JOHN GOSHERT - Punk After The Pistols - American Music, Aconomics, and Politics in The 80s and 90s

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“Punk” after the pistols: American music, economics,

and politics in the 1980s and 1990s
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John Charles Goshert
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Ph.D. candidate in English , Purdue University
Published online: 24 Jul 2008.
To cite this article: John Charles Goshert (2000) “Punk” after the pistols: American music, economics, and politics in the
1980s and 1990s, Popular Music and Society, 24:1, 85-106, DOI: 10.1080/03007760008591760
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"Punk" after the Pistols:
American Music, Economics, and Politics
in the 1980s and 1990s
Downloaded by [University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries] at 15:00 20 December 2014
John Charles Goshert

music pushed beyond its limits, absolutely shatters, every revolution
invents its own terms, music does the same, to live in a different
world, we must discover the sounds that describe it. if the term revo-
lution seems ludicrous, think about accepting life the way it is. music
is the language.
—peter plate
When attempting to discuss punk rock as a subculture, as move-

ments in musical or fashion styles, or as simply the next phase in popular
music production, critics have invariably looked to the most notable (or
noticeable) "punk" bands from which to draw their examples and form
their conclusions. Dick Hebdige's Subculture (1985) may be the source
of much of this phenomenon, as it set the tone and strategy for defining
subculture movements in Great Britain. Most studies of punk since then
have taken their cue, whether they support or refute his findings, from
his work, and thus appear to center around such bands as the Sex Pistols,
the Clash, and Stiff Little Fingers in the United Kingdom, or Nirvana
and Rage Against the Machine in the United States. To focus a study of
punk on such clearly commercially successful supergroups, whether to
repeat Hebdige's proclamation of punk's demise in 1978 with the
breakup of the Sex Pistols, or to point to the continuing influence of
punk on youth culture, consumer culture, or the music industry since that
time, is to miss what is perhaps the most crucial point about punk: that
its tendency is a resistance to working within the usual terms of commer-
cial success and visibility. In other words, it is precisely when punk
becomes popular culture that it ceases to be punk; thus it remains to be
argued whether there is anything "punk" about the way in which it has
been defined and described for the last twenty years of academic treat-
ments of the subject.
It is in Jude Davies's 1996 article, "The Future of 'No.Future,'" that
the possibility for such a reading may be opened, as she not only sets out
to redefine the academic task of writing about punk but also points to the
55
86 • Popular Music and Society
continuing life of the punk scene after the British scene of the 1970s.
Davies attempts to write about punk without recourse to the "discourses
of mastery" which drive both Hebdige and his critics (3), and to discuss
the problematizing of such grounding terms as "community" in these
studies. Her overt awareness of punk's potential for being recuperated
into mainstream politics (5), in turn, would problematize those terms on
which definitions of subcultures have been dependent (Hebdige, for
instance, circumscribes the punk scene in strict ethnic and class terms
which are not applicable to punk in the United States, either in the 1970s
or today). However, Davies falls back on the usual exemplary bands,
again ending her discussion with those in the British scene of the early
1980s, and again mostly focusing on those that became commercially
successful: Siouxsie and the Banshees, X-Ray Spex, the Slits (22). Only
citing two bands as current examples in her notes, Davies simply states
in her conclusion that "The punk subculture remains very healthy at gigs
and in the fanzines of a D.I.Y. [do it yourself] music scene" (23). The
general linkage of such a clearly antiindustry economic ethic as "doing it
yourself with the aforementioned bands could only be the most blatant
contradiction in terms of study, for those bands are the very antithesis of
a punk business ethic centered around independent production and inde-
pendent control of music.
While Davies's choices of exemplary punk bands reflect similar
tendencies that I would critique in other work on punk, her initial move
to problematize the grounding terms of (sub)cultural analysis is a neces-
sary one if we are to be able to continue the discussion beyond Hebdige.
Following her work into the context of the music industry in the United
States at this time, how are we to speak of alternative culture at a time in
which words such as "alternative," "independent," and "punk" have
themselves become the blue-chip terms of marketing popular culture in
the 1990s?1 Certainly, the tendency in academic discussions has been to
take whatever is defined by mass media outlets as punk, then to describe
it as (or as not) a subculture, or as effectively (or ineffectively) counter-
cultural, without questioning the very label of punk, or at least the source
of that label. Most notably, the inherent problem in this approach is that
such bands must already have the ability to be recognized and legiti-
mated as part of a national commercial culture, despite those labels of
"alternative" that are applied to them. The ability for bands such as
Green Day, Offspring, and Bad Religion to be first noticed and then
marked as the exemplars of punk is necessarily problematic, for their
renown arises from MTV, Spin magazine, Alternative Press, or other
similar industry outlets.
Despite the problems in doing so, in this essay I will argue that it
may be possible to discuss punk, but in limited terms that work without
"Punk " after the Pistols • 87
dependence on examples from the national culture industry. Despite the
attempted cooption of the terms on which alternative music and culture
have presented themselves as integral parts of mainstream marketing
strategies, we may yet see the potential in punk to signal new social
movements with economic, social, and political impact. First, to speak of
punk at all, it must be defined and applied in strictly local terms, as
Susan Willis pointed out, "regardless of the homogenizing influence of

the media and mass market commodities" (366). While the mass media
label of punk may be applied indiscriminately to many bands as a
catchall generic reference, it is precisely because of punk's local produc-
tion and consumption, as well as the geographic specificities in musical
forms, style of dress, and political practice that are present across the
country, that it cannot be reduced simply to a musical or otherwise styl-
istic genre. Continuing in her essay "Hardcore: Subculture American
Style," Willis states that it may not be possible to define punk as a sub-
culture either in Hebdige's, or I would add, in any unifying terms (367).
In fact, it is in punk's inability to be defined as a subculture, as a politi-
cal movement, as a genre, that we see the possibilities for the articulation
of social identities which cannot be captured by the standardizing and
reductive terms of ethnography and much current cultural studies.
With considerable success, Willis grounds her study in her daugh-
ter's local experience in the Raleigh-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, "hard-
core" scene in order to avoid those problems which have plagued
discussions of punk when they are framed by nationally successful
examples. In one of the clearest arguments against trends in cultural
studies to valorize cultural production for its own sake, Willis states that
a criticism "which celebrates the making of cultural meanings in and of
itself, as a radical form of politics," allows for a separation of culture
from economy, and for a vision of autonomous culture to be formed
"where dominant and subordinate groups clash on a far more equal foot-
ing than they do in the economic sector" (365). Through this reduction
of cultural space to one in which all forms of production can compete
equally and in possibly oppositional relationships with each other, critics
enable themselves to discuss punk as an alternative or subculture in
generic terms which are the very naturalized products of an entertain-
ment industry that punk seeks to disrupt.
Additionally, it is because of the tendency in studies of the punk or
hardcore scenes in the United States to reduce those names to generic
constants that the foundational logic of punk's definition—a logic to
which even Willis's admirable study is subject—must be questioned.
Indeed, Willis may provide the most glaring academic misconception of
the scene by equating its cosmetic appearance with a cohesive subculture
when she unquestioningly collapses the social, political, and ethical dis-
tinctions between punks and skinheads under the blanket term "hard-
core." Such reductions take place as well on economic terms, for Willis
and others almost invariably identify, either centrally or solely, as punk
those bands that have become international success stories on the same
major labels which, from the critics' own accounts, punk would work
against.
Because I do agree with Willis that culture and economics are

clearly related and exist in a symbiotic relationship to one another, I will
take the cue from her to form a study of punk around local experience,
rather than national trends in mass culture, in order to look at the inter-
section of music, politics, and economics in the San Francisco Bay Area
and Washington, D.C., scenes since 1980. Additionally, though, just as
this movement is a diverse one even within local restrictions alone—and
is often self-contradictory—to add the cultural and political differences
of like movements in the United Kingdom and elsewhere would be to
throw too much difference into what is already a mix bordering on the
uncontrollable.2
My hope here is to avoid making the sort of statements found in
other analyses of the scene (especially the recent treatment of the D.C.
scene and Fugazi), which tend toward the uninformed, if not careless,
homogenizing of styles, personalities, and locales under the name
"punk," which I would rather describe as a set of only loosely assimil-
able vectors and forms of expression.3 Consequently, this study will
focus on specific economic strategies employed in the punk scene, as
well as on the constantly problematic relationship between notions of
community and individualism within the scene and the always shifting
politics of specific local groups as they attempt to comment on and cri-
tique not only the world at large but their scenes themselves. While I
will, additionally, discuss at times both bands and individuals who have
achieved some national notoriety, I do so in order to point out the rare
but notable possibilities of bringing the punk scene into national visibil-
ity on its own terms, rather than on those of corporate media.
This album tells a story of America, of what was, what is, and—most
importantly—what can be.
—Mark Anderson
During the 1980s, two flagship models of independent record com-

panies thriving on their own terms rose out of the punk scene: Dischord
"Punk" after the Pistols • 89
Records in Washington, D.C. (1980), and Lookout! Records in Lay-

tonville, California (1987, relocating to Berkeley in 1989). Both labels
were founded in order to produce records for local bands of the D.G.-
Arlington area and the San Francisco Bay Area, respectively. Both labels
have since become commercially successful, yet remain clear of what
might be called the "subsidiary effect" of the current music industry, in
which the mega-entertainment corporations—most notably Sony and
Warner—appear to have bought, or at least obtained a controlling inter-

est in, the majority of viable independent record companies, such as Epi-
taph in Los Angeles, Revelation in New York, and Sub-Pop in Seattle.
While Dischord and Lookout! are not the only two examples of success-
ful independent labels, either in the Bay Area or in D.C, they exemplify
the potential viability of noncorporate music production, and are also
among the best examples of the ways in which local production has car-
ried the potential for having national effects on the scene.
Founded in 1980 by Teen Idles members Ian MacKaye and Jeff
Nelson, Dischord Records has typified the possibilities for the creation
of an independent and locally focused cottage industry in the punk
scene. Summing up the DIY philosophy that is only referred to in pass-
ing by Davies, MacKaye and Nelson write in the liner notes of the 1985
Four Old 7"s on a 12 " compilation album:
We set up Dischord so we could put out music we liked by people we liked, and
put it out cheap. Our goal was not to make lots of money, but rather to help out
as many of our friends' bands as we could. For at least two years the bands
made no money off their records. Instead, the profits from each record went
right back into Dischord to help put out the next band's record.
After releasing more than 100 records, the Dischord label remains com-
mitted to working within the principles on which it was founded. The
recent success of the bands on the label, most notably MacKaye's band
Fugazi, has allowed Dischord the means to survive economically; yet
they have remained focused on their hometown scene, still producing
records for friends' bands: Bluetip, the Make-Up, Branch Manager,
Trusty, and others. The staff at the label is small, as they work directly
with local bands without the usual recourse to building up batteries of
talent scouts, promoters, and legal staff without which even smaller
labels seem unable to work.
Dischord has also remained committed to sharing financial
resources with the D.C. punk scene and the D.C. community at large.
The most notable example of the former is the 1989 State of the Union
D.C. Benefit Compilation, a collective benefit project for SANE, the
ACLU, and homeless foundations of the D.C. area, produced by

Dischord, Sammich Records of Washington, D.C, and Positive Force
D.C, a leftist political action group. Many of the bands on the Dischord
label, including Fugazi, Soulside, Shudder to Think, and Rites of Spring,
donated music for the record, and all profits went to the groups the pro-
ject set but to benefit. In the liner notes to this record, the DIY philoso-
phy was reinforced with a collective statement from Positive Force:
—human beings were meant to find fulfillment from creation, not the mindless,
hectic and destructive pursuit of "things."
This, we believe, is the solution to the present "state of the union"—we
encourage people to consume less . . . to support local small scale alternatives to
giant corporations, to ultimately reject greed in all its forms. And, as always, if
you don't like your alternatives, then do it yourself. (Anderson 2)
This form of benefit is radically different from the corporate rock

format, in which major talent is paid to perform in order to recruit large
audiences; of course, the latter format tends to benefit the promoters
more than anyone else, as the concerts are set up as ignition points for
spinoff marketing of souvenirs. The March 1998 anti-death penalty ben-
efit in Los Angeles, "Not in Our Name," provides a good example of this
trend, as their postconcert website ("Not") has information about the
performers, organizer Tim Robbins, and the souvenirs available to fans,
which includes $20 shirts and $10 "official" posters; yet it contains no
information about the amount of money raised—not to mention the por-
tion of that money that actually reached the charity.4
A second crucial distinction between the independent and corporate
industries may be found in their support for the production of music over
business profits. In addition to their community benefit work, Dischord
has also been committed to helping others in the punk scene create their
own record labels and keep them self-sufficient. In the D.C.-Arlington
area, Dischord has lent financial support to Fountain of Youth, Simple
Machines, and Sammich Records, to name but a few labels. Addition-
ally, not only MacKaye and Nelson, but also Cynthia Connolly, an editor
of the documentary book Banned in DC and now a member of
Dischord's small staff, have been instrumental in providing fledgling
record labels across the country with advice on becoming sustainable
businesses while remaining independent of corporate control. In the mid-
1980s, however, Lookout! Records was the most successful of those
labels that attempted to follow the Dischord model of doing it yourself.
Founded by Maximum Rock and Roll columnist Lawrence Liver-
more, Lookout! became successful more rapidly than Dischord had been
able to, due to the far larger audience for the music in the late eighties,
as well as to increased access to independent distribution companies that
had been founded, or had become successful, in the interim, such as
Revolver and Mordam in San Francisco, and Taang!, Dutch East India,
and Caroline on the East Coast. Lookout !'s success was also, although
not directly, due in large part to the input of money and energy from
Maximum Rock and Roll, a San Francisco-based syndicated radio show
and magazine, which had financed the 1987 opening of Berkeley's col-
lective-run community center, the Gilman Street Project. Invariably, the
bands that originally appeared on the record label were recognized by
Livermore at this club, which, with the fall of the San Francisco collec-
tive, the Farm, became the only independent Bay Area venue for punk
shows and community activities. Because it was the only independent
venue (most other clubs in the Bay Area were managed by one company
that had a "pay to play" policy which most punk bands either could not
afford or refused to pay), community support was strong, and Lookout!
was able to sell enough records from the start to finance new projects.
Additionally, because Lookoutl's print runs were comparatively
small (1,000-1,500 copies of a 7" or 12" record), advertising costs were
negligible (for the most part, the bands promoted themselves by playing
live), and sympathetic recording studios were used that charged a frac-
tion of major ones ($8 per hour rather than as much as $200 per hour),
the risk involved in production was minimal. This limited risk allowed
Lookout! to be founded on a profit-sharing basis between bands and the
label, which would be unheard-of in the world of corporate music: the
label paid for production costs, and once the record broke even the band
got 60% of the profits; major label artists, on the other hand, rarely
receive more than 5-10% of their sales.5 Sales in such an isolated market
as the punk scene were necessarily small, so there was little concern
about actually making money from the label, beyond being able to pro-
duce records for more bands and for those bands to tour the country with
less personal expense than usual. Additionally, members of the bands,
including Livermore, worked "straight" jobs and were high school or
college students as well.
Like Dischord, Lookout! clearly was not searching for a way out of
the working life by exchanging it for the benefits of corporate music pro-
duction. For both labels, the goal of producing records was sustainabil-
ity, rather than profit, as the prices for the records themselves indicate.
Dischord's first run of 7" records sold for $2.50, and LP records sold for
$5 postpaid by direct mail order from the label; in the March 1988 issue
of Lookout (Livermore's Laytonville fanzine) the label advertised its
first six releases on the same price scale (back cover). More signifi-
cantly, the postpaid prices from both labels at this time severely undercut
those of major labels, most of which did not even offer direct mail order.
Recently, the reintroduction of vinyl records from major labels has been
accompanied by skyrocketing prices, from the $7-8 pre-CD prices to the
$12-25 cost now. Yet, Dischord's recent releases still encourage a resis-
tance to such increases: for instance, on the 1997 Lungfish release Indi-
visible, an $8 postpaid price is printed on the outer jacket of the record.
Lookout !'s prices have remained either consistent with, or lower than
Dischord's, and both labels distribute their records with the provision
that store markups must be limited; in fact, the Berkeley record store
Amoeba sells Dischord's records for $7.99 in order to keep the in-store
business that the label draws now more than ever.
Lookout!'s DIY approach to music production is only one indicator
of a more pervasive economic and social attitude in the Bay Area punk
scene at the time of its inception. The Gilman Street Project became the
meeting place for various political groups, practice space for bands, and
an example of the potential for punks to build a space for themselves on
their own terms through local collective action. Additionally, innumer-
able small record labels, bands, and venues were conceived around the
country on the models of Lookout! and Gilman Street.* The clearest
lesson that these models taught the punk scene was specifically not to
follow the lead of those national-multinational entertainment corpora-
tions that depended on large production runs or massive ticket revenues
for high profits; instead, the scene had the potential to produce for itself
with the relative autonomy that came from not being dependent on the
financial success of bands, record labels, and venues for one's income.
Most importantly, a model of community involvement demonstrated that
if a project failed, the loss to an individual's time or money would be
minimized; likewise, if a project was successful, the financial or social
benefits would be shared by a community rather than an individual
entrepreneur. As MacKaye stated in a 1989 Fugazi interview: "It's great
to be able to make money, because there's a lot of money to give"
(Antolin and Cobb 22).
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the ethico-political practices
of both Dischord and Lookout! is that they were founded, and continue
to operate, as outlets for sovereign creative production by the bands
themselves. Bands producing records for the two labels have complete
creative control over the content of the actual songs, as well as the con-
tent of the packaging (art and design for jackets and sleeves, liner notes).
Again, this marks a significant difference between the independent and
corporate labels, for the corporate label invariably retains the right to
have the last word on appearance, song content, continuity, or any other
feature which might affect promotion and sales of a record. As Guy Pic-
ciotto of Fugazi stated in a Washington Post interview: "A major label
contract, by definition, makes you an employee of that record company.
No matter how good a contract you negotiate, you do not have complete
creative control" (qtd. in Fairchild 29).
The recent lawsuits by musicians against their corporate record
companies over artistic control is certainly indicative of the lack of sov-
ereignty those bands exercise over their own music. The 1994 attempt of
the Bay Area band Metallica to gain their creative freedom from Elektra
was one of the most publicized instances of such suits. Although lawyers
argued that Elektra had violated California labor codes by contracting
Metallica beyond a seven-year period, the most pressing issue for the
band was the protection of their already published work against future
misuse. As drummer Lars Ulrich stated: "All we wanted was to get our
masters back, so (Elektra) can't put our songs into shoe commercials or
put out 14 greatest hits packages that rip off the fans" ("Metallica" D2).
The bands on the independent labels, on the other hand, are seldom
under contract at all, which prevents the labels from having any control,
not only over current production but, more importantly, over future pro-
duction by their bands. The majority of the bands that release records on
Dischord or Lookout! continue to make little if any money from their
music; for most, however, it remains worth the potentially lost income to
retain as much autonomy as possible over their music.
Needless to say, this new subculture never seems to get the respect it
deserves. Many people coming into the scene are more interested in
the fashion (or trendiness) rather than the ideas. The more jaded
people are satisfied with their arm-chair cynicism. They've done it
before. They've seen it before.
—Lance Hahn
My fight's not with you; it's with gravity.

—Fugazi, "Long Distance Runner"
More important than their function of disseminating the music of

the punk scene on noncorporate terms though, is the role that Dischord,
Lookout!, and other lesser-known labels have had in propagating the dis-
senting social values in and behind punk music. A breakdown of the bor-
ders between performer and audience, which manifests itself most
notably in the accessibility of musicians to audience members, has been
central to defining the scene's social values. This is the case not only for
lesser-known musicians who play in the strictly local venues of the
country, but even for members of those few bands that are able to tour
and play the larger halls that might draw as many as 2,000 people. The
latter case, however, is far more the exception than the norm, and for this
reason it is strange that Fugazi has become the exemplar both of the
D.C. scene in particular, and the "foremost bearer of the best that the
punk rock tradition has had to offer" (23), as Charles Fairchild recently
wrote in his essay "'Alternative' Music and Politics."
The terms with which Fairchild describes both the style and the pol-
itics of Fugazi's music are revealing. Despite their success, the band is
clearly for him a holdover from an already past era or, at best, the sole
survivors of a past musical legacy (a legacy for which Ian MacKaye,
Guy Picciotto, and Brendan Canty are largely responsible, at least in the
United States). For Fairchild, the "blend of styles" that forms Fugazi's
sound is built partially out of "rock elements with specific 'survivals'
from the punk era" (23), implying that somehow punk itself is a residual
form which can be successfully and authentically recuperated in
Fugazi's music.
To take on the specific reasons for the strangeness of Fugazi's
exemplary status, we may look at both the local and national forces in
music that have contributed to Fugazi's placement in such an unusual
position. In fact, I wish to point out that, contrary to Fairchild's analysis,
it is precisely due to their lack of cultural-economic autonomy that
Fugazi has become successful. It is true that Fugazi is in all likelihood
the only band in modern music history to become so internationally
renowned and financially stable without the aid of the promotion
machine consisting of armies of publicists, managers, legal assistants,
and handlers that are at the disposal of the major labels; it is only on a
surface reading, however, that Fugazi's oft-cited rise to recognition—
even in the terms of the most resistant mass-mediated sites—was the
first instance of working completely independently of the popular enter-
tainment market.
Returning briefly to the means of production themselves, the wide-
spread success that Fugazi has enjoyed cannot be achieved without
effective distribution and press coverage, and even as early as 1990
Dischord was working with the independent distribution company
Southern to handle the label's exponentially increased business. Also, as
Fairchild's bibliography shows, whether approved by the band or not,
much of its popular success (that outside of the scene itself) is in fact due
to the publicity accorded them by industry magazines such as Pulse and
Alternative Press. Ironically, Fairchild himself points out in his notes
that "the D.C. scene is distinct enough to warrant its own column in the
local scene roundup section of Tower Records' Pulse magazine" (32);
and, since this is also the case for other major punk scenes in the United
States (Seattle, Berkeley, Chicago, New York), such national recognition
would appear necessarily to undermine, while paradoxically promoting
the semblance of, the localist practices of punk music and politics.
As Fairchild states, it is true that Fugazi attempts to control "the

structure of their coverage" through their autonomy from music media
outlets such as trade magazines (30); yet, as shown above, they cannot
prevent those outlets from reporting on music, thus promoting the band
despite their resistance to promotion. An additional factor that helped the
band's rise to popular appeal was the merchandise circulation that also
took place without Fugazi's approval. Following the marketing success
of similarly unauthorized products (stickers, buttons, t-shirts) promoting
Minor Threat, another MacKaye band, by the early 1990s many record
stores were carrying Fugazi t-shirts with the motto "This is not a Fugazi
T-shirt" on the front and a line from the 1990 Repeater LP, "You are not
what you own," on the back.7 This is an example (and perhaps the exam-
ple) that points to the lack of total autonomy of any given punk scene
when it is staged against the pervasive power of commodification. Thus,
as soon as the band was perceived to have the mass-marketing potential
that has so obviously been realized, it did not matter after a point
whether they signed to a major label or not, whether they authorized
spinoff promotional products or not, for, with or without permission,
their antiindustry stance was opened up to flattening by the very industry
they tried to work against, as they became a mass-marketing phenome-
non of slogans and bumper-sticker ideology. Clearly then, contrary to
Fairchild's conclusions, Fugazi cannot "simply choose to be indepen-
dent," nor is "autonomy . . . a matter of choice" (30), for, regardless of
choice, the power of mainstream marketing and promotion can still exert
itself when there is profit to be made.
The lyrics of Fugazi's songs themselves point to the problematic
reward of popular acceptance. The "birthday pony" of the band's success
is better left as a dream gift than realized, in the song of the same name
on the 1995 Red Medicine record: "I needed something to do and so I
split into two / but now the pattern takes hold I feel I'm losing control / 1
don't want to be free / this is a birthday pony." While the increased
recognition of the band has allowed them to play for larger audiences,
sell more records, and perhaps have some positive effect on those audi-
ences, that recognition has simultaneously distanced the band from those
people it would benefit. No longer playing small halls, community cen-
ters, and clubs—spaces in which the bands perform on the floor in many
cases—Fugazi, as well as other bands that reach the same level of noto-
riety, have lost direct and intimate contact with the punk scene. Picciotto
stated as early as 1989:
It's entertaining and fun to play music, but when you have a double agenda and
you put a lot of meaning into the music, then you end up with alienated situa-
tions where you feel you're just in another rock club in front of another rock
audience and no communication is going on. (Antolin and Cobb 19)
Needless to say, the potential of an intimate performance is greatly

reduced when bands in the punk scene receive enough press coverage to
force them to play the large halls to "people who," MacKaye notes,
"don't give a fuck about what we're saying. They're just running around
in circles or screaming or yeehawing, or they just don't care" (Antolin
19). The gift of success, then, is also a loss of communication between
band and audience that is addressed by Jem Cohen's documentary film
on Fugazi's first ten years, Instrument.* The ways in which it has become
possible for the signs and appearance of the punk scene to be appropri-
ated by mass media outlets is the broader topic to which I wish to turn at
this time, in an attempt to look at the ways in which the punk scene itself
has changed and a curious circuit has been forged between it and popular
culture.
IV
There's a whole history of communities . . . . As different as they are

from one another, they all "guarantee" their bonding by some sort of
communion or promise of communion, or a project, or a goal. Some-
times "community" is established in reaction to a crisis; but once that
crisis is resolved, the community disbands.
—Avital Ronell
The means for the incorporation and retooling of the signs of

market/political dissent in the punk scene by the mass entertainment
media could be seen to lie as much in the internal identity crisis that took
place within the scene at the close of the eighties as it does with any par-
ticular strategy of the entertainment industry as a whole. At that time, the
scene (at least the scene in Northern California) appeared to be rapidly
atomizing, particularly into different political (as well as apolitical) fac-
tions and groups of enthusiasts around specific musical styles. This fac-
tional dispersal is in no small part due to the gradual disappearance of
the skinheads from the scene at roughly the same time. While only mar-
ginally a part of the scene itself, since they simply happened to go to the
same shows that the punks did (although clearly with different inten-
tions), the skinheads' function was critical as a visible means of solidify-
ing the punk scene into a local/national collective, despite personal or
group aesthetic and political differences. Additionally, the end of the
Reagan years in the United States marked the lack, or at least the
waning, of a clearly identifiable national enemy against whom the punks
could position themselves. Reagan was seen by many in the scene to be

the national avatar of what the skinheads represented on the local level,
and while the policies of the Reagan administration did not disappear
with the Bush administration (nor have they now), the process of norr
malization that such economic and social policies underwent made them
increasingly difficult to address in an oppositional manner.
Whatever the cause, though, the atomization of punk was accompa-
nied by the loss of the visible stream of intellectualism that had typified
at least the more politically focused scenes of San Francisco and D.C.;
or, if nothing else, the visibility of that stream was reduced to smaller
pockets of intellectualism, which retained their visibility only locally in
those activist scenes. One symptom of this waning intellectualism was
the increase in songs about the scene itself, such as Government Issue's
"Hole in the Scene," the chorus of which was: "There's a hole in the
scene where the brain used to be." However, it was precisely this lack of
clear identificatory signs that allowed parts of the punk scene to articu-
late a changing sense not only of what it means to be a punk, but also of
ways to envision a politics of the scene other than those oppositional
forms that punk music had often taken in the past. Here we may point
again to the shift in music that came out of D.C. in the mid-to-late
1980s, beginning with bands such as Dag Nasty, Embrace, and Soulside.
Visible precursors to the musical style and lyrical content of Fugazi,
these bands shifted the political focus of the music from opposition to a
more diffuse and avant-garde strategy.
As with the French avant-garde movements that preceded the sea-
change in punk politics, what is called for is not an oppositional or pro-
grammatic politics, but rather, a response to power's ability to transform
and accommodate opposition through its incorporation and sanitizing.
As Susan Suleiman writes of the need for an avant-garde approach that
resists recourse to the ideologically correct: a "shifting ground is best
dealt with by movement" (xv); and her theoretical move could describe
not only some earlier avant-garde movements of this century, but the
shifting abilities of punk music. Indeed, as early as 1978, Nico Ordway
wrote of the connection between Andr6 Breton's surrealism and the new
wave, "a movement with nothing but a future" (111). Finding herself
positioned in the historical heart of the cold war and at the emergence of
punk rock, Ordway wrote: "In a world terrorized ABOVE ALL by
nuclear weapons, nothing better validates the surrealist perspective than
the emergence of something like new wave, in which art and music com-
bine to provide means for revolt to claim new terrain" (111). The later
transition of the punk scene was marked not only by the shifting of the
music and politics away from the generic constrictions under which they
had been working, but was additionally marked, or better, was made
unmarkable by the absolute breakdown in genre boundaries. The perfor-
mance of punk gradually became anything that took place at punk
shows: in the Bay Area for instance, while a "traditional" punk sound
and image still defined the majority of performances, there also was per-
formance art (Carolina Rainbow, Rites of Venus), belly dancing, funk
(NoMeansNo), rap (Funky Fresh Crew, Disposable Heroes, Yeastie
Girlz), jazz (Sabot, Charlie Hunter), heavy metal (Neurosis, Helmet),
and country (Two Nice Girls)—any number of which might appear in
one venue on a single night.
The venue at which this generic breakdown was most clearly staged
was Berkeley's Gilman Street Project. Founded in 1987 by Maximum
Rock and Roll, the Project was established on anarchist collective princi-
ples in which band members, founders, and audience members alike
were expected to take equal responsibility in the success of the club.
Because commitment to sustainability was made explicitly personal by
requiring a financial investment in the $2 membership fee, encouraging
members to attend and vote in biweekly membership meetings and to
take active roles in day-to-day operations, the Project became, perhaps,
the first overt attempt to realize punk's growing Utopian demand for a
community of performer and audience activists.9
The generic breakdown of the performances was simply the out-
come of a deeper logic of the scene's coming realization of its survival
being based on constant mutation and unrecognizability. Again, like ear-
lier avant-garde artistic and political movements, the Project became the
locus of "a new syntax that will shake up and transform old habits of
thought and old ways of seeing" (Suleiman 123), which would be
formed through a radical notion of individualism, rather than a (sub)cul-
tural homogeneity. The Project sought to break down distinctions
between performer and audience, founder and worker, music and poli-
tics, punk and everyday life, essentially disrupting the potential for a
replaying of those hierarchical standards on which "cultures" (sub- or
otherwise) are dependent. Shows were often spontaneous and transient,
and the hope for many was that such performances would be created by
an entire collective community, rather than by the all-too-familiar pro-
duction/consumption (or performer/audience) model threatening to close

in on the scene. Without an overarching political or aesthetic philosophy,
the Project could claim no clear orthodoxy or ideology which would
make its products easily containable and consumable; the only prohibi-
tion at the club was against any action that would threaten its survival.10
Recently, however, the attempted performer-audience breakdown
envisioned by the Gilman Street Project and other punk venues has been
subject to the same process of cooption and dilution that punk music
itself has undergone. Among the many examples of this, the clearest is in
the normalizing of "crowd surfing" at arena-sized alternative and college
rock concerts. Historically, the rise of stage-diving in the seventies and
eighties (one punk precursor to today's mass-mediated "crowd surf")
had its political/social impetus as "a great way to test the unity of your
scene" (despite the intentional satire of this "glossary entry" in the liner
notes to Crucial Youth's 1988 Posi-Machine LP)." As is the case with
the incorporation of a certain, always ineffectual, benign liberal politics
in the alternative/college radio rock of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the like,
these changing visual constitutions of commercial music mark an incor-
poration of the form of alternative music without its politics. As
Fairchild correctly notes: "the often problematic politics of the under-
ground, specifically the unresolved anger, negation, and confrontation,
and the clearest statements of ideology . . . have been conveniently dis-
carded by the mainstream" (23). It may be more accurate to say, how-
ever, that although they are far from singular, those explicit calls for
political action in punk scenes across the country have been effectively
incorporated by alternative rock bands and the promotional apparatus of
their labels. What is, in fact, more insidious about the methods of main-
streaming the alternative is that the appearance of having some sort of
politics, emotional depth, and populist commitments behind their music
is still maintained.'2
Despite mass media control of, or intervention into punk scenes,
punk activists still prove that they can coalesce around particularly
pressing national issues. In addition to Dischord's State of the Union
compilation mentioned above, the release of numerous antiwar and
antidraft records and newsletters during the 1991 Gulf War is indicative
of this potential. The best-known of the benefit records released as the
war approached were Maximum Rock and Roll's Noam Chomsky/Bad
Religion split 7 " , New World Order: War #1, and former Dead
Kennedys singer Jello Biafra's Die for Oil Sucker, both of which
appeared in 1991. Foldout posters with information and suggestions for
further reading accompanied both records and covered the war itself, the
recent history of U.S.-Middle East relations, the American tradition of
aggression against the third world, and anarchist politics. Both records
also included draft and war resistance information that was elsewhere
unavailable in the corporate media blackout that surrounded the war.
However, it was precisely because of the visibility of enemies in the
form of George Bush and the New World Order, and because of the
monovocal national media surrounding the war, that the space for such
coalitions in the American and international punk scenes emerged. In
retrospect, it appears that during the Reagan years and the years in which
skinhead activity were at their peak, punk activists came together only
because there was a visible enemy to act against. The unanimity of news
and entertainment media made clear the extent to which the information
Americans received from the TV, radio, and newspapers was under some
form of control or self-censorship. As philosopher Avital Ronell stated in
a 1991 interview with Andrea Juno, "Everyone from Madonna to Bush
[was] on a mission from God" (150)." After the war, however, mass
media quickly returned to a self-privileging portrayal of American popu-
lar culture, one which was no less sanitized, but which nonetheless pro-
claimed a renewed openness to "alternatives." Accordingly, the
cohesiveness built in the punk scene began to dissolve as well, as the
visible totality it had confronted for a short time became dispersed in a
semblance of multiplicity.
For the most part, popular media have, over the past twenty years,
worked primarily to present themselves as sites in which multiple alter-
natives already exist. As Willis notes, however, because those sites
remain flattened and present no more than the semblance of distinction,
it is unproductive to attempt a location of punk in those sites designated
and legitimated as alternatives. It would be equally unproductive to
search for any sort of effective anti-institutional force within those popu-
lar institutions, for it is invariably the case that mass-mediated sites are
infinitely capable of absorbing oppositional discourse and action. As
Robert Tillman stated, writing of the punk scene in 1980:
normative dissensus—the expression of decadence and the purposeful outrage

of public mores—is no longer an instrument of political change as advanced
capitalist societies are capable of absorbing large variations and challenges in
the moral order while maintaining a well-insulated political system. (172)
Therefore, it must remain the goal of an effectively activist movement to

resist the totalizing tendencies of large-scale oppositional subculture for-
mation, and to remain committed to the possibilities of local action
making disruptive interventions into the totalizing media. Attempting the
appropriation of national media, which have definitive incorporative
abilities, may be a fantasy of oppositional subcultures, but the possibility
of success is questionable. To cite Ronell again: "no one in their right
mind is even going to hope that the state will be the place where some-
thing grandiose is going to happen, community-wise. Nor are they going
to expect justice from the state—nor from any typical (or stereotypical)
and sclerotic institutional models" (145).
Following Ronell's lead, we might argue that punk—whose politi-

cally activist facet has been my focus—is in the position to point toward
what Giorgio Agamben has termed the "coming community," one which
is "expropriated of all identity, so as to appropriate belonging itself
(11). In the present treatment of punk's avant-garde and anti-institutional
tendencies, I have pointed toward those vectors of punk that strive to
escape models of production and consumption otherwise omnipresent in
the entertainment industry. Despite their resistance, those vectors coa-
lesce periodically, and in some fleeting way they continue to claim their
belonging to punk. While the terms I have used here may create only
partial definitions, the DIY philosophy serves as an operative grounding
for my location of a punk scene that is able to position itself in both radi-
cal individual and community action. Punk thus becomes a call to do it
yourself, to form strategically impermanent communities of dissenting
political, artistic, and social values. A simple valorization of opposition-
ality is a relatively ineffective standard of political or social critique.
Thus, the use of carnivalesque symptoms, for instance, in contemporary
commercialized and sanitized punk images of the Sex Pistols and other
"alternative" groups, either to confirm or deny punk's political potential,
is already a misplaced focus. Those images can only be used, whether as
subversive or reactionary, as recuperative of a commercial system that
punk would disrupt at its very foundations. In its political, social, and
aesthetic production, in order to survive and remain as autonomous as
possible, punk must continue, for the most part, to be localized and tran-
sient performance rather than subcultural oppositionality that has been
largely attributed to punk until now.
Recognizing the historical unassimilability of the punk scene in the
United States may reopen possibilities for reading today's scene in other
than generic or stylistic terms, which invariably return punk to the recu-
peration of residual and already established forms. American punks have
themselves refused an essence in their performance of community from
the 1970s until today, although they do, nonetheless, continue to orga-
nize around the name. Alignment with the name "punk" is not in this
case, however, an alignment with a singular group ideology, countermar-
ket strategy, or musical genre, although these tendencies are ever appar-
ent in its praxis. The call for an absolutely correct definition of punk will
always miss the point, for the stable form of genre or fashion is always
subject either to appropriation by the flattening forces of the entertain-
ment industry, or to transformation by punks themselves. Instead, punk
is better seen as a series of performative traces will never serve as hard-
ened constraints of its definition.
Notes
I wish to thank Numsiri Kunakemakom, Robert Seguin, and Stacy Thompson,

who reviewed various drafts of this paper, and were instrumental in its comple-
tion. Additionally, I must thank numerous friends and contacts in the Bay Area
and D.C. scenes who have discussed (and often adamantly disagreed with)
many of the ideas presented here, and without whose support this paper could
not have been written.
1
We need only take a walk through any record store, national chain or oth-
erwise, to see that these terms are now used to make generic distinctions within
the older "general rock" category, creating at least the appearance of different
modes of production and ideological currents in the "independent" and "alterna-
tive" categories. However, as Devo noted in 1977: "There's not much freedom
for art in America . . . . There's freedom for just lots of proliferation of endless
imitation kitsch. Stupidity is rewarded in this system—big contracts! . . . and
anybody who takes it too far is quickly like stopped!" (Vale 53).
2
Establishing this boundary is critical because, as Jello Biafra (of the San
Francisco band Dead Kennedys) implies, the national and regional differences
are, to a great extent, unresolvable. He states that, unlike the punk scene in the
United Kingdom of the same time, in the United States, "[tjhings were so much
more underground. Never mind the Ramones . . . . Some people, including a
former band member, have said Dead Kennedys were the 'American Sex Pis-
tols.' There were no American Sex Pistols" (Vale iii). It is on such grounds that
the Sex Pistols, the Clash, or other British punk groups of the 1970s cannot pro-
vide the definitive standard against which American new wave and punk move-
ments could be measured as somehow equal. Certainly, "punk" operates in both
cases; however, the contexts in which the name operates across national and
regional boundaries is so radically different that we are better served by examin-
ing its local idiosyncrasies, rather than attempting a wholesale account for such
a diverse notion as "punk."
3
Just to cite one recent example, Charles Fairchild writes about the D.C.
scene and not only makes factual errors (citing the first Dischord record as
Minor Threat [the band's 1981 self-titled 7"] rather than the Teen Idles' Minor
Disturbance e.p. [Dischord #1, 1980]), but also conflates such politically and
aesthetically diverse bands as D.C.'s Scream (early "posi-hardcore") and Fear
("traditional" American punk) with Austin, Texas's, D.R.I. (political

thrash/speed-metal). This trend toward homogenization is exactly one of the
problems that needs to be addressed in the way the punk scene is written about
and discussed in the popular and academic presses alike.
4
As Hoover and Stokes note, nor do other "mega-events such as Live Aid
and Farm Aid stand in for ongoing political projects," despite their pains to
create the semblance of doing so, particularly through their recruiting of "alter-
native" and "independent" bands who perform for the benefits.

5
Even these comparisons could be misleading, for the major-label bands
must often pay out of their lower share of the profits the record label's costs of
promotion, tour support, and legal work, among numerous other costs the label
may attach.
6
For instance, labels: Very Small (Berkeley); Take A Day, Allied, Shredder
(San Francisco). And venues: ABC No Rio (New York), Powerhouse (Portland),
Ché Café (San Diego), Jabberjaw (Los Angeles).
7
The song "Merchandise," from which this line is drawn, was also on their
1988 demo tape. Again, this points to Fugazi's potential for marketing that they
self-consciously did not capitalize on at that time. MacKaye's history and
renown in the scene, especially from Minor Threat, would make any band he
was in an instant success; thus, the marketing of Fugazi, if it had come from the
band itself, undoubtedly would have begun long before the early 1990s.
8
Among other features which distinguish it from the standard rock video-
documentary format, which is invariably dependent on the carefully controlled
magnification of its subject, Instrument's minimal instances of audience testi-
mony largely portray the band in a negative light. However, as a band member
simultaneously comments, off-camera, on the state of the punk scene and the
music industry in general: "Something happened around the early 1990s. The
industry saw a market in agitated guitar music, punk rock, or whatever you want
to call it, and an enormous amount of money and attention kind of descended on
the scene. It's a lot harder, I think, now, for people to be able to avoid that kind
of cultural carpeting, or whatever. It's hard to see things without having seen
them through the eyes of that industry, and that really affects people's responses
to it." This analysis is typical of older punks, who have watched the scene move
from a space that was literally off the radar of popular culture, to achieve a level
of legitimacy that, intentionally or not, constantly undermines those actually
existing cottage industries.
9
Initially, the membership terms were $2 for life. This was adjusted to $2
per year after Maximum gave up control of Gilman Street. As with all major
decisions regarding the Project's management, the issue of membership dues
was subject to months of discussion, mainly over whether to raise door prices
from a $4-5 average to a $6-7 average or to shift to yearly membership. As
could be expected in a direct democracy, there were also infinite permutations
of these two suggestions and other completely different ones relating to the cre-
ation of appropriate increases in price. The cost of both membership and indi-
vidual shows has since remained constant.
10
There were restrictions on drinking alcohol within two blocks of the club,
on graffiti around the neighborhood, and on skinheads showing any racist slo-
gans on their clothes. These few restrictions, in addition to being posted in writ-
ing at the club's entrance, were also enforced by club members, who would
clean up the neighborhood after shows and try to defuse conflicts between other
members before more extreme action, such as expulsion, was taken.
11
The phenomenon of stage diving, of course, precedes the punk scene of
the early 1980s; indeed, earlier instances may also suggest quite similar acts of
performer-audience breakdown to those described by Crucial Youth's "Straight
Edge Glossary." From Jerry Lee Lewis's performances in the 1950s, to the
1960s ballroom scenes of the Who's film Quadrophenia (1979), to photos in a
1977 issue of Search and Destroy documenting a Devo show at San Francisco's
Mabuhay Gardens, the act of allowing the audience this level of intimacy with
the musicians, as Biafra notes, "really brought home . . . that this whole barrier
between 'bands' and 'audience' didn't have to be there" (Vale iii).
12
For an early instance of this trend, in the late 1980s the band U2 played a
free concert at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco, the climax of which was
Bono's dramatic climbing of the plaza's fountain and spray-painting "stop the
traffic" at its top. This publicity stunt was cast by the local news media as a
political act and was lauded by fans as indicative of U2's activist commitments,
despite the band's immediate apologies to the city's mayor, Dianne Feinstein,
and their offers to have the fountain repainted.
13
Begun by Search and Destroy's V. Vale and Andrea Juno, RE/search pro-
duced a series of books on avant-garde culture that included the seminal study
of tattooing, piercing, and body manipulation, Modern Primitive, and the
Incredibly Strange Music series. The Angry Women collection in which Juno's
interview with Ronell appears dealt with changing women's issues in the early
1990s and includes interviews with other feminist philosophers (bell hooks),
writers (Kathy Acker, Sapphire), sex workers (Annie Sprinkle), performance
artists (Diamanda Galás, Lydia Lunch), and women's rights activists (Suzie
Kerr and Dianne Malley). The continuing work that Vale and Juno have done
since 1977 speaks, most importantly, to an unrestricted commitment to the doc-
umentation of emerging culture in the United States. Thus, both politically and
aesthetically, the RE/search project remains one of the best examples of avant-
garde practices informing the diverse work in which punks engage.
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,

1993.
Anderson, Mark. Liner notes. State of the Union DC Benefit Compilation. LP.
Dischord Records, 1989.
Antolin, Emmanuelle, and Jennifer Cobb. Interview of Fugazi. EchoLine #1

(San Francisco) (1989): 18-22.
Connolly, Cynthia, et al. Banned in DC. 4th ed. Washington, D.C.: Sun Dog
Propaganda, 1992.
Crucial Youth. "Straight Edge Glossary." Liner notes. Posi-Machine. LP. New
Red Archives Records, 1988.
Davies, Jude. "The Future of 'No Future': Punk Rock and Postmodern Theory."
Journal of Popular Culture 29. 4 (1996): 3-25.
Fairchild, Charles. "'Alternative' Music and the Politics of Cultural Autonomy:
The Case of Fugazi and the D.C. Scene." Popular Music and Society 17.1
(1995): 17-25.
Hahn, Lance. "What Makes a Man Person Do a Record Comp." Maximum Rock
and Roll #79.5. San Francisco: Maximum Rock and Roll, 1989. 2.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. New York: Methuen, 1985.
Hoover, Michael, and Lisa Stokes. "Pop Music and the Limits of Cultural Cri-
tique: Gang of Four Shrinkwraps Entertainment." Popular Music and Soci-
ety (forthcoming).
Juno, Andrea. Interview of Avital Ronell. RE/search #13: Angry Women. San
Francisco: RE/search, 1991. 127-53.
Lookout #30. Laytonville, CA. March 1988.
MacKaye, Ian, and Jeff Nelson. Liner notes. Four Old 7"s on a 12". LP.
Dischord Records, 1984.
"Metallica Settles Lawsuit with Its Record Label." San Francisco Chronicle 6
Jan. 1995, final ed.: D2.
"Not in Our Name Benefit Homepage." Online Posting. 30 April 1998. <http.//
www.notinourname.com/home.html>
Ordway, Nico. "Anarchy, Surrealism, and New Wave." Search and Destroy #1-
6. Ed. V. Vale. San Francisco: V/search, n.d. 111.
plate, peter. Liner notes. Sabot. Surface Tension. LP. Slime Records, 1989.
Suleiman, Susan Rubin. Subversive Intent. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.
Tillman, Robert H. "Punk Rock and the Construction of 'Pseudo-Political'
Movements." Popular Music and Society 7 (1980): 165-75.
Vale, V., ed. Search and Destroy #1-6. San Francisco: V/search, n.d. [reprint of
Search and Destroy fanzines, 1977-78].
Willis, Susan. "Hardcore: Subculture American Style." Critical Inquiry 19
(1993): 365-83.
Discography
Biafra, Jello. Die for Oil Sucker, e.p. Alternative Tentacles Records, 1991.
Crucial Youth. The Posi-Machine. LP. New Red Archives Records, 1988.
D.R.I. Dirty Rotten LP. R-Radical Records, 1983.
Dag Nasty. Can I Say. Dischord Records, 1986.
Embrace, self-titled LP. Dischord Records, 1987.
Fear. The Record. LP. Slash Records, 1982.

Four Old 7"s on a 12" LP. Dischord Records, 1984.
Flipper. Birth Canal/Ha Ha. e.p. Subterranean/Thermidor Records, 1980.
—-. Generic Album. LP. Subterranean Records, 1981.
. Public Flipper Limited. LP. Subterranean Records, 1986.
Fugazi. "Birthday Pony." Red Medicine. LP. Dischord Records, 1995.
. "Long Distance Runner." Red Medicine. LP. Dischord Records, 1995.
. "Merchandise." Demo Tape. Audiocassette. 1988.
. "Two Beats Off." Repeater. LP. Dischord Records, 1990.
Government Issue. "Hole in the Scene." Finale. LP. 1989.
Lungfish. Indivisible. LP. Dischord Records, 1997.
New World Order: War #1. e.p. Maximum Rock and Roll Records, 1991.
Sabot. Forbidden, e.p. Broken Rekids, 1991
. Surface Tension. LP. Slime Records, 1989.
Scream. Still Screaming. LP. Dischord Records, 1982.
Soulside. Trigger. LP. Dischord Records, 1987.
State of the Union DC Benefit Compilation. LP. Dischord Records, 1989.
Yeastie Girlz. Ovary Action. Lookout! Records, 1988.
Videography
Instrument. Dir. Jem Cohen. Videocassette. Dischord Records, 1999.
John Charles Goshert is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Purdue University. He

is competing his dissertation "Other Possible Identities," which focuses on the
literature and criticism of Frank Chin, Ishmael Reed, and Sarah Schulman. He
has published on Frank Chin and post-colonial theory in Jouvert, and has an
essay forthcoming on Deleuze and minor American literatures in Janus Head."

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John Charles Goshert

When attempting to discuss punk rock as a subculture, as move-

Susan Willis pointed out, "regardless of the homogenizing influence of

Because I do agree with Willis that culture and economics are

During the 1980s, two flagship models of independent record com-

Records in Washington, D.C. (1980), and Lookout! Records in Lay-

Warner—appear to have bought, or at least obtained a controlling inter-

ACLU, and homeless foundations of the D.C. area, produced by

This form of benefit is radically different from the corporate rock

My fight's not with you; it's with gravity.

More important than their function of disseminating the music of

As Fairchild states, it is true that Fugazi attempts to control "the

audience and no communication is going on. (Antolin and Cobb 19)

Needless to say, the potential of an intimate performance is greatly

There's a whole history of communities . . . . As different as they are

The means for the incorporation and retooling of the signs of

could position themselves. Reagan was seen by many in the scene to be

duction/consumption (or performer/audience) model threatening to close

normative dissensus—the expression of decadence and the purposeful outrage

Therefore, it must remain the goal of an effectively activist movement to

Following Ronell's lead, we might argue that punk—whose politi-

I wish to thank Numsiri Kunakemakom, Robert Seguin, and Stacy Thompson,

("traditional" American punk) with Austin, Texas's, D.R.I. (political

native" and "independent" bands who perform for the benefits.

Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,

Antolin, Emmanuelle, and Jennifer Cobb. Interview of Fugazi. EchoLine #1

Fear. The Record. LP. Slash Records, 1982.

Instrument. Dir. Jem Cohen. Videocassette. Dischord Records, 1999.

John Charles Goshert is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Purdue University. He

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