Punk's not dead, and this is your guide: Q&A with author Nicholas Rombes

CBGB. The Ramones. The Sex Pistols. Rage. Anger. Spitting. It’s all so in-your-face. It’s all so mosh pit wonderful. It’s all so punk.

Giving the finger to hippie culture of the 1960s, punk made its stamp on the 1970s, bringing with it a flood of angst, nihilistic notions and a brand new subculture.

Safety pins and snarly guitar riffs came to embody not just a musical style, but a movement. Nick Rombes seeks to explain the movement, looking back over 30 years through fanzines, newspapers and vinyl.

In his creative dictionary, Rombes explains the finer points of punk, giving us both critical analysis and creative writing. The encyclopedic tome is laid out in alphabetical order, so readers can take in everything punk from the Adolescents to the Zeros in a tidy fashion.

A professor of English at the University of Detroit Mercy, Rombes took several years to research "A Cultural Dictionary of Punk 1974-1982," and found the intricacies of a historical sound.

Here is Rombes about his book and about his own history with punk.

JC: Have you always loved punk music? Punk culture?

Nick Rombes: No. I was a raised in northwest Ohio, near Toledo. It is kind of a classic rock town. Punk was sort of a rumor. But it wasn’t on the radio. I knew about it from the margins in Cleveland.

I kind of discovered the whole punk scene as it was ending. It was a good and bad in ways. I discovered it all at once and moved backward. I kind of fell in love with it all at once.

JC: Were you ever in a punk band?

Rombes: I was in a band in high school called Fungus. We played one song, which was the Rolling Stones’ “Bitch.” I played the trumpet.

JC: How did the idea for this book come about?

Rombes: I think David Barker of Continuum e-mailed me out of the blue three or four years ago. I think his original title was "The Encyclopedia of Punk." His idea was coming at punk from all these different angles. So he sort of pitched me. And the fool that I was, I e-mailed him back at 1 in the morning, saying: Yes, absolutely.

It’s the most fun I’ve ever had writing. 

Does punk still matter? That's after the jump.

JC: You write: “Punk was such a radical, absurd, and dangerous phenomenon not just for what it was but for how it emerged in the context of its historical time.” Explain the punk phenomenon and why it mattered. Does it still matter?

Rombes: That’s key to me. If you think of punk as really boiling up to the surface in 1973. If you think of punk as coming and flowering in the middle of the '70s. I think of the '70s as an undefined decade. The '70s seem like a bad hangover. It becomes this blank space. And from that space came these great movies — like Martin Scorcese films. In writing — this great work from Thomas Pynchon. And then with music — you have punk and the beginnings of rap in a way.

When no one knew what to do with that decade, it created a space for punk to be created. I can’t imagine it coming out in another time.

Today, in a lot of ways, I think it’s the technology that defines it. There are a lot of DIY bands on MySpace. With the technology, there’s a way you can distribute independently, and you can catch on without going to a big label. Punk does live in smaller bands that are bypassing the larger operations.

JC: How did you pull together the research for this book? Where does one go to research punk?

Rombes: I wanted to go back to original sources as much as possible. I had some original fanzines. Living in Ann Arbor, you can still go into these record vinyl stores and buy a Germs album for 7 or 8 bucks.

I probably ramped up the EBay account pretty high. I borrowed from friends and bought and accumulated. I went back through articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post and others. It took three or four years to write, and it wasn’t so much the writing, but the accumulation and putting myself in that time period.

In the fanzines, I found there were impressive sociological comments about what was going on. That’s what surprised me most — the insight there.

JC: Can you talk about the difference between New York punk versus British punk versus California hardcore? What’s the distinction there?

Rombes: It’s weird. I’ve puzzled over that. There’s an argument that certain patterns emerge in the world at the same time because there’s something in the condition of the world.

Around the same time, in the U.S. — in Cleveland, Akron, New York; in England — London, and elsewhere, the same thing happens at the same time.

If you go back to the first demo from the Electric Eels and the first demo from the Sex Pistols, it’s the same snarl. It’s the same nihilism.

There are some differences. The Ramones were suburban kids from Forest Hills who played CBGB’s. The Sex Pistols were really delinquents. I know there’s a class distinction there.

California hardcore?  By the time you reach California, punk has been boiled down to its dark essence. California sort of becomes the final dark heart. Like with Black Flag, it’s "You’re either with us or against us."

JC: Where does punk stand today? Could you imagine a punk revival in the future?

Rombes: No, I don’t think so. Because I think ultimately punk is about destroying the past. Punk was about destroying the 1960s. Just like the Ramones destroyed the long concept albums into these short, fast songs about nothing.

And then California hardcore stripped down the Ramones by taking out the fun.

It would have to disavow punk. It would have to be something else. A true punk revival would spit on punk.

JC: How do you hope readers use this dictionary?

Rombes: My ultimate hope for any book I write, the ideal reader would be led down a new path. Even if 98% of that book doesn’t resonate, there would be that one thing that connected. I almost see it as a viral book -- leading readers somewhere outside of their preconceptions.

JC: What made you choose to include the songs that you did? It would be almost impossible to include all punk songs ever made, so how did you narrow it down?

Rombes: That was very arbitrary. I tried to do it in the punk spirit. I told myself I’m not going to have a rule. I’m going to listen and see what speaks to me and give it light. I took inspiration from Brian Eno. He had these cards with sayings on them called Oblique Strategies. He’d pull one out and the card might say “Never start a band rehearsal with a song you know,” and he’d go from there.  He’d follow that with whatever he was doing. That constraint produces a form of creativity.

JC: Punk bands tend to have meaningful, if hardcore, names. Like Savage Voodoo Nuns. Do you have a favorite name you came across? A favorite lyric?

Rombes: Oddly enough, the Weirdos is a band I came across while writing this book that I didn’t know much about. They have this song called “Happy People.” It is happy people, but, boy, is it a savage song. Really mean. That song has rattled around in my mind since I wrote the book. Of all the songs, that’s the one I can’t shake.

JC: Most interesting fact about punk that you weren’t expecting?

Rombes: I had no idea how hostile they were to the hippies. You look at the Ramones and they all had this long hair and what I didn’t realize is how in England, New York and Los Angeles, how they were all breaking with the hippies. Johnny Rotten hated the hippies. Both the Ramones and the Sex Pistols saw the hippies as an unfortunate detour from the heart of rock 'n' roll. They said: We are going to reject peace, love and understanding.

JC: Can you talk about New Wave a bit and how that fits in?

Rombes: Once the Sex Pistols went, against all odds, into Nashville and the Bible Belt, quickly the word “punk” became associated with anti-Christian, anarchy and nihilism. The record labels decided the word “new wave” was more palatable. I believe “new wave” began as a marketing term used to disguise.

JC: Alongside the release of the book, you and Continuum Books are holding a sticker giveaway. Sending stickers to fans who ask for them and asking the fans to paste their sticker up and pose with it in a photo. Can you talk about that a bit?

Rombes: The sticker contest is so fun. I’ve got people e-mailing me from Miami or North Dakota or Rio de Janeiro. People write to me saying: Send me a few stickers and I’ll put them around town. That connection to readers is precious to me. That’s the essence of this project. They’ll tell me their story: I was a punk. I went to the first Ramones concert. It is the ultimate fantasy for an author to connect with the reader.

-- Lori Kozlowski

Photo: The Ramones.

Comments

[Road cat]

The NEW UPDATED EDITION of "On The Road With The Ramones." With new pages, photos and info on what's been happening to the legacy of the Ramones since 2003.
This is a MUST-HAVE book for all Ramones fans. Based around the story of Monte A. Melnick who was the Ramones tour manager (and much more) throughout their entire career (1974-1996, and 2,263 live shows). It's an inside look from the people who were actually there witnessing and experiencing all the extreme highs and lows of one of rock's greatest bands. The book is packed with interviews from the Ramones and many many more people who where very close to the band. There is over 250 photographs and pictures of memorabilia Monte collected along the way. Buy it, read it and then revisit their albums. You'll never look at the Ramones in the same light.

[Chrisso]

It's funny how this cat spent four years researching and writing about punk rock and how he ends up so wrong about the subject philosophically, no? (I guess that's kinda "punk rock" tho': dedicating your life to a pursuit, fail AND get paid.)

[tedgrant]

the thing about old punk bands versus recent punk bands, isnt the speed or volume or snotty attitude. the songs were simply better and more catchy back then. musicians with limited skill (punks) can only figure out so many chord progressions. The originals were better.

nobodys going to come up with complex progressions like pete townsend to elevate their songs from the herd

[Matt]

Punk isn't dead.

[ripper]

@Chrisso
excellent analysis --- LOL

[Lurch]

punk is about stripping away all the corporate and government BS. As long as that BS exists NEW punk bands will sprout up to reclaim rock n' roll's roots. This guy spent years studying punk and says no revival coming? got news for you- punk does not need a revival, because it never went away. There are new bands in all subgenres of punk forming and releasing material every day. Anybody who says differently is out of touch with reality. Get out there into the underground. See for yourself. If you cannot find it, then you must have grown up and become a square;(to use a hippie term you can understand without a dictionary).

[Bruce]

Why would someone who clearly hates punk (despite a claim to the contrary) want to write about it? My two cents:

Punk was a reaction to Disco and 70's pop -- which was nothing but fiddling during a fire -- not the "hippies", whatever that means musically (it certainly can't mean the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.) Hence The Damned's "Disco Man" and the portrayal of Punk and Disco in the Spike Lee movie "Summer of Sam". Not one mention of the breakdown of the British economy in the 70's, the bankruptcy of New York City, or the gas lines in Los Angeles. I recognize that the author is an English professor, but I doubt the history department lies so very far away.

Moreover, Punk has roots in a broad range of music. As Mike Ness puts it,

"I’ve always described Social Distortion as starting out as a punk band but along the way we grabbed everything we could from American roots music and incorporated it into our sound because I saw a connection from that kind of music through punk…being working class music. And music being of rebellion and revolution, I saw the connection of punk music going all the way back to the 20’s-the depression era, blues, jazz, rockabilly, country…all that stuff. In other words, I grew up with the Beatles and the Stones and then I heard the Pistols." from http://www.musicpix.net/home/content/social-distortions-mike-ness-punk-rocks-painted-cowboy-interview-and-live-photos

Finally, the dear Professor's characterization of Black Flag is way off. Henry Rollins has been an articulate voice for reason and common decency for some time. Greg Ginn played a very innovative instrumental and video show which I saw in Iowa City not too long ago. Joe Strummer described a Punk as "someone with exemplary manners." If this description fits anyone, it's Black Flag.

[TOC]

Nothing against this author - At least he admits he wasn't into punk while it was happening, but rather took on this book project as some sort of research/discovery piece - as such he is bound to get some things wrong and overlook crucial elements etc. He gave it his best shot, but so much of this ground has already been covered, and covered better, by people who already KNEW all this stuff based on a life lived to the punk rock soundtrack...

If you want to get into punk rock archeology, there are plenty of better books to spend your money on, such as:

"PLEASE KILL ME - the uncensored oral history of Punk"

and

"Our Band could be your Life"

Gabba Gabba Hey !!

[Coats]

Someone will always have to have their perfectly laid out descriptions of music as art and demonstration spit and trounced upon. Whether it be the post punk or new wave movement in the 70's-80s, riot grrrl in the 80's, the new DIY movement or the DHR movement of the 90's, situationalist punk, etc, there should always be someone willing to destroy someone's view of what punk and music in general can mean, what it can change; especially to those that think they have it down. There's no one that needs smacked around more than an aging punk.

[JJ Flash]

Joe Strummer was never a punk. He was a well-brought-up middle class boy who, after he left private school, wanted some street cred so he joined a punk band.
Er, what were they called now?....

[Mr. Peligro]

I'm sorry but TRUE PUNK is dead, everything else are just a bunch of wannabes, poseurs and dare I say EMO sounding crap trying to tap into a movement that's long moved on which was the catalist for radical thoughts of Anarchy and Government. The "Future be Damned" attitude from an era of a doomed generation either it by the H bomb or something else. We Punks back then didn't just half heartly open the door we kicked that door of conventionality down from its hinges and stepped into a dark space with no clear path whatsoever! and made it our own. As Frank and Johnny used to say "We did it our Way"!!!

[Larry]

JJ flash, didnt you read the legal terms for posting a comment, "If you are under 13 years of age you may read this message board, but you may not participate", i say this as you'd have to be under 13 to make such a comment, and possible from the mid west. whats next, will you ask what were they called of the beetles (sic)??

[koerb]

JJ Flash: Where do you get your bio info on Strummer? He was in boarding school with his brother and away from his parents. His brother died as a teen. Strummer played as a street musician and worked as a grave digger. Not the profile of a privileged lad. He was invited to join a punk band by Mick Jones. Strummer and The Clash are still one of the most influential bands ever. Rancid is directly influenced by them, as were Good Riddance, and many other bands. Punk means doing what you want, not what your record company wants, or anyone else. The Clash's songs were an in-your-face front to the status-quo and the values of the middle/upper class. "I'm So Bored With the USA."

[koerb]

Oh yeah, my favorite book about the scene is Rollins' "Get on the Bus."

[SteveM]

I'm writing in defence of JJ Flash. I am a 45 year old Londoner who was 13 years old when it was all happening in London. Joes Strummer came from a very priviliged background and spent time at a finishing school in Switzerland. He hid his background and in fact lied about it for a very long time. This does not take away from his musical contributions but he was still a bit of a fraud.

As for why punk occurred at all in London, yes the place was very run down at the time with many problems, also mainstream radio and TV considered Emerson Lake and Palmer the height of musical excellence and the most poplular band was the Bay City Rollers. When faced with Emerson Lake and Palmer or the Bay City Rollers some people just chose to take existing music trends such a Doctor Feelgood a whole lot further.

In London most punk bands did not even listen to other punk bands but instead listened to reggae. I'd be interested to know how much reggae is mentioned in this book.

Any book like this written by someone who was not there at the time to experince it is bound to be of limited value

[Faith]

Have a listen to The Bad Shepherds if you want a refreshing take on classic punk........

[hdimig]

Why don't the Stooges ever get listed as a pioneering punk band? It is always the Ramones or Sex Pistols.

[Mugger]

@koerb: The book is called: "Get in the Van"

[haroldh]

Anyone hear of the "Teddy Boys" in England of the 1950's? Punk British roots start very early and are related to the socioeconomic despair and anger of the establishment and governmental policies favoring the rich/wealthy. Not much has changed. Think also of Stanley Kubricks "1971 movie "the Clockwork Orange". Punk attitude has been around for a very long time.

[2Catz]

Whatever

[2Catz]

And yes the Stooges were 1st, and Southern California is still going (NOT EMO). yes Get in the Van is a good book.
What about Canada like DOA, SNFU etc? San Francisco etc there were many early scenes.
By the way author it is was not MOSH it was and as far as I am concerned still a SLAM PIT. No one said MOSH until the late 80's and that was when metal resurfaced and started having pits.

[Xiuy X]

It doesn't matter--Black Flag and its Mostly O.C. middle class followers were the death of the true meaning of the punk ideals--And Like their parents, who demand confrmity they launched a mutated Nazi style punk genration --That its lead singers grew up was nothing short of a miracle...check your facts--the record speaks for itself.

[warren america]

I'm sorry, but speaking as somebody who WAS around for the early days of (West Coast) punk, speaking for those of us who were immersed and engaged in it, as it was happening, we have no use for this kind of missed-the-party and missing-the-point research project. Professor Poseur here has researched punk from a bunch of 2nd- and 3rd- hand archival materials, old fanzines, and mainstream media articles. Despite the fact that most of the original participants are still alive and making plenty of noise. There used to be a quaint notion called "authenticity" which academics like Rombus know nothing about. My suggestion to the author: quit your teaching gig, blow up your TV and car, cancel your insurance policies and tear up your driver's license. Start a band, sleep on the floors of strangers, squat in abandonded buildings, and live on a diet of Top Ramen, cheap beer and methamphetamines for a few years. Shave your head, pick fights with redneck types, and do your own genital piercings. Then come back and tell us what punk is, ya dope.

[Marcos El Malo]

The death of punk was the day the Pistols set foot in the U.S. The Sex Pistols were a marketing scam put over on gullible people by Malcolm Mclaren to sell fetish clothing.

I'd like to also note the silly English class struggle bullshit appended to punk by the likes of Steve and JJ as being irrelevant to anything beyond their anglicized punk. The reason The Clash was and still is The Only Band That Matters was because they spoke to a universal struggle.

[Marcos El Malo]

Just to clarify: It's the petty class distinctions that is such a hobby horse among English wankers that is irrelevant.

[Jack]

Anyone studying punk needs to look at all the music movements of the 70s, everything from prog rock, metal, disco, even ska. I think the assessment that punk evolved as a reaction against the hippies is too simplistic. Punk reacted against anything they deemed "establishment": hippies, Queen of England, proper dress & hygiene.

Every musical movement can be viewed as a vehicle for rebellion of some type. For example:

hippies (antiwar, communal peace & love)
disco (hedonism - if anything is anti-hippie, it's disco!)
hip-hop (inner city rebellion)
techno (why play music when you can program computers to do it? revenge of the nerds!)... etc.

And punk is a musical "middle finger" to anything "establishment" in the quickest & loudest & simplest way possible.

The analysis of Black Flag & California hardcore as "boiled down to its dark essence" is off-base as well. If anything, one could say that the post-punk sound were the "dark essence" of punk: Joy Division & Siouxie & the Banshees come to mind.

California's punk is rooted in sun, surf, skate culture. It produced Black Flag, the Minutemen, and also the Vandals, the Descendents, and the Butthole Surfers. In many ways, California punk is even more fun. Sure there's teen angst, but after rockin' out, I'm sure the kids went and skated a few swimming pools or rode their BMX bikes to the beach...

[Economike]

uhm...punk rock, yes I vaguely remember doing something that left me with less teeth and uncomfortable sores on my lip back around 1977-79 or so...

[EmThis]

Opinions on the definition of "punk" -- vintage or current -- will always vary. As a 44-year-old female who thrashed hard through her teens in punk's hey-day during the late 70s and early 80s, opinions among punks back then were as sharp and furious as they were wide (and often fiercely territorial regarding So-Cal, Nor-Cal, D.C., NYC, Brit bands, thrash-rock reggae, etc.). Where passions run high in any "movement," such diverse perspectives should be no surprise, least of all to punks and those on the margins of society. Accept the differences, dudes, and stand tall by your own.

Moreover, the most hardcore of punks took their music and their rage under the dark clouds of the Reagan-Thatcher era very seriously. (One cannot possibly do justice to an "evaluation" of punk without recognizing the the reactions of non-conformist youth against the jackboot socio-political realities of that period.)

Indeed, the very "up yours" spirit of many of those hardcore, as opposed to "poseur," punks is what will never die (including my own). We have matured, yes, but at our core, our most fundamental ideals and attitudes have not changed, only sharpened. In our respective paths, many of us are still rockin' (if not thrashing) the boat. Just as, say, Joe Strummer would be, or Jello Biafra (S.F.'s Dead Kennedys) likely still is. As for other punks, I can't speak for them and won't claim to.

As for the class argument regarding Joe Strummer, please, folks, can't we pick our battles better? Simplistic attitudes and pigeon-holing were/are antithetical to the best of the punk "ethic." Obviously, some of us understood that point, and some did not. Primarily, however, anything that was stagnant, reactionary, self-bloated, and/or blindly worshipped was a natural target for punk angst.

Just so, among his greatest fans, Strummer is remembered for being one of the coolest, most open-minded, good-natured, salt-of-the-earth cats ever. Why quibble about his childhood, when what distinguishes him is his legacy: what he left us, and what he continues to inspire in generations still today, and with a heckuva lot o' heart.

(Also, like it or not, such is the complexity and richness of humanity that among the most beloved "revolutionaries" the world over have hailed from aristocratic or otherwise class-privileged backgrounds, even as cruds of all stripes hailed from poverty and vice versa. Che Guevara, anyone?)

So, whatever the extent of Strummer's class privilege as a child, his music, his words and his uncommonly infectious chutzpah live on. To paraphrase the Clash, "THAT'S the only thing that matters" (at least in this punker's humble opinion).

Cheers, folks.

- EmThis