What Is Punk?

 

Punk isn't dead, it just smells that way.  All seriousness aside, when I was growing up, Punk was dangerous, scandalous, debased, seditious, ugly;  in short, new.  Punks were the cause of terrified news reports and falling real estate prices.  Now they're considered passé when they're considered at all.  So it's worth thinking a little about how it started and what it meant.

Today is a day long after Punk has risen and fallen.  It became an Establishment unto itself and people started to realize this was too much of an oxymoron.  It couldn't become a popular trend while still being true to itself, and the people who really understood it realized that.  Punk promptly collapsed -- or, at least, dropped off the radar screen of the culture.

Wandering through the resulting debris, there are a few people who still practice real Punk.  Many of them would probably call me a "Poser".  But I take that as a compliment, because I'm not even really trying to emulate Punk;  I just admire Punk's values.

Even in its most trivial aspect, Punk stood outside of established culture, music, and fashion, and chose its own boundaries.  By doing so, Punk showed many of us which of society's platitudes were false and which sacred cows were unimportant.  That's the core of Punk:  a refusal to accept at face value what other people tell you is for your own good.  You can be a Punk and still have a regular job, live in a decent house, wear new clothes, be loyal to your friends and not fight with them, listen to classical music.  But a true Punk has made those decisions for himself (or herself).  If someone is exploiting a true Punk for ill-gotten gains, or if that Punk does something un-Karma-tic, it's not because the Punk doesn't know about it.  A true Punk has already considered the causes and consequences of the big decisions;  he may make a bad decision but it's his decision, not someone else's that he's aping.

True Punks complain that there are still too many commercialized, skin-deep, pseudo-punks on the scene.  But all the Punks I've met have at least one thing in common:  they're real people.  The posers are out there somewhere, but every Punk I know has made a conscious choice about his or her identity;  a choice which a lot of relatively successful people go through their whole lives avoiding.  The mere act of making this choice opens your eyes to an invisible spectrum that stretches from your own self-identity through all personal relationships and social structures.

A comedienne whose name I don't remember said "The best thing I can hope to do is give my children something to rebel against."  True words.  We have to remember that we can't just pass all our wholesome and well-reasoned values along to our kids in one nice, neat package.  People who grow up accepting a "gift" like that too often abuse or misapply it.  Values that are not questioned are not understood.  Without rebellion a child does not forge a solid identity, its core will crumble when he or she needs it most.

So in short, I'm not a Punk, but I admire Punks.  There are several pages on this website where I say that such-and-such person has a "punk attitude" or a "punky sense of humor."  And that's meant as a high compliment.

Andrei Codrescu, interviewed about his second novel Messiah, had this to say:

    "I think that the tattooed and the pierced kids and the urban flotsam and gutter punks are actually a species of saints.  They're obviously not intellectual powerhouses, but neither were the saints of the deserts.  They wandered from city to city being spiritual and a general public embarrassment.  So I see those kids as the tribes of the Messiah.  The fact that they have put themselves out of society -- because it's very hard to work at an office with a tattoo on your face -- and the fact that they really try to form a community and identify with each other by their marks of beauty, to me that is spiritual.

    "Hard-edged urban pessimism is really the flip side of a call for social justice and a different kind of world.  Even just a kind of heroin-driven yearning for death and oblivion is a spiritual impulse.  There is something spiritual just in refusing to buy the values of your mediocre and well-settled elders."

Go Back to the Music Navigation Wheel

 

    THIS JUST IN -- PUNK IS QUANTIFIABLE!

    Another in a series of excellent recommendations from my Punk correspondent Shane of Drubskin, there is now an on-line test to determine if you are punk.  Yes, that's right, follow my punk ass to the Internet.  Click on the graphic to take the test.  I would, of course, rather I'd scored in the Jello-Biafra range, but I'm proud that I at least managed to get to the Green Day level.

    I am 46% Punk Rock.
    Not Quite Punk.
    Well, I may know what punk is, but... Okay maybe some people think I am punk, but is that enough? Nope.
  • My first name is Kevin
  • My last name is Wohlmut
  • My middle name is Arthur

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