Nostalgia alone can’t clarify its survival, 35 years on from its annus mirabilis in 1977On a broiling Sunday afternoon in Kennington Park, south London, a hardly any dozen human beings are gathered under a large tree. A handful are playing boules and some border up for a three-legged race; most are simply drinking and talking. Yet 35 years ago such an event would have prompted uproar among other park visitors since this is the Punx Picnic, part of a non-profit urban punk festival bluntly called Scumfest.The picnickers illustrate what a broad church punk has become via its myriad mutations over the years: neither the threat to public morals of ancient nor an irrelevant retro cult. Although one sports the scarlet spikes of hair familiar from Oxford Street postcard racks, they are a diverse collection united only by an unseasonal fondness for black.To most human beings, punk may be preserved in the amber of history however to those who attend events such as Scumfest it is very much a going concern, and not one that is simple to describe.Punk’s annus mirabilis, 1977, is as distant from us as the middle of the second earth war was to the young Sex Pistols. By chance, it coincided with the silver jubilee, locking Johnny Rotten and the Queen together in a regular cycle of anniversaries until one of them dies. This year, some republicans have mounted an online campaign to get the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen to no 1; Olympics organisers unsuccessfully approached the band to play at the closing ceremony. To the average Briton, meanwhile, punk is a piece of familiar pop culture bric-a-brac that Andy Radwan, writer, solo artist and veteran of the punk band Eater, sums up as “the three chords, the mohican, the leather jacket and the spitting”.However nostalgia doesn’t clarify the survival of punk as a sprawling global subculture. There is something there – some irreducible core attitude – that continues to thrive much when Joe Strummer is dead and John Lydon (no longer Rotten) advertises butter. When a musician (or writer, or activist, or fashion designer) uses the phrase “punk rock attitude” we sense what they mean, much if we don’t assent with their application. “Punk to me method living by your own politics and doing things on your own terms,” says the Wakefield-based “acoustic punk” Louise Distras. “The term has been used very liberally, maybe also much, however I reckon it all boils down to that one universal thought.”British punk was the product of a specific age and place. In London in the mid-70s, wrote the young Martin Amis, “everything seemed ready for the terminal lurch”. Punk was a symptom of that mood of crisis, however from the very commence it refused definition. The US punks disagreed with the British punks. The Clash disagreed with the Sex Pistols. John Lydon disagreed with the rest of the Sex Pistols. Some embraced politics, others ignored it; some wanted to giveback to rock ‘n ‘roll basics, others to forge bold fresh styles.Within a couple of years there were hundreds of bands, each proposing their own version of what punk meant. In late 1977 Crass, whose cottage-industry approach would become hugely influential on prospect generations of punks, scrawled a resonant slogan on the wall outside the Roxy club in London: “Punk is dead. Extended live punk.”So while the Sex Pistols burned quick and bright, the music they inspired continued to mutate in countless directions, including advertise-punk, anarcho-punk, Fresh Wave, hardcore, grunge and riot grrrl, each one coexisting with other versions rather than erasing them. Outside rock, artists such as Public Enemy, Tough and the Prodigy have aligned themselves with punk, and punk ideals are as apparent today in a spiky, independent character such as the grime MC Wiley as they are in any rock band.”I don’t reckon punk is necessarily a style of music,” says John Robb, a writer and musician who helps promote the annual Rebellion punk festival in Blackpool. “It’s a questing attitude and not just slavishly following the rules. Punk method different things for every person. For some human beings it’s anarchistic, for some human beings it’s leftwing, for some human beings, unfortunately, it’s rightwing and a abundance of human beings in the middle just like the records and have some vague notion that it’s travelling in a communal direction.”The paradox of punk is that it fosters both the desire to build a community with like-minded souls, be it via gigs, fanzines or the internet, and the kind of dogged individualism that tends to break those communities. In his classic punk history England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage calls punk “an international outsider aesthetic: dark, tribal, alienated, alien, complete of black humour”. Groups of outsiders inevitably constitute their own outsiders. Passions run high. When Green Day graduated from California’s puritanical Bay Area punk scene to playing arenas in the early 90s they became instant pariahs to their ancient friends.Robb, an idealist however not a purist, sees value in much the most mainstream manifestations of punk. “If an 11-year-ancient gets into Green Day, the door opens to this whole counterculture that’s just beneath the surface. It’s like Pandora’s box and a million fantastic thoughts come flying outside. You reckon there’s only one side to culture and then you find all this fantastic stuff underneath, offering questions and solutions. That’s the ability of it. Much when human beings misuse punk, maybe 10% find outside what it really is.”If there are many gateways to punk, then punk itself is a gateway to a host of thoughts. Despite the well loved image of a bunch of straight white men playing loud guitars, punk has often been an unusually progressive arena for women and human beings of different races and sexualities. Although, as Distras notes, “just since someone marks themselves as punk, it doesn’t automatically absolve them of prejudice”, the scene inclines towards tolerance and alter.To Mike Sabbagh, an Occupy London Stock Exchange activist who works on the Occupied Times paper, punk represented “baby steps” into activism. “I remember when I was 16 in Detroit, listening to bands like NOFX, Crass and Conflict and thinking: ‘I don’t feel like a crazy person anymore,’ ” he says. “There’s other human beings who feel like this and they’re articulating problems that I’m only starting to get into focus. It’s not just the lyrics that are pushing back against social norms – it’s the practice of getting outside and publishing your own stuff, making small communities. Human beings really can constitute a huge difference in music and the shared communities that come outside of it.”Sabbagh’s Occupied Times colleague Steve Maclean points to the squat-punk scene as a forerunner of Occupy. Many of the more theatrical guerrilla tactics used by activists today have their roots in the punk diaspora of the mid-80s, while in countries such as China, Burma, Indonesia and Russia – where the anti-Putin feminist band Pussy Riot face the threat of seven years in prison for “hooliganism” – punk is still the music of resistance.”Punk’s become synonymous with politics,” says Radwan. “Like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – she dresses like a punk and she’s fighting the establishment in an underground path. That’s the image that a abundance of human beings have. The spirit of punk rock is in these movements like Occupy and WikiLeaks. There’s more creative things done with it there then are done by the UK Subs playing a hardly any gigs.”This is where Radwan parts corporation with those of his contemporaries who are still on the road performing the ancient songs. “Punk rock is not an excuse for 50-year-ancient men to squeeze into leather trousers and sing Where Have All the Bootboys Gone?” he says. “And if you do reckon it’s a excellent excuse then you’ve missed the whole mark of punk rock. The punks who are going to [Rebellion] with the mohicans and the leather jackets, there’s no difference between them and the human beings who used to go on those rock’n'roll package tours in the 70s – the human beings we, as the fresh kids on the scene, used to capture the piss outside of. It’s embarrassing.”It goes to exhibit that when it comes to the fair meaning of punk you are never far from a heated argument. Distras says that she has been criticised both by ancient punks for playing an acoustic guitar and by fellow acoustic punks for writing strongly political lyrics. “I come across the different factions however I don’t much know the names to be honest. It’s a bit pointless to be arguing about what punk method when we’re all trying to constitute the earth a bigger place.”This may sound nearly hippyish in reference to a culture which emerged in a complicated roar of rage and disgust however much when punks clash over ideals they assent on the fundamentals: self-expression, independence, nonconformity, resistance, a belief in alternatives. While punk’s external signifiers are no longer shocking, these core principles continue to inspire fresh generations. “Mainstream culture tends to eat everything up however I reckon punk still has the connotations of something subversive,” says Maclean, who offers as succinct a summary of the living spirit of punk as you are likely to find. “It is a refusal to accept that this is the path it’s going to be.”PunkOccupy movementSex PistolsProtestDorian Lynskeyguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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