What is Punk?
PhD, English Literature (Lancaster University)
Date Published: 16.09.2024,
Last Updated: 16.09.2024
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Definition
Exploding onto the scene in the 1970s United States and Britain, punk wasn’t just another music genre: it was an attitude, a style, a way of life, a countercultural expression against the status quo. Marked by its raw sound and anarchic spirit, punk offered a platform to society’s misfits who railed against conformity and commercialism.
Punk refers to a subculture that centered around anti-establishment beliefs, individual expression, and DIY aesthetics, encompassing music, fashion, art, and other forms of popular culture. Punk artists critiqued capitalism and the commodification of music and art, seeing many popular musicians as “sellouts” to the label.
Punk is typically divided into two waves: the first beginning around 1974 and ending 1977/78, and the second wave beginning in 1977 and declining in the mid-80s. Though it is often debated as to whether punk developed in the US or Britain, Pete Lentini points out in “Punk's Origins: Anglo-American syncretism” (2003) that “punk evolved as a hybrid musical genre and subcultural entity through a process of American and British cultural exchanges.” Examples of this exchange include The Ramones playing in London in 1976 and The Sex Pistols 1978 US tour. The clip below shows a commentary of the Sex Pistols first concert of the tour:
As with many subculture and youth movements, punk emerged as a response to a combination of social, political, and economic conditions in the US and Britain, and was shaped by the cultural landscape at the time.
As Mindy Clegg writes,
[Punk] arrived globalized into a pessimistic world. The 1960s began in hope and ended in despair. The 1970s were darker, more violent, and more uncertain. (Punk Rock, 2022)
Mindy Clegg
[Punk] arrived globalized into a pessimistic world. The 1960s began in hope and ended in despair. The 1970s were darker, more violent, and more uncertain. (Punk Rock, 2022)
In the 1970s, the economic crisis, mass unemployment, and political scandals such as Watergate caused working-class youth to become disillusioned (see Keith W. Olson’s Watergate, 2016). Many young people felt disconnected from mainstream and traditional values and felt out of place in a world that seemed to afford them limited opportunities. Moreover, the economic stagnation made punk’s DIY aesthetic, a rebellion against consumer capitalism, all the more appealing and accessible:
As the American culture industries commercialized youth entertainment and leisure, young people pushed back by seeking to create their own, more democratic cultural spaces. Youth were consuming the goods offered by the commercial culture but also looking to make them more responsive and truthful to their lives. (Clegg, 2022)
This guide will explore the key influences on the punk movement, highlighting some of the most famous protopunk bands, before going on to explore the key players on the punk scene in the US and Britain. We will then cover the other aspects of the subculture, such as fashion and art, and explore why punk was so controversial.
Influences on punk
In Punk Rock: An Oral History, John Robbs writes,
Punk rock as we know it was a culmination of everything that had gone on in pop before, from the electric filth of hard rock, the wild abandon of the Stooges [...] even the experimentation of prog rock and Seventies underground art rock. Punk didn’t just come from the love of Ziggy Stardust. It came from everywhere: from the Beatles to glam, from Iggy to the Sweet, from pub rock to Captain Beefheart. Punk pulled these strands together and when it all finally coalesced in the UK in 1977 it went straight to the heart of the establishment. (2013)
John Robbs
Punk rock as we know it was a culmination of everything that had gone on in pop before, from the electric filth of hard rock, the wild abandon of the Stooges [...] even the experimentation of prog rock and Seventies underground art rock. Punk didn’t just come from the love of Ziggy Stardust. It came from everywhere: from the Beatles to glam, from Iggy to the Sweet, from pub rock to Captain Beefheart. Punk pulled these strands together and when it all finally coalesced in the UK in 1977 it went straight to the heart of the establishment. (2013)
The immediate influences on punk came from protopunk bands such as MC5, Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the Kinks. Many of these bands were inspired by blues musicians, garage bands, and reggae.
Blues music, with its raw sound, repetition, and prioritization of emotional intensity, contributed to the iconic sound of the Stooges and MC5:
The blues-oriented musicians who set the stage for punk rock, such as Iggy Pop and the MC5, were white baby boomers deep into the sixties counterculture, trying to find ways to play rock music that were up to the social and political demands of the times. (Evan Rapport, Damaged, 2020)
Evan Rapport
The blues-oriented musicians who set the stage for punk rock, such as Iggy Pop and the MC5, were white baby boomers deep into the sixties counterculture, trying to find ways to play rock music that were up to the social and political demands of the times. (Evan Rapport, Damaged, 2020)
As Rapport goes on to explain, punk musicians drew upon “the most powerful and the most unrestrained” examples of blues music, naming these particular sounds “raw power” (2020). Some bands such as Velvet Underground, Rapport notes, adopted elements of blues music “while separating their music from the most racially marked qualities of American blues styles, in effect “whitening” their sound, a strategy they enacted for authenticity” (2020).
The removal of punk from its blues roots has established and upheld the belief that punk was pioneered by white musicians for white audiences:
Yet at the same time, the blues has had a paradoxical and ambiguous relationship to punk. While the blues remains at the core of punk’s musical style, it has disappeared as punk’s acknowledged foundation. It is even common to claim that punk music is devoid of the blues rather than rooted in it (Rapport, 2020)
In fact, not only was punk inspired by Black music like the blues and, as we will see, reggae, there were numerous Black punk musicians who are often overlooked in the punk canon. This includes punk bands Bad Brains and Pure Hell, and the lesser-known protopunk group Death.
A further influence on proto-punk bands were US garage bands of the late 1960s who were predominantly “a response to the British Invasion of the American market” and included bands such as The Yardbirds, The Who, and the Troggs (Roy Shuker, Popular Music Culture, 2022)
Punk was also heavily inspired by reggae, as explained by Don Letts, known as “the DJ that single handedly turned a whole generation of punks onto reggae” (BBC, Don Letts' Culture Clash Radio, 2024):
[...] these white working-class kids were presented with this Jamaican music coming out on the Trojan label. I guess the reason they were drawn to it was that it was the only rebel sound around. It was totally anti-establishment. (Quoted in Robbs, 2013)
As Roger Sabin writes,
punk bands like the Clash, the Slits, and ATV incorporated reggae rhythms into their music, while the compliment was returned in other ways by reggae artists: Bob Marley’s ‘Punky Reggae Party’ summed up the alliance by saying that both punks and rastas were ‘rejected by society’ and ‘treated with impunity’, yet were both ‘protected by their dignity’. (“‘I Won’t Let That Dago By:’ Rethinking punk and racism, Punk Rock: So What?, 2002)
Roger Sabin
punk bands like the Clash, the Slits, and ATV incorporated reggae rhythms into their music, while the compliment was returned in other ways by reggae artists: Bob Marley’s ‘Punky Reggae Party’ summed up the alliance by saying that both punks and rastas were ‘rejected by society’ and ‘treated with impunity’, yet were both ‘protected by their dignity’. (“‘I Won’t Let That Dago By:’ Rethinking punk and racism, Punk Rock: So What?, 2002)
However, as Sabin explains, this “union could be a superficial one” as some punk bands “refused to touch reggae” and their fans reacting with outrage when reggae musicians played on the same bill as punk bands. (2002)
The punk music scene
CBGB
In December 1973, Hilly Kristal set up his New York club CBGB (country, bluegrass, and blues) “in the hopes of attracting those kinds of bands" but "ended up playing host to the first-wave punk bands in the city instead” (Clegg, 2022). CBGB hosted, and in some cases launched the careers of, seminal punk stars such as Television, The Ramones, Misfits, Blondie, and Patti Smith.
CBGB attracted patrons that included John Holmstrom, Ged Dunn, and “Legs” McNeil who were inspired to create Punk magazine, a homemade fanzine, after which
journalists applied the punk rock label to New York groups as diverse as the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, the Dead Boys, and the Talking Heads. A movement was born. (Sharon M. Hannon, Punks, 2009)
Sharon M. Hannon
journalists applied the punk rock label to New York groups as diverse as the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, the Dead Boys, and the Talking Heads. A movement was born. (Sharon M. Hannon, Punks, 2009)
Key elements of punk music
So, what characterizes punk music? One of the defining features of punk music was that it was a raw and unpolished sound: anyone, irrespective of formal musical training, could pick up a guitar and have a go. Nick Crossley likens the style of punk music to rock, but argues it is a more aggressive genre:
It was (electric) guitar-based and akin to rock but inflected with an aggressive and confrontational attitude uncommon in much rock, such that lyrics, whose content was often provocative, were spat out or shouted rather than sung, to musical accompaniment which had a harsh timbre and often a jagged, choppy rhythm. (Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion, 2015)
Nick Crossley
It was (electric) guitar-based and akin to rock but inflected with an aggressive and confrontational attitude uncommon in much rock, such that lyrics, whose content was often provocative, were spat out or shouted rather than sung, to musical accompaniment which had a harsh timbre and often a jagged, choppy rhythm. (Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion, 2015)
Punk bands often recorded live albums, rejecting the idea of manipulated studio music. In One Chord Wonders, Dave Laing writes,
The instrumentation on the records was exactly that of the bands in performance, and the ‘positioning’ of the instruments and voices ‘mimed’ that of the group on stage. The sound was ‘set back’ from the listener, with the voice either buried among the other sounds, or placed only a short way in front of them. The contrast is with the mix on records by ‘intimate’ vocalists, where the singing combines softness with volume in an ‘unreal’ way. When punk voices are loud it is because the singer is shouting, not because of production technology. (2015)
Dave Laing
The instrumentation on the records was exactly that of the bands in performance, and the ‘positioning’ of the instruments and voices ‘mimed’ that of the group on stage. The sound was ‘set back’ from the listener, with the voice either buried among the other sounds, or placed only a short way in front of them. The contrast is with the mix on records by ‘intimate’ vocalists, where the singing combines softness with volume in an ‘unreal’ way. When punk voices are loud it is because the singer is shouting, not because of production technology. (2015)
Punk bands often emphasized they were performing live on these tracks by having a non-sung line, as Laing explains, such as Johnny Rotten’s laugh on the song “Anarchy in the UK”:
Iconic punk bands
As Hannon explains,
Most of the early New York punk bands sounded nothing alike. Some were still learning to play their instruments and write their first songs, but to their audience it didn’t matter how well they played. The point was that they were playing what they wanted to play, not what they thought would be commercially successful. (2009)
What follows is a brief overview of some of the most influential punk bands in the US and the UK.
The Ramones (1974-96)
Many consider The Ramones to be the first official US punk band, and one of the most influential on the punk movement more broadly. The band, however, did not use the “punk” label themselves:
Early punk bands, including the Ramones, who considered themselves a rock-and-roll band, openly rejected the punk label out of hand. Still, the label helped critics identify a new genre, distinguishing it from the past, drawing attention to the scene. This allowed a new movement to surface and boosted the market—it sold records. [...] nobody played a greater part in proclaiming, defining, or pushing punk forward than the Ramones. (Donna Gaines, Why the Ramones Matter, 2018)
Donna Gaines
Early punk bands, including the Ramones, who considered themselves a rock-and-roll band, openly rejected the punk label out of hand. Still, the label helped critics identify a new genre, distinguishing it from the past, drawing attention to the scene. This allowed a new movement to surface and boosted the market—it sold records. [...] nobody played a greater part in proclaiming, defining, or pushing punk forward than the Ramones. (Donna Gaines, Why the Ramones Matter, 2018)
The Ramones consisted of members Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy Ramone (the Ramone “family” name was a stage name and the members were not related.) Some of their major hits include “Blitzkrieg Bop” (1976) and “I Wanna Be Sedated” (1978).
The Sex Pistols (1975-78)
The Sex Pistols, with vocalist Johnny Rotten, along with Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, are considered by many to have started the British punk movement with their song “Anarchy in the UK” (1976). The band were often provocative and incensed many in the mainstream media, and their three years in the spotlight were marked by censorship, obscenity trials, and calls to ban their music. Their 1977 hit song, “God Save the Queen,” was particularly contentious:
“God save the Queen/she ain’t human bein’,” the song was immediately banned. Censorship in a democracy is often the quickest way to spread a provocative message. Alert for controversy, the BBC had the Sex Pistols on TV to discuss the song. They were warned against vulgar language, which was like ordering an infant not to drool. Rotten spat and used four-letter words, which again, banished the group. (Wayne Robins, A Brief History of Rock: Off the Record, 2016)
Wayne Robins
“God save the Queen/she ain’t human bein’,” the song was immediately banned. Censorship in a democracy is often the quickest way to spread a provocative message. Alert for controversy, the BBC had the Sex Pistols on TV to discuss the song. They were warned against vulgar language, which was like ordering an infant not to drool. Rotten spat and used four-letter words, which again, banished the group. (Wayne Robins, A Brief History of Rock: Off the Record, 2016)
This controversy helped to get the single to Number 1 in the UK and was a defining moment in punk history. However, their notoriety was not without consequences:
Fear of malicious behavior got the Sex Pistols blackballed from almost every city and town in the United Kingdom: they had no place to play. And that enabled the Clash — a more serious, musical band — to stake its place as the great band of British punk, and more. (Robins, 2016)
The Clash (1976-86):
The Clash, consisting of Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, Terry Chimes, and Nick Headon, was one of the most iconic bands of the era. Their self-titled debut album was described by the British magazine Mojo as “searingly evocative of dreary late ’70s Britain, but still timelessly inspiring” (quoted in Robins, 2016). Their highly influential album London’s Calling was released in 1979, cementing the band’s legacy (see below for the music video for the title song of the album).
Unfortunately, as Robins highlights “internal dissension, and the contradictions of succeeding as capitalists while pitching a socialist worldview caused them to gradually disengage” (2016).
Bad Brains (1977 - 1995, 1998 - Present)
The all-Black quartet Bad Brains consisted of Paul Hudson (HR), Gary Miller (Dr. Know), Daryl Jenifer, Early Hudson, and Sid McCray. The band are considered to be highly significant in the punk rock canon. As Rapport explains,
Not only did they broadcast punk’s relevance to people of color at a time when the style had become almost completely associated with white people, they also resisted the categories and emerging stylistic norms of “hardcore” and “punk,” once again uncovering the tensions in punk between conformity and nonconformity. Bad Brains introduced a wide variety of personal and philosophical ideas, including some that directly conflicted with those of other punks, and they made crucial musical innovations that reshaped punk rock as a vehicle for expression. They spoke to a wide variety of people, and their music stressed virtuosity and multiple rhythmic approaches. (2020)
Bad Brains reformed in 1998 and are still active. To learn more about the band’s journey, see Greg Prato’s “Punk, purity, and positive mental attitude: The turbulent tale of Bad Brains” (2020).
Alternative fashion
The punk movement is not only iconic due to its music, but also for its style:
Popular perception, at least in academic critiques, presumes that punk is rooted in the music. But, in fact, the music and fashion have always developed simultaneously and in conjunction (which is true of many subcultures beyond punk). The early days of the punk scene were a blend of fashion, music, politics, hooliganism, youth culture, avant-garde artists, intellectuals, societal outcasts, and the generally disenfranchised. (Monica Sklar, Punk Style, 2013)
Monica Sklar
Popular perception, at least in academic critiques, presumes that punk is rooted in the music. But, in fact, the music and fashion have always developed simultaneously and in conjunction (which is true of many subcultures beyond punk). The early days of the punk scene were a blend of fashion, music, politics, hooliganism, youth culture, avant-garde artists, intellectuals, societal outcasts, and the generally disenfranchised. (Monica Sklar, Punk Style, 2013)
In the 1970s, punk fashion was about rejecting mainstream trends, expressing individuality, and, often, being provocative. Staples of the punk wardrobe included:
- DIY clothing (particularly patches sewn onto clothes or garments embellished with safety pins and studs)
- Leather jackets
- Plaid shirts
- Combat boots or Dr. Martens
- Vibrant hair colors, mohawks, or spiky hair
- Dramatic or unconventional makeup
An example of this style can be seen in Figure 1 below.
Fig. 1. "Punks HITS Festival Morecambe 2003"
Punk style today has moved away somewhat from its DIY, anti-consumerist roots, with pre-distressed clothing available in numerous alternative stores. As Sklar explains,
Today punk style—a visual identity once so hard fought to create—can be purchased with a quick click of a mouse. Does the countercultural identity imbued in this attire also arrive in the bubble-wrapped package on one’s doorstep? This is a contemporary challenge to the integrity of punk style. [...] Contemporary involvement in the punk subculture does not require the investment of time or energy it did for previous generations. This inspires the question: Is dressing like a punk enough to be punk? Maybe. Maybe not. Punk remains an esoteric and amorphous concept.
(2013)
Performance art
Punk had a clear place within the art world, even before it was established as a clear movement in the 1970s. For example, legendary pop artist, Andy Warhol’s multimedia exhibit “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” in 1966 and '67 included performances from The Velvet Underground.
Punk art was largely inspired by the Situationists, an avant-garde group who worked to create “situations” (such as protests, events, riots, and art) as a way to disrupt capitalism and commodity culture. Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols “embraced the Situationist ethos of the 1960s” and worked with ex-Situationist group King Mob (Clegg, 2022).
An example of this ethos at work within the punk movement can be found in the performance group COUM Transmissions:
COUM intertwined performance with pain, sex with greed, and entertainment with violence to maximize the effect of their work. They explored whether crime could be art, and whether art could be a crime. [...]. And then—as though taken from the playbook of Warhol’s Factory ensemble—they used controversy, press agitation, and transmission feedback as media in themselves. (Marie Arleth Skov, Punk Art History, 2023)
Marie Arleth Skov
COUM intertwined performance with pain, sex with greed, and entertainment with violence to maximize the effect of their work. They explored whether crime could be art, and whether art could be a crime. [...]. And then—as though taken from the playbook of Warhol’s Factory ensemble—they used controversy, press agitation, and transmission feedback as media in themselves. (Marie Arleth Skov, Punk Art History, 2023)
Their ICA exhibition Prostitution in 1976 was highly controversial, featuring framed pages from pornographic magazines, bloody tampons inside of an old art deco clock, sex toys, and a box of maggots turning into flies:
[...]The ephemerality of the materials was countered by the series title TAMPAX ROMANA—which might be seen as a hint at the decay and downfall of empires, as the Pax Romana is used to describe the time right before the Roman imperial crisis in the third century AD. The TAMPAX ROMANA series thus expressed the artists’ derisive view of the contemporary state of the former British Empire anno 1976. (Skov, 2023)
David G. Torres referred to this as “the first punk exhibition” (“PUNK: Its Traces in Contemporary Art,” 2016; Quoted in Skov, 2023).
Punk performance art continued well beyond punk’s heyday and into the twenty-first century, as we can see from the Russian feminist group, Pussy Riot:
Pussy Riot was bold, clever, obscene, and—most jarring for Russians—feminist. In today’s Russia, what could be more punk than radical feminism? The group’s very name is a challenge to norms of sexual propriety and linguistic purity (Eliot Borenstein, Pussy Riot, 2020)
Eliot Borenstein
Pussy Riot was bold, clever, obscene, and—most jarring for Russians—feminist. In today’s Russia, what could be more punk than radical feminism? The group’s very name is a challenge to norms of sexual propriety and linguistic purity (Eliot Borenstein, Pussy Riot, 2020)
In 2012, the group entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and began to perform for their music video, incorporating the posture of prayer into their dancing. They were quickly chased out by security guards. They combined this footage with other footage recorded at another church and released this online as seen below:
The performance led to the arrest of three of the five women: Mariia (Masha) Alyokhina, Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina (Katya) Samutsevich. Samutsevich was freed following an appeal, but the others were sent to prison for two years, attracting much media attention. (For more on this, see the collection Pussy Riot!: A Punk Prayer for Freedom, 2012)
Moral panic
Due to its rebellious nature and anti-establishment rhetoric, punk derived a lot of criticism from those who felt these artists, musicians, and followers in general were promoting anarchy and violence. Media sensationalism surrounding the punk movement called into question its impact on young people, who they argued would become violent if they engaged in this subculture. As Hannon writes,
British punks deliberately cultivated a violent, deviant, disgusting image. As a result, most Americans first learned about punk through sensationalized newscasts about the antics of the Sex Pistols and their fans, who pierced their cheeks with safety pins, wore ripped clothing, vomited in public, and cursed on television. (2009)
The media attention such stunts attracted, however, played right into the hands of the movement:
Punk was a carefully orchestrated media hype, the latest version of a tried-and-true scenario of pop outrageousness that elicited a hurricane of Establishment hysteria—a hysteria that was in many ways as cynical and self-serving as the provocation. Yet punk uncovered resentments, fears, hatreds and desires so fierce that their emergence threatened the legitimacy of the social order and revealed its tyranny. (Greil Marcus, “Punk (1979),” 2014)
An often-cited example of this is the infamous interview with the Sex Pistols on Thames Today with Bill Grundy in 1976. In this interview, after a salacious comment made by Grundy to Siouxsie Sioux (of Siouxsie and the Banshees), guitarist Steve Jones chastizes Grundy, using profanity on live TV:
it is difficult to believe [Jones] did not—at least to some degree—anticipate the hypocritical consternation that would follow. In the wake of the scandal about the use of offensive language on TV, Bill Grundy was fired, the Sex Pistols’ next concerts were canceled, and their music was banned. One caller to the overloaded complaints line claimed he had been so offended by Jones’ swearing that he had “kicked in the screen of his new £380 television set.” (Skov, 2023)
The Daily Mirror ran the story with the headline “The Filth and the Fury,” later used by the band for promotional material.
Is punk really dead?
For many, punk was pronounced dead at the Sex Pistols last show in January 1978. Others argue that punk held out a little longer until the second wave ended around 1984. For some, however, punk has persevered into the modern day, adapting with the times, rather than vanishing from the scene altogether. We can see this with the emergence of pop-punk and the enduring popularity of bands like Green Day, and in the globalization of punk (for more on punk’s manifestations around the world, see Russ Bestley et al’s edited collection Punk Identities, Punk Utopias [2021] and Jian Xiao’s Punk Culture in Contemporary China, [2018]).
While punk has adapted to the digital age, it has still (mostly) retained its ideology. As Flor Guzzati argues in her article “The Renaissance of Punk Rock,”
In a world increasingly dominated by algorithms and influencers, punk offers a refreshing antidote – a celebration of authenticity and creativity. From zines and DIY recordings to guerrilla art installations and underground shows, the contemporary punk scene thrives on innovation and self-expression. It’s a reminder that true artistry lies not in conformity or commercialism, but in the raw, unfiltered expression of the human experience. (2024)
Guzzati goes on to explain how punk today still rallies against injustice, particularly focusing on LGBTQ+ rights and anti-racism.
Of course, the increasing commercialization of punk bands has resulted in some feeling the movement has been diluted. Stacey Thompson has addressed how punk in the digital age can still produce authentic art in an increasingly commercial world:
Punks have not separated themselves wholly from capitalism—try as they might to replace the commodity with other objects, including the gift— but they do demonstrate that, even in the increasingly global economy of the early twenty-first century, an earlier form of capitalism can flourish—the enterprise instead of the corporation. If abolishing capitalism through punk rock is the ultimate aim of punk, and it is, then punk has so far failed, but as a process and a project committed to transforming consumers into producers, it succeeds on a daily basis. (Punk Productions, 2012)
Stacey Thompson
Punks have not separated themselves wholly from capitalism—try as they might to replace the commodity with other objects, including the gift— but they do demonstrate that, even in the increasingly global economy of the early twenty-first century, an earlier form of capitalism can flourish—the enterprise instead of the corporation. If abolishing capitalism through punk rock is the ultimate aim of punk, and it is, then punk has so far failed, but as a process and a project committed to transforming consumers into producers, it succeeds on a daily basis. (Punk Productions, 2012)
Punk continues in the modern day to offer a space of refuge for those who value individual expression and want to speak out against the status quo. Whether in the form of political rhetoric, music, literature, fashion, or any other form of art, punk still preserves, relentlessly defying anyone who suggests it is no longer relevant.
Further reading on Perlego
A Cultural Dictionary of Punk, 1974-1982 (2010) by Nicholas Rombes
Going Underground: American Punk 1979–1989 (2016) by George Hurchalla
Sex Pistols: The Inside Story (2011) by Fred Vermorel and Judy Vermodel
Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007) by Dan Ozzi
White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race (2011) edited by Stephen Duncombe, Maxwell Tremblay
What is punk in simple terms?
What are some examples of punk music artists?
Who are some key punk figures?
What are some examples of famous punk songs?
Why was punk so controversial?
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https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/bad-brains-changed-punk-history/
Thompson, S. (2012) Punk Productions: Unfinished Business. SUNY Press. Available at:
https://www.perlego.com/book/2672243/punk-productions-unfinished-business
Xiao, J. (2018) Punk Culture in Contemporary China. Palgrave Macmillan. Available at:
https://www.perlego.com/book/3485790/punk-culture-in-contemporary-china
PhD, English Literature (Lancaster University)
Sophie Raine has a PhD from Lancaster University. Her work focuses on penny dreadfuls and urban spaces. Her previous publications have been featured in VPFA (2019; 2022) and the Palgrave Handbook for Steam Age Gothic (2021) and her co-edited collection Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic was released in 2023 with University of Wales Press.