New & Novel: History of Punk

What is punk? Simply put, a music genre with a heyday in the 1970s, but also, culturally, an anti-establishment movement rooted in freedom of expression.  A lot of people have embraced punk, from fashion designer Vivienne Westwood to musician Billie Joe Armstrong to actor Noomi Rapace.  Musicians like Robert Smith, Kurt Cobain, Jack White, Beth Ditto, Florence Welch, Sufjan Stevens,and Moby have all talked about the impact punk played on their lives. Here's a few quotes from some of the major players of punk in an attempt to encapsulate the movement:

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom not to be successful, freedom to be who you are.  It's freedom.
~Patti Smith

Questioning anything and everything, to me, is punk rock.
~Henry Rollins

Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s.
~Jello Biafra

People forget the punk thing was really good for women. It motivated them to pick up a guitar rather than be a chanteuse.  It allowed us to be aggressive.
~Siouxsie Sioux

To me, punk is about being an individual and going against the grain and standing up and saying 'This is who I am.'
~Joey Ramone

I never wanted to go back and relive the glory days; I just wanted to keep moving forward. That's what I took from punk.  Keep moving.  Don't look back.
~Paul Simonon

We recently saw an internet meme that showed a picture of punk rockers Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins (as they look today) with the caption "Punk rock is not dead. It is, however, graying, balding, and going to bed at a much more reasonable hour..." With that on our minds, and the recent memoirs published by Patti Smith (M Train) and Carrie Brownstein (Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl) in the library catalog, and with a little help from the folks at Book Riot, we thought it might be a good time to revisit the history of one of our favorite genres. Here's some items dealing with history of punk from the library catalog:


From the Velvets to the Voidoids: A Pre-Punk History For a Post-Punk World by Clinton Heylin [eBook]

Girl In a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes; Music, Music, Music; Boys, Boys, Boys: A Memoir by Viv Albertine

Punk: The Whole Story edited by Mark Blake

Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews by Simon Reynolds  [eBook]

Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone by Marky Ramone with Richard Herschlag

Dancing with Myself by Billy Idol

Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored by John Lydon

Punk by Stephen Colegrave & Chris Sullivan

The Punk Rock Fun Time Activity Book by Aye Jay  [eBook]

Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, 1977-1981 by Liz Worth [eBook]

Punk Rock, So What?: The Cultural Legacy of Punk edited by Roger Sabin [eBook]

Punk Rock: An Oral History by John Robb [eBook]

For Kids 

The Story of Punk and Indie by Matt Anniss (J)

DVDs

The Punk Singer: A Documentary Film About Kathleen Hanna 

Punk Revolution NYC

The Decline of Western Civilization Collection 
(See the Penelope Spheeris' "crucial, compelling statement of the most significant and influential youth movement and musical transformation of the past 3 decades" at The Guild Cinema November 20-21!)

We Are the Best!


For more punk, try a subject search of "Punk rock musicians" or "Punk culture". You can even find some fiction with punk rock themes, like Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, I Am China by Xiaolu Guo, The Unnoticeables by Robert Brockway, Tyler McMahon's How the Mistakes Were Made, The Predictions by Bianca Zander, and The Listeners by Leni Zumas.

Read Like Patti Smith

I was completely smitten by the book. I longed to read them all, and the things I read of produced new yearnings.
~Patti Smith

Patti Smith, author of the acclaimed memoir Just Kids (winner of the National Book Award in 2010), has a new book coming out in October called M Train. Amazon.com describes M Train as "an unforgettable odyssey into the mind of this legendary artist, told through the prism of cafés and haunts she has visited and worked in around the world." In honor of her new book, we thought we might revisit some of Smith's oeuvre, and a few of the books she recommends.

For more books by Patti Smith available in the library catalog, try Woolgathering and Auguries of Innocence. Look for M Train to pop up in the catalog closer to its publication date!

If you are interested in reading like Patti Smith, she told Elle magazine, "I'm a real bookworm. I'm sort of a solitary person. I could recommend a million [books]. I would just say read anything by [Roberto] Bolaño. Re-read all the great classics. Read The Scarlet Letter, read Moby-Dick, read [Haruki] Murakami. But Roberto Bolaño's 2666 is the first masterpiece of the 21st century." In the links below, the website Open Culture has a more complete list of Smith's recommendations from around of time of 2008's Melbourne International Arts Festival. These include:

Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Against Interpretation, and Other Essays by Susan Sontag [eBook]

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa [eBook]

Links

Here's Patti Smith's Winter Reading List [Elle]

Patti Smith's List of Favorite Books: From Rimbaud to Susan Sontag [Open Culture]

Patti Smith's author profile on Goodreads

Punk Literature

It doesn’t take name-dropping Black Flag or writing a scene where a character gets her first mohawk to know that the book you’re reading is influenced in some way or another by the punk scene.
~Jason Diamond, "An Essential Punk Literature Reading List"

Earlier this year, New York's Metropolitan Museum had an exhibit called "Punk: Chaos to Couture" which focused "on the relationship between the punk concept of 'do-it-yourself' and the couture concept of 'made-to-measure'...organized around the materials, techniques, and embellishments associated with the anti-establishment style".  Wikipedia defines the punk ethos as "primarily concerned with concepts such as rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, free thought and discontent".  Guardian writer Rob Woodard, referring to the New York punk scene of the 1970s, said it featured "an amazingly eclectic collection of styles and personalities...this scene produced some of the most strikingly original rock'n'roll ever made. And it's these wide-open values that make its still expanding literary wing so fascinating."  Its literary wing includes such luminaries as Richard Hell, Patti Smith, and Jim Carroll.

We are interested in punk subculture here at abcreads, and we're happy to point out that you can find items about punk culture, punk rock music, and more, all within the library catalog (don't miss The Punk Rock Fun Time Activity Book, which includes activities such as a Velvet Underground Connect the Dots, Draw Tattoos on Henry Rollins, Match the Johnny Rotten Quote with Its Subject,  Punk Libs, Give Ian MacKaye Hair, and Find the Two Matching Social Distortion Logos).  We are drawn to the booklist format to recommend some books from or influenced by the punk scene, but we've tried to represent our slice of punk in the most anarchic possible way, including modern punk-themed fiction, rule-breakers of the 1970s, and "total assault on the culture" [William S. Burroughs]. 


Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary by Lydia Lunch

Neuromancer by William Gibson

The Petting Zoo by Jim Carroll

I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp: An Autobiography by Richard Hell

Woolgathering by Patti Smith

Carved in Rock : Short Stories by Musicians edited by Greg Kihn [includes stories by Jim Carroll, Richard Hell, Lydia Lunch and Ann Magnuson]

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader edited by James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg

Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the F*** You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side by Ed Sanders

The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard


Links

Punk Ideologies

The Literary Legacy of New York Punk

Goodreads Punk Book Lists