Jonathan Kulick, "The National Review of hardcore zines, Maximum Rock’n’Roll, ... ." Brilliant.
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Clause of the Day
02 Mar 2008 10:38 pm
Comments (25)
Unless I'm mistaken, National Review in the 1990s operated out of the same building that houses a rap magazine. I remember reading an article about this once. The irony was that the rap magazine actually made money, whereas the pro-capitalist NR depended on subsidizes from rich readers. The whole situation must have made for some awkward moments in the elevator.
I remember reading an article about this once -- does anyone remember.
Also, one of William F. Buckley's nephew's was interested in punk and National Review featured some surprisingly positive articles about punk circa 1977 or 1978. It is true that the raw nihilism of punk and punk culture's hatred of hippies is congruent with some forms of conservatism.
Take the skinheads blogging, take them blogging.
Somewhere in the archives I have copies of old MRRs - from the first dozen or so issues. I don't think Jonah Goldberg was ever a contributor.
I was pretty excited to read about the Iranian black metal scene! I had no idea!
Punks are hippies. If you don't know it, you haven't been in the scene much-- the most punk rock people you'll meet are often the biggest hippies (as far as their values, lifestyles, and beliefs-- veganism, anarcho-syndicalism, communal living, bottom-up community-oriented economies (or "do it yourself"), poly-amorism- the list goes on and on).
Punks "hatred of hippies" has more to do with "fake" or new punks-- or with the contrast between energetic punks who are ready to do something, or do something about something, and hippies who are worn-out (the left-overs who have shriveled away to being mere hedonists, caring about little outside of their own feelings anymore).
If MRR is like National Review, it's only in that someone who works on MRR is probably more likely to be an oldster, have a relatively sedate lifestyle/agenda and a steady job than someone who's involved with a more fresh and less-establish publication.
It's definitely hard to make generalizations about punk, but the one and only thing about punks I'd pick out as consistent with conservatism is tolerance of political incorrectness. Back in the old days (c. late '80 - early '90s), before my time, people in a lot of scenes were so tolerant and open-minded, they'd listen to what you had to say, no matter what it was. Definitely a very hippyish attitude to have.
That faded. Nowadays (or at least a little while ago) there were many otherwise-hippyish punks who were very intolerant of even jocular, throwaway, meaningless politically incorrect stuff, and very lockstep PC themselves (or at least, they were convinced that they were the few who had the taste to pick on the non-PC with some mockery of the non-PC, and had a double-standard of not being able to see it as a joke when other punks would do it).
I was pretty excited to read about the Iranian black metal scene! I had no idea!
Black Metal is everywhere nowadays, but I always find it odd that a genre of music rooted in fiercely anti-Christian ideologies can take root in places that are decidedly non-Christian (assuming that reactionary music is generally a function of one's surroundings).
Nah, MRR is the Commentary of hardcore 'zines.
Phrase of the day.
The anti-punk pose, of course, is even more annoying and bullshit than the punk pose.
Nah, MRR is the Commentary of hardcore 'zines.
What's HeartattaCk?
What's HeartattaCk?
Partisan Review.
That's not a clause.
There actually are a lot of ads in MRR. I can't say any of them are for the John Birch Society though, unless they've gotten into mail-order selling weird-looking clothes and obscure punk rock records.
Freddie wrote:
The anti-punk pose, of course, is even more annoying and bullshit than the punk pose.
And even more annoying and infuriating and bullshit than the anti-punk pose is the anti-anti-punk pose. **scoffs**
Anyway...
If only I could go back in time, and sell a $15 "How To Be A Punk" manual to all the rich kids who joined the scene in the '90s when they were like, 15 years old, and had just seen their first Green Day video (how these kids all got into punk). They'd eat it up, I'd make a ton of money, and I'd save punk rock in the process. It takes a rich person to have the special kind of arrogance required to believe their access has bought them the real scoop from the one-and-only (out of zillions of kids in the scene) person who can tell them what it really was like back in the day (most likely some semi-opportunist patronizing them, anyway), and what it's really all about, and that therefore they have the right to declare punk rock is, at all times, whatever they'd like it to be.
The punk of the late 1970s was very different from subsequent incarnations: there was a real strain of racism and anti-liberalism in some (not all) early punk bands.
One of the articles I was thinking about was National Review was "Pistol-Whipped" by Edward Meadows (the November 11, 1977 issue), which was a fairly early and surprisingly sympathetic account of the Sex Pistols. Another article was "The Cold War Sound" by John M. Buckley -- a relative I'm assuming -- from the November 9th, 1979 issue. This article celebrates the Ramones and other punk bands for writing anti-communist songs.
I'm going from memory in my description of these articles. If anyone has access to National Review's online archives, I'd love to re-read them to see if my memory is accurate.
Struhar beat me to it -- a clause is a sentence-like construction, with a subject and a verb.
That's not a clause.
Indeed. It's a noun phrase, "The National Review of hardcore zines", modified by an appositive noun phrase, "Maximum Rock’n’Roll". The previous sentence contains further examples of noun phrases and appositions.
To be more precise: a nonrestrictive appositive noun phrase
On the substantive issue, I have to agree with Spencer Ackerman: National Review is too ideologically diverse to be an analog to Maximum Rock’n’Roll. I think it would have been better to say "The Commentary of hardcore zines, Maximum Rock’n’Roll".
MRR did allow for diverse views, but those exceptions tended to be obsessed over through the dominant PC filter.
Everyone claimed to be some kind of anarchist, but they all had product to move. Just send $3 for their latest 7" or cassette!
It's interesting to listen to all the old punk rock that's available free from sites like 7" punk, something I learned today, killed by death, etc. Interesting because it's pretty anti-gay. Those attitudes have changed a lot since 1980, and that makes me happy.
The punk of the late 1970s was very different from subsequent incarnations: there was a real strain of racism and anti-liberalism in some (not all) early punk bands.
Wha--? You're making this up. There have always been some racist kids who hang out at punk shows, just like there have always been some racists hanging out just about everywhere. I can't say the scene has been at all tolerant of racist or conservative bands. Racist views aren't represented in songs except for in their own splinter of the scene featuring all-racist shows. Conservatives are limited to oi or skinhead bands that have the skinhead image, and not the racism, and range from being communists/anarchists to being mainstreamers, politically, who hold a few conservative views here and there, such as support for the death penalty.
Don't know what anti-communist Ramones songs you're talking about. There was an anti-Reagan Ramones song which is well-known, Blitzkrieg Bop. One original member of the Ramones was very conservative, but that's a very rare and very well-known exception to the punk-rock norm.
Interesting because it's pretty anti-gay.
It would be interesting to know what bands you're referring to and what lyrics, so you could be fact-checked.
For example, you may have been listening to a song that was supposed to be ironic. Or, you may have listened to a band that isn't at all influential and that people don't listen to nowadays.
I've listened to tons of punk, and I've always paid attention to lyrics- I can remember only one band, new or old, that used the word "fag" once, and the song didn't strike me as especially anti-gay. A lot of people, even those who consider themselves pro-gay rights, might use that word as an insult just because they know it would piss off the intolerant person they're using it on, not because they hate gay people or anything like that. If you heard the word "fag" used in a punk rock song, unless it was a band from that very insulated, punk rock splinter-scene I mentioned in my previous comment, it's most likely it was used more like that.
I remember one D.I. song that used the word "fag" once (it used it as an epithet to slight rich-kids, though-- it wasn't a song devoted to being anti-gay), and maybe a Murphy's Law or a No Redeeming Social Value song had arguably anti-gay lyrics like that, but I can't remember for sure.
Other than that, you'd be really hard-pressed to find any punk that anyone is listening to that includes anti-gay stuff, except for in a very small scene that is very isolated from the rest of the punk rock scene (people from the main scene don't attend the racist shows and (mostly) vice-versa, and for the most part non-racists don't hang out with racists or listen to racists' music- the exceptions are something like a handful of people in each state of the US).
There are some homophobic lyrics in old punk songs, although I will agree that most of that was repudiated later. For example, the Descendents, a band I LOVE, says "you f*ckin' homo" and "you f*ckin' gay" in "I'm Not a Loser" in a way that's pretty clearly meant to be insulting. The Descendents were/are pretty liberal in general individually and I'm pretty sure they've stopped playing the song live (when they play live these days) because of the lyrics. But a lot of the bands in the early to mid-80's were mostly comprised of teenaged boys and some of the music was almost casually homophobic in a way that teenaged boys of that era tended to be (at least far more than they do now). And of course, Bad Brains were pretty notoriously homophobic in real life, although I don't think that carried over to their lyrics--or their fans--in any real way (especially considering how liberal the DC scene was otherwise).
But, all that being said, you all are right that you don't really see those kinds of sentiments in punk music in general today and most if not all of the bands that had those attitudes then quite clearly do not now. Actually, when you do see the word "fag" in songs by later bands, it is usually pretty clearly used by gay or gay positive bands who are reclaiming the word and there are plenty of punk bands out there that are very pro-gay. Bands like Pansy Division come to mind. And yes, other than a racist scene that exists out there, punks tend to be very anti-racism and in fact, even in the sub-genres where there is some racism, there are groups that rose up to fight the more racist elements. For example, the SHARP skins--skinheads against racial prejudice--are pretty militantly anti-racism.
Of course, all of this is pretty off-topic from MRR, but I got a little carried away.
I think it's sad that people are still whining about Greenday ruining the punk scene. That was 15 years ago people. Today's punk scene has completely different bands to even worry about if you want to be part of that school of thought. However, also the deeply underground leftist punk rock community that is in such debate A) was indeed around in the late 80s and early 90s and B) has changed very little since Greenday .... in fact, I'd say Against Me would be the modern band for those kids to whine about because they did come from the anarchist scene and even released stuff in Plan-It-X and such. But that's a debate I have no interest in getting involved with.
As far as punk rockers who hate hippies, at least in the DC scene, there are sort of two separate punk music scenes. Both are very deeply underground, but one is far more apolitical than the other one. There are lots of non-poseur punk rockers who love to get drunk and rock out to punk rock, and some of them hate hippies. And then there are more peace-punk oriented punks who might fall into a far more hippie category. It seems like a lot of you are old and out of the loop. That's kind of a shame, as I'm 30, and still like to keep in touch. I don't have any interest wearing my Black Flag t shirt and reminicing on how much better it was in my youth.
Comments closed March 16, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Maximumrocknroll is kinda like the National Review, if you think of the typical MRRL reader as a Punk Rock dead-ender.
I'm typing this while wearing my Black Flag "Family Man" tee-shirt, mind you.
Posted by Kevin | March 2, 2008 10:56 PM