The Philosophy of Punk: all anarchy, no music

Anarchy for the U.K. / It's coming sometime and maybe ...

But is it? Is it coming, this state of anarchy for the United Kingdom? Leaving aside the possibility that Brexit in the year 2018 is the horribly curdled version of Lydon's tongue-in-cheek prophecy, what was it all about, this punk "anarchy"? I'm asking this (unforgivably naive?) question after reading Craig O'Hara's The Philosophy of Punk: more than noise! 

Have you read it? I doubt it. And frankly I'm surprised I've read it either. It's possibly the worst-written book I've ever read. Sorry Craig, but this book was crying out for a decent editor. And maybe some assistance with doing some proper research as well. The Philosophy of Punk is littered with typos and syntactically painful sentences. It continually uses sweeping phrases like "Rebellion is one of the few undeniable characteristics of Punk" or "Punk has largely been composed by people who perceive themselves as misfits or outlaws in one way or another". In other words, a deeply-researched, nuanced look at the rise of an important cultural movement it ... isn't. It's more or less the anti-Jon Savage, the polar opposite of England's Dreaming, with its careful mapping of socio-political context, artistic sensibility, individual opportunism and music. The Philosophy of Punk is mostly about the US underground punk scene of the 1980s/early 90s, but says almost nothing about the music itself. It name-checks a few well-known bands (Fugazi, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Bikini Kill, D.O.A.), fairly frequently cites Crass, Chumbawamba and Conflict (seen, apparently, as the only worthwhile "English" contributions to politicised punk), but seems to just take punk music - in all its forms - as some sort of given. In fact the book isn't a book about punk music. It's about punk as a vehicle for political ideas, especially some form of DIY, quasi-anarchist lifestyle and philosophy. And here's the reason I stuck with it. Through the stodgy writing and through the ridiculous sentences (here on the pre-punk UK skinhead scene: "The Skins would go on raids, brutalizing, and sometimes killing, Pakistanis whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time" - what, just Pakistanis?). I stuck with it because the core idea in the book is interesting: what did/does punk facilitate in terms of politics, personal, movement-wide, even global? O'Hara takes nearly all of his source material from fanzines, mostly US ones and, to judge by the chunks he quotes, often pretty badly-written and shoutily polemical ones. But the topics really do matter: with its questions about consumerism, militarism, the environment, animal rights, women's rights, racism. Yet I find it hard to read stuff like "It's the same barbaric mentality which allows thousands of men to be slaughtered on the battlefield of war, just to benefit the filthy rich" (from a 1990 ALF compilation LP, apparently), not for the subject matter (which I'm in sympathy with) but because it's so crudely expressed.

And that's how it is with nearly all of O'Hara's book - it's like being inside the brain of a 17-year-old punk kid from California who's been reading Bakunin, but in a faultily-printed version which has got all the lines half-scrambled together. Even so, for all my (over-refined?) revulsion at the writing, the lumpen nature of the political analysis, and the ridiculous narrowness of the musical range, I'm still broadly supportive of The Philosophy of Punk. (OK, I may not seem it, but I am). Because, if as a result of wading their way through O'Hara's book, a few hundred - or a few thousand - people get interested in ideas of DIY culture and political anarchism, that's probably a good thing. And this is the paradox, in a way. Rotten and the Sex Pistols popularised anarchy for the punk masses of the late seventies, but what did that idea actually mean (if anything) to most people? Get pissed, destroy? Given that "anarchy" commonly means chaos and mayhem, that's surely all the song meant to most juvenile listeners. A swaggering juggernaut of a song with a fuck you, smash-it-up message. In fact, I think AITUK definitely is this, but also a playful mucking around with political anarchism as well ("I want to be anarchy/No dogs body", "I want to be anarchy/It's the only way to be"). The best line is "Don't know what I want/But I know how to get it", a nice bit of logical absurdism that sort of jump-cuts you out of the crushing reality of council tenancies and IRA bombings. Future dreaming ...

Around the same age as my hypothetical 17-year-old Californian punk, I was not so different. I was going through a phase of earnestly reading all the text on my Crass records (as well as the Dead Kennedys' sleeves and any other political punk stuff I got my hands on). Crass in particular really hit home - Gee Vaucher's artwork and Crass's drummed-into-your head polemics ("Anarchy and freedom is what I want"). A lasting impression. And it was somehow the same even with the more superficial politics of the Sex Pistols' first record. In other words, music and politics can sometimes fuse to create extremely powerful moments. And it's still one of the reasons I like music. I think it's a shame that O'Hara's book is so little interested in music (or good writing either, another important art form), but I still respect that the book is making a sincere effort to struggle with some big issues.  So, having now read The Philosophy of Punk and having (in honour of it today being exactly 42 years since its release) also just re-listened to the Sex Pistols' cheery little punk rock masterpiece, do I think anarchy is coming to the UK?  Er, I'll need to consult a few more books, but I think I can definitely say the answer is: maybe ...