fan recently enrolled at the University of Idaho, described his exposure to punk subculture in San Francisco. Doug praised the tolerant nature of the Bay Area and its punk scene. He then admitted to a period of disillusionment with the scene, when he considered becoming a contributing member of twisted society. Ultimately, however, upon moving to Idaho to attend college, Doug recounted his decision to reaffirm his nonconformity to mainstream society. Dougs reaction to northern Idahos conservative political climate factored in his decision:
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. . . I quickly regained my senses upon my arrival at the U. of I. (which is located in an extremely conservative part of this country). I immediately observed . . . the intense brain-washing and propagandization of the government-controlled media. The shocking, hideous truth of those in power (pro war, sexism, racism, corporate-control, mind control, rich supremacy) became strongly reinforced in the eyes of myself, as being one who had opportunity to become exposed to the sources of information based on reality and humanity, not merely the subduction of society on the basis of government progress (as is exhibited by the media). Dougs choice of villains reveals that his disaffection involved not only the prevailing Reagan era militarism, but also what he called rich supremacy. Dougs concluding words highlight what he meant by this phrase, as he characterized the personal sacrifice involved in an oppositional stance as resisting the fruits of Reagans reign and described how he often encountered physical and verbal harassment for his nonconformity (MRR 23). For Doug, as for many post-punk fans, oppositional politics often involved a refusal to consume or to participate in any rituals that might be seen as class privilege. This refusal could be exercised whether the fan in question had parents who were doctors or capitalists or who hailed from legitimately working-class backgrounds. Post-punk attitudes toward consumerism often expressed class politics. In a 1986 MRR, one reader responded to a previous article that suggested boycotting Coors products, informing readers of the NATIONAL BOYCOTT NEWSLETTER, a publication that he promised covered everything from the destruction of the rainforests to . . . which corporations fund the contras. A subsequent letter protested high ticket prices at shows by urging fans not to attend and bands not to play high-priced shows (MRR 40). Several bands sympathized with this position and took steps to provide access to their shows to the widest range of fans. For many years, Ian MacKayes band Fugazi, like his previous band Minor Threat, held to a policy of only playing all ages shows and never playing at shows for a charge of greater than $6 per ticket (Arnold 52). Similarly, Pearl Jam struggled with Ticketmasters exorbitant and inconsistent surcharges for reserving tickets, arguing that the surcharge inflated already high ticket prices, denying access to fans who lacked sufficient economic resources to see its concerts (Strauss 30). Although the courts
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ultimately upheld the surcharges, Pearl Jams stand against Ticketmaster demonstrated a measure of resistance in an era when the vast majority of musical acts remained content to perform arena shows at steep ticket prices without questioning such policies. Explaining his idea of exploring the esthetics of proletarian play, Frith refers to subculture participants who do not truly belong to the working ranks of society but merely play at being working class. This idea of exploring proletarian play suggests one reason why young people participated in post-punk scenes. In 1988, an anonymous female fan remarked of her initial attraction to the hardcore scene: . . . The first show I went to was great. I felt I had finally found a place where I belonged. Slamming was a trip. It was dangerous, it was senseless; to me it was a perfect manifestation of the chaos inside of me. In those days I was very optimistic. I was sure I was becoming part of a group that was unified and supportive. I thought we were going to change something and make a difference in the world . . . when I was knocked down someone picked me up; when my lip bled, someone wiped it off. When I was hit I felt the pain, but pain was not new to me and the feeling of camaraderie in the crowd of dancers was well worth any bruises I accumulated (MRR 62). This female fans exhilaration with the roughness of slam dancing and the sense of community it embodied existed not only in hardcore, but throughout post-punk, and by the early 1990s entered the mainstream as moshing. Felder observed, moshing releases aggressions, putting parameters around physical violence, but also allowing young fans to express anger (87). Fans experiences of post-punks proletarian play reflected important gender differences. The female hardcore fan quoted above related her growing disillusionment with the increasing violence of slam pits, blaming skinheads for the violence. She considered her options for coping with the problem: . . . I suppose I could become a skinhead girl and if I acted tough enough, maybe I would be accepted that way. It is funny that I have to speak of looking a certain way in order to be accepted in a scene that is supposed to condemn conformity (MRR 62).
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This fan criticized gender exclusionary tendencies in hardcore, observing that such exclusivity contradicted the professed politics of hardcore. Her argument echoed Angela McRobbies feminist critique of Hebdiges discussion of 1970s punk subculture in Great Britain. McRobbie argued that punk as a youth subculture was constructed as exclusively male by cultural analysts like Hebdige and by punkers themselves, questioning how radical punk subculture really was, given that it remained male-dominated, and did little to question traditional gender roles (McRobbie 6680; Hebdige 5665). McRobbies argument applies to 1980s hardcore in the U.S. almost as readily as to British punk. For instance, another female fan from Iowa City wrote to MRR recommending feminist texts by authors such as Simone De Beauvoir and Susan Brownmiller to enlighten male and female fans on gender politics (MRR 40). Her letter suggests her frustration with hardcore fans reconstitution of traditional gender roles. While female hardcore fans may have faced limitations because of gender, in postpunk outside of hardcore many women experienced expanding musical possibilities. The 1980s post-punk continued a 1970s punk trend, as women asserted themselves musically, playing a variety of instruments, and escaping the stereotypical vocalist role. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, all-women post-punk bands flourished, led by L7, Babes in Toyland, and Bikini Kill. These bands used post-punk as a forum for wide-ranging expression and challenged gender stereotypes. Typical sartorial strategy for women post-punkers juxtaposed traditionally feminine clothing such as undersized baby doll dresses with tough-looking boots (Felder 7780). In an era when mainstream popular culture aggressively buttressed patriarchy (Faludi 75226), this subversion of traditional feminine style amounted to one of post-punks everyday rebellions. Kim Gordon, Sonic Youths bassist, deserves special mention in this discussion of post-punks gender politics, as her style, stage persona, and songwriting themes influenced the wave of all-women bands mentioned above (Felder 779). Since the 1982 release of Sonic Youths first extended play album, Gordons songwriting consistently addressed issues that affect women specifically, such as sexual harassment and anorexia. The battle over womens public sexual persona persisted as a primary concern of post-punk women. For instance, members of L7 remarked that they tried not to wear clothing that was too revealing because they feared that their music would not be taken seriously. Furthermore, they condemned female heavy metal artist Lita Ford, who exploited her sexuality
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as a ploy to increase her popularity, wearing garter belts and pantomiming sexual intercourse with the microphone in videos. Suzi Gardner, L7s lead vocalist and guitar player, implied that she felt adopting a version of female sexuality such as Fords would encourage fans to trivialize the bands music (Flipside 57).16 Post-punk womens thoughtful discourse about gender representations underscored the difference between these women and women in mainstream music at the time.
1991: Nirvanas Nevermind, Lollapalooza, and the Politics of Co-optation
During the 1980s, while palpably opposing mainstream cultural politics, post-punk remained marginal in the marketplace as bands enjoyed little commercial success. After 1991, however, post-punk exploded into the cultural mainstream as betokened by a documentary film on the phenomenon entitled 1991: The Year That Punk Broke (Foege 21920). Of course, the other sense of the word broke, connoting malfunction, embodied the skepticism, anxiety about co-optation, and fear of compromising artistic integrity that accompanied mainstream success. In 1991, guitar-based rock n roll music in the post-punk tradition made a quantum leap commercially led by Nirvanas Nevermind, which sold 3.5 million copies in the last four months of that year alone (Arnold 45). The popular press lauded Smells Like Teen Spirit, the albums hit single, as a generational anthem. Grunge rock, a post-punk subgenre associated with a group of Seattle bands including Nirvana, spawned its own fashion trend as pricy designer lumberjack shirts reached high fashion runways. Major record labels rushed to sign bands previously regarded as without commercial potential, capitalizing on the genres newfound popularity. Commercial success changed the discourse surrounding the music, prompting articles in the mainstream press with titles such as Alternative to What? (Sullivan, 267) and Is Lollapalooza Losing Its Outsider Status? (Pareles, 26). These articles surveyed the mainstreaming of post-punk, which had once prided itself on its challenge to mainstream popular music. But why did post-punk become popular at that particular moment? Felder compares British punk circa 1977 to music in the U.S. in 1991, arguing that both cultural moments were dominated by superstars who remained distant from their fans, that both periods of musical innovation emerged when their respective countries were mired in economic recessions, and that both cultural moments were ripe for a resurgence of music with a rebellious spirit. According to Felder, British punk led by the
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Sex Pistols and American post-punk led by Nirvana each emerged to fill a national void (24). Obviously, this analysis is more suggestive than scientific, but punk and post-punk shared a sense of aggressive difference from mainstream popular music. As with many overnight successes, closer analysis suggests the deeper roots and gradual development of the post-punk phenomenon. For instance, one post-punk enthusiast argued that while rock n roll music in the 1980s was often viewed as lacking innovation, that the 1980s was actually rock musics most fertile decade, that the independently produced music of this era bubbled with creative ferment (Foege 23). While many of post-punks most influential bands started out on independent labels like SST, Touch and Go, and Sub Pop, by the late 1980s, the major labels had caught on to the musics commercial potential. In 1986, Husker Du left SST and signed with Warner Brothers for its Candy Apple Grey album. In the wake of this signing, some of Husker Dus original fan base felt alienated, and charged the band with selling out and abandoning its politics. Husker Dus Bob Mould defended the move to a major label as a bid to reach a greater fan base, arguing that the band remained true to its ideals, and that its conception of politics was broadening beyond the formula of topical songs, each addressing individual issues (MRR 33). Debates such as this over the meaning of Husker Dus major label deal were carried out in the pages of the fanzines and closely foreshadowed popular press debates in the wake of Nirvanas success after 1991.17 Other seminal post-punk bands that signed with major labels by the end of the decade included Firehose (two-thirds of whose members were the Minutemen) the Replacements, Dinosaur Jr., and perhaps most importantly Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth worked almost a decade to garner a fraction of the popularity that Nirvana achieved virtually overnight. Yet underground bands like Sonic Youth toiled in the 1980s fruitfully, opening cultural space for Nirvanas popular success. Prior to signing with Geffen in 1990, Sonic Youth was affiliated with a number of independent labels such as Homestead, Blast First, and SST. Sonic Youths career trajectory challenges typical arguments about selling out and cultural co-optation. The bands early work was characterized by aural experimentations, such as tuning the bands two guitars one-quarter note apart to produce a dissonant wall of sound, and impressionistic lyrics often delivered with an ironic distance that resisted cogent interpretation. Beginning with Goo, Sonic Youths 1990 major label debut, the bands politics actually became more
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overt. Much of this had to do with Kim Gordons emerging feminist voice on songs like Swimsuit Issue and Tunic (Song for Karen), but some of guitarist Thurston Moores songs, most notably Youth Against Fascism, clearly reflect oppositional political ideas (Macnie 14; Felder 747; Foege 207). Sonic Youths increasing politicization after signing to a major label serves at the very least as a caveat to the idea that bands automatically become co-opted by signing to a major. Sonic Youth also aided Nirvanas success from a standpoint of networking and personal contacts within the music industry, providing a liaison with a Geffen A & R man in 1990, and selecting Nirvana as the opening act on its 1991 European tour (Azerrad 162; Foege 2189). Along with increasing major label interest in underground music, another factor contributed to the cultural moment that enabled Nirvanas commercial breakthrough, namely, a coalescing sense of identity among post-punk fans. A shared political outlook helped this community to cohere. Many of the letters to the editor in the fanzines actively tried to promote unity among fans. Patrick of Colorado Springs defended the presence of politics in post-punk: . . . people talk about bands all being generically political. People think that enough has been said about Ronald Reagan, war, nuclear holocaust, cops and governments. Well, I dont. A lot has been said and a lot of people have been working really hard, but the things that we hate, cops and government . . . etc., have not gone away. So why should I not sing about what sucks and what should be done about it just because others feel the same way and have voiced their opinions before me? Thats dumb. Punks keep saying the same thing because the fucking system keeps playing the same fucking game. and as long as they keep pulling their shit, well keep fighting any way we know how. Patrick proceeded to defend the Dead Kennedys against charges of selling out, and praised them for broadening the reach of their message. Finally, Patrick urged fans to pool their collective power together against the system as a strategy for survival (MRR 23). Another fan named Dave called for a move to other directions of political work, advocating moving beyond political lyrics that simply preached to the converted. He also cautioned fans not to fall into what he called the subculture trap, echoing McRobbies argument. Dave argued
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that post-punk was vulnerable to charges that it was exclusive and maledominated, and made a plea for a more inclusive post-punk community, offering to compile a contact list of fans addresses so that serious political punks could get together and start talking. Besides the kind of opposition to the dominant political culture evident in the Rock Against Reagan concerts and I hate Ronnie contests, post-punks also defined their politics in contrast to previous generations. Letters from fans cite examples of 1960s radicals who have renounced their politics and traded in their lovebeads for three-piece suits (MRR 23; Drozdowski 2 : 124).18 Young post-punk fans consistently differentiated themselves from 1960s youth. In the summer of 1991, the first Lollapalooza tour helped solidify the post-punk communitys self-image. The Lollapalooza festival was the brainchild of Perry Farrell, the lead singer of Janes Addiction, and several of Farrells associates involved in music management. Farrell and his partners organized a lineup of seven bands and announced a tour to 17 different locations in the U.S. The initial Lollapalooza proved successful, drawing large crowds to listen to a ten-hour show of varied musical fare in which post-punk received prominent representation. The festival also featured information display tables sponsored by various political and social action groups. While some have claimed that information tables emphasizing non-radical political initiatives such as voter registration and condom distribution are evidence of post-punks mobilization for a more reformist political use, this also suggests that the post-punk community began to realize that participation in traditional politics, such as voting, did not preclude rebellious music. Regardless of whether the politics of Lollapalooza were radical or reformist, the festivals success promoted a feeling of generational cohesion. Even the mainstream press appreciated this heightened sense of community, as Newsweek referred to Lollapalooza as A Woodstock for Post-Punks (Pareles, Is Lollapalooza II: 26; Watrous C135; Pareles, Lollapalooza, Tattoos C13, 18; Pareles, Lollapalooza, a Day C112; Pond II: 28; Leland 55; Pareles, Lollapalooza94 I: 13, 17; Farley 17). Although it is ultimately impossible to prove why post-punk music became popular after Nirvanas success in 1991, several factors converged serendipitously at that moment. Increasing major label attention and the cohesion of post-punk fans through festivals such as Lollapalooza and The International Pop Underground Convention (Arnold 1646) contributed to post-punks rising popularity, but a shared culture of opposition most likely also figured in its breakthrough. Rock writer Jon Garelick compared
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Nirvanas Nevermind to Bob Dylans 1967 John Wesley Harding album, citing Jon Landaus memorable review of John Wesley Harding, which argued that although Dylan does not mention the Vietnam War explicitly, a profound awareness of the war and its consequences on American life could be felt throughout the album. Garelick contended that Nevermind exhibited a similar consciousness about the 1991 Persian Gulf War during which Nirvana recorded the album (2: 16). If Garelick was right, then Nirvanas rage on Nevermind may have constituted one of those important acts of everyday rebellion that ultimately wielded a cumulative effect on power relations. As one Nirvana biographer wrote, When I heard that Nevermind, an album whose first line is Load up on drugs and bring your friends, had gone to number one the first week of 1992, my first thought was, Bush will not be reelected (Arnold 5). This premonition proved correct, as the greatest number of young people to vote in a Presidential election since 1972 turned out to vote George Bush out of office. The success of post-punk, or alternative music as the recording industry came to call it, combined with Bill Clintons election, shifted the cultural context in which the music operated. Articles such as one entitled Alternative To What? point out that this supposedly rebellious cultural form was easily retrofitted to sell Subarus and Miller beer. Writers in the mainstream music press questioned the authenticity of some of the most popular alternative acts, such as Pearl Jam, the Stone Temple Pilots, and Blind Melon, criticizing the second-rate imitators, and suggesting that they were part of a rush to imitate a successful musical form once it proved popular. Certainly, there are cultural antecedents, such as acts like Fabian and Frankie Avalon that represented a watered-down version of Elvis Presley. It was not surprising that advertisers and the mainstream music industry sought to cash in on post-punks commercial success. That commercial enterprises mobilized a musical form that only a few years before the industry had regarded as lacking commercial potential illustrates capitalisms capacity for overcoming aesthetic obstacles as well as those of time and space. Despite this, the compatibility of a musical form with commercial success in one epoch does not necessarily negate the oppositional stance it projected as it cohered in another. In perhaps the most memorable lyric of his mid-1980s hit Boys of Summer,19 Don Henley sings: Out on the road today/I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, exemplifying a 1980s popular culture trend of bashing 1960s idealists as sellouts engaged in a headlong capitulation to materialist values. In a recent up-tempo punk-pop
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remake of this song, the Ataris morph the line to: Out on the road today/I saw a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac. The dominant reading of the Ataris variant suggests that formerly oppositional post-punks have become as morally bankrupt and crassly materialistic as the 1960s sellouts Henley lamented. Yet, an alternate reading would acknowledge that, in its time, Black Flagalong with countless post-punk musicians and fans of similar bandsconstituted an authentic voice of opposition, a voice unwilling to yield to Reagan era militarism and cultural conservatism. Listening to the recent Green Day, Blink 182, and Sum 41 cycle of punk pop, its clear that these musicians would do well to look outward, and to find a larger structural context with which to link their personal frustrations. Clearly, this outward focus represents part of post-punks usable past and a needed component of a music of resistance in this preemption era of American foreign and military policies. Notes
1. The letters to the editor in Maximum RockNRoll 23 (1985) are representative of fans debates surrounding the issue of American intervention in Nicaragua; Bondi ascribes political opposition to Reagan conservatism to a small group of marginalized young people (2). 2. Sonic Youths 1990 Goo LP contained a track entitled Kool Thing, which foreshadowed this kind of musical hybrid. Rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy contributed an effective cameo performance on this track (Foege 209). 3. Arnolds personal memoir of her experience as a fan of American indie rock includes a discussion of R.E.M.s influence on the genres trajectory toward commercial success, that concludes, Ultimately, you can lay it all at R.E.M.s feet. 4. The identification of these four elements of 1970s punks influence on post-punk owes much to the section entitled The Case of Punk (Frith 15863). 5. Econo is the Minutemens term of choice for describing the do-ityourself production ethic, which is designed to keep production costs low and punk authenticity high. This stands in contrast to high-budget, majorstudio produced music, which many post-punk fans and performers viewed as inauthentic and/or insincere. 6. In my discussion of how fans may have experienced post-punk in ways that transcended record industry control, I take my cue from Shank, who criticizes analyses of popular music that privilege recording industry practices:
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. . . [I]n their focus on the systematic production and exchange of recorded commodities, these studies . . . reduce the human performance of musical sound to the practices of the recording industry, thereby contributing to the reification of music and the ideological dominance of the concept of a music industry . . . He contends that such accounts run the risk of conflating the production of music with the production of records, and he laments the fact that too often the study of the recording industry has stood in for the study of popular music (204). Post-punk displayed resonance and meaning for fans and performers that extended beyond the music industrys purview. 7. This piece of language is borrowed from Reebee Garofalo, who refers to the continuing tendency to depict independent labels as heroic underdogs even though the structural relationship between independents and majors has long since been transformed (Garofalo, Rockin 367). 8. It is difficult to interpret Sonic Youths fetish with the Manson killings. Most music critics have interpreted Death Valley69 and Expressway to Your Skull as a critique of violence in American culture (Passantino 78; Watrous, Sonic 85; Foege 11923). 9. Themselves Written by Dennes Boon New Alliance Music (BMI)/ Administered by BUG. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. 10. My observations about post-punk fans draw liberally from a PostPunk/Alternative Music Questionnaire I distributed in 1995 as part of my research for a Masters Thesis in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts/Boston. I distributed the questionnaire in record stores, to musicians, and to employees in clubs that served as live performance venues for post-punk music, using the ethnographic technique of snowball sampling (Margolis). Thus, the questionnaires received relatively wide geographic distribution. Out of the approximately 100 questionnaires I distributed, I received 22 completed questionnaires. Because of the relatively small size of this sample, then, the questionnaire results are useful mainly as qualitative, rather than quantitative, evidence. The first question in the Post-Punk/Alternative Music Questionnaire was intended to be simple to answer and to ease the respondents into engaging their music intellectually. I also envisioned it as an opportunity for respondents to proclaim allegiance to bands that possessed special meaning to them. That so many resisted answering in the most straightforward way may also indicate that they felt unsure of post-punks boundaries and did not want to risk appearing ignorant by choosing a band that they felt might not classify as post-punk. 11. Ironically, post-punk fans were expressing this view at precisely the moment their music had become popular.
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12. Frith develops a detailed discussion of how the structure of commercial radio mitigates against musical innovation (11726). In Marcuss article Born Dead, he offers an excoriating critique of music video as a cultural form (3459). One of Marcuss main arguments is that music video is a form that seems to encourage insincerity. 13. There were fan letters that expressed a conservative point of view printed in the pages of MRR and Flipside, but the editors of these fanzines consistently used their editorial power to refute the positions these letters expressed. These letters were used as a foil for the editors to elevate their own oppositional views at the expense of fans with more conservative views. 14. For instance, some of the responses included Kato Kaelin, the freeloading houseguest in the O.J. Simpson trial, and Lorena Bobbit, who had severed the genitals of her abusive and unfaithful husband, along with Madonnas left breast, and Sonny Bono. 15. For this study, I reviewed dozens of issues of Flipside and Maximum RocknRoll, two of the most renowned and enduring fanzines. 16. For a critical view of Lita Fords representation of femininity, see the Sut Jhallys documentary video Dreamworlds (1990). 17. For debate on the meaning of Husker Dus signing to Warner Brothers, see What th fuck!!!, a column featuring an interview with Bob Mould, in MRR 33; and Ruth Schwartz, What Th What Th Fuck in MRR 34 (1986). 18. The comment about trading love beads for three-piece suits was a tacit reference to ex-Yippie radical Jerry Rubin, whose abandonment of radicalism for a new career on Wall Street was much celebrated in the popular media as an example of 1960s activisms demise. Another emblematic example of the cynical attitude in much of 1980s popular culture toward 1960s idealism was the 1986 hit film The Big Chill. 19. The song debuted on the Top 40 charts at the end of 1984, but peaked in 1985, reaching the Top 10.
Works Cited
Arnold, Gina. Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana. New York: St. Martins, 1993. Azerrad, Michael. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Bondi, Vic. Feeding the Noise Back Into the System: Hardcore, Hip Hop, and Heavy Metal. New England American Studies Association Conference Paper. May 1993, 225.
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Boon, Dennes. Themselves. New Alliance Music (BMI)/ Administered by BUG (All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission). Carson, Tom. Americas Most Conceptual Bar Band. Village Voice Nov. 6, 1984: 81. Chapple, Steve and Reebee Garofalo. Rockn Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 1977. The Cramps to Join Mordam Records! Aug. 29, 2001 <http://members.shaw. ca/thecramps/newpress.html>. Drozdowski, Ted. X Marks the Time: How Grunge and Its Champions Worked a Desperate Generation. Providence Phoenix 2 Feb. 18, 1994, 124. Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Farley, Christopher John. Latter-Day Grunge. Time July 12, 1993, 17. Felder, Rachel. Manic Pop Thrill. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco, 1993. Flipside. 29 (1981). . 51 (1986). . 52 (1987). . 57 (1988). Foege, Alec. Confusion is Next: The Sonic Youth Story. New York: St. Martins, 1994. Frith, Simon. Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock n Roll. New York: Pantheon, 1981. Garelick, Jon. Rocks Body Politic: The Music is Still Bigger Than the Message. Providence Phoenix 2 Dec. 9, 1994 16. Garofalo, Reebee. How Autonomous is Relative: Popular Music, the Social Formation and Cultural Struggle. Popular Music 6.1 (1987): 7791. . Rockin Out: Popular Music in the U.S.A. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. Gibson, James William. Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994. Gross, David M. Proceeding with Caution. Time July 16, 1990, 5662.
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Hebdige, Dick. Style as Homology and Signifying Practice. On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. Ed. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin. New York: Pantheon, 1990. 5665. Heylin, Clinton. From the Velvets to the Voidoids: A Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World. New York: Penguin, 1993. Husker Du. Land Speed Record. SST (1981). Ian MacKaye + Jeff Nelson Interview. Flipside 29 (1981). Kelley, Robin D.G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 1990. Laing, Dave. One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock. Philadelphia, PA: Open UP, 1985. Leland, John. A Woodstock for Post-Punks: Lollapalooza Tests Out a Freaky-Deaky World Order. Newsweek Aug. 17, 1992, 55. Macnie, Jim. Riffs: Sonic Youth. Down Beat Mar. 1987, 14. Marcus, Greil. Ranters & Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 197792. New York: Doubleday, 1993. Margolis, Maxine L. Little Brazil: An Ethnography of Brazilian Immigrants in New York City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1994. Martin, Bradford. Noise From the Underground: Post-Punk Music as Oppositional Culture. Unpublished M.A. Thesis, U of Massachusetts/Boston, 1995. Maximum RocknRoll 23 (1985). . 33 (1986). . 34 (1986). . 40 (1986). . 58 (1988). . 62 (1988). McRobbie, Angela. Settling Accounts With Subcultures. On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. Ed. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin. New York: Pantheon, 1990. 6680. Minutemen. Ballot Result. SST, (1986). Palmer, Robert. Hot Band: Sonic Youths Thrash Pop May Be the Sound of Young America in the Nineties. Rolling Stone May 18, 1989, 97100.
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Pareles, Jon. Is Lollapalooza Losing Its Outsider Status? New York Times June 27, 1993, 26. . Lollapalooza 94 Opens in Las Vegas. New York Times July 9, 1994, 13+. . Lollapalooza, a Day Full of Sound and Fury. New York Times Aug. 11, 1992, C112. . Lollapalooza, Tattoos and All. New York Times June 21, 1993, C13+. Passantino, Rosemary. Sonic Youth 85. Village Voice June 11, 1985, 78. Pond, Steve. The Trick Is to Be Loved but Not Embraced. New York Times June 26, 1994, 28. Savage, Jon. Englands Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. New York: St. Martins, 1992. Schwartz, Ruth. What Th What Th Fuck. Maximum Rock n Roll 34 (1986). Seidenberg, Robert. Revolt Into Convention. Village Voice June 4, 1985, 74. Shank, Barry. Dissonant Identities: The Rock n Roll Scene in Austin, Texas. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan UP/UP of New England, 1994. Sinker, Daniel, ed. We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews. New York: Akashic, 2001, 10918. Strauss, Neil. Exploding Tickets: Pearl Jam Wage an Anti-Trust War Against Ticketmaster on Capitol Hill. Rolling Stone Aug. 11, 1994, 30. Sullivan, John. Alternative to What? From Beer to Cars to Radio, Angst-Rock Surfs the Latest Wave to the Mainstream. Boston Globe B1, Apr. 2, 1995, 2627. Walser, Robert. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1993. Watrous, Peter. Good Things Happen to Lollapalooza. New York Times Aug. 5, 1992, C135. . Sonic Youth: California Dreaming. Village Voice, July 1, 1986, 85. What th fuck!!! Maximum Rock n Roll 33 (1986). Wood, Joe, ed. Malcolm X and the New Blackness. Malcolm X: In Our Own Image. New York: St. Martins, 1992. 14.

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. . . And You Voted For That Guy

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1991: Nirvanas Nevermind, Lollapalooza, and the Politics of Co-optation

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