administrator
06-30-2007, 12:19 PM
Ian MacKaye says it best: “Punk is indefinable, so therefore it can never be dead. You can’t kill something that doesn’t really have a single definition.” This is basically correct.
No one has ever been sure exactly what punk is. We think we know it when we hear it (loud, fast, brash, snotty and sloppy) and see it (dirty leather jackets, patches, safety pins, mohawks). But when you consider that, say, Talking Heads, a group of art students dressed like a collegiate debate team playing African-influenced funk, are considered punk pioneers, those superficial images get thrown out the window.
So what does it mean to be punk, then? And, if there is no answer to that question, how can anyone claim, as people have from practically the moment the Sex Pistols broke up, that punk is dead?
Working from that point of view, director Susan Dynner offers her opinion in the title of her new documentary: Punk’s Not Dead. Through new interviews with icons such as Mike Ness and punk-doc staple Henry Rollins and nouveau riche newbies like Sum 41, and segments on the Warped Tour and kids living and hosting shows at a place they call the Drunk Tank, Dynner sets out to prove punk is an amorphous entity, shifting shapes depending on who is inhabiting it, and thus cannot be killed.
Dynner skips over proto-punk and the first wave, eras that have already been covered and mythologized to death, and jumps straight to the second generation, which molded the things the earlier bands seemed to represent (consciously or not) into a set of workable ideals and created an international network of artists, labels and fans that flourished completely beneath the mainstream radar. MacKaye calls it one of the most important periods in the history of popular music, and he is right. But it is also during this time when that punk went pedantic. Suddenly, rules were being applied to something that began not as a movement but as a way for teenagers who hated Styx to keep themselves from dying of boredom.
Which leads us to the early ’90s and the so-called “punk renaissance.” After a late ’80s lull, Nirvana blew up out of nowhere, selling millions of records and breaking the glass ceiling open for everyone else. Soon, punk was everywhere — on radio and MTV, at malls, on the racks at Target — and bands that originally formed with no concept of “making it” were having commercial opportunities dropped in their lap. And so began the great debate: Can anything embraced by society at large be considered punk?
Dynner examines this existential crisis, and what she comes up with is not a definitive statement but a paraphrase of the late, great Minutemen’s take on the subculture that “changed their lives”: punk is whatever you want it to be. As such, she doesn’t judge the freshly scrubbed, platinum-selling pop idols playing what their toothless, is punk, nor the old farts continuing to flog their dead horses at dingy clubs around the world. She lets them both have their say, and in the end, leaves it to the viewer to find their own personal definition. And that, ultimately, is Dynner’s conclusion: Punk, as a revolution, failed as badly as hippie utopianism, but as a tool for individual empowerment, it still breathes heavy.
Punk’s Not Dead screens at the Seaside Park date of the Warped Tour. Info: www.punksnotdead themovie.com.
No one has ever been sure exactly what punk is. We think we know it when we hear it (loud, fast, brash, snotty and sloppy) and see it (dirty leather jackets, patches, safety pins, mohawks). But when you consider that, say, Talking Heads, a group of art students dressed like a collegiate debate team playing African-influenced funk, are considered punk pioneers, those superficial images get thrown out the window.
So what does it mean to be punk, then? And, if there is no answer to that question, how can anyone claim, as people have from practically the moment the Sex Pistols broke up, that punk is dead?
Working from that point of view, director Susan Dynner offers her opinion in the title of her new documentary: Punk’s Not Dead. Through new interviews with icons such as Mike Ness and punk-doc staple Henry Rollins and nouveau riche newbies like Sum 41, and segments on the Warped Tour and kids living and hosting shows at a place they call the Drunk Tank, Dynner sets out to prove punk is an amorphous entity, shifting shapes depending on who is inhabiting it, and thus cannot be killed.
Dynner skips over proto-punk and the first wave, eras that have already been covered and mythologized to death, and jumps straight to the second generation, which molded the things the earlier bands seemed to represent (consciously or not) into a set of workable ideals and created an international network of artists, labels and fans that flourished completely beneath the mainstream radar. MacKaye calls it one of the most important periods in the history of popular music, and he is right. But it is also during this time when that punk went pedantic. Suddenly, rules were being applied to something that began not as a movement but as a way for teenagers who hated Styx to keep themselves from dying of boredom.
Which leads us to the early ’90s and the so-called “punk renaissance.” After a late ’80s lull, Nirvana blew up out of nowhere, selling millions of records and breaking the glass ceiling open for everyone else. Soon, punk was everywhere — on radio and MTV, at malls, on the racks at Target — and bands that originally formed with no concept of “making it” were having commercial opportunities dropped in their lap. And so began the great debate: Can anything embraced by society at large be considered punk?
Dynner examines this existential crisis, and what she comes up with is not a definitive statement but a paraphrase of the late, great Minutemen’s take on the subculture that “changed their lives”: punk is whatever you want it to be. As such, she doesn’t judge the freshly scrubbed, platinum-selling pop idols playing what their toothless, is punk, nor the old farts continuing to flog their dead horses at dingy clubs around the world. She lets them both have their say, and in the end, leaves it to the viewer to find their own personal definition. And that, ultimately, is Dynner’s conclusion: Punk, as a revolution, failed as badly as hippie utopianism, but as a tool for individual empowerment, it still breathes heavy.
Punk’s Not Dead screens at the Seaside Park date of the Warped Tour. Info: www.punksnotdead themovie.com.