Punk has always meant much more than simply three chords.
It's a philosophy, a way of life – a force that supplies continuing inspiration across the arts and into everyday life. New book 'The Truth Of Revolution, Brother: The Philosophies Of Punk' essentially expands upon this premise, inviting figures who have been inspired by punk to discuss the movement and its meaning in their lives.
Featuring contributions from Mike Watt, Ian MacKaye, John Robb, Jeffrey Lewis and even Jón Gnarr (the former Mayor of Reykjavík) it's a fascinating book, packed with inspirational insights into what it means to live outside the norm.
Steve Albini contributes a full chapter, an interview that dwells on his first intersection with punk, how it changed his life and how it still shapes the way he approaches music. Here's a short extract…
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When I was a teenager and I first heard the Ramones, my friends and I thought they were hilarious. We thought they were inept and we listened to them as a talisman of my little group of friends. We listened to them because we thought they were absurd. Gradually over time there was something magnetic about that first Ramones album that made me play it again and again and again and somewhere around the 10th or 12th play I realised that it was actually the greatest record that was ever made and that actually that’s how I wanted to live my life – being a goofball with a bunch of my friends and writing offensive and absurd music.
What punk rock meant to me was that the parts of culture that had previously been dismissible, i.e. young people, crazy people, people on the fringes of society, people of abnormal behaviour, abnormal tastes, abnormal standards – those people had to be taken seriously now because they could do amazing stuff.
And punk was the first time where I thought that people who thought like me, people who had the same sort of background as me, the same sort of world view as me, were taking themselves and these preposterous notions of theirs seriously and they were expressing it.
During punk rock all of the anti-social, morbid and indulgent and borderline insane ideas were given vent… the effect that it had on me, very personally, was that it made me less judgmental of other people, it made me more willing to consider ideas that were not mine. Rather than disregarding ideas because of the source I had to consider an idea on its merits because, well, it turns out crazy people can do really clever and intelligent things.
It was a great moment for me of feeling I was valid, like the ideas that were in the back of my head, however goofy or morbid or weird or inappropriate, maybe I should take those seriously… this just became the framework through which I saw the world… I just assumed that everyone has moments where they imagine cutting the throat of a neighbour.
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Punk changed the whole world for me. Punk changed all of my friends. Everything that I do with my life. This studio. All of this that I am doing for a living. Everyone I know. Every significant friend I’ve ever had. Every significant life experience that I have had, I owe that to the Ramones. Without any question whatsoever, all of those things that I got to experience, all of my moments in my love life, all of my creative moments, all of my professional accomplishments, every single thing that I did in my life has to do one way or another with me hearing the Ramones and deciding they were great.
All of those people that abandoned those core principles that all of us identified with when we were deeply involved with punk at the time, even people who have totally abandoned those principles, they know they’re there. And while they were still cognisant of them and acting on those ideals, they accomplished things and those things have survived. There is any number of people that put out great records and then later on turned into Republicans or those born-agains or whatever; those records are still kicking around and those records are still awesome, and are still inspirational. There’s any number of people who misread punk as a thing and they got lost on a tangent of ideology. Because of punk, that tangent of ideology or politics or whatever they are proselytising, now has a spokesman for it that it wouldn’t have had before.
A friend of mine described punk as a brilliant flash of light. Very few people were there at the spot where that flash of light happened, but it illuminated everything and cast really long shadows. For people like me that were dazzled by that light it really did change everything about the way you saw the world… punk rock still has the effect of clearing the table of all the bullshit.
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Punk was evidence that people outside of your immediate peer group, or friends, don’t matter. If they have an opinion on you and your peer group and your circle of friends, you are your own barometer. You and your friends know what’s cool and what isn’t cool, or what is and what isn’t fun, what’s an asshole move and what isn’t an asshole move. You have to trust your instincts about that stuff and not worry about external yardsticks, because you are the one that’s living this life experience from which you derive this philosophy that you want to be consistent with. Other people that have an opinion about it from the outside – fuck all those people! They’re not in the room at the time.
If you’re following a train of thought, that train of thought will guide you in a lot of different places and give you ammunition or give you a structure for how to live your life. And if you want to live a life consistent with that structure because you are enjoying this train of thought or this mania that you’re riding then you shouldn’t worry about what other people outside have to say about it. Say like you have an unconventional relationship with someone you love, it’s like – fuck off! Or you have an unconventional approach to money. They don’t get to have an opinion on it.
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Order your copy of 'The Truth Of Revolution, Brother' HERE.
