Classic Rock Magazine
By Jo Kendall
SXe: what political punk rock did next.
If
rock’n’roll is your business – and business has tended to be pretty
good for the past 40 years or so – there’s little chance you will have
examined punk rock in all its angry, mutating glory. But if you’re
curious about the post- Pistols scene that drop-kicked punk into
hardcore, straight edge and the oft-perceived po-faced social activism
behind them, this book is for you.
It’s not a promising start;
the preface reads like an Open University textbook. But as soon the
progenitors of the new noise get their say the study comes into its own.
Through the manifestos of Minor Threat’s Ian Mackaye – patron saint of
straight – Refused’s Denis Lyxzen and even Fall Out Boy’s Andy Hurley,
the layers surrounding the movement and its faithful start to unfurl.
It’s still confusing, filled with socialist, anarchist, puritan,
feminist, vegan and radical queer ethics (sometimes all at once), and it
won’t be turning, say, Tommy Lee’s head any time soon, but Kuhn’s quest
to probe every niche to define the puzzling whole is a brave try. Less
‘get pissed, destroy’, more ‘use your brain, change the world’. And it’s
for all ages, too.
