Punk is and/or isn't dead

Crass | Soft Play | Off!

Punk rock's relative state of health has been a matter of contention for at least as long as 1978, when anarcho band Crass proclaimed 'Punk is Dead' on their debut album.

Coming just a year after Damned Damned Damned and Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, not to mention arriving before a further five Crass albums, the musical death of punk would appear to have been greatly exaggerated. 

Nonetheless, Crass certainly captured the death of certain interpretations of punk's revolutionary spirit and high-flung aspirations. 

"Schoolboy sedition backed by big time promoters / CBS promote the Clash / But it ain't for revolution, it's just for cash"

Less clear was their accusation that “punk narcissism was social napalm”, surely something any self-respecting street-walking cheetah would want to fill their heart with.

A counter rallying cry to Crass was duly supplied by The Exploited, with 'Punk's Not Dead', in 1981, though by then the original punk spirit had transfigurated into hardcore, post-punk, two-tone, UK82 and others.

More recently, this summer in fact, there was Soft Play with the raging irony of ‘Punk’s Dead’ and its defence of both the genre and their own (wise) decision to drop their original name of Slaves.

Punk and death have been on my mind since reading this bloated headline: Life in Camden's alternative punk community which is under threat from gentrification as the 'punk spirit is being left behind'.

On the one hand I’m perfectly aware of the kinds of newsroom cutbacks that only allow the thinnest level of coverage.

But on the other hand, the reporter might have mentioned that Camden’s also home to London’s only punk and hardcore record shop All Ages Records*, which this year celebrated its 20th anniversary and is where the picture at the top of this issue was taken.

Among my recent purchases at All Ages was Fucked Up’s One Day, in preparation for seeing the band, plus Off! and John (TimesTwo) – in Camden, no less – at the weekend.

The gig was part of Pitchfork Music Festival London and brought the impressive line-up to the 500 capacity Camden Underworld.

Opener John (TimesTwo) proved to have mastered the art of maximalising the sound a two-piece band can make. They put My Bloody Valentine guitars through a punk rock blender as the drums, played by the singing of the two Johns, take up the space of two instruments.

They have a trick of using the drums to explode into prominence midway through songs, opening new chapters in them, that was very effective – more so than I remember them being on record, so I’ll have to revisit their albums.

It’s my second time seeing Off! this year, after an in-store performance at Rough Trade East, and my third time in less than 16 months seeing Keith Morris front a band, having caught the Circle Jerks at Camden’s Electric Ballroom last summer.

Whichever band he's fronting, each time has been better than the last. And each time I’m struck by how mightily expressive he can be while moving relatively little. 

This time around the gig leaned heavily on newer material from last year's excellent Free LSD, whose complexity you get a sense of from watching bassist Autry Fulbright II, who previously spent nine years playing with …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead.

 ‘Slice of the Pie’, ‘War Above Los Angeles’ and ‘Kill to Be Heard’ blast by in their hardcore take on hard rock. Perhaps its around then that the person is carried aloft in front of the venue’s No Crowd-Surfing/No Stage-Diving sign.

It would not be the last and by the time Fucked Up take the stage there’s a fairly regular stream of them. ‘Queen of Hearts’ and ‘Normal People’ are highlights, and then it all properly kicks off in the encore for ‘Police’. All throughout singer Damian Abraham is a force of nature as he and the band push hardcore into new shapes.

All told there were napalm filled hearts aplenty on the Underworld’s stage that night, with punk spirit front and centre.

* Full disclosure, I set up and run the Twitter account for All Ages Records back in June 2020, when that social network was far less problematic and I wanted to help the shop when it was hit hard by the pandemic