“All that class privilege stuff, that’s behind me now…”

GASH sends shivers down my spine in the same way GISM has the power to do so. It’s visceral, it’s violent, and it feels good. “Power Fucker” is the strongest track out of the GASH tracks. Live, GASH has some bloodshed and vivisection videos that can render some faint hearted watchers uncomfortable. This is a band that pushes limits in the way GISM did, and does it with excellence. Shares members with another solid Boston ripper, ASPECTS OF WAR. The CLEANSING WAVE track is just as strong as their demo earlier this year and still reminds me of MORPHEME with the sickest drumming. This is a beautifully done flexi release that is not just a novelty but a must-own record that captures the raw punk brutality of what is coming out of the Northeast right now. The cut and paste on this flexi still smells of glue. Instructions on flexi say to “play loud and throw away” — punk is meant for destruction and chaos. Get this or don’t. P.S. The blood on my test press had not oxidized when it was received.
(Total Fucker)

Ponx! Every month, a couple weeks after the magazine comes out, we post our reviewers’ monthly top tens from the latest issue of Maximum Rocknroll. This one’s from MRR #345, the February 2012 issue. Eat it!

Mariam Bastani

Mariam Bastani
SPEED KILLS-Como o Fogo-EP
MARIA T-TA Y EL EMPUJÓN BRUTAL-EP
BROWN SUGAR-LP & EP
LONG PIGS-EP / WARNING//WARNING-LP
HYSTERICS-EP / POL POT-LP
G.A.S.H./CLEANSING WAVE-split EP
BLACK AND WHITE-Mortal Sin/World War 3-45
FORCED LAUGH-Live at Club Anthrax-EP
BITTER AMERICAN-Infinite Tick-EP
DISPLEASURE / REPLICA / YADOKAI-live

Justin Briggs

Justin Briggs
TRUE RADICAL MIRACLE-Cockroaches-LP
BASTARD NOISE-Skulldozer-LP
CRIATURAS-Oscuridad Eterna-LP
BROWN SUGAR-LP & EP
LONG PIGS-EP / WARNING//WARNING-LP
MARIA T-TA Y EL EMPUJÓN BRUTAL-EP
REASON FOR HATE-Why?-EP
HYSTERICS-Arm Candy-EP
PIG HEART TRANSPLANT-Weapon/Gut Pleasure-45
BLOODKROW BUTCHER-live

Tim Brooks
HEAVY TIMES-Jacker-LP
CRIATURAS-Oscuridad Eterna-LP
RADAR EYES-Miracle/Me and My Dogs-45
NO COMMENT-Downsided-EP
LOVE TRIANGLE-Boomerang Girl/Quick Joey Small-45
EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING-2xLP
WHITE CRIME-End of Change-EP
WAX IDOLS-No Future-LP
MANIC DEPRESSIVES/0:30 SECOND FLASH-split 12”
YOUNG GOVERNOR-Where It’s Quiet-10”

Mitch Cardwell

Mitch Cardwell
LOS LLAMARADA-Gone Gone Cold-LP
EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING-2xLP
BLACK AND WHITE-Mortal Sin/World War 3-45
FRUSTRATIONS-Negative Reflections-LP
IMPEDIMENTS-Broken Hits-LP
CHOSEN FEW-Joke’s On Us-LP
GRUBERGER BROTHERS-Greetings From Reading, PA-LP
MANIC DEPRESSIVES/0:30 SECOND FLASH-split 12”
CYCLOPS-Cyclops-EP
ARMITAGE SHANKS-All Cisterns Go!-EP

Robert Collins

Robert Collins
BASTARD NOISE-Skulldozer-LP
YADOKAI-live
BROWN SUGAR-LP & EP
WARNING//WARNING-There’s Nothing Left-LP
CRIATURAS-Oscuridad Eterna-LP
PIG HEART TRANSPLANT-Weapon/Gut Pleasures-45
CYCLOPS-Cyclops-EP
BLACK AND WHITE-Mortal Sin/World War 3-45
LOS CAIDOS-demo / METH SORES-demo
RAJAT-demo / IMPATIENCE-demo

Dougie!

Sean “Dougie” Dougan
BLACK AND WHITE-Mortal Sin/World War 3-45
SONIC AVENUES-Television Youth-CD
ARMITAGE SHANKS-All Cisterns Go!-EP
HEAVY TIMES-Jacker-LP
WAX IDOLS-No Future-LP
EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING-2xLP
FRUSTRATIONS-Negative Reflections-LP
TERRY MALTS-live
YOUNG GOVERNOR-Where It’s Quiet-10”
SKITSYSTEM-Beväpna Er-EP

Layla G

Layla Gibbon
HYSTERICS-Arm Candy-EP
MARIA T-TA Y EL EMPUJÓN BRUTAL-EP
FORCED LAUGH-Live at Club Anthrax-EP
SCEPTRES-Childsplay/Job Centre Plus-EP
READING RAINBOW/SUPER WILD HORSES-split EP
TY SEGALL-Singles 2007-2010-2xLP
BLACK AND WHITE-Mortal Sin/World War 3-45
CYCLOPS-Cyclops-EP
WAX IDOLS-No Future-LP / LOVE TRIANGLE-EP
BROWN SUGAR-LP /TERRIBLE FEELINGS-EP

Dan Goetz
“I went your schools, I went to your churches, I went to your institutional learning facilities…”

Bob Goldie (circa 1986)

Bob Goldie
STEVEN ADAMYK BAND-Forever Won’t Wait-LP
FUTURE VIRGINS-Western Problems-LP
MANDATES-Take You to the Dance-EP
TERRIBLE FEELINGS-EP / EROTIC DEVICES-EP
MANIC DEPRESSIVES/0:30 SECOND FLASH-split 12”
NO QUALMS-EP / HIGH SOCIETY-EP
WHITE CRIME-End of Change-EP
VENGEANCE-Are a Bunch of PC Wimps-EP
NO COMMENT-Downsided-EP
REASON OF INSANITY-Violence-10”

Kenny Kaos
THE PIZZAS-We Don’t Have to Do Anything…EP
THE ILLS-I Kill Me-EP
MANIC DEPRESSIVES/0:30 SECOND FLASH-split 12”
ARMITAGE SHANKS-All Cisterns Go!-EP
BLACK AND WHITE-Mortal Sin/World War 3-45
V/A-Portland Mutant Party-EP
READING RAINBOW/SUPER WILD HORSES-split EP
THE CRAZY SQUEEZE-Gimmie a Kiss/I Need a Witness-45
COMPLAINTS-Falling Down-EP
THE MAXINES-Queer Mods-EP

Carolyn Keddy
NO FUNERAL-12” / HEAVY TIMES-LP
READING RAINBOW/SUPER WILD HORSES-split EP
MAGNETIX-CD / CYCLOPS-EP
THE ILLS-I Kill Me-EP
ARMITAGE SHANKS-All Cisterns Go!-EP
THE CHOSEN FEW-The Joke’s On Us-LP
EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING-2xLP
TY SEGALL-Singles 2007-2010-2xLP
MANIC DEPRESSIVES/0:30 SECOND FLASH-split 12”
TAV FALCO AND HIS UNAPPROACHABLE PANTHER BURNS-live

Ray Lujan
CIGARETTE CROSSFIRE-LP / COMPLAINTS-EP
THE CRAZY SQUEEZE-Gimmie a Kiss/I Need a Witness-45
EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING-2xLP
FACTORY MINDS-CD / HEAVY TIMES-LP
IMPEDIMENTS-LP / THE MIGHTY FINE-CD
THE NATURE-Allting Blir Ok-EP
READING RAINBOW/SUPER WILD HORSES-split EP
SHY MIRRORS-LP / SONIC AVENUES-CD
WAX IDOLS-LP / STOOGES-live
TOP TEN-live / PIERCED ARROWS-live

Marissa Magic

Marissa Magic
BROWN SUGAR-LP & EP
WHITE LOAD-Pig Eyes/Little Black Pig-45
DISPLEASURE-demo
V/A-Punks Win MPLS-LP
NO FUNERAL-Six Song EP-12”
GHADAR/MARY-KATE AND ASHLEY OLSEN-split EP
MARIA T-TA Y EL EMPUJÓN BRUTAL-EP
BITTER AMERICAN-Infinite Tick-EP
FORCED INTO FEMININITY-live
REPLICA / PERMANENT RUIN-live

Fred Schrunk

Fred Schrunk
FUTURE VIRGINS-Western Problems-LP
CRIATURAS-Oscuridad Eterna-LP
HYSTERICS-Arm Candy-EP
MARIA T-TA Y EL EMPUJÓN BRUTAL-EP
KOBAN-Solid Gold-EP
HYSTERESE-Hysterese-LP
CAROLEE-EP1-LP
TERRIBLE FEELINGS-Blank Heads-EP
SCEPTRES-Childsplay/Job Centre Plus-EP
LONG PIGS-Cut Off-EP

Martin Sorrondeguy(!)

Martin Sorrondeguy
CRIATURAS-LP / SPEED KILLS-Como o Fogo-EP
MARIA T-TA Y EL EMPUJÓN BRUTAL-EP
KOBAN-Solid Gold-EP
JESUS H BOMBS-Life of a Fly-EP
WHITE CRIME-End of Change-EP
BROWN SUGAR-Tropical Disease-EP
G.A.S.H./CLEANSING WAVE-split EP
LONG PIGS-Cut Off-EP
WARNING//WARNING-There’s Nothing Left-LP
REPLICA / DISPLEASURE / PERMANENT RUIN-live

Top Ten Zines
Degenerate #9
Modern Hate Vibe #5
Freak Out #3, #4
Making Waves #1
Punks, Punks, Punks #5
Fanzine Mierda #7
Frozen Dirt #1
Kiss Off #14
Taste Maker #1
Overdosing in Republican World #1

David Ensminger, former editor of Left Of The Dial, is also responsible for interviewing some heavy hitters for this very zine. He’s also handy with the camera as I learned this weekend when I opened the email he sent over for this installment of the  Monday Photo Blog. Below are four photos from the recent Visual Virtriol in Houston, TX. Two nights of punk from the Houston, New Orleans, and surrounding vicininty held at Super Happy Funland. If you’re interested, David also has a book of punk flyers titled Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation available here.

Busy Kids, from Houston. (photo by David Ensminger)

The Drafted, from Baytown. (photo by David Ensminger)

Vivian Pikkles, from Houston. (photo by David Ensminger)

Sparrowhawk, from New Orleans. (photo by David Ensminger)

Send your tour photos, bands that have come through your town, the best of your local bands, etc. to: photoblog {at} maximumrocknroll(.)com (note new email address!). Include your name, the band (or subject) in the photo, where and when it was shot, and a link to your website (or flickr, Facebook, or whatever). Just send your best photos — edit tightly. Three to seven photos is plenty, and it’s best to send pictures of different bands. Please do not send watermarked photos. Please make your photos 72 dpi and about 600–800 pixels at the longest side. Not everything sent in will be posted, and a response is not guaranteed, but we do appreciate all of your contributions — and feel free to submit more than once. Thanks!

MRR Radio is a weekly radio show featuring the best DIY punk, garage rock and hardcore from the astounding, ever-growing Maximum Rocknroll record collection. You can find the MRR Radio podcast, as well as specials, archives, and more info at radio.maximumrocknroll.com. Thanks for listening, and stay tuned!

THIS WEEK: One Fine Show Title Making This Listening Extra Fun

Download here

Maxies (photo by Xarah)

Intro song:
LARRY – Half Assed

Adam – Hotdog Music
THE BLITZZ – Degeneration
SYDNEY DUCKS – Esprit de Corps
COMPLAINTS – On My Mind
MANIC DEPRESSIVES – Going Out With the In Crowd
CRAZY SQUEEZE – Gimme a Kiss

Chad – Horror Rising
HOOKERS – Horror Rises from the Tombs
NO PROBLEM – Your Eyes
THE BELTONES – My Old Man
THE SLEAZIES – Gonna Operate on Myself
ATTAK – Your Generation

Rotten Ron – R.I.P. Tony G.
BRAIN TRANSPLANTS – If I’d Known Sooner
EXECUTIONER – Hellbound
SPEED KILLS – Bike Cops
VARIX – Problems
WHITE LOAD – Little Black Pig

Halitosis – Why Drugs Rule
CROSSTOPS – Snobb
ROZPOR – Zostarnut Mlady
MAXIES – Jo Jo
CRISIS HOTLINES – Astral Projections
POST TEENS – Fucked Up Perception
NEGATIVE LIFESTYLE – New Solutions

Outro song:
JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS – Dead Vandals

"Fuck the East Bay, This Is N.O.K." CD - 1997

We live in an age where almost every punk record ever released is available for download. Usually you’ll find what you’re looking for on one of the hundreds or Blogspot sites dedicated to making old out-of-print vinyl accessible to everyone, and that is awesome. But what the vast majority of these blogs lack is a personality, a connection of some kind to the music presented. All you get is the record cover, a download link, and if you’re lucky a track listing or a sentence or two about the record.

So it’s totally exciting when you find a site like Greg Harvester’s Remote Outposts. Like Terminal Escape (which is dedicated entirely to cassette releases and includes entertaining reviews of each tape), Remote Outposts can be just as enjoyable to read as it is to listen to all of the great music available. Greg’s musical tastes are all over the map — literally — but you will find a heavy concentration of “Region Rock” (hard to define, but mainly music from the Southeastern US from the ‘90 thru now that tends to be melodic and rough) and a preference for demos and records that never found the appreciation they deserved. Lengthy descriptions accompany each post, giving these releases a much more tangible essence. “I try to talk about how it makes me feel or talk about what kind of people made up the bands. Sometimes, I think that’s even more exciting than the music…the stories behind it,” says Greg.

Mr. Harvester, who names Terminal Escape and Region Rock and More as sparking his interest in blogging, is a veteran of too many Southern, Midwestern, and Bay Area bands to mention, and in his touring and moving around the country has amassed quite a collection of demos and records over the years. So many that he’s been able produce a blog post every single day recently. Also in the mix lately has been a bunch of great demos and live tapes on loan from the collection of Erick Lyle (formerly Iggy Scam of Scam zine, and also a million bands from the South and the Bay Area).

But don’t think that just some old dude digging up tapes from the “good old days.” Remote Outposts features a lot of current bands, like Wade Boggs from Athens, GA, who released their LP on the site, and Cleansing Wave from Worcester, MA, a newish noisy crust band.  Greg says, “I like to think of it as an archive more than nostalgia… I also revel in pulling people into the blog by posting bands they like and then using that as a platform to discuss ways they can combat sexism, transphobia, macho bullshit or racism in their own punk scenes. Music is definitely the driving force behind it all, but it doesn’t end there… I did one full week where I posted only bands with only women in them because I was sick of so many music blogs (and punk and society and everything) that were so male-centric. I’ve been trying to be more conscious of posting bands with women in them.”

When asked for his favorites, or suggestions on where readers should start on his web page, Greg cited: “Fred Lane, Twat Sauce, Pink Collar Jobs (from NC), the multiple Impractical Cockpit tapes I’ve posted, Hickey Million, The Curse, Jarvis (or any band from Chattanooga, TN, or labeled as Region Rock),  Potential Johns, Uke of Phillips, etc, etc….Download anything on there. So far, I love everything that is on the blog. I just want to share music that I love and hope that people will enjoy it.”

January 18, 2012 is one year since the shutdown of San Francisco’s college & community radio station KUSF. At 10 am that morning KUSF’s program director, representatives from the University of San Francisco and armed campus police interrupted DJ Schmeejay while on the air, asked him to leave the studio and turned off the transmitter. It is a horrible silence.

The final five minutes of KUSF

Without knowing what transpired at KUSF, I showed up to do my show at 11:15am (show starts at noon). As I am locking up my bicycle, I am met by fellow DJ and USF student Michelle who can’t even get the words out. USF has sold the station and everyone is getting kicked out. She is followed by Janet and Tresa of the show Love Letters Live who confirm it. Campus police gather in the foyer of USF’s Phelan Hall and I will never enter the station again.

Over the next days, more than a few people would point out to me that no one listens to radio these days. Who  cares? Fortunately these naysayers are a minority. I am reminded of when I was just getting in to punk in 1979, the older kids would tell me that no one listens to that shit any more, punk is dead and all that. I just blew them off because I liked what I was hearing and whether it was dead or not would be determined by me. A similar thing happened in the late ’80s when CDs started to take over. I still buy vinyl to this day. Why should my attitude toward radio’s importance or lack of it be any different? Plus the fact that a corporation would pay $3.75 million dollars for a low-power college radio station makes the situation a bit more intriguing.

As the details of the deal emerge it becomes clearer that a very shady exchange is going on. Media conglomerate Entercom is at the center. As the owner’s of KDFC San Francisco’s classical radio station, they sell that station to a University of Southern California non-profit Classical Public Radio Network. Entercom begins to simulcast KUFX a San Jose classic rock station in San Francisco at KDFC’s 102.1fm. KDFC begins broadcasting on KUSF’s 90.3fm. However KDFC’s programming continues to originate from Entercom’s studios. KUSF’s eclectic programming is silenced. The very thin line between public and corporate interests becomes almost invisible.

90.3 belongs to San Francisco

The former DJs and radio producers under the group Friends of KUSF have petitioned the FCC to deny the sale of 90.3fm. The FCC has begun some unprecedented inquiries into the deal. A year later the sale of KUSF still has not been approved by the FCC. As a comparison it took the FCC almost two years to approve the sale of NBC Universal to Comcast which strangely was approved the day after KUSF was shut down. More importantly USF still has not set up the on-line radio station they promised would be replacing terrestrial KUSF. While waiting for the FCC’s decision, the outed volunteers with the help of New Jersey radio station WFMU have set up KUSF In Exile to continue broadcasting the station’s unique music and cultural programs which include shows in twelve different languages.

To mark the anniversary there is a KUSF Protest at Entercom, 201 3rd St at Howard in SF on Wednesday, January 18 at 10am – the hour the station was shut down.

http://youtu.be/sNvXMTWJaoU

White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race (on Verso Books, edited by Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay) just hit the academic circuit claiming to be the “Ultimate Collection” of writings about punk and race. While many, and I mean many, many, many of us punks of color whom this book claims to be representing by way of other peoples voices, disagree, there seems to be very little attention paid to these critiques. I personally plan on responding to the book, but thankfully we have this review in the current issue of MRR. Resulting from many conversations and discussions, Golnar Nikpour, former coordinator, active punk, scholar and, yes, brown as fuck person agreed to review this highly questionable (in my opinion, shitty) book.
—Mariam

The back cover of this recently published volume compiled and edited by NYU professor Stephen Duncombe and New School doctoral student (and frequent MRR book reviewer) Maxwell Tremblay proclaims confidently that White Riot is a “comprehensive” and even “definitive” study of punk’s racial politics; this book, we are told, is “the ultimate collection on punk and race.” Compiling both non-academic and academic writings—i.e., primary material culled from zines and records, and secondary material culled from books and journals on scholarly presses—White Riot attempts to gather and assess the writings of a movement the authors tell us is obsessed with race, but is often unable or unwilling to contend with its own racial contradictions and implications.

Before cracking the book open, I viewed White Riot with both skepticism and anticipation. My skepticism shouldn’t come as any surprise: the academic world has produced a silly number of texts in the name of “punk studies,” but the great majority of these studies traverse a world that has little to do with punk as I know it. At best, they are basically irrelevant the-Sex-Pistols-Were-Totally-Influenced-By-Situationism-and-Other-Serious-Things Studies, and at worst they are egomaniacal attempts to garner legitimacy (not to mention CV padding!) on the backs of DIY subculture(s). In general, I am leery of those academic “experts” whose object of study is punk, not only because I don’t consider the punk scene an intellectual little league that needs legitimacy bequeathed to it by professionals, but also because punk—auto-archiving, self-aware, and interested in its own history—operates on the premise that everyone is an expert. Still, I was hopeful about White Riot, because it promised to showcase writers, records, and ideas that have played a formative role in my own life in punk; I grew up on Los Crudos records and Mimi Nguyen zines, after all. Further, Duncombe and Tremblay were given generous access to the bountiful MRR archive, which I know for a fact could not possibly be used to tell the same old the-Clash-are-the-only-band-that-matters story… or could it?!

Readers of MRR are all likely to recognize that the title of White Riot is borrowed from a Clash song of the same name. Throughout the book, this song—in the form of the notion of punk-as-white riot—is used as a framing tool and constant refrain for the editors in their analysis of punk and race. Punk, we are told by Duncombe and Tremblay, is a quintessentially Anglo/American phenomenon primarily of/by/for disaffected white kids who either consciously or subconsciously (in the form of their anti-establishment posture) believe themselves to have transcended their own racial privilege. Whether they paint themselves as “white negroes” (White Riot starts of with a famous essay by Norman Mailer of that name, implicitly tracing punk’s lineage through American bohemian movements) or as “racetraitors” (the authors remind us of the thusly named—and terrible!—’90s HC band), punks are white (often middle class and suburban) folks anxious about race and their relationship to it. In other words, punk has primarily been a site where alternative models of whiteness—mostly oppositional, sometimes anti-racist, but always constitutively white—have been articulated. With this framing, the central question of whether or not punk can ever be anything other than (just) a white riot guides the editors through their project.

White Riot is broken into eight contributor-based chapters; the selections have all already been published elsewhere, which means that Duncombe and Tremblay’s efforts are predominantly in curating and introducing each piece. After an opening chapter by the editors (more on that in a sec), we are taken through chapters on the apparent roots of punk (Mailer, the MC5, the Weathermen, etc.), the concept of the “white minority,” aka the just-doesn’t-fit-into-straight-society white rebel (academic articles on the swastika in punk, interviews with Bob Noxious of the Fuck-Ups from MRR, Black Flag from Ripper, etc.), white power and punk (academic articles on skinheads, interviews with Ian Stuart of Skrewdriver from Terminal and Kieran Knutson of Anti-Racist Action from MRR, etc.), and an examination of the relationship between punk, reggae, and anti-racist politics (interviews with Paul Simonon of the Clash, excerpts from cultural critics Jon Savage and Paul Gilroy, early calls for anti-racist politics from Profane Existence, etc.). Incredibly, it is not until the sixth chapter (over 200 pages in!) of this book about race and punk that we hear from any punks of color, as virtually everything compiled up to this point (save a couple of–dare I say token—non-punk people of color, however brilliant, like James Baldwin and Paul Gilroy) is by white punk dudes, white scholar dudes, or the two white editor dudes of this book.

The aforementioned chapter six features an interview with Darryl Jenifer of Bad Brains, more academic articles, interviews with Skeeter Thompson from Scream, late ’70s Pakistani-British punkers Alien Kulture with the BBC, and Los Crudos (from their first year as a band) among others, an excerpt from the Afro-Punk script, some writings about the Taqwacore phenomenon, etc. Chapter Seven examines what the authors term the “Race Riot movement” (though I don’t remember these zines ever being codified as such in their day), with contributions from a number of ’90s zinesters led by a seminal essay by Mimi Nguyen (if you read only one thing from this collection, Mimi’s piece should be it—don’t worry, you can also find it on the internet), as well as essays by Tasha Fierce and Madhu Krishnan and others, an interview with Taina Del Valle of Anti-Product, and an extremely interesting MRR letter exchange jump-started by an writer who goes by “Just Another Nigger.” Finally, in chapter eight we are—at last!—informed that there are, indeed, punk scenes outside of the US/UK, with still more academic articles featuring ethnomusicologists lending their professional expertise in looks at contemporary scenes in Mexico City and Jakarta, Indonesia. This section ends on the piece written by Esneider from Huasipungo for the immigration issue of MRR from a few years back.

The editors’ flawed assumptions about punk’s historical trajectory are clear from their presentation of the material culled. According to White Riot, punk began (and for many years remained only) in London, NYC, and L.A. and as such was founded as a more-or-less a white movement (despite its formative—albeit troubled—relationship to reggae in London), until a political turn in the ’90s that included some punks (Crudos in particular) declaring themselves not only punk but also brown (or black), a shock for the wannabe “colorblind” but nonetheless racially-divided scene. There is then a final movement of punk from London, New York, etc. towards the so-called third world as the popularity of Green Day and the like (I shit you not, this is what this book is telling me) takes punk to such far flung places as Indonesia and Mexico in the ’90s and ’00s. It is in this final move that the authors find the most hope, telling us that if punk is to be not only a white riot, it will be because of the efforts of these non-Anglo punks.

This is a deeply problematic timeline. Most obviously, it is one that utterly excises the essential globality of punk scenes, not to mention the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll as a transnational form long before the advent of punk. This insistence that punk travels from “the West” to “the rest”—a typical imperial trope here espoused by self-proclaimed anti-racists—ironically mirrors and reproduces racist assumptions that “the rest” of the world is living in a belated present, and that their today is not coterminous with “ours” but rather with an era that for “us”—and there is no mistaking who “we” are in this argument—is fully in the rear-view mirror.

Somehow, the editors miss numerous chances to discuss non-Anglo punk scenes even when they’re staring them right in the face. In the introduction, they relay an anecdote about encountering some young Polish punks in front of ABC No Rio in NYC: “Nearby was a group of young punks: leather, spikes, mohawks, heavy black boots, the whole bit…Blink your eyes and it could have been 1977, 1987, or 1997. Except for one thing: these punks all spoke Polish…We stood there wondering what punk meant to them…Punk, with it’s Anglo-American lineage and the dominance of English, must have also been something foreign to them, something alluring, something ‘Other.’” (italics mine, p. 15). These punks are simply assumed to have gotten into punk rock in the US; hence, punk is transformed into something supposedly “foreign” for a bunch of Polish kids at a show. A simple Google search would have revealed the extraordinarily prolific history of Polish punk — a history that has its roots in the late ’70s (hey, just like American and British punk!) and has produced literally thousands of Polish-language bands, records, labels, distros, zines, etc. Instead of a good faith effort at getting to the bottom of this seeming paradox, the navel-gazing and presumption continues: “[Punk], we imagine, was a way to rebel (against their Polish parents) to assimilate (into this new English-speaking world), and rebel once again (against mainstream America). It was a more complicated punk experience than our own.” Um…what? First of all, if the purpose of this study is to unearth the “experience” of punk for members of different communities—immigrant and otherwise—in the US, the authors of this book didn’t have to imagine what was going through the heads of these Polish punks or wonder how they got into punk; they could have just walked up to them and asked! It seems that it is in fact the editors of White Riot who view these Polish punks as hopelessly foreign, rather than the Polish punks’ view of punk rock as such. Of course, this reveals Duncombe and Tremblay’s assumption that their “own experience” of punk—English speaking, suburban, US-based, middle-class, and white—is the norm from which others should be judged.

If the purpose of the study is not to compile and compare “experiences,” however, but rather to provide a geographically contextualized, historically attentive study of how punk scenes are implicated in, produced by, and absorbed into racialized structures of power—and of course they are—White Riot misses the mark. My comments about purpose and context point to a central problem of White Riot. Rather than limit themselves to a study of, say representations of racial difference in the U.S. punk scene in some given era—a topic with which the editors seem as though they would be more comfortable—Duncombe and Tremblay instead boast that they have provided an exhaustive study of (the entirety of the unbounded world of) punk’s relationship to race/ethnicity.

Assuming that such a “definitive” look is even possible—which is frankly doubtful—it is a huge problem that the book doesn’t even seem to know that, as early as the late-’70s, there were fertile punk scenes in any number of major global cities, most of which were not nearly as homogenous as the editors assume. From NYC to London to Warsaw to Tokyo to São Paulo to Istanbul (yes, the first Turkish punk record is from 1977/8!) to Stockholm to Manila, punk as a phenomenon was global from its inception. This is to say nothing of hardcore, which exploded at the tail end of the 1970s—inarguably simultaneously—in tens of countries in the world. Hell, a favorite HC nurd pastime is arguing about whether the first HC band was the Middle Class from California or the SS from Japan or Lixomania from Brazil or…well, you get my point. None of this is to discount the complicated transnational networks—propped up by capitalist relations and implicated in lingering colonial structures of power as they are—in which punk has always operated, and will continue to operate.¹ This is the fucked up world in which we live, and I am the last person to romanticize punk as the colorblind utopia (or gender-neutral, or transcendent of class, etc.) some scene participants with their heads in the sand tell themselves that it is. Rather, it is to say that any study of punk must take into account this global-ness—and with it the profoundly different racial/ethnic/class/gender classifications that are at work in any given context (this means, in part, that we cannot afford to only see race in black and white, or only think of race in one way)—particularly if it hopes to understand how something like race or ethnicity is navigated by punks around the world. One cannot simply quote the Clash and be done with it.²

To be fair, the authors do admit that the “claim that punk is just a white riot” is a “dubious” one (213), but they nonetheless replicate this logic over and over (and over and over) throughout the book. From the opening chapter, which promotes the idea that punk is primarily a terrain in which oppositional whiteness is navigated (“Punk offered a space for young Whites growing up in a multicultural world to figure out what it meant to be White”), to the final chapter, which needs the help of professional American (and Canadian) anthropologists and ethnomusicologists (!!!) to tell us about punk scenes in Mexico and Indonesia (apparently these punks do not know how to speak or write for themselves), punk is understood as something that travels from “us” to “them.”

Ironically, some stern admonitions are leveled against other punks/critics who would whitewash punk (one can’t help but recall the old adage about glass houses and casting stones). For instance, despite spending the entire introduction framing punk as (only) a terrain through which to wrestle with whiteness and white identities, Duncombe closes on the claim that “…once punk is indelibly White [as in his book, presumably!] the genuine contributions of Black, Latino, Asian, and other punks of color tend to get erased” (5). Nowhere is this (true!) claim truer than in White Riot. But even the famously white early ’80s USHC scene is not as lily-white as the editors seem to believe. Black Flag, the Germs, the Adolescents, the Fix, Dead Kennedys, Crucifix, Void, Bad Brains, Suicidal Tendencies — almost every single one of the most popular early ’80s USHC bands featured one or more punks of color! This is to say nothing of plenty of lesser known bands, as well as influential zine editors like Tim Tonooka of Ripper, V.Vale of Search & Destroy, and hey even Tim Yohannan, first of three Iranian coordinators of Maximumrocknroll. Most of this history is simply not mentioned by White Riot. Of course, this list is not meant as a tokenizing gesture, a celebration of punk “multiculturalism,” or a diagnosis of a clean bill of racial health for the punk scene. On the contrary, it is just meant to further question Duncombe and Tremblay’s frustrating understanding of punk’s pure “origins” in Anglo whiteness.

Unfortunately—protests to the contrary notwithstanding—Duncome and Tremblay’s project seems to suffer from the impossible and problematic desire for a fully “fixed” and “post-racial” punk that lives up to its promises of offering a subversive whiteness that transcends race, not for the sake of the marginalized punk POC, but for the guilty conscience of the (to borrow from Mimi Nguyen) whitestraightboy punk who has had to wake up to the fact that calling oneself a race traitor doesn’t change one’s ability to access racial privilege, but who would nonetheless like punk to be a scene devoid of racial contradictions. The editors of this volume—who clearly see themselves as the punk norm—first posit punk as quintessentially white (i.e. inauthentic as an oppositional culture after all! damn it, we’ve been duped!), and then practically beg punks of color (here presented as authentic bearers of pure resistance) to somehow absolve this white scene of its dirty racial history. This to me is the ultimate in both the hubris of racial privilege and the uselessness of guilty liberal hand wringing.

—Golnar Nikpour

¹ It is perhaps a bit off topic for the main body of this review, and may be too academic for some, but I’d like to propose an alternative way to discuss the emergence of punk in the late ’70s, which could prove more useful for punks in studying and contextualizing punk history. It seems to me that punk—I am speaking here of its late ’70s iteration—is a product of the 20th century movement of capital and peoples, insofar as it is one in a number of cultural (and subcultural) movements that are impossible to imagine without the prior two centuries of global urbanization and proletarianization. Thinking about punk in the context of urban space provides us with new methodological tools and questions, because the emergence of the cosmopolitan capitalist metropolis is a reality of both the colony and the metropole. This could help explain why in 1976-78 we see punk scenes not only in London and New York but also in Istanbul, São Paulo, Tokyo, Mexico City, Stockholm, Warsaw, etc. If there was a punk scene in Istanbul before there was a punk scene in say, suburban Iowa or rural Turkey—and there was, as far as I know—then the movement of ideas is not from “west” to “rest” but rather a product of a particular historical moment in the global city, a moment that is rife with tensions between not only colony and metropole, but also town and country. (This way of thinking also allows us to avoid the elision of class, political economy, gender relationships, etc.)

²One anecdote may help illustrate my point about the importance of context and history. In 2004, Japanese HC sweethearts Framtid—my favorite band in the world—were supposed to travel to the US for a week-long West Coast tour. In the end, they were disallowed from leaving Japan because their drummer Shin—a member of a many generations old Korean-Japanese community that emigrated to Japan from Korea as cheap labor, war refugees, or forcibly conscripted soldiers in the context of Japanese colonial rule of Korea—isn’t allowed Japanese citizenship, despite having been born and raised in Japan. This colonially mitigated relationship to the state that this punk calls home has nothing to do with the racial politics about which the Clash sing. And yet, this legally enforced marker of ethnic difference between one punk and his bandmates couldn’t help but mediate their relationships to punk.

This week’s  Monday Photo Blog comes from Eugenita Gravina of Bad Bones fanzine in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She went with two local bands, Los Valientes, and Los Caidos, on tour through southern Brazil.  Here’s visual proof of some of what went down. You can also see more work at abejaenojada.

Los Valientes in Porto Alegre, Brazil 8.12.11 (photo by Eugenita Gravina)

Los Valientes in Porto Alegre, Brazil 8.12.11 (photo by Eugenita Gravina)

Los Caidos in Porto Alegre, Brazil 8.12.11 (photo by Eugenita Gravina)

Los Caidos in Porto Alegre, Brazil 8.12.11 (photo by Eugenita Gravina)

Send your tour photos, bands that have come through your town, the best of your local bands, etc. to: photoblog {at} maximumrocknroll(.)com (note new email address!). Include your name, the band (or subject) in the photo, where and when it was shot, and a link to your website (or flickr, Facebook, or whatever). Just send your best photos — edit tightly. Three to seven photos is plenty, and it’s best to send pictures of different bands. Please do not send watermarked photos. Please make your photos 72 dpi and about 600–800 pixels at the longest side. Not everything sent in will be posted, and a response is not guaranteed, but we do appreciate all of your contributions — and feel free to submit more than once. Thanks!

MRR Radio is a weekly radio show featuring the best DIY punk, garage rock and hardcore from the astounding, ever-growing Maximum Rocknroll record collection. You can find the MRR Radio podcast, as well as specials, archives, and more info at radio.maximumrocknroll.com. Thanks for listening, and stay tuned!

Mariam gets down with SHOPPERS!

Download here

Pleasure Leftists (photo by Mary Cassidy)

Intro song:
PLATES – Lineage

Josh: New and Newish Pit Anthems
TENEMENT – Daylight World
BAD NOIDS – Ticket to Mars
POISON PLANET – Bleed for Me
PENETRATORS – Baby, Dontcha Tell Me

Kari
PLEASURE LEFTISTS – Nature of Feeling
STATE VIOLENCE – Order 101
BIG EYES – Pretend to Care
NEON BLUD – (side B)

Francesca’s homage to Friday the 13th…spooky
VENOM – Welcome to Hell
45 GRAVE – Evil
ZOUO – Making Love With Devil

Meredith
DARK AGES – Can America Survive Pt. 1
LOTUS FUCKER – The Meaning of Alchemy
LOTUS FUCKER – A New Path Is Opened
CLOUD RAT – Sinkhole
PANZRAM – Fall

Ben the roadie
THE GIZMOS – The Midwest Can Be Alright
FROZEN TEENS – Support
THE AGENDA – Hunger
NIGHT CRUSADE – Mexico

Outro song:
CONDOMINIUM – On/Off