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The purpose of this study is to understand the subcultural and commercial overlap that exists in the physical signifiers conspicuously co-opted by attendees and artists at Fest, a punk rock festival held in Gainesville, Florida. Contemporary punk rock does not exist in an insular space, shielded from the influences of popular culture, current events and mass media. Rather, this intersection of subculture and popular culture offers valuable perspective on how punk fans' relationship to commercial culture remains a significant influence in this space today. This participant observation study investigates the co-opted and reinvented signifiers evident in this subcultural space at the 2022 festival, looking at a range of festival elements such as band merchandise and performances as evidence of this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines two recent memoirs by punk musicians, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry by Justin Pearson and The Spitboy Rule by Michelle Cruz Gonzales, and asks how do these works rethink the value and function of community in punk and what might be involved in recognizing friendship as something that can structure punk around altogether different operations than a notion of community presently does? The article contests a popular and scholarly perception that punk is best appreciated as a distinct community of outcasts, a view that justly recognizes that punk is much more than a failed social protest. Gonzales and Pearson challenge the assumption that punk offers a community for marginalized individuals, documenting the routine discrimination they faced from punks who prioritized uniformity and idealized norms of white male heterosexuality. Their memoirs examine how punk sometimes replicates the discriminatory social norms the authors encountered outside of the subculture and thus these works explore the limits of interpreting punk as a separate community. As an alternative, Gonzales and Pearson test out expressions of punk friendship that retain some of the optimism and sociability of punk while also remembering the centrality of relations of power that condition any practice of living with others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines women's experiences in the punk scenes of Tallinn (Estonia) during the late Soviet (1970s–80s) and the initial post-Soviet period (1990s–2000s). The author is interested in how women perceived their identity inside those scenes and in relation to mainstream culture, as well as in the role of Tallinn's urban space in scene creation. The article places a particular emphasis on examining the consistency in women's experience of those scenes in the context of a society that witnessed the crumbling of Soviet rule. Theoretical background for the article is provided by subculture and gender studies. The material for analysis is drawn primarily from in-depth interviews with members of the subcultures concerned but also includes data from participatory observation and personal experience. In interpreting the data, the author has combined qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis (including context analysis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viking-rock grew out of the diminishing Swedish punk scene in the early 1980s and is lyrically linked to British Oi! and the far-right 'Rock against Communism' (RAC) scene. Previous research on Viking-rock either emphasizes the genre as a cultural expression of the Swedish white power milieu of the 1990s or as a product of the skinhead subculture. However, critical analyses of Viking-rock lyrics are scarce. This study emphasizes the development of the Other, as expressed in the lyrics of Viking-rock flagship band Ultima Thule from the 1980s to the 2010s, in relation to the development of the political party the Sweden Democrats. The lyrics are analyzsed from a comparative literature perspective that draws upon both borealism and the concept of the subaltern as an anti-intellectual voice of power as well as the idea that long-lasting political change is preceded by cultural change. The results suggest that Ultima Thule's lyrical Other has gone from vague to distinct characterization. Ultima Thule also makes use of self-victimization when confronting journalism and intellectualism, much like the Sweden Democrats' own view of themselves as political outcasts. Ultimately, the lyrics toe the party line and describe nationalists as an outcast Other in an alleged, politically correct, discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the main discussions around punk aesthetics and the culture of commodification, tracing the methods of punk's canonization back to the two early films that have been considered within the documentary genre and described as 'transparent' mainly due to their low-budget conditions: The Punk Rock Movie (Don Letts, 1978) and The Blank Generation (Amos Poe and Ivan Král, 1976). As this 'punk cinema' canon stems from a larger standardization of punk history, this article firstly presents the criticisms around the dominant narratives in the discourse around punk and the role of subjectivity in their writing. Drawing from deconstructive perspectives that give room to think about the relationship between punk and representation beyond the canon, I look at the ignored aspects of early punk cinema that involve a reliance on the cinematic referential codes of the heteronormative gaze, echoing the media sensationalism of the time. The Punk Rock Movie's overlooked cinematic engagement with the media representations of punk and The Blank Generation's approximation to cinema verité are both analysed in relation to how they textually engage with the 'immediacy' of the environment. In this analysis, the abundance of concert and archive footage comes across as an overriding effect in the reception of the two films. Expanding on Stacy Thompson's adoption of Roland Barthes's textual analysis in theorizing punk cinema, this article reconnects with what is actually 'self-reflexive' about these films as well as aiming to uncover how their overshadowing sense of transparency is constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the editorial and photographic content of Vox, a Dublin magazine that covered the musical, artistic and sartorial tastes adopted by various subcultures on the streets of the Irish capital. Edited and published by Dave Clifford between 1980 and 1983, the magazine featured local and international post-punk bands, performance artists, writers and those on the scene. Particular reference is paid to the role of markets, such as the Gaiety Green, the Ivy and the Dandelion, as sites for the exchange of both ideas and goods. The creativity and self-expression embodied within these photographic spreads is analysed. The article draws upon scholarship on fanzines, subcultures and fashion and also augments the author's research into the subject with additional oral histories and interviews conducted with market traders. National and international networks are traced and tracked with especial reference to London and Berlin as sites of culture and experimentation. It concludes with a look at the street as the locus for creative expression through music and clothes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some scholars suggest that subcultures are a thing of the past, that we are living in a post-subcultural era, an ethnographic exploration of psychobilly shows that subcultures still play a meaningful role in contemporary society. Since its development in the early 1980s, psychobilly has uniquely blended punk, rockabilly and horror to express countercultural values and aesthetics. Like the groups studied by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1960s and 1970s, the psychobilly subculture is characterized by consistent and distinct values and tastes, a shared sense of collective identity, committed involvement over a long period of time, and relative independence from the culture industry. By participating in this obscure but strongly defined subculture, psychobillies not only express their resistance to mainstream culture but also find strategies to manage and improve their lived experience. As a result of their committed subcultural involvement, psychobillies feel alive, or, rather, 'undead', a metaphor made all the more symbolic because of the subculture's interest in a host of undead creatures. This article thus argues for continued application of subcultural theory to understand the significant meaning and impact of participation in non-conformist communities today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing the Noise: The Second International Conference of the Subcultures Network, University of Reading, Reading, UK, 6–7 September 2018 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of excessive drinking in a subcultural scene of Russian punk. Based on an extensive long-term field research, our work demonstrates that the loss of identity and withdrawal from the projects of social identification, usually associated with excessive consumption of alcohol, might not explain The article suggests that in certain situations drinking, disgrace, alcoholic exploits and 'heroic incompetency' surrounding the consumption of alcohol cause the opposite effect, through which individuals do not dissolve their identity, but rather construct alternative agency recognized and enacted within a subcultural collective. On the basis of the observations of drinking practices in three geographically defined Russian punk scenes and reflections on these practices produced by the members of the scenes, we conclude that excessive drinking can be seen as a specific response through which members of the subcultural groups construct alternative agencies and reclaim their political subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journey from proto-punk to punk occurred at high speed in many of London's satellite towns. Among these, the town of High Wycombe in the home counties offers a narrative that can trace an involvement in the earliest stages of that journey as a result of performances by leading British punk group the Sex Pistols. This article explores three Sex Pistols-related events that are used to map three clear phases of the proto-punk to punk transformation. The first wave notes the blurred lines in the fluid symbiotic relationships between proto-punk in London and its satellite towns. Drawing on Crossley, I note that London's networked punk 'music world' was reliant on both cultural commuters and activities in the provinces. I propose a further, fluid notion of transivity that shows the relationship between local and 'commuter' punks is needed. The second wave shows the damaging aspect to High Wycombe's punk identity as, due to its close proximity to London, many if its key actors would move to the capital as soon as they were able to. They escaped from the 'boredom' of High Wycombe – the commuter town – to go to the 'excitement' of cosmopolitan London to live their dreams. The third wave reveals a moment of class and regional cohesion, through which a High Wycombe Punk identity emerges during the summer of 1977. This occurs among the first and second wave participants who remained and the newer school-aged punks. Finally, the article introduces the local punk terrain beyond the timeline under investigation. Here, regional and class difference became played out through violent interactions between Wycombe punks and skins, and punk scenes from other towns. Here we see the assertion of 'Wycombe Punk' as a type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with musician Miguel Debattista, is presented. Debattista discusses the musical approach of punk rockers Batteries Not Included in Malta and their sources of influence. He elaborates the development of punk subculture in Malta between the late 1970s and the 1990s and his philosophy about punk music.

Punk's embrace of autonomous, do-it-yourself artistic production has been widely documented as a key element of the punk 'explosion'. At times, however, the rhetoric has exceeded the actual practice and the boundary between DIY authorship and professional production has become blurred. Although much early punk visual material was indeed raw, rough and ready, and often appeared to run counter to any kind of formal aesthetic criteria in respect to design or taste, it was also widely the product of trained graphic designers and illustrators with a keen awareness of the appropriate visual language required to reflect a new, self-styled, anarchic and polemical subculture. Even many of the celebrated 'do-it-yourself' punk pioneers relied on access to professional services for reproduction, including printers, prepress art workers and specialist record sleeve manufacturers. However, much like the punks who chose to make their own outfits, rather than buy 'official' clothing from the burgeoning punk boutique (and mail order) market, some fans and enthusiasts attempted to create their own punk graphics or decided to adopt a naïve model of détournement to adapt or personalize jackets, shirts, school bags, scrapbooks and even record sleeves within their own collections. These home-made artefacts can be viewed as products of subcultural participation and belonging, as an individual's response to punk's call to arms and as markers of possession. They may also help us to better understand an underlying, distilled and unmediated interpretation of punk's 'natural' visual language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to analyse the data collected from ten in-depth interviews with participants who attend Fest. Fest is a punk-centric music festival that has taken place in Gainesville, Florida since 2002 and draws fans from around the globe who attend to see over 300 punk bands perform in a dozen venues throughout the city. The literature applied to this study focused on the significance of music scenes and experience economies as they relate to Fest and the festival-attending experience. Interviews were conducted with participants who attend Fest regularly, or perform in bands that have played Fest in recent years. Data collected from these interviews confirmed participants' motivations for attending the festival, while examining the specific characteristics of Fest that influence participants to return year after year. Participants also commented on the community-building aspect of Fest, which was often viewed as a significant incentive for participants who attend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on the hardcore punk scene in the mid-1990s' United States and its clothing consumption experiences. Within the fashion cycle, various subcultures often consume and produce products in unique manners and timeframes and with assorted motives. Although many subcultures use a centralized retail space for scene development, hardcore did not; rather it produced and consumed the style utilizing the concepts of do-it-yourself (DIY) and bricolage. Qualitative mixed methods of data collection included literature research, social media discussions, open-ended survey participation, interviews and location visits. The results obtained indicate that for this subcultural community, the process to produce and consume was an integral part of meaning being imbued in the products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, the Metropolitan Museum hosted an exhibition of punk-inspired fashion entitled Punk: Chaos to Couture. The exhibition emphasized the 'spectacular' elements of the subculture, reflecting a narrative that dominates accounts of punk dress, whereby it is presented as a site of art school creativity and disjuncture with the past. This is an important aspect of punk dress, but photos of bands and audiences reveal that there was much more to British punk style in the 1970s than what was being sold on London's King's Road. Heeding calls to trouble the boundary between the spectacular and the ordinary in subculture studies, this article looks at the ordinariness of 1970s British punk dress, arguing that we should understand punk dress in terms of mass-market commodities, not just customization and designer fashion. Many of these commodities were worn by the skinheads who preceded punk, and this article explores this subcultural continuity by focusing on the role of the Dr. Marten boot and the Harrington jacket in first- and second-wave British punk dress. It does so through discussion of the Cockney Rejects, the 1979 BBC television dramatization of the Sham 69 album That's Life and the Undertones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music scenes are sites of a reciprocal relationship that exists between physical spaces and the bodies that occupy them. Music venues, as centralizing nodes within local punk scenes, are integral spaces of socialization in which scene participants actively produce identity, culture and community. If scene participants and the physical venues that they congregate in are engaged in such an active, inter-dependent relationship, then what happens to those participants and their established communities when music venues are shut down? When faced with the dissolution of these gathering places, punk scene participants utilize various spatial tactics of rebuilding or transforming space, even if only a temporary measure to address the demands of the community at large. These strategies may work within established legal guidelines or outside them in an attempt to escape the threat of surveillance. However, additional difficulties may occur within the scene itself when participants disagree not only on which strategy is best but also what type of space most closely conforms to their understanding of what exactly 'punk' is or should be. This article conducts a comparison of such strategies via two case studies located within Vancouver, British Columbia: (1) The Cobalt Hotel; and (2) The Safe Amplification Site Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on neo-liberal policy exposes its influence across economic, political and social lines, scholars often fall short of examining policy implications for minority groups and youth cultures. In the 1970s and 1980s, New York City officials and elites challenged years of Keynesianism that represented prevailing post-World War II economic ideology, prompting underfunded municipal programmes and rising unemployment that subsequently ensured racial segregation. New York City's condition weighed heavy on youth cultures that arose from urban declension in a city recognized as an international tastemaker. While punk, in the 1970s, in part symbolized the city's cultural influence, by the early 1980s, hardcore, punk's more aggressive successor, became a reaction to New York's waning state. Hardcore represented youth culture navigating economic and social conditions in an era of postwar de-industrialization and rising conservativism. Nonetheless, hardcore bands' pleas for unity in defiance of neo-liberal policy fell short of offering an escape to the pervasiveness of economic conservativism that purportedly ensured New York's rise from economic crisis. Like business in Lower Manhattan, whiteness defined hardcore. Highlighting the shortcomings of New York hardcore through examination of its whiteness in spite of calls for inclusivity reveals a deep-seated relationship between youth culture and prevailing economic and political policy. Pleas for inclusiveness met a scene that limited participation through maintaining racial exclusion. Ultimately, hardcore's inclusive ethos failed to materialize into the physical space the subculture occupied, exposing a subcultural representation of the segregation that marred New York beyond the scene's walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of punk and its subgenres is, in part, a history of DIY spaces and the influences these spaces have on punk and the DIY scene at large. A better understanding of the ethical guidelines of DIY venue organizers would provide insight into the practices of these venues by providing a glimpse into the motivating factors behind these actions. To approach these issues, this article utilizes existing research to examine current DIY practices and their relation to punk culture, as well as defining the primary ethical guidelines in the DIY scene, followed by new research into these issues. In this study, I spoke with eleven different organizers of long running DIY spaces around the United States. These interviews revealed an overwhelming drive to construct DIY venues as inclusive spaces that provide resources for a variety of communities. In practice, however, the heightened sense of alignment between organizations and artists reported by the participants alludes to a lack of diversity amongst the viewpoints of those within these communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the early history of punk in London and its subsequent evolution in the provincial towns of the Great Britain. Topics discussed incvlude information on the relationship between Russian punk and excessive alcohol consumption among youth-subcultures; examines the relationship between gender and alternative music through the experiences of female musicians; and the information on the ethical issues associated with the film making.

This article draws on a growing number of studies of punk that use Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field. It is argued that this approach has considerable advantages over the concept of subculture because of its emphasis on the diversity of punk practices. The concept of subculture tends to assume a shared culture and a consensus about punk values. The article argues that punk should be considered as practice within a field. This research strategy is illustrated by interviews with two contemporary bands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does 'punk scholarship' mean in practice? This is a question that many of us wrangle with on a personal as well as a critical, academic level. How can punk be academicized? What is gained - and what is lost - in that process? Why does punk need to be studied? In relation to which fields of enquiry, which bodies of knowledge could, or should, it be examined? What kinds of people undertake such study, and what motivates them to do it? What is their connection to the subculture itself, as observers, analysts or contributors? What constitutes a critical study of punk in any case - many punk followers are interested in the history of the subculture, sometimes to the tiniest detail, but does that make them 'scholars' or merely active participants (or punk nerds)? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Post-punk' has been defined in a variety of ways. Some commentators view it primarily as a reaction to punk, with distinct musical features. Others debate whether its organizing principle can even be found in a stylistic unity. Ryan Moore has described how punk responded to a 'condition of postmodernity'. In his view, postmodernism represented an 'exhaustion of totalizing metanarratives'. Within this context punk used bricolage to 'turn signs and spectacles against themselves, as a means of waging war on society'. For the purposes of this piece post-punk is broadly considered a response to punk's response to postmodernism. This article addresses how manifestos came to be used in various examples of post-punk music. It uses, as a starting point, Julia Downes' description of musical manifestos in riot grrrl as a 'key way to define ... ideological, aesthetic and political goals'. A series of chronological case studies investigate the key components and aesthetics of the post-punk manifesto, which include the use of lists, itemization and direct second-person address. Given Simon Reynolds' view that post-punk 'tried to make politics and pop work together, but failed', this article examines whether the goals of post-punk manifestos were at all achieved. Were manifestos in the main, promotional or self-motivating exercises? Do recent 'post-punk' manifestos, such as those by the band Savages, both acknowledge and move beyond the limitations of earlier models, to increasingly alter how people consume music? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of this study, published in Punk & Post Punk 2.2, positioned punk within an historical and cultural context in relation to humour, comedy, satire, profanity and the absurd. This second part of the article places further emphasis on the visual identity of punk, post punk and hardcore groups, and on the graphic strategies employed by designers to reflect an underlying satirical core at the heart of the subculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the personal and social impact of predominantly musical subcultures. It looks at the extent to which in particular punk and post-punk subcultures have validated ideas of self-design. 'Self-design' here is a term analogous to S. Greenblatt's (1983) concept of 'self-fashioning', referring to the capacity some influencers have to validate the subversion of cultural norms in aspects of personal presentation. After briefly contextualizing the historical and cultural backdrops such groups and individuals have emerged from (e.g. mod, punk, post-punk, New Romantic and Riot Grrl) this article will examine the social norms such figures can subvert. It will then go on to focus upon more extreme examples of self-design using the case study of Richey Edwards. The article concludes by drawing from recent research to investigate where self-design ends and self-harm begins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Punk. The sound of the streets, the music of protest, the shouts and screams of the disadvantaged and oppressed, the anguished howl of the underdog, the unclean and the unworthy. Political, agitational, provocative, subversive, awkward, uncompromising, angry and aggressive. Descriptions and definitions of punk - the subculture, the music, the fashion, the lifestyle, the language and the politics - inevitably revolve around stereotypes and generalizations. Consensus, where it can be found, tends to exemplify those same regularly repeated clichés, and important elements become further hidden from view. The use of humour in punk - lyrically, within musical phrasing, song construction and live performance and in the graphic language of punk sleeves, fanzines and posters - is often overlooked. This article comprises two parts. This first part seeks to outline the ways in which humour - through rhetorical codes and strategies including satire, pun, metaphor and metonymy, hyperbole, invective, irony, sarcasm, allegory, exaggeration, parody, repetition, self-deprecation, profanity and the embrace of the absurd or ridiculous were and are central to an understanding of punk language and practice. Within part two of this article, to be published in Punk & Post Punk, further emphasis will be placed on the visual identity of punk and hardcore groups, and on the strategies employed by designers to reflect and support punk's satirical core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an understanding of complex cultural flows between Eastern Europe and 'western' punk music. This flow is investigated through examples of East-West interactions that take places within the punk subculture in The Netherlands. The article argues that these exchanges complicate the notion of mimesis of 'the West' by the rest of the world, whilst highlighting a continued structural inequality in this relationship. In doing so this article builds upon debates that appear in the special edition of Punk and Post-Punk, 'Punk - but not as we know it: Special issue on punk in post-socialist space'. Drawing on interview data from fieldwork conducted in The Netherlands, the article highlights aspects of cross-cultural exchange: the circulation of political ideas amongst Europe's left wing, the migration out of Eastern Europe following the fall of communism, and the political economy of punk as illustrated through bands' touring practices. These aspects are situated within debates around the local/global in a punk scene, centre/periphery inequality in Do It Yourself (DIY) culture, and rhizomic forms of influence within cultural flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If humankind truly is 'born a rebel', as his Grand Inquisitor declares, perhaps no author's body of literature is more appropriate to read in the context of punk and postpunk than Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose Notes from Underground alone has been appropriated countless times by those who consider themselves members of this specific popular music subculture, Pussy Riot aside. Beyond Notes, however, much of Dostoevsky's thought seems to have found a home in punk culture, the intellectual predilections of which are well-documented. With assistance from M. M. Bakhtin and psychoanalysis, then, this article explores a trio of scenarios in detail to show how and to what effect Dostoevsky has emerged in punk historically: first, as an attempt to grapple with punks' shame in Being; second, as a touchstone for the often crippling 'intensified consciousness' this shame produces; finally, and following The Brothers Karamazov, as a way of approaching the killing of all manner of master signifiers or 'fathers' who generate, even in absence, this shame and paralysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss how punk has become an instrument manifesting disloyalty to the modern German state and an expression of one's German Democratic Republic (GDR) origin. I show how punk reflects the perception of an East/West polarization and the popular understanding that Germans of GDR origin are second-rate citizens. Thus, although couched in the anti-state rhetoric of a punk ideology, the behaviour of East German punks, I suggest, reflects attitudes shaped by the experience of the post-socialist transformation, economic restructuring and increasing unemployment. My research demonstrates that the development of youth culture should be viewed within a larger context of general socio-economic processes. According to the theories of CCCS, subcultures are rooted in their parent culture and share the same experiences and social contradictions. Research in East Germany helps to broaden this approach and indicates that youth culture under certain circumstances can also share and reflect the ideologies and norms of a parent culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its very emergence, there has been a particular connection between the punk and football scenes in the UK whether demonstrated by those in the limelight (Cockney Rejects' links with West Ham's Inter City Firm, for example) or simply ordinary young people whose lifestyles and identities were articulated simultaneously through punk and football fandom. Tracing the history of punk scenes in Croatia confirms the significance of these cross-scene connections. In the 1980s football stadia became appropriate(d) places for pogo dancing while punk concerts became home for football fans who joined the dancing adorned with scarves and team colours. In the 1990s, however, the shadow of war fell across football stadia, which became virtually'no-go' areas for punks while football fans became unwelcome intruders to punk concerts. The punks' place on the terraces was taken by skinheads who, by the mid 1990s, had become a visible and aggressive element who engaged in frequent violent clashes with punks. This article, based on research of the punk scene in the cities of Zagreb and Pula, traces the complex and changing connections between punk and football in Croatia over the last three decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory article, the rationale for considering punk in a particular spatial and temporal setting (post-socialist societies) is outlined. It is argued that such an enterprise is more than a process of filling in the 'local colour' of punk studies; the study of punk in places usually considered marginal to its inception and development can disrupt established canons of knowledge in a productive way. In this vein the article considers the relative usefulness of classic understandings of punk (as aesthetic movement and as site of 'semiotic guerrilla warfare') in the socialist and post-socialist context and explores key tropes in understandings of punk (punk and politics, authenticity and mimesis, and subcultural and everyday life) in relation to the particular expressions and lived experiences of punk in post-socialist societies. The article also introduces the project on which contributors to this special issue collaborated and the case studies (in Russia, Croatia and eastern Germany) from which the empirical material in the articles is drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On a hand-made poster in the 'HQ' of the Biker Club in Vorkuta, the three members of the local punk band Mazut loom out of the darkness, their faces comically distorted and framed either side by the words 'Fucking noise' and 'Mutant-morons'. This article traces tropes of 'mutation', 'mutant' and 'moron' within the music, performance and self-identifications of punk scene members drawing on interviews, field notes, audio and visual recordings gathered in autumn 2009 in the city of Vorkuta in Russia's far North. It explores the 'mutant' hero as it appears in facial and bodily gestures, song lyrics and everyday talk on the punk scene. It considers the meanings attached to the practice of 'mutation' among scene members as well as the unarticulated role it plays in signalling a boundary crossing between 'everyday life', marked by heavy physical and emotional demands of routines of paid employment and family lives, and 'subcultural life', as a practice of the enactment of (a consciously temporary) freedom from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The punk movement between 1976 and 1984 represented a distinct period in the development of youth culture in Britain. Whilst certain principles paralleled earlier generations and youth movements, they were married to an outspoken ideology that declared 'anyone can do it' and an overtly nihilistic attitude toward the music industry itself. This led to a situation where 'anyone' did, in fact, 'do it', and the resulting deluge of independent, do-it-yourself records, concerts and networks of activity threatened to seriously disrupt the commercial stability of the popular music business, albeit temporarily. This period also saw a shift in power from traditional centres of production to smaller, independent hubs of operation with often clear local agendas. The relationship between popular music, geographical location and notions of authenticity is long-standing though discourse on the subject has been largely overlooked in favour of a style and authenticity debate centred on youth cultures and subcultural groups (Hebdige 1979; 1988; Marcus 1989; Home 1995; Muggleton 2000). Although Jon Savage (1991) does make a case for the punk Diaspora from 1978 onwards, the process is still described as one-way in that authentic punk styles originating in London filtered out to the provinces. Much the same case was made by Dick Hebdige, who attempted to validate his own position regarding what he describes as 'originals' and 'hangers-on', while Dave Muggleton adopted a more pluralistic attitude towards individual modes of 'authentic' participation. However, these models are all based on the perceptions of those involved in subcultural groups, and the physical geography of their locations relative to a perceived 'centre' is not discussed in any detail. This article explores the relationship between punk aesthetics and graphic identities across the wider regions of the United Kingdom. UK punk has often been portrayed as London-centric, with an occasional 'nod' to a small number of other major metropolitan centres, such as Manchester or Leeds; but little attention has been paid to more local interpretations of punk and post-punk styles, or of the groups and clusters of individuals from further afield who responded to punk's initial call to arms to 'do it themselves'. Examples of punk output reflecting a connection to geographical localities and regional cultural histories are highlighted; and the sense that often small-scale local agendas operated alongside and in parallel to both national and international punk development is explored. This sense of local identity played out in record sleeves, lyrics, song titles, band names and graphic identities of groups and labels across the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will explore the gender politics of post-punk in Leeds in the early '80s. It links the brutalist architecture of the university (now listed buildings), with the rigorous sound of Gang of Four and Delta 5, and how that reflected the austere mood of the late '70s/early '80s. It will also look at how radical feminism flourished in a post-industrial city affected by the National Front, the Yorkshire Ripper and an aggressive male culture, and how it found a soundtrack in female post-punk bands like Delta 5 and the Au Pairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'punk' has become a highly contested and problematic label since its appropriation in the 1970s, when it was commonly used to describe music produced by many anarchic and irreverent bands. Subsequently, the term has been used to describe genres of fiction that juxtapose punk attitudes with cyberspace (cyberpunk), extreme gore (splatterpunk) or anachronistic technology (steampunk). Although originally coined ironically, steampunk is a particularly interesting case of the wider meanings of punk in terms of a DIY ethos and a rejection of social norms. Drawing on surveys and analysis of online discourses and presentations of self on the one hand, and the responses collected from in-depth interviews with steampunks on the other, we set out the ways steampunk has evolved into a performative style subculture associated with recognisable fashions and lifestyle accessories. Focusing specifically on fashion and music, we analyse steampunk as a subcultural constructor of identity, articulating complex discourses concerning gender and class. The pleasures of steampunk lifestyle are associated with the rejection of contemporary lifestyles and social mores, and a return to ingenuity, craftsmanship and invention, and a real-world acting out of imagined histories. Whilst the steampunk ethos revealed in the desire to reclaim clothing and technology is organized bricolage as opposed to the chaotic anarchy of punk, steampunk, like punk, rejects the norm, and makes a display of difference. The activities of the steampunk community not only intersect with punk and alternative music subcultures, but also exist in the intersections of subculture and fan culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on issue which focuses on the journal of "Punk and marginalized identities". Topics discussed include key is to analysis the history of subculture; mentions massive commercial success and highlighted the activities during culture resistance; and views of seminal punk designer, Jamie Reid on 50th anniversary retrospective exhibition which is the leading figures in punk art and design.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including authenticity, punk culture, and philosophy of the subculture.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the subcultural phenomenon of steampunk, a feminist appreciation of the post-punk scene in Leeds, England, at the turn of the 1980s, and the spread, development and meanings of regional punk design.