Punk Paradox

From the legendary singer-songwriter of Bad Religion comes a historical memoir and cultural criticism of punk rock’s evolution. Greg Graffin is the lead vocalist and songwriter of Bad Religion, recently described as “America's most significant punk band.” Since its inception in Los Angeles in 1980, Bad Religion has produced 18 studio albums, become a long-running global touring powerhouse, and has established a durable legacy as one of the most influential punk rock bands of all time. Punk Paradox is Graffin's life narrative before and during L.A. punk's early years, detailing his observations on the genre's explosive growth and his band's steady rise in importance. The book begins by exploring Graffin’s Midwestern roots and his life-changing move to Southern California in the mid-’70s. Swept up into the burgeoning punk scene in the exhilarating and often-violent streets of Los Angeles, Graffin and his friends formed Bad Religion, built a fanbase, and became a touring institution. All these activities took place in parallel with Graffin's never ceasing quest for intellectual enlightenment. Despite the demands of global tours, recording sessions, and dedication to songwriting, the author also balanced a budding academic career. In so doing, he managed to reconcile an improbable double-life as an iconic punk rock front man and University Lecturer in evolution. Graffin’s unique experiences mirror the paradoxical elements that define the punk genre—the pop influence, the quest for society’s betterment, music’s unifying power—all of which are prime ingredients in its surprising endurance. Fittingly, this book argues against the traditional narrative of the popular perception of punk. As Bad Religion changed from year to year, the spirit of punk—and its sonic significance—lived on while Graffin was ever willing to challenge convention, debunk mythology, and liberate listeners from the chains of indoctrination. As insightful as it is exciting, this thought-provoking memoir provides both a fly on the wall history of the punk scene and astute commentary on its endurance and evolution.

On the road with a punk rock band.

This is the most wide-ranging and provocative look at punk rock as a social change movement over the past forty-five years, told through first-hand accounts of roughly 250 musicians and activists. John Malkin brings together punk’s most famous figures as well as underground voices, creating a new and insightful history of punk throughout the ages.

Since the 1970 and 1980s, fanzines have constituted a zone of freedom of thought, of do-it-yourself creativity and of alternatives to conventional media. Along with bands, records and concerts, they became a vital part of the construction of punk 'scenes’, actively contributing to the creation and consolidation of communities. This book moves beyond the usual focus on Anglophone punk scenes to consider fanzines in international contexts. The introduction offers a theoretical, chronological and thematic survey for understanding fanzines, considering their contemporary polyhedral vitality. It then moves to consider the distinct social, historical and geographic contexts in which fanzines were created. Covering the UK, Portugal, Greece, Canada, Germany, Argentina, France and Brazil, as well as a wide range of standpoints, this book contributes to a more global understanding of the fanzine phenomenon.

The Frailty of Authority explores the social, economic, cultural, and historical forces that shape and constrain the common worldviews that give ideological legitimacy to collectivities ranging from dynastic American families to Communist party cadres in China. The Frailty of Authority is the fifth consecutive volume in the series, Political Anthropology. It offers original analyses in a pioneering, multidisciplinary field concerned with understanding political man. Articles cover a wide range of theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches in exploring the complex inter-relationships among socioeconomic, cultural, and political phenomena.

For more than three decades, a punk underground has repeatedly insisted that 'anyone can do it'. This underground punk movement has evolved via several micro-traditions, each offering distinct and novel presentations of what punk is, isn't, or should be. Underlying all these punk micro-traditions is a politics of empowerment that claims to be anarchistic in character, in the sense that it is contingent upon a spontaneous will to liberty (anyone can do it - in theory). How valid, though, is punk's faith in anarchistic empowerment? Exploring theories from Derrida and Marx, Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground examines the cultural history and politics of punk. In its political resistance, punk bears an ideological relationship to the folk movement, but punk's faith in novelty and spontaneous liberty distinguish it from folk: where punk's traditions, from the 1970s onwards, have tended to search for an anarchistic 'new-sense', folk singers have more often been socialist/Marxist traditionalists, especially during the 1950s and 60s. Detailed case studies show the continuities and differences between four micro-traditions of punk: anarcho-punk, cutie/'C86', riot grrrl and math rock, thus surveying UK and US punk-related scenes of the 1980s, 1990s and beyond.

Damaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk is the first book-length portrait of punk as a musical style with an emphasis on how punk developed in relation to changing ideas of race in American society from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Drawing on musical analysis, archival research, and new interviews, Damaged provides fresh interpretations of race and American society during this period and illuminates the contemporary importance of that era. Evan Rapport outlines the ways in which punk developed out of dramatic changes to America’s cities and suburbs in the postwar era, especially with respect to race. The musical styles that led to punk included transformations to blues resources, experimental visions of the American musical past, and bold reworkings of the rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues sounds of the late 1950s and early 1960s, revealing a historically oriented approach to rock that is strikingly different from the common myths and conceptions about punk. Following these approaches, punk itself reflected new versions of older exchanges between the US and the UK, the changing environments of American suburbs and cities, and a shift from the expressions of older baby boomers to that of younger musicians belonging to Generation X. Throughout the book, Rapport also explores the discourses and contradictory narratives of punk history, which are often in direct conflict with the world that is captured in historical documents and revealed through musical analysis.

Jim Lindberg is a Punk Rock Dad. When he drives his kids to school in the morning, they listen to the Ramones, the Clash, or the Descendents—and that's it. They can listen to Britney and Justin on their own time. Jim goes to soccer games, dance rehearsals, and piano recitals like all the other dads, but when he feels the need, he also goes to punk shows, runs into the slam pit, and comes home bruised and beaten . . . but somehow feeling strangely better. While the other dads dye their hair brown to cover the gray, Jim occasionally dyes his blue or green. He makes his daughters' lunches, kisses their boo-boos, and tucks them in at night—and then goes into the garage and plays Black Flag and Minor Threat songs at a criminal volume. He pays his taxes, votes in all the presidential and gubernatorial elections, serves on jury duty, and reserves the right to believe that there is a vast Right Wing Conspiracy—and that the head of the P.T.A. is possibly in on it. He is a Punk Rock Dad.