...punk rock came to me like a secret language, a bold tonic, a soothsayer in tangled three chords, a golden oldie tune dynamited, a bold endless rush of saccharine, a feisty political gambit, and a creed I figured out on-the-fly.
Even when utterly moronic, punk felt like reportage. Sometimes it invoked a careening left-wing manifesto, replete with sweat-drenched drama. Other times it dripped with vile images, a compiled list of terrors, including skulking and monstrous figures, figurative and literal, that inhabited Misfits and early Dead Kennedys tunes. It was also a sonic tattoo, a signature of angst worn on the body. It offered predatory-like declarations of autonomy - "leave me alone" - that sometimes clearheadedly stared capitalism down, too, especially when soaked in Crass sentiments.
To critics, though, especially upon viewing films like The Decline of Western Civilization, punk seemed more or less akin to artless entanglements. Entrenched in ennui, punk became the calling card of germ boys and poison girls. Ensconced in its own destructive mythmaking, punk offered a study in psychosis. I saw punk's sheer audacious change-stirring revelation; they saw recast antiauthoritarian slogans shorn of context, a movement missing sober reflections, and logic that evaporated in millisecond guitar patterns. Punk was the trope of living wreckage, born of ill repute. I saw punk packed with conscience, from Better Youth Organization to Dischord, not mere discord. Punk was a genealogy of disgust, sure, and embodied enduring disagreements over its own aims. In punk dwelled a bent and unruly fanzine nation, a rough and ready van plowing down the road with Government Issue or Swiz.
Punk offered a bonus round of carelessness and overhastiness, unfazed determinism...The list goes on.
The book itself was underwhelming - most of the interviews are poorly conducted, and are mostly old dudes talking shit about other old dudes and/or talking about how the scene was better/realer/more punk back in their day (such is the case with pretty much every punk retrospective, whether in book or film format), but I did like this part of the intro. I'm always interested to read other writers' takes on how they got into punk and what punk means to them.
Oh, also: in the interview with Keith Morris, he talks about how women can be just as talented as men (oh, thanks, dude!), but he also says that punk is a boys' club because it is a tough, aggressive, sweaty, "manly" kind of music and women just are naturally not as hardcore as men. FUCK YOU, Keith.
