Punk Rock and Chestertonian thinking

This week Gilbert Magazine senior writer John Peterson alerted us all to a DVD of a searing performance by the late, great Roy Orbinson, Black & White Night (the DVD is very highly recommended; order it here). A discussion of popular music ensued, and one of the participants said this: "The British music of the 60s offered something new, but again lasted about six years at most before it exhausted itself. Maybe the rest of what is called rock has some virtues, but they are few and far between."

And that got me thinking, fan of punk rock that I am. There was a very bleak period for rock & roll for a few years until the British Invasion, which pumped some new life in the genre. The early 70s was a similar bleak period (helped by nearly all the greats from the 60s either dying or going nuts -- like Brian Wilson). After that, though there were a few bright spots, the survivors merely kept trying to cash in on past glory. But then came the punk/new wave movement in the mid-1970s.

Punk as a genre arose simultaneously in America and the UK, but there were distinct sub-genres and styles depending on where it came from. There was Los Angels punk (bands like X and the Vandals), New York punk (the Ramones) and London punk (the Clash and, of course, the Sex Pistols). Of course there were a lot more bands than these, and there were other regional outposts, such as Athens Georgia (home of the B-52’s), but these are the most recognizable examples. The American Midwest, particularly Chicago, Madison (yes, Madison), and Minneapolis also developed its own regional sound.

Of these regions, LA punk was most heavily influenced by R&B and country. X even released a purely country-western LP, Poor Little Critter on the Road, for which they renamed themselves the Knitters. It is a BRILLIANT album, and nearly impossible to find (I found a scratched copy in a used record store in St. Paul -- still have it; and you can buy it here now -- and look, I guess X put out a second Knitters album. The things you can learn on Amazon...). Another West Coast band from a little later in that era, the Beat Farmers, shamelessly flaunted their rockabilly roots (I saw them play multiple times at the Cabooze in Minneapolis). The duo Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper, from San Diego, even took the stage with Skid playing a washboard for percussion.

The London punkers also were heavily influenced by American R&B and country, especially the Clash. To listen to their masterpiece, London Calling, is to listen to a band steeped in American musical traditions and styles: jazz, country, rockabilly, blues, R&B, folk, and more, with some reggae and Hispanic influences thrown in for good measure.

But that scene played itself out long ago, and thus far, so far as I can see, nothing has arisen to carry rock and roll forward. Anything that came after, including so-called "grunge," was co-opted by the corporate giants, commodofied, and sanitized for MTV and chain record stores in shopping malls. The huge corporations pretty much control everything and very little of any spontaneity or originality occurs any more. One of the things I loved about the alternative scene in the Twin Cities in the 1980s was how independent it was: all the best bands recorded on local labels and sold their music only in independently owned stores, or else they sold their stuff between sets at their shows. They probably didn't make much money, but we all loved how they thumbed their noses at the corporate giants -- who would have just squeezed as much money as possible out of them and then hung them out to dry, deep in debt -- and did their own thing.

It used to drive me nuts trying to figure out what that attitude was and what it meant. I could not put my finger on its exact nature or what about it made it so attractive to me, yet I knew I liked it. I knew instinctively that it was superior to allowing corporate recording giants to have any control. Years later, I would learn to call it Distributism.