Punk: The Final Phrase by Chris Sullivan and Stephen Colegrave
Printed by: Omnibus
Launch date: twenty third October 2025
Twenty-five years in the past, Sullivan and Colegrave co-wrote a guide referred to as Punk: A Life Aside. They’ve written this one with the advantage of many extra years of hindsight. And with that long-range perspective, they’ve chosen to deal with “our competition that punk is greater than only a musical style; it’s a tenet, a philosophy, a mindset and a way of life”.
Personally, I don’t suppose that notion is definitely contentious. I’ve at all times argued that punk is about perspective, not what you put on and even the music you hearken to. That’s, for instance, why Vivien Goldman’s guide Revenge Of The She-Punks is so wide-ranging.
Alternatively, I just lately joined a Fb group the place individuals appear to suppose that mohawk hairdos and moshpits make you “punk”. So maybe it does want saying.
Nonetheless, you possibly can take it too far. Did Socrates invent punk? Clearly not. However he’s the primary title in a barely tongue-in-cheek listing of “historic harbingers” – non-conformists from varied walks of life – within the prologue.
A few of them, like Little Richard and Keith Richards, are a bit extra believable as punk antecedents. However there’s a robust sense working by means of this guide that somebody did invent punk, and that individual was Andy Warhol. Maybe that’s extra contentious.
The 34 chapters begin with New York and circle again to it many occasions. You’re ten chapters in earlier than you get to the beginning of the London punk scene. That can also be lined intimately and is adopted by a number of chapters investigating what occurred subsequent.
There are quick sections on the inspiring scenes that grew up in numerous components of the UK and a bit on the much less inspiring subgenre Oi! (“a cautionary story”). The guide additionally seems to be at varied post-punk actions, together with rockabilly, the Blitz children, Two-Tone and punk-funk. The musical tour concludes with hip-hop, exemplifying the DIY punk spirit.
It’s undoubtedly complete, as you’d anticipate from a guide of over 600 pages. After we get to the precise UK punk motion that started within the late Nineteen Seventies, it’s attention-grabbing to notice that individuals got here to it from completely different instructions. The pub rock route and the artwork faculty route are well-known, however there are different, much less properly documented methods in, just like the “soul boy disco costume up scene” and the Welsh scene the place Steve Unusual originated.
Every chapter tells the story largely by means of quotes from these concerned (together with Sullivan and Colegrave themselves): scenesters and properly as musicians. They add as much as a intently detailed historical past, even when they don’t at all times help the authors’ case for punk’s countercultural credentials.
The authors have carried out quite a few interviews and likewise embody quotes from different sources that some readers would possibly discover acquainted. Should you’re already within the topic, notably when you’ve learn, for instance, Will Hermes’ Love Goes To Buildings On Fireplace (the New York angle), England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage (the London angle) or any of the varied punk memoirs on the market, you would possibly get a little bit of déjà vu. So I did marvel a bit about who this was for.
The authors contact on the truth that some individuals write PhDs on punk or make a residing lecturing about it, and I puzzled if maybe this quantity was truly meant for college kids to learn. It’s definitely an incredible primer for many who come to it with little earlier information. (There are some minor inaccuracies, however that’s to be anticipated in such an enormous guide.)
As for being “the final phrase”, properly, that’s a suitably provocative title even when it’s nearly definitely not going to be. However, given the quantity of labor and perspective that’s gone into this guide, let’s enable the authors to pose, only a bit.
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Punk: The Final Phrase is on the market in any respect good guide shops.
Phrases by Penny Kiley. You may learn her Louder than Conflict evaluations at her writer profile, and her archive of music journalism on Substack.
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