Punk: The Final Phrase by Chris Sullivan and Stephen Colegrave
Revealed by: Omnibus
Launch date: twenty third October 2025
Twenty-five years in the past, Sullivan and Colegrave co-wrote a e-book known as Punk: A Life Aside. They’ve written this one with the advantage of many extra years of hindsight. And with that long-range perspective, they’ve chosen to give attention to “our competition that punk is greater than only a musical style; it’s a tenet, a philosophy, a mindset and a way of life”.
Personally, I don’t suppose that notion is definitely contentious. I’ve all the time argued that punk is about angle, not what you put on and even the music you hearken to. That’s, for instance, why Vivien Goldman’s e-book Revenge Of The She-Punks is so wide-ranging.
Then again, I just lately joined a Fb group the place folks appear to suppose that mohawk hairdos and moshpits make you “punk”. So maybe it does want saying.
Nonetheless, you may take it too far. Did Socrates invent punk? Clearly not. However he’s the primary title in a barely tongue-in-cheek checklist of “historic harbingers” – non-conformists from numerous walks of life – within the prologue.
A few of them, like Little Richard and Keith Richards, are a bit extra believable as punk antecedents. However there’s a powerful sense working via this e-book that somebody did invent punk, and that particular person was Andy Warhol. Maybe that’s extra contentious.
The 34 chapters begin with New York and circle again to it many occasions. You’re ten chapters in earlier than you get to the beginning of the London punk scene. That can also be coated intimately and is adopted by a number of chapters investigating what occurred subsequent.
There are brief sections on the inspiring scenes that grew up in numerous elements of the UK and a bit on the much less inspiring subgenre Oi! (“a cautionary story”). The e-book additionally appears to be like at numerous post-punk actions, together with rockabilly, the Blitz youngsters, Two-Tone and punk-funk. The musical tour concludes with hip-hop, exemplifying the DIY punk spirit.
It’s positively complete, as you’d anticipate from a e-book of over 600 pages. Once we get to the precise UK punk motion that started within the late Nineteen Seventies, it’s attention-grabbing to notice that individuals got here to it from totally different instructions. The pub rock route and the artwork faculty route are well-known, however there are different, much less properly documented methods in, just like the “soul boy disco costume up scene” and the Welsh scene the place Steve Unusual originated.
Every chapter tells the story largely via quotes from these concerned (together with Sullivan and Colegrave themselves): scenesters and properly as musicians. They add as much as a carefully detailed historical past, even when they don’t all the time assist the authors’ case for punk’s countercultural credentials.
The authors have carried out quite a few interviews and in addition embody quotes from different sources that some readers may discover acquainted. Should you’re already within the topic, significantly for those who’ve learn, for instance, Will Hermes’ Love Goes To Buildings On Hearth (the New York angle), England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage (the London angle) or any of the varied punk memoirs on the market, you may get a little bit of déjà vu. So I did surprise a bit about who this was for.
The authors contact on the truth that some folks write PhDs on punk or make a dwelling lecturing about it, and I puzzled if maybe this quantity was really meant for college students to learn. It’s definitely an excellent primer for individuals who come to it with little earlier information. (There are some minor inaccuracies, however that’s to be anticipated in such an enormous e-book.)
As for being “the final phrase”, properly, that’s a suitably provocative title even when it’s virtually definitely not going to be. However, given the quantity of labor and angle that’s gone into this e-book, let’s enable the authors to pose, only a bit.
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Punk: The Final Phrase is accessible in any respect good e-book shops.
Phrases by Penny Kiley. You possibly can learn her Louder than Warfare opinions at her writer profile, and her archive of music journalism on Substack.
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