3. TODAY… Rock and roll gets revised
by punk.
1977 to present.
4. THIS WEEK
• Punk and ‘subculture’
• Classic Subcultural Theory
in 1970s London.
• Next Week: post-
everything
5. PROTO-PUNK: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND
● Lou Reed / John Cale / Moe Tucker / Nico /
Andy Warhol (manager)
● 1965-73
● Precursor to NYC punks/ art-rock
● Elements of 60s psychedelia incorporating
darker, more Bohemian connotations (heroin)
6. PROTO-PUNK: THE STOOGES
• 1967 – 1974 (reformed in 2003)
• Iggy Pop (born James Newell
Osterberg, April 21 1947)
• Detroit, Michigan
• Not commercially successful in their
time, but massively influential
7. PROTO-PUNK: THE MC5
• Formed in Lincoln Park,
Michigan
• 1964 – 1972
• Defined ‘Motor City’ rock
• Leftist political bent (White
Panthers)
8. THE RAMONES
• Formed in New York, 1974.
• Only one gold record, a
compilation. But very
influential.
• Considered (by Americans) to
be the ‘first punk band.’
9. THE SAINTS
• Formed in Brisbane, 1974
• First record, DIY, “(I’m) Stranded” in
1976
• Considered (by Australians) to be the
first punk band
• Moved to London, didn’t work out
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14. SOUND OF EARLY PUNK
•Liveness – live shows establish reputation &
identity. Recordings as close to live show as
possible
•Voice – ‘between ordinary speech and singing’
•Mode of address – strong, declamatory, not
confidential
•Instruments – basic guitar, drums
•Tempo – basic, fast, ‘undanceable’
15. WHAT IS SUBCULTURE?
• A music subculture is an identifiable group of musicians,
audiences, and participants that is structured according to shared
identities, practices and values.
• Identities: Subcultures are groups formed at a micro-social level
– in other words, they are subsets of broad social divisions.
o Geography
o Race/ethnicity
o Class
o Age
o Gender/Sexual Orientation
o Taste
16. WHAT IS SUBCULTURE? (CONT)
People in subcultures act (social and symbolic practices):
• Producing and performing music (playing, singing,
recording, DJ)
• Consuming music (buying, clubbing, listening, swapping,
sharing, discussing, dancing, collecting)
• Uses of particular spaces
• Styles of dress, speech and deportment
• Behaviour (hanging out, dancing, skating, graffiti)
• Media production, DIY and subcultural enterprise
17. WHAT IS SUBCULTURE? (CONT)
Values:
• Aesthetics - Appreciation of beauty & craft = “I like fast music”
eg. All of us; Robbie Williams super-fans
• Political - Beliefs concerning governance = “I am a communist”
& “We’re a DIY band” eg. Rage Against The Machine (lefties) and
Fugazi (DIY)
• Ethics - Moral beliefs = “I do not eat meat” eg. Morrissey & “All
people are equal” eg. Riot grrrl & queercore.
• Religious - Spiritual beliefs = “I am a Buddhist” eg. Rex Harrison,
Christian metal and punk bands.
18. WHY STUDY MUSIC SUBCULTURES?
• Subcultures seen as responses to broader social change and/or
as creating social change
• Plethora of constantly changing music styles and subcultures
• Mass media demonise subcultures, but also appropriate
aspects of them.
• Academic study of subcultures often in response to these mass
media representations
• More recently, subcultures understood as key sites of
innovation in the creative industries
19. CLASSIC SUBCULTURAL THEORY
• Where to start? I start with Theodor Adorno & the active
audience. • Popular music used to pacify;
• His model of audience behaviour: a
minority of active, authentic music
listeners augmented by a mass of
passive, inauthentic music consumers
who were supplied music by an
exploitative industry;
• Very high art vs low art !
20. THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL
• The University of Birmingham’s Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS): 1964 - 2002.
• Subculture scholars: Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, Dick
Hebdige & more.
• They were interested in studying ‘youth culture’ in
post-war Britain.
• What they found in subcultural activity: active music
consumers i.e. a mass of audience activity
21. THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL (CONT)
So what was going on in 70s Britain to attract all this academic interest
to youth culture?
• PUNK
• SKINHEADS
• TEDDY BOYS
• MODS
But why were these things happening?
• That’s what the Birmingham school academics were trying to find
out, they looked at the social context.
22. BRITAIN IN THE 1970S
Previous academic studies claimed that youth were:
• More affluent and mobile than previous generations thus
• Class distinctions were seen to be disappearing thus
• The ‘Generation Gap’ appears where society is seen to be split along
the lines of age, not class.
BUT…
• It didn’t pan out.
• London was a mess.
23.
24. BRITAIN IN THE 1970S (CONT)
• POLICY: Public housing projects and suburbanization led to extreme
boredom, disaffection & alienation from “community”
• RACE: Massive increase in immigration from former British Empire
(e.g. Jamaica, Pakistan and India), radically altering the racial
composition of many areas of Britain and creating new social
dynamics
• CLASS did evidently not disappear, despite the persistence of rhetoric
to the contrary – class divisions still apparent both economically and
culturally
• Distinct cultural differences between working class youth subcultures
(teddy-boys, mods, rockers, skinheads) and those with strong links to
the middle class (bohemian avant-garde, hippie counter-culture)
25.
26. CCS SUBCULTURE THEORY:
• CCCS subculture theory was interested in these class based
differences between subcultures in the context of cultural change
BCCS Subculture Theory:
They theorised the functions of subcultures:
a) Subcultural practices symbolically distance the members from
‘mainstream’, ‘straight’, or dominant values (e.g. respectability,
consumerism, conservative politics). Subcultural style as
ritualistic deviation from the ‘natural order’ (i.e. the dominant
ideology and its expression in mainstream culture - Hebdige)
27. CCS SUBCULTURE THEORY: (CONT)
b) Subculture attempts to resolve hidden tensions or
conflicts in parent cultures (e.g. mod – working
class kids playing at being middle class, but in an
ironic way): subcultures as “magical solutions”
(Cohen)
c) Enables young people to self-construct identities
out of mass-produced cultural objects, breaking
away from their traditional or expected roles,
construct new cultural spaces to forge new
identities (obvious contemporary examples of this
would be hip-hop, skate cultures – subcultures that
actually temporarily take over or occupy public
spaces).
28. CCS SUBCULTURE THEORY: (CONT)
Two KEY concepts:
1. Bricolage: the process by which elements of style are
appropriated from “mainstream” culture and used in a way
unique to the subculture. (Hebdige)
2. Homology: the way that a subculture’s stylistic or symbolic
elements (dress, rituals, music, speech, drugs) form a unity
with the group’s social situation and experience: “each part is
organically related to other parts and it is through the fit
between them that the subcultural member makes sense of
the world.” (Hebdige, see also Paul Willis)
29. LET’S LOOK AT 70S PUNK:
• Clip from ‘Filth & The Fury’
Bricolage: What did punk take and use in a unique way?
• Dress (Safety Pins, Bin Liners, Garbage)
• Symbols (swastika, Union Jack)
Homology: What stylistic or symbolic elements formed a unity with the
group’s social situation and experience?
• Music & Fanzines & Fashion (stylistic similarities)
• Music & Drugs & Dancing i.e. the pogo (amphetamines)
• Lyrics& Speech & Fashion (coarse slang)
• Everything is aimed at chaos
30.
31. LET’S LOOK AT 70S PUNK:
• Dick Hebdige writes “Subcultures represent ‘noise’ (as opposed to
sound): interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real
events and phenomena to their representation in the media.”
• “Spectacular subcultures express forbidden contents (consciousness of
class, consciousness of difference) in forbidden forms (transgressions of
sartorial and behavioural codes, law breaking, etc)” - Hebdige
• Thus punk, according to the CCCS, draws attention to the ‘laws of
society’ by breaking them.
• Punk’s signs did not have fixed signifieds.
32.
33. LET’S LOOK AT 70S PUNK:
• “…the members of a subculture must share a common language. And if
a style is really to catch on, if it is to become genuinely popular, it must
say the right things in the right way at the right time. It must anticipate
or encapsulate a mood, a moment. It must embody a sensibility, and the
sensibility which punk style embodied was essentially dislocated, ironic
and self-aware.”
• Remember: These people were angry, annoying, abusive, sometimes
violent folks for a reason = they had nothing.
• The CCCS thus position punk (and other subcultures) as instances of
working class resistance.
34. BUT IS IT?
• Did punk’s future become a
working class resistance?
• Was it ever true?
• How is this story incorrect?
What’s missing? Who’s
missing?
