Punk: The Final Phrase by Chris Sullivan and Stephen Colegrave
Revealed 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 angle, 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 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.
Nevertheless, you would take it too far. Did Socrates invent punk? Clearly not. However he’s the primary identify in a barely tongue-in-cheek listing of “historic harbingers” – non-conformists from numerous 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 powerful sense working by this guide that somebody did invent punk, and that particular person was Andy Warhol. Maybe that’s extra contentious.
The 34 chapters begin with New York and circle again to it many instances. You might be ten chapters in earlier than you get to the beginning of the London punk scene. That can also be coated 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 elements of the UK and a piece on the much less inspiring subgenre Oi! (“a cautionary story”). The guide additionally seems at numerous 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 count on from a guide of over 600 pages. Once we get to the precise UK punk motion that started within the late Seventies, it’s fascinating to notice that folks got here to it from totally 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 gown up scene” and the Welsh scene the place Steve Unusual originated.
Every chapter tells the story largely by 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 embrace quotes from different sources that some readers would possibly discover acquainted. In case you’re already within the topic, notably should you’ve learn, for instance, Will Hermes’ Love Goes To Buildings On Hearth (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 dwelling lecturing about it, and I puzzled if maybe this quantity was really supposed for college kids to learn. It’s definitely an ideal primer for many who come to it with little earlier data. (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 virtually definitely not going to be. However, given the quantity of labor and angle 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 out there in any respect good guide shops.
Phrases by Penny Kiley. You’ll be able to learn her Louder than Battle opinions at her creator profile, and her archive of music journalism on Substack.
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