Poison Girls’ Vi Subversa (Frances Sokolov) described punk as ‘a reaction to power … it’s a reaction of the powerless … We’re expressing something and we’re using music as a medium.
And although the Angelic Upstarts’ Mensi (Thomas Mensforth) felt punk should be working class, it was more generally recognised to cut across such social barriers. For Vice Squad’s Beki Bondage (Rebecca Bond), punk was about being individual and thinking for yourself. He understood punk as a medium through which people could communicate their own ideas. John Baine, otherwise known as the punk-poet Attila the Stockbroker, agreed. As interesting, however, were the attempts to answer Bushell’s secondary question: What did punk actually mean? 9įor Tom McCourt, bassist with archetypal Oi! band the 4-Skins, punk meant people thinking for themselves it was neither fashion nor anything the media said it was. Not surprisingly, all thought punk remained an important cultural force (even as they recognised punk’s distance from the cultural mainstream). 8 The debate itself brought together writers and members of various bands to discuss the problems facing punk in 1982, meaning factionalism, media faddism, commercialisation and a fatalism embodied in the nuclear mushroom cloud that decorated many a record sleeve and the discarded glue-bag that littered too many a gig. Readers wrote in to reassert punk’s continued relevance, pointing to the prescience of various punk bands and punk lyrics to the local scenes and squats that incubated creativity to the excitement generated by what Alistair Livingston of the influential Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine felt was punk’s basic rationale: ‘to create our own lives out of the chaos’. Because music ain’t never going to change anything.’ 7īushell’s polemic proved contentious. ‘If you’re going to change anything you’ve got to look beyond what you’re doing, beyond music. Punk’s spirit remained, Bushell contended, but punk itself – as a music and a culture – had become conservative and introspective. Ideologically, punk had sub-divided into what Bushell described as the hippie-inflected libertarianism of Crass-style bands the art-for-art’s sake impasse of ‘musical radicalism’ (post-punk) and the blunted ‘street socialism’ of an Oi! scene deformed by a mixture of middle-class prejudice, media misrepresentation and far-right encroachment. In musical terms, thrash or wilful experimentation had replaced songs with a point and purpose. Stylistically, the punk ‘look’ had become formulaic (studs, spikes and leather jackets). ‘A movement which once stood proudly and profoundly against uniformity is … just another uniform’, he insisted. His argument was relatively straightforward: where punk once offered a challenge, ‘at most to the way society is, at least to the jaded musical establishment’, it had now descended into ritual, imitation and narrow-mindedness. 5 Bushell, however, sensed punk’s impact was on the wane, going so far as to ask: ‘Does anyone know what punk means anymore?’ 6 Earlier in the year, too, Crass had proven punk’s ability to retain a subversive intent, spearheading a vocal protest against the Falklands War that provoked questions in parliament and threats of prosecution. 4 Street fashion and even national chart acts retained elements of punk style or attitude across their varied forms. His listeners’ chart for songs issued only in 1982 covered the gamut of punk and post-punk styles, topped by New Order but including Action Pact, The Clash, The Cure, The Jam, Josef K, Killing Joke and Siouxsie and the Banshees. 3 Once again, John Peel’s ‘all-time festive 50’ for 1982 was topped by ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and featured nothing released prior to late 1976. Among the albums, Factory and Rough Trade LPs jostled for position with the likes of the Abrasive Wheels, Blitz, Poison Girls, Dead Kennedys and The Damned. December’s independent charts were dominated by punk or punk-informed bands, with Crass, the Anti-Nowhere League, GBH, Violators, Theatre of Hate, Sex Gang Children and Southern Death Cult all in the top twenty. Ostensibly, British punk appeared to be in relatively rude health as 1982 drew to a close. Figure 1.1 ‘The Punk Debate’, Sounds, 25 December 1982.