February 17, 2025 • 48 mins
Margaret talks with Jolie Holland about a multigenerational punk band from the 70s that introduced punk ethics to punk rock.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
You were weekly reminder that I have a podcast. My
name is Margaret Kiljoy and it's a podcast called Cool
People Do Cool Stuff. You probably caught that when I
said it the first time. But in addition to rambling,
I also have a guest, and my guest is Jolie Holland. Hi,
(00:26):
how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Hi? I'm the fine. How are you? I?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You know, before we hit record, we both were like,
how are you doing? And we were both like, well,
you know, I guess because the world isn't doing so great.
But it's okay because this is a history podcast, so
what does that matter? Jolie Holland For anyone who hasn't
heard of you, is a singer songwriter, musician? What's the
(00:53):
I don't know what?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hey?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, well I sing and I play songs and yeah,
I mean it's funny because I read them.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
There's a nice The way they say it in Spanish
is really beautiful. Okay, sounds better in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah than singer slash songwriter.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, because that's like a singer songwriter implies a genre
and I think that's silly.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, fair enough. Well, anyone who hasn't heard should listen
to Julie Holland, one of my friends who was staying
with me recently, was very excited that you were going
to be on the podcast, and we were arguing about
which songs are our favorite, and I picked Old Fashioned
Morphine and she picked I Want to Die. So there's
(01:39):
two options for anyone listening who's never heard your stuff,
but these were both a bit older. What's your more
recent stuff?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
My last record is called Haunted Mountain.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It's also good.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I have a framed print of the song itself. Oh
you might have noticed, dear listener, that Sophie isn't here. Sophie,
where did you go? I know where Sophie went, but
did where did you go? It's been so many episodes
or producer lists. It's un produced, but we do have
(02:16):
an audio engineer who's named Rory. Hi Rory. You have
to say hi to Rory too, Hi.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Ri.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Our theme music was written forced by a woman who's
also a singer song writer. Okay, yeah, So I was like, well,
I have Jolie on, I have all these books about
an arcopunk, and I was like, I'm gonna do an
episode about an archo punk, and specifically, I am going
(02:43):
to do an episode about the band Crass. You heard
the band Crass?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah, I had the same accountants as them for a minute.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Oh really, that's kind of wild. Before we get into it,
you probably know a fair amount of this story, and
maybe more of it than I do. But what do
you know about Crass and a narco punk coming into it?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I don't know much.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yeah, it's interesting that that my you know, closest direct
connection with them is that I had the same business
managers as them for a minute. Like I have some
old records in storage that have Crass written on them
because they reused the boxes.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I'm excited about this.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Hell yeah, So we're gonna talk about punk, rock and anarchy,
and we're going to talk about a bunch of hippies
who started a punk band in the late seventies with
a token punk and uh completely reinvented the genre of
punk and changed the esthetic landscape of the world and
had more direct influence on modern anarchist politics than you
(03:54):
would expect. And uh, yeah, we're gonna talk about punk.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Art is so much power, I know, I know, for
better and worse, which is fun. It's fun to play with.
So what's funny about punk is that it's a bit
of a blank canvas upon which many people have written,
kind of like a blank brick wall in a crumbling
city when you see a wall covered in graffiti. Some
(04:22):
of it's really cool and it says things like eat
the rich, and some of it is racist, and some
of it is people writing Bob was here. And I
think that's a good summation of punk. A those are
the three types of punk I think. And I'll put
up with Bob was here, and I quite like to
(04:44):
eat the rich. I can't fuck with the racist graffiti.
I can't in good conscience tell you that punk was
always anarchist, or that we have any real claim to
starting the whole thing. No one ideology or band can
really claim to have started the whole thing. Well, lots
of them do. Lots of them do, and they all
have kind of many of them have like a legitimate claim,
(05:06):
which means none of them can truly claim it. But
anarchists have been there from the beginning, and we've done
incredible things with it. And I'm going to start this
history of punk in the same place that I try
to start all of my stories when I can get
away with it. The Spanish Civil War, eh wow. Although
(05:29):
actually later we can talk with the etymology of punk
and there's literally punk music in the nineteenth century, but
we'll get to that.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I'm taking a non alcoholic drink in honor of that.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So I'm starting with the Spanish Civil War because I'm
going to start with a death knell of classical anarchism.
As people listen to the show, a lot people might
know that there was big, huge labor movement that had
all different types of socialists, and one of those types
of socialists was libertarian socialists or anarchists. And after being
a major political force for nearly one hundred years, anarchists
(06:05):
were killed in such numbers at the opening of the
twentieth century, specifically, especially by the time we get up
into World War II, that their ideas went underground for
a long time. The Spanish Republic fell, fascist forces took
over Spain, anarchists went underground, and they did some good work.
They drove the tanks that liberated Paris from the Nazis.
(06:26):
But you've got this sort of dead period of anarchism.
You can claim the dead period started and ended at
different points. You can say from the fall of the
Spanish Republic in nineteen thirty nine until the rise of
the anti globalization movement at the end of the nineteen nineties,
or you could be like from the end of World
War II to the start of anti authoritarian stuff in
(06:47):
the pippy movements of the sixties and seventies. Whatever specific
numbers here don't really matter. But for decades, the part
that matters, the part that I'm excited about, there's this
period where they're it's just like, not these large social
movements that have large anarchist groups within it. For a while,
only two political forces were triumphant across the world, Western
(07:10):
capitalism and Soviet and Chinese communism. Right, those are the
two big middle of the twentieth century things going on.
But anarchism didn't go away. An anarchists didn't, well, a
lot of them did, a lot of them died. Whenever
people are like this is a tangent, Whenever people are like, oh,
you can't kill an idea, then I like look at
(07:32):
history and I'm like, well, you can get really close.
Yeah you can.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
You can vary it layers of bullshit so that nobody
knows what it is anymore or like layer gossip on
top of it, you know, or kind of deflections.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah, you can. You can kill most of the practitioners,
and then the people who are left you can just yeah,
you can slander them. You can not bother to mention
that they have ideas beyond you know, this or that
music or whatever. You know. And you know, we've covered
some of the people who were doing things during this
time period before, like Murray Bukchin, who later inspired the
(08:09):
millions strong Democratic and federalist movement. It's happening right now
in Kurdistan what people usually call Roshava, and he hung
out in New York City running book clubs in like
the nineteen fifties with exiled Spanish anarchists. But mostly, and
this is the part that I'm getting to with the
punk part, what kept anarchism alive during this dead period
(08:31):
was cultural anarchists rather than political anarchists totally. So you
get musicians, authors, religious anarchists, including a strong Christian pacifist
movement and also a more labor focused Jewish anarchist movement.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And visual artists.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, I don't know as much about them yet, and
I like, I want to know more about them, and
you have groups like Bread and Puppet working towards new
ideas and community theater. A lot of the beats were anarchists.
A lot of them were misogynists. A lot of them
misogynists were anarchists. This turns out people are terrible no
matter what ideology they ascribed to. A lot of the
(09:11):
modernist literature authors were anarchists. Speaking of like Henry Miller
was an anarchist, and I don't know whatever. I can't
get through his books, but I'm under the impression he's
a misogynist. A couple decades later you have a Narco punk,
which was largely pacifistic and what could be disparagingly called lifestylist.
But in music, do you know why am I making
(09:34):
this trivia? Do you know what famous twentieth century mid
twentieth century composer was an anarchist? Now who Well? In
nineteen fifty two in Woodstock, New York, there was a
festival meant to highlight all of the greatest composers and
pianists of the twentieth century, and a gay anarchist, one
(09:56):
of the most celebrated composers of the twentieth century stepped
onto stage. He sat in front of a piano and
he premiered his most famous piece. It is called four
thirty three.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Oh yeah, dude.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
For four minutes and thirty three seconds, that's how long
the piece takes. It is a very simple piece. It
is the only piece of his that I feel confident
that I could play.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
It's really hard to play.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, he uh. He didn't touch the piano for four
minutes and thirty three seconds. That's the piece, and it
is the kind of piece that drives right wing culture
people into like a violent rage.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
That's that's the art. Yeah, yeah, the art is all
of that noise.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I know.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I like, I actually think four thirty three is really
funny and kind of interesting. But like overall, I'm like,
I like melody. I don't really go to noise shows.
A lot of my friends like noise shows. I'm gonna
lose my trans girl card if I talk too much
trash on noise.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
But I love experimental music.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
I love like really abstract stuff. I just get I
get tired of the eight notes. I'm fully fully done
with the eight notes, and I get tired of the
twelve notes. I just want to hear some I want
to hear some sound a lot of the time.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
That's fair. I think a lot of the better musicians
that is where they end up. They end up real
bored of the the real basic stuff I love.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I mean I also love like, you know, kids jumping
rope and talking shit and like really simple musical stuff too.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah yeah, and oh man, you're just you're gonna love crass.
I mean, I think they got both of those.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
I'm sad because I fully I was in a scene
where people loved crass. Yeah, but I we never listened
to them together. And like, I've just been such a
like rounder. My entire life just plays to place to place,
so like my favorite way to listen to music is
with people. And like, I don't know, they had just
(12:07):
they were just not in that phase when I was around,
so I didn't. I'm missing I'm missing out on my
my crass, the crass part of my life.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I uh. I wish. We're not really able for various
legal reasons to play music on this show, so everyone
has to go and listen to some crass at some
point during this I would recommend to you, dear listener,
if you've never heard crass, to listen to a song
called Big A Little A. That's maybe my favorite crass song.
I don't know, but to John Cage, he went and
(12:40):
sat in front of a piano and this just pissed
everyone off. And like you said, that is the art
of this kind of thing, is the like the reaction
it is provoking out of people. And it's it's kind
of funny because like the right wing spends all their
time complaining about snowflakes, but like they are absolutely incapable
of this just triggers the hell out of chuds if
you do abstract art. Yeah, Later he wrote about that
(13:04):
moment quote, they missed the point. There is no such
thing as silence. What they thought was silence because they
didn't know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds.
You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement,
during the second, raindrops began pattering on the roof, and
during the third, the people themselves made all kinds of
(13:24):
interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I really love that, and I love Cage's visual art
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I've read some of his poetry and I've listened to
some of his music, but I actually haven't seen his
visual art.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, I used to go to the One of the
coolest things in my hometown of Houston, Texas is the
Rothko Chapel.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Have you ever been there?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
No, it is.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
I forget how many paintings there are, but it's like
octagonal or yeah, I think it's an octagonal space and
there's these giant black and you know black variant Rothkos
on all the walls and natural lighting and they just
kind of they just recently fixed the lighting in there
(14:15):
to go along more.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
With his vision.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
So I'm excited to go back and see that. But
there was a Cage exhibit there at one point I
think I was I was a teenager. I was a
homeless teenager, and I went to that show in Houston,
and I remember this other experience that is similar to
how Cage is describing the intent of four point thirty.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Three, where.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I used to be a visual artist, but I was
a homeless teenager, so like I couldn't go to school,
like I just I sort of tried, but I was
like I can't.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I can't figure this out. And then music took over.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
So now all I do is design my merch design
my records, and sometimes I like, you know, actually physically
do the art instead of just working with people who,
you know, know how to use the digital layout and
stuff like this. I am, i am not a computer person,
but I'm I'm lucky that I'm surrounded by the most
(15:18):
beautiful nerds on the planet, so like it's normally not
like an issue in any kind of a way. I
just I'm like, people catch me, I cook for them.
It all works out. Yeah, But I loved this experience
of going to see the cage in the in the
cage stuff the place where I saw that, there's also
(15:39):
a Sy Twombly exhibit.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Do you know Sytombly's work.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
It's like.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
It literally feels like what a tree would draw. Okay,
it's like little sketchy sketches, Like it's this very it's
just very like it feels non human in this really
beautiful way. And I, as a visual artist, like I
dissociated so hard on Side Twombly and just like really
(16:09):
fully immersed myself in his gestural work. And then I
remember walking outside and just feeling how everything was like that.
It's like I could feel the trees drawing after I
got into Side Twombly, So like, yeah, anybody who runs
away from that experience is just running away from themselves.
(16:32):
That's so that's an interesting, uh full on, you know,
point of the art.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Well, once he finished plane that song afterwards, someone shouted,
good people of Woodstock, let's drive these people out of town.
Really yeah, supposedly. I mean it's like quoted when people
talk about.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
It, that's so funny, like pitchforks.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Most of his compositions were you know,
full of musical notes and such, but he was obsessed
with silence, and he was also fighting specifically against I
didn't realize how far back musaic goes. The concept of
music goes back. I want to say, the twenties, thirties,
and now it's a trademark term has been for like
(17:19):
seventy years. Just background music, just the constant, irritating background
noise of modern civilization. He absolutely despised it, and I
really appreciate that because I'm actually someone who I don't
fuck with background music unless I have like a really
specific purpose, Like if I am writing in a crowded place,
I will put on stone or metal or something like
to like obliterate my brain and get things done. But
(17:41):
like and I'll listen to music when I drive, when like,
when my brain can engage with it a little bit.
But I do not fuck with like just music just
constantly everywhere happening, because if you can't pay attention to it,
I'm like, this is anyway. So I like his hatred
of music. Yeah, And he was a particles have been
in the avant garde movement. He was looking to explore
(18:02):
the boundaries of what we understand his art. He didn't
talk much about his sexuality. He was gay. He lived
with his partner for almost fifty years. He didn't try
to hide it. He was also quite upfront about his politics,
and this is more hidden for him. He was an anarchist.
And he was an anarchist of a sort. I've read
about a ton of times when I read about art
(18:23):
figures who are engaged with anarchism. When someone is more
famous for something other than their political actions or their writings,
their anarchism is diminished to like a footnote in their biographies,
a sort of odd curiosity, because anarchism has so been
so thoroughly buried that most people writing about musicians and
artists literally don't know what the word means. Again, not
a huge Henry Miller fan, but at one point an
(18:44):
interviewer who wrote an entire book length interview with the
modernist author Henry Miller for People and from Here was like,
you call yourself an anarchist, but you're so organized. And
Henry Miller's like.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, they don't know what that word means.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
No, they don't. They don't know what the word means.
That is the political label of the person they are
literally writing a book on. Yeah, and they're like, well,
why do you call yourself an anarchist? And he's like,
because I don't know. I like read Bakunin and shit,
you know. And so people sometimes think that John Cage
was an anarchist and that he pushed the boundaries of music.
(19:23):
He was, you know, anti the authority of the rules
of music, and he was that right, but he was
aware of it as a political force. In his mid seventies,
he wrote a poetry book called Anarchy, which opens on
an with an essay on anarchism. And the reason I'm
talking about this one. I just like talking about anarchism
whenever I can. But I think to understand anarcho punk
(19:43):
and the way in which politics and specifically anti authoritarian
and anarchist politics infuse culture and music. I feel like
this is like really useful, and I think a lot
of it goes back to him, and I can draw
a direct line from him to an arcopunk and that
makes me really happy.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, he was a very important figure.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah. On the first page of that, in that essay,
he writes, we don't need government. We need utilities, air, water, energy,
travel and communication means food and shelter. We have no
need for imaginary mountain ranges between separate nations, nor do
we have any need for the continuing division of people
into those who have what they need and those who don't.
(20:28):
Then he like the second page of it is like
basically a page length quote of recurring hero on this
pod Malatesta. John Cage just seemed like an incredible man.
He was like into macrobiotic cooking when he ascivated it.
Had any regrets, he said he would have been a
botanist instead of a musician. He wrote a book about
mushroom foraging and he organized a society for amateur micologists.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
I swear to God, anarchist culture is so beautiful, Like
you just get these people who.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Have such a strong sense of their center. They and they.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Realize what real authority is and that you know, it's
not it's not flimsy.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah. Yeah. And as he got to the end of
his life, he practiced four thirty three every day in
front of his piano, which is a kind of cool
meditative practice.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
You know, I like that meditating for that long. That's
not as long as I want to meditate the same.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah. He died in nineteen ninety two of a stroke
at the age of seventy nine, and I've always wondered
whether he was going to get his own episodes, and
maybe he will one day, But I basically was like, hooray,
I got to talk about four thirty three guy. And
it's hard to overstate his influence on avant garde music.
Think of him as the first famous noise musician in
(21:52):
the modern sense. And he's going to influence some hippies
in the UK who are going to reinvent punk rock,
spearheaders genre called a narco punk, and dictate so much
of the radical political aesthetics of the Western world for
decades to come. But before someone can reinvent punk rock,
they have to cut to ads. It just happens. Actually,
(22:12):
Krass would fucking hate that I am doing this, But
that's what's happening right now. Because actually I have critiques
around class and crass, but we'll get to that later
because I understand the needs of working artists in a way. Whatever. Anyway,
here's ads. I have to put them here. Here they
are so before someone can reinvent punk rock, someone has
(22:39):
to invent punk rock. As to who did that, I
don't fucking know. People like to argue about it. There's
an awful lot of proto punk bands. Iggy Pop and
the band the Stooges from Detroit did some punk rock
shit starting nineteen sixty seven. MC five started also in
Detroit nineteen sixty three. There was another Detroit band, an
all black band called Death that was formed in nineteen
(23:00):
seventy one. Have you seen that documentary about them? I
think it's called a band called Death. It's so good.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I really I really want to see that.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah, and the Velvet Underground is seen as proto punk
out of New York City. Have you heard of this
band called the Dictators? No, I don't like them. They
formed in nineteen seventy three in New York. The New
York Dolls were from New York nineteen seventy two. Punk
rock absolutely came out of rock, specifically came out of
(23:29):
garage rock, a sixty genre that was centered around Detroit
and New York City. A lot of these bands were
leftist or anarchists, most notably MC five, a working class
band with ties to veteran of the Pod Up against
the Wall Motherfuckers, who were a New York City anarchist
street gang. But most histories of punk seem to agree
that punk, what we call punk today, was actually built
(23:51):
out of maintainstream acts, the ramones, the sex pistols in
the Clash. By nineteen seventy six, you've got a bunch
of the classic first punk bands, also like the Slits
and the Damned. As for the word punk, it actually
has a different etymology than I thought coming into.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
This weird Okay, I'd always.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Heard the like homosexual and like sex worker. Yeah, etymology,
that's what I thought. So it's two different etymologies that
got mashed together. The word punk is a reclamation of
a slur. I think most people know that Shakespeare used
the word a lot for female sex workers. There's a
(24:31):
song even older than Shakespeare called Simon the Old King
that says being drunk is quote a sin, as it
is to keep a punk.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I didn't realize that punk referred to a female sex worker.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
I had never heard that.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, that's the oldest English version of it, to quote
an article called the Rotten Etymology of Punk by JP Robinson. Quote. Meanwhile,
on the other side of the Atlantic, a new meaning
for punk grew, a meaning that had never been used
in Britain. Punk as rotting wood used for tinder and
(25:07):
eventually other things that smolder like fuses an incense. And
this was derived from the indigenous Lenape language.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
What this is amazing.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, and this is a stronger etymology. It became a
word for things that are kind of shitty, like bad
performances were punk shows.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
That's so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I love that there's indigenous idnology to that.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
That's so great.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah. And I think that the modern use of punk
derogatorily like don't be a punk or punk ass motherfucker
or whatever is actually pretty true to this old slang.
This like just something that's shitty, you know.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I love that. And then also it's like I think like.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
New York City is like Lenape territory, So I think
that's that's adorable.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Like, so it comes out of New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tons of music was being called punk in the nineteenth century.
In eighteen ninety nine, a West Coast guy named Otto
Wise wrote a skating review of some music he heard
in a music hall, calling it the most punk song
ever heard in a hall. And then it started being
(26:22):
used in the nineteen tens to mean sort of popular music,
non highbrow music. Wow, anything that is popular for being
kind of shitty and like lowbrow was punk. So then
people started using it positively as far back as like
nineteen tens, like yeah, so fucking what, we're not perfect
(26:42):
at this, we like it that way. There was like
all of these articles where people would say, oh, yeah,
so her voice is a little punk, but we like
it imperfect.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
That is fucking great. I uh yeah. I just went
on this like personal deep dive with.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Man and the Witch, like really really trying to like
fully understand what she's talking about, and it just gave
me such a beautiful sense of working class pride. It's
like it's like even way way way wa way way
back before there was you know, this idea of unions,
like working class people were just like doing all this
amazing organizing, and like so much of what we think
(27:22):
of as being union based was just like working class
people drawing boundaries for themselves and trying to have a
good life. So I love like when something that you
didn't think was as old shows up way back.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, totally, but kind of like we've been doing this forever.
And also just even that the like like punk almost
feels like almost a modern slang, not just the word
like punk, like punk rock, but like, yeah, don't be
a punk that feels very modern. It is five hundred
plus years old.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, I thought, like, you know, maybe fifties forties. No,
this is that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, there's like it's older than modern English the language. Yeah,
and it also became slang for delinquents, especially young gay men.
By the nineteen forties. It was slank in gay culture,
for the bottom in a gay relationship.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
That's what I thought. That's what I.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Thought totally, and that one might have also come in
from the British use of it, right, but like delinquents
who are kind of queer, very lowbrow. Of course this
gets applied to rock and roll. In nineteen sixty seven,
a journalist said quote, We've got kids out there in
Vietnam dying without a sound, and we've got punks here
(28:40):
who dress up like girls and make millions of dollars
doing it. The Rolling Stones were called punks, the Beatles
were called punks. Bob Dylan was called a punk, and
hippies were called punks. And it's funny because punk is
usually presented as an opposition to hippies. But it's actually
its natural growth. Really, it's dialectic. But I hate that.
(29:03):
I now know what dialectic means. I refused it to
just pretend I didn't say that. It's the thing that
responds to the thing.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Nah, I don't like I don't like it because it's
too political ease, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Oh yeah, and it means different things to every single
person who says it.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah, so I I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I like the idea of saying like it's part of
a conversation.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
I really try to bring things back to vernacular and
as much as you can.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Oh no, totally.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And I had such a hard time with Caliban and
the Witch, and I was longing for Prop to do
a translation.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah, totally. And there are some critiques to be laid
at the feet of that book in terms of its
accuracy around the Witch Trials. But oh yeah, that's a okay.
So when early punk bands were called punk, it wasn't
like these bands suck or this is a new genre,
(29:59):
but it was more we're keeping with this history of
being like, this is low brow, delinquent, kind of queer music.
And this got cemented when that band MC five, when
a reviewer called them punks in nineteen seventy two. This
is sort of when it kind of sticks. But it
didn't even have a specific sound, not until those specific
(30:20):
bands like the Sex Pistols, and then it suddenly did.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I got to be on stage with Wayne Kramer one time.
It was so so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Is that a sex Pistols?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Guy?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I can't remember names?
Speaker 1 (30:31):
He's from MC five.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Oh shit, Oh okay, that's way cooler. Fuck. Yeah. I
struggle all the time with music trivia because I just
literally can't remember names, which is why I actually kind
of like punk, because like the singer of Crass being
Steve Ignorant, I'm like, I can remember Steve Ignorant.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
You know, right, Yeah, And it's more about band names.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yeah, or art names like that totally yeah. But what
I can remember, Jolie is I can remember that I
need to do two ad break during each episode. I
remember that very well. And I bet you, dear listener,
remember the horrible jingles of our wonderful advertisers, whom I
(31:10):
all love very dearly. Here they are my favorite things
in the world, and we're back. So in nineteen seventy seven,
an anarchist magazine called Fifth Estate, which is still around,
(31:31):
actually wrote about this new punk phenomena and they talked
about its political content in an article called punk Rock,
Musical fad or Radical Kernel, which is a pretty like
that's a correct question to ask around punk absolutely and
basically they're like, is this punk rock thing? Is it anarchist?
(31:53):
Is it right wing? Is it mainstream pop? And much
like the Wall that says eat the rich and then
some racist stuff and then Bob was here, the answer
is yes, it is anarchist, it is right wing, it
is mainstream pop. It is everything punks good and bad
in that And actually, to be clear, when I say
good and bad, some of the bobless here is actually
(32:13):
some of the best punk I really like. I really
like cocksparuh. But maybe I'll find out that they're terrible people.
I don't know, but I really like some of the
OI from early times, the non racist stuff anyway. So
in that article they admit that they are old hippies
(32:33):
looking at this thing from the outside, so they're not
being like, we are the punks, right, but they've clearly
got a lot of knowledge. They talk about how there's
They identify three different strains of punk in nineteen seventy seven.
The most popular was the one in the UK built
around the sex Pistols, which was mainstream. Then there was
the New York scene around CBGB's as Fifth State puts it,
(32:55):
and I think this is a slightly reductive way putting it,
but Fifth State puts it. Groups like the Dictators merge
right wing lyrics manifest destiny disco with not so subtle
appeals to the fatish sato masochism now so popular in
the Big Apple. Not much there. That's their review of
the New York scene. I had never heard of the Dictators, which,
(33:19):
if you're a music person you're listening to me, you're like,
what I thought she was punk? I don't care. They
are legitimately one of the founders of punk. There are
one of the proto punk bands, and I swear I'm
not expressing this just because of my bias. It is
so bland. This is the blandest proto punk I have
ever heard. They recently reunited and put out a song
(33:39):
called Goddamn New York and it's a bunch of seventy
year olds with like a really low energy, fuck the
rich song that still manages to complain about Chinese billionaires
and a far right guy from the metal band Man
of War is in that band.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, that's very boring.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah. And then there was a third strain in nineteen
seventy seven, a West Coast punk that was more independent
and hated the record industry. And they're interesting because that's
like kind of what grows up in the UK, and
everyone attributes it to the UK. But West Coast punk
built a network of zines, some of which were just
about music, but some covered politics. A magazine called New
(34:19):
Diseases with diseases spelled wrong because they're punks was already
calling out Nazi punks with an article that read, Fascism
is on the rise. The time to renounce it forever.
Fascism is the negation and the end of the individual,
the end of creativity. Punk and anarchism is the shout
of the individual. It's creativity brought into our lives. It's
the end of the oppressor and not the myth of
(34:40):
the fascist dictator. It's not coy posing its revolution, which
is a very punk uh not very However, from Fifth
Estate's analysis, UK punk grew out of working class resentment,
while West Coast US punk grew out of a rejection
(35:01):
of middle class values. But I found another source that
argued something different that I found kind of interesting. Maybe
I find this interesting because whatever, if you're listening to
this podcast, you probably like weird history shit. So in
the early nineties there was a federation of anarchists across
the US called the Love and Rage Federation, and in
their newsletter an author named Christopher Day wrote this, It
(35:25):
was a bit of a long quote, but it's about
the political climate and the economic climate that punk came
out of. Quote. After the Second World War, a deal
was struck in the United States between major corporations and
the organized labor movement that basically guaranteed a large privileged
section of the working class steady improvements in its standard
of living in exchange for social peace and support of
(35:47):
the US military actions around the world in terms of consciousness,
if not always in terms of the economic position in
the overall process of exploitation. The effect of this deal
was to deproltarianize a huge section of the US workforce.
That deal was broken in the nineteen sixties. So basically,
it's saying like, after World War Two, a whole ton
(36:08):
of people, especially white working class people, became middle class.
And this is why everyone like dreams of the fifties
as like all the racists or like that was when
everything was perfect. It's because that's when more white people
got to be middle class. To continue the quote, that
deal was broken in the nineteen sixties when anti colonial
movements around the world and the Black liberation movement in
(36:30):
the US inspired millions of relatively privileged white youth to
openly oppose and defy the US war against Vietnam. At
the same time, the enormous expenditures the US was making
to wage the war were undermining US domination of the
world economy. The other industrialized countries were becoming more competitive.
Opek forced industrialized countries to pay more for oil, and
(36:51):
certain Third world countries like Korea and Brazil began to industrialize.
The global capitalist restructuring that has resulted has had several
main features. The most significant is the massive relocation of
the industrial production from the old imperialist countries to the
Third world. So basically it's like when the rust belt
starts rust belting to continue to quote. Hand in hand
(37:14):
with this de industrialization has gone a steady erosion into
standard of living of the US working class, both in
the form of lost jobs and wage cuts, and in
the form of cuts in social programs. While the worst
effects of this erosion have been borne by people of color,
it is important to note that the erosion has affected
the entire working class. Amongst the white working class accustomed
(37:34):
to middle class standard of living, the brunt of the
changes have been borne by their children as they have
entered the workforce. Young workers have always had to take
cruddier jobs at lower pay. What is different this time
is that those lower wages are not the first step
in a progression of better paying jobs. Rather, they are
a dead end. As probably the longest quote I've done
(37:57):
on this show, but it's so fascinating to me, and
I quoted at full in full, because this is what's
happening now.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Absolutely yeah, it's just a it's just another it's another
like level of degradation.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, and like all of these people who got promised
to be middle class are not middle class. And a
lot of people who are promised upward mobility into the
middle class are not. That is not available to them.
And I remember reading something there's like a it was
like a tweet or something. It's like, oh, the last
time that this happened, we at least got some good
(38:33):
music out of it, right.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Yeah, I think about that, but it's that's uh you
and I feel how kind of evil that is that, like,
you know, it's getting harder and harder to make a living,
and especially for artists, and to say like, oh, make
some grow, grow some beautiful flowers out of this shit.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah. And what's funny is it's like I hate to
deny people the flowers that they might be able to grow.
But one of the major differences is that even though
they were seeing erosions in the social systems, they had
more to begin with, exactly. And so like a lot
of people, especially in the UK, a lot of early
(39:19):
punk comes out of working class people or dropouts of
middle class who are able to live off of welfare,
you know, or like shitty, low paying jobs are enough
because of access to social services, and so like, we
don't we don't have that this time.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
And they also had that because of mass class solidarity
coming out of the Second World War, like people people
were like, well, we survived this horrible thing, so we're
gonna at least have healthcare.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah totally. And now you know, because when you look
at this like long quote, you're like, oh, well, they,
you know, sent jobs overseas, and you're like, theoretically, what
the right wing is claiming to do, and I don't
think that they'll have particular success with this is to
bring jobs back to the US by like through tariffs
and stuff, right, prioritizing US made stuff. But they're pairing
(40:14):
it with even further gutting of all social services. Like
so it's not actually helping the American working class at all.
I doubt I have to convince anyone who listens to
that show of this, but like.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, they're just making people more desperate.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah totally. And so instead it's like, oh, yeah, there
will be some jobs here and they will be absolutely
the worst. So in the seventies, workers were suddenly I'm
not quoting anymore, workers were suddenly forced to compete with
workers in other countries like Mexico and Malaysia. A lot
of this early history of punk and anarchism that I'm
pulling a lot of this from comes from a zine
(40:49):
put together by an anonymous editor, and that zene is
called Rebel Close, Rebel Songs, Rebel Pose, and it was
like someone who like literally went to the microfish and
read all the old stuff to put it together. And
the editor of that zcene says, quote places like Mexico
and Malaysia incidentally, places that have raging, fucking punk scenes
that are centers of anarchist ideas and activity.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
I don't know about Malaysian anarchism.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
That's awesome, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
So I know a little bit about Malaysian punk, and
it's mostly through the anonymous editor of the scene and
some of the people around that scene. And I want
to know more about It's like interesting because people like,
we'll talk about it later when we get further and
further into how anarcho punk kind of brought anarchism back
way more than I realized. And it didn't just do
(41:39):
it in the Western world. It like spread and developed
its own traditions everywhere and anyway. It's cool.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, because music doesn't have borders.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah, as John Cage put it doesn't have imaginary mountain ranges.
I really like that way of imagining borders. And people
were promised a future and they were told to work
within the system to improve the system. You know, they're
coming out of the sort of hippie era and people
are like, oh, okay, well we have a few environmental
protections now and don't worry, everything's going to be better
(42:10):
and you know whatever. And people kept seeing that that
wasn't happening, and so punk came with a promise, and
its promise was there is no future. You know. Its
promise was like, nah, that's all a lie. But dear listener,
you'd better hope there's a future because you're not going
to get to hear the rest of this four parter
(42:31):
until the future. Thank you, Thank you. When we come
back on Wednesday, we're going to talk about the rise
of punk in the UK, and we're going to talk
about how a bunch of not young hippies met a
young punk and started a band that changed the world.
But if people want to hear your band that it's
like kind of like it's funny because like Kress didn't
(42:51):
do this alone, and they very much know they didn't
do it alone, and like, but they're the like the
one that people talk about the most. And I'm doing
it too, you know, But why am I saying that?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, everybody's part of a scene.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, and like we collectively create a culture that influences
and changes things. But if you want to hear the
one that you do, how can they do that?
Speaker 3 (43:16):
You can find my music in all the places, you know,
it's everywhere. My band and my illegal name is Jolie Holland.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Oh yeah, you got you like lucked out with a
legal name that works for a band.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
It's the only thing my father gave me.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I'm actually curious, like where you see yourself in the
tradition of punk, cause, like I maybe just because I
like first started hearing your music when I started hanging
out and like squats and things like that, and so
it was like around the same time I started hearing
like things that would be classified as punk. And I
would guess that most people don't classify your music as punk,
but like the like broader world of that, I'm curious
(44:03):
how you see yourself fitting into that.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
You know, I was.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
A homeless street kid and we played the weirdest music,
you know. And then like I recorded my record Catalpa,
which is just like all it was all just like
home recordings for just like really really flaky shit.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
There's like three coughs on that record. And then it.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Was taken it face value as like so called folk music,
although you know, it's like I know a lot about
traditional music, and there's kind of a grounding of traditional
music in my work, but it's not it's not all
of what I do. And then that record blew up
and it was like in the top ten in the
(44:54):
college charts on both coasts, like twenty years ago, and
it blew my mind, like I because I had never
played the East coast at that point because I'm from
Houston and I was living on the West coast. And
then I started playing shows with that band, and it
(45:15):
was so hard to figure out even how to present
it because it it was all.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
The flakiest shit, you know. Katalpa is so flaky.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
And then we recorded Escondido, which is a lot more together.
That record it's whatever, it's a studio record, yeah, and
I went out and I started playing shows. And this
was in my late twenties, and I started playing shows
with that you know material, and I was on a
punk rock label. I was on Anti, which is a
(45:47):
sidiary of Epitaph Records, and I had like a you know,
NPR audience and it blew out my mind.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
I was like, there's people wearing khaki pants in this audience,
and it totally freaked me out because like I, you know,
I was just such an outsider and it was like,
who are these people?
Speaker 1 (46:12):
You know, it was very it was very confusing.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
So it's been I'm really happy that you heard my
music in that context because to a lot of people, yeah,
I just think, like, you know, my music does come
out of a microcultural context. So it's always been bizarre
fitting in. It's never been fully natural.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
I mean, the mainstream craves authenticity, and not even always
necessarily in a bad way. I think that people who
live outside of subculture feel like they're missing something, and
so when people who come from inside of subculture are like, hey,
here's a thing and it's available to you, but it
comes from subculture, I think people eat that up.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
You know, if you want to hear part of the
scene that I was in.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Listen to this absolutely atrocious noise music from band camp
called Donut Band. Okay, I love it so much.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
And are you on this?
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, Okay, you won't recognize me. I'm just like playing
some weird violin or something.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Okay. Well, that's where we're going to leave it for today,
and when we come back Wednesday, we're going to talk
about UK punk and we're gonna talk about weird hippies,
and we're going to talk about music that I think
is cool and interesting. And oh, I've got to shout
out my own things. I have a book coming out
about punk rock Scooby Doo. See it's punk rock and
(47:44):
well it's the third book in the Daniel Kaine series,
which someone is called punk Rock Scooby Doo and I
like that way of describing it. And it's a third book,
but it also stands alone because it's a bit of
a prequel. And I'm going to be kickstarting it in March,
which might be very soon if you're listening to this
in twenty twenty five, and you can back it. And
(48:06):
I'm gonna have audiobook versions of all three books in
the Daniel Kine series. So if you really want to
hear all of them, you can, and you should do that.
I guess if you want, all right, I'll see everyone
all on Wednesday. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is
(48:27):
a production of cool Zone Media and more
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
You were weekly reminder that I have a podcast. My
name is Margaret Kiljoy and it's a podcast called Cool
People Do Cool Stuff. You probably caught that when I
said it the first time. But in addition to rambling,
I also have a guest, and my guest is Jolie Holland. Hi,
(00:26):
how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Hi? I'm the fine. How are you? I?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You know, before we hit record, we both were like,
how are you doing? And we were both like, well,
you know, I guess because the world isn't doing so great.
But it's okay because this is a history podcast, so
what does that matter? Jolie Holland For anyone who hasn't
heard of you, is a singer songwriter, musician? What's the
(00:53):
I don't know what?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hey?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, well I sing and I play songs and yeah,
I mean it's funny because I read them.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
There's a nice The way they say it in Spanish
is really beautiful. Okay, sounds better in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah than singer slash songwriter.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, because that's like a singer songwriter implies a genre
and I think that's silly.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, fair enough. Well, anyone who hasn't heard should listen
to Julie Holland, one of my friends who was staying
with me recently, was very excited that you were going
to be on the podcast, and we were arguing about
which songs are our favorite, and I picked Old Fashioned
Morphine and she picked I Want to Die. So there's
(01:39):
two options for anyone listening who's never heard your stuff,
but these were both a bit older. What's your more
recent stuff?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
My last record is called Haunted Mountain.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It's also good.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I have a framed print of the song itself. Oh
you might have noticed, dear listener, that Sophie isn't here. Sophie,
where did you go? I know where Sophie went, but
did where did you go? It's been so many episodes
or producer lists. It's un produced, but we do have
(02:16):
an audio engineer who's named Rory. Hi Rory. You have
to say hi to Rory too, Hi.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Ri.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Our theme music was written forced by a woman who's
also a singer song writer. Okay, yeah, So I was like, well,
I have Jolie on, I have all these books about
an arcopunk, and I was like, I'm gonna do an
episode about an archo punk, and specifically, I am going
(02:43):
to do an episode about the band Crass. You heard
the band Crass?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah, I had the same accountants as them for a minute.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Oh really, that's kind of wild. Before we get into it,
you probably know a fair amount of this story, and
maybe more of it than I do. But what do
you know about Crass and a narco punk coming into it?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I don't know much.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yeah, it's interesting that that my you know, closest direct
connection with them is that I had the same business
managers as them for a minute. Like I have some
old records in storage that have Crass written on them
because they reused the boxes.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I'm excited about this.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Hell yeah, So we're gonna talk about punk, rock and anarchy,
and we're going to talk about a bunch of hippies
who started a punk band in the late seventies with
a token punk and uh completely reinvented the genre of
punk and changed the esthetic landscape of the world and
had more direct influence on modern anarchist politics than you
(03:54):
would expect. And uh, yeah, we're gonna talk about punk.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Art is so much power, I know, I know, for
better and worse, which is fun. It's fun to play with.
So what's funny about punk is that it's a bit
of a blank canvas upon which many people have written,
kind of like a blank brick wall in a crumbling
city when you see a wall covered in graffiti. Some
(04:22):
of it's really cool and it says things like eat
the rich, and some of it is racist, and some
of it is people writing Bob was here. And I
think that's a good summation of punk. A those are
the three types of punk I think. And I'll put
up with Bob was here, and I quite like to
(04:44):
eat the rich. I can't fuck with the racist graffiti.
I can't in good conscience tell you that punk was
always anarchist, or that we have any real claim to
starting the whole thing. No one ideology or band can
really claim to have started the whole thing. Well, lots
of them do. Lots of them do, and they all
have kind of many of them have like a legitimate claim,
(05:06):
which means none of them can truly claim it. But
anarchists have been there from the beginning, and we've done
incredible things with it. And I'm going to start this
history of punk in the same place that I try
to start all of my stories when I can get
away with it. The Spanish Civil War, eh wow. Although
(05:29):
actually later we can talk with the etymology of punk
and there's literally punk music in the nineteenth century, but
we'll get to that.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I'm taking a non alcoholic drink in honor of that.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So I'm starting with the Spanish Civil War because I'm
going to start with a death knell of classical anarchism.
As people listen to the show, a lot people might
know that there was big, huge labor movement that had
all different types of socialists, and one of those types
of socialists was libertarian socialists or anarchists. And after being
a major political force for nearly one hundred years, anarchists
(06:05):
were killed in such numbers at the opening of the
twentieth century, specifically, especially by the time we get up
into World War II, that their ideas went underground for
a long time. The Spanish Republic fell, fascist forces took
over Spain, anarchists went underground, and they did some good work.
They drove the tanks that liberated Paris from the Nazis.
(06:26):
But you've got this sort of dead period of anarchism.
You can claim the dead period started and ended at
different points. You can say from the fall of the
Spanish Republic in nineteen thirty nine until the rise of
the anti globalization movement at the end of the nineteen nineties,
or you could be like from the end of World
War II to the start of anti authoritarian stuff in
(06:47):
the pippy movements of the sixties and seventies. Whatever specific
numbers here don't really matter. But for decades, the part
that matters, the part that I'm excited about, there's this
period where they're it's just like, not these large social
movements that have large anarchist groups within it. For a while,
only two political forces were triumphant across the world, Western
(07:10):
capitalism and Soviet and Chinese communism. Right, those are the
two big middle of the twentieth century things going on.
But anarchism didn't go away. An anarchists didn't, well, a
lot of them did, a lot of them died. Whenever
people are like this is a tangent, Whenever people are like, oh,
you can't kill an idea, then I like look at
(07:32):
history and I'm like, well, you can get really close.
Yeah you can.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
You can vary it layers of bullshit so that nobody
knows what it is anymore or like layer gossip on
top of it, you know, or kind of deflections.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah, you can. You can kill most of the practitioners,
and then the people who are left you can just yeah,
you can slander them. You can not bother to mention
that they have ideas beyond you know, this or that
music or whatever. You know. And you know, we've covered
some of the people who were doing things during this
time period before, like Murray Bukchin, who later inspired the
(08:09):
millions strong Democratic and federalist movement. It's happening right now
in Kurdistan what people usually call Roshava, and he hung
out in New York City running book clubs in like
the nineteen fifties with exiled Spanish anarchists. But mostly, and
this is the part that I'm getting to with the
punk part, what kept anarchism alive during this dead period
(08:31):
was cultural anarchists rather than political anarchists totally. So you
get musicians, authors, religious anarchists, including a strong Christian pacifist
movement and also a more labor focused Jewish anarchist movement.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And visual artists.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, I don't know as much about them yet, and
I like, I want to know more about them, and
you have groups like Bread and Puppet working towards new
ideas and community theater. A lot of the beats were anarchists.
A lot of them were misogynists. A lot of them
misogynists were anarchists. This turns out people are terrible no
matter what ideology they ascribed to. A lot of the
(09:11):
modernist literature authors were anarchists. Speaking of like Henry Miller
was an anarchist, and I don't know whatever. I can't
get through his books, but I'm under the impression he's
a misogynist. A couple decades later you have a Narco punk,
which was largely pacifistic and what could be disparagingly called lifestylist.
But in music, do you know why am I making
(09:34):
this trivia? Do you know what famous twentieth century mid
twentieth century composer was an anarchist? Now who Well? In
nineteen fifty two in Woodstock, New York, there was a
festival meant to highlight all of the greatest composers and
pianists of the twentieth century, and a gay anarchist, one
(09:56):
of the most celebrated composers of the twentieth century stepped
onto stage. He sat in front of a piano and
he premiered his most famous piece. It is called four
thirty three.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Oh yeah, dude.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
For four minutes and thirty three seconds, that's how long
the piece takes. It is a very simple piece. It
is the only piece of his that I feel confident
that I could play.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
It's really hard to play.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, he uh. He didn't touch the piano for four
minutes and thirty three seconds. That's the piece, and it
is the kind of piece that drives right wing culture
people into like a violent rage.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
That's that's the art. Yeah, yeah, the art is all
of that noise.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I know.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I like, I actually think four thirty three is really
funny and kind of interesting. But like overall, I'm like,
I like melody. I don't really go to noise shows.
A lot of my friends like noise shows. I'm gonna
lose my trans girl card if I talk too much
trash on noise.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
But I love experimental music.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
I love like really abstract stuff. I just get I
get tired of the eight notes. I'm fully fully done
with the eight notes, and I get tired of the
twelve notes. I just want to hear some I want
to hear some sound a lot of the time.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
That's fair. I think a lot of the better musicians
that is where they end up. They end up real
bored of the the real basic stuff I love.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I mean I also love like, you know, kids jumping
rope and talking shit and like really simple musical stuff too.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah yeah, and oh man, you're just you're gonna love crass.
I mean, I think they got both of those.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
I'm sad because I fully I was in a scene
where people loved crass. Yeah, but I we never listened
to them together. And like, I've just been such a
like rounder. My entire life just plays to place to place,
so like my favorite way to listen to music is
with people. And like, I don't know, they had just
(12:07):
they were just not in that phase when I was around,
so I didn't. I'm missing I'm missing out on my
my crass, the crass part of my life.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I uh. I wish. We're not really able for various
legal reasons to play music on this show, so everyone
has to go and listen to some crass at some
point during this I would recommend to you, dear listener,
if you've never heard crass, to listen to a song
called Big A Little A. That's maybe my favorite crass song.
I don't know, but to John Cage, he went and
(12:40):
sat in front of a piano and this just pissed
everyone off. And like you said, that is the art
of this kind of thing, is the like the reaction
it is provoking out of people. And it's it's kind
of funny because like the right wing spends all their
time complaining about snowflakes, but like they are absolutely incapable
of this just triggers the hell out of chuds if
you do abstract art. Yeah, Later he wrote about that
(13:04):
moment quote, they missed the point. There is no such
thing as silence. What they thought was silence because they
didn't know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds.
You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement,
during the second, raindrops began pattering on the roof, and
during the third, the people themselves made all kinds of
(13:24):
interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I really love that, and I love Cage's visual art
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I've read some of his poetry and I've listened to
some of his music, but I actually haven't seen his
visual art.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, I used to go to the One of the
coolest things in my hometown of Houston, Texas is the
Rothko Chapel.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Have you ever been there?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
No, it is.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
I forget how many paintings there are, but it's like
octagonal or yeah, I think it's an octagonal space and
there's these giant black and you know black variant Rothkos
on all the walls and natural lighting and they just
kind of they just recently fixed the lighting in there
(14:15):
to go along more.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
With his vision.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
So I'm excited to go back and see that. But
there was a Cage exhibit there at one point I
think I was I was a teenager. I was a
homeless teenager, and I went to that show in Houston,
and I remember this other experience that is similar to
how Cage is describing the intent of four point thirty.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Three, where.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I used to be a visual artist, but I was
a homeless teenager, so like I couldn't go to school,
like I just I sort of tried, but I was
like I can't.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I can't figure this out. And then music took over.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
So now all I do is design my merch design
my records, and sometimes I like, you know, actually physically
do the art instead of just working with people who,
you know, know how to use the digital layout and
stuff like this. I am, i am not a computer person,
but I'm I'm lucky that I'm surrounded by the most
(15:18):
beautiful nerds on the planet, so like it's normally not
like an issue in any kind of a way. I
just I'm like, people catch me, I cook for them.
It all works out. Yeah, But I loved this experience
of going to see the cage in the in the
cage stuff the place where I saw that, there's also
(15:39):
a Sy Twombly exhibit.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Do you know Sytombly's work.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
It's like.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
It literally feels like what a tree would draw. Okay,
it's like little sketchy sketches, Like it's this very it's
just very like it feels non human in this really
beautiful way. And I, as a visual artist, like I
dissociated so hard on Side Twombly and just like really
(16:09):
fully immersed myself in his gestural work. And then I
remember walking outside and just feeling how everything was like that.
It's like I could feel the trees drawing after I
got into Side Twombly, So like, yeah, anybody who runs
away from that experience is just running away from themselves.
(16:32):
That's so that's an interesting, uh full on, you know,
point of the art.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Well, once he finished plane that song afterwards, someone shouted,
good people of Woodstock, let's drive these people out of town.
Really yeah, supposedly. I mean it's like quoted when people
talk about.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
It, that's so funny, like pitchforks.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Most of his compositions were you know,
full of musical notes and such, but he was obsessed
with silence, and he was also fighting specifically against I
didn't realize how far back musaic goes. The concept of
music goes back. I want to say, the twenties, thirties,
and now it's a trademark term has been for like
(17:19):
seventy years. Just background music, just the constant, irritating background
noise of modern civilization. He absolutely despised it, and I
really appreciate that because I'm actually someone who I don't
fuck with background music unless I have like a really
specific purpose, Like if I am writing in a crowded place,
I will put on stone or metal or something like
to like obliterate my brain and get things done. But
(17:41):
like and I'll listen to music when I drive, when like,
when my brain can engage with it a little bit.
But I do not fuck with like just music just
constantly everywhere happening, because if you can't pay attention to it,
I'm like, this is anyway. So I like his hatred
of music. Yeah, And he was a particles have been
in the avant garde movement. He was looking to explore
(18:02):
the boundaries of what we understand his art. He didn't
talk much about his sexuality. He was gay. He lived
with his partner for almost fifty years. He didn't try
to hide it. He was also quite upfront about his politics,
and this is more hidden for him. He was an anarchist.
And he was an anarchist of a sort. I've read
about a ton of times when I read about art
(18:23):
figures who are engaged with anarchism. When someone is more
famous for something other than their political actions or their writings,
their anarchism is diminished to like a footnote in their biographies,
a sort of odd curiosity, because anarchism has so been
so thoroughly buried that most people writing about musicians and
artists literally don't know what the word means. Again, not
a huge Henry Miller fan, but at one point an
(18:44):
interviewer who wrote an entire book length interview with the
modernist author Henry Miller for People and from Here was like,
you call yourself an anarchist, but you're so organized. And
Henry Miller's like.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, they don't know what that word means.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
No, they don't. They don't know what the word means.
That is the political label of the person they are
literally writing a book on. Yeah, and they're like, well,
why do you call yourself an anarchist? And he's like,
because I don't know. I like read Bakunin and shit,
you know. And so people sometimes think that John Cage
was an anarchist and that he pushed the boundaries of music.
(19:23):
He was, you know, anti the authority of the rules
of music, and he was that right, but he was
aware of it as a political force. In his mid seventies,
he wrote a poetry book called Anarchy, which opens on
an with an essay on anarchism. And the reason I'm
talking about this one. I just like talking about anarchism
whenever I can. But I think to understand anarcho punk
(19:43):
and the way in which politics and specifically anti authoritarian
and anarchist politics infuse culture and music. I feel like
this is like really useful, and I think a lot
of it goes back to him, and I can draw
a direct line from him to an arcopunk and that
makes me really happy.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, he was a very important figure.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah. On the first page of that, in that essay,
he writes, we don't need government. We need utilities, air, water, energy,
travel and communication means food and shelter. We have no
need for imaginary mountain ranges between separate nations, nor do
we have any need for the continuing division of people
into those who have what they need and those who don't.
(20:28):
Then he like the second page of it is like
basically a page length quote of recurring hero on this
pod Malatesta. John Cage just seemed like an incredible man.
He was like into macrobiotic cooking when he ascivated it.
Had any regrets, he said he would have been a
botanist instead of a musician. He wrote a book about
mushroom foraging and he organized a society for amateur micologists.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
I swear to God, anarchist culture is so beautiful, Like
you just get these people who.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Have such a strong sense of their center. They and they.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Realize what real authority is and that you know, it's
not it's not flimsy.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah. Yeah. And as he got to the end of
his life, he practiced four thirty three every day in
front of his piano, which is a kind of cool
meditative practice.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
You know, I like that meditating for that long. That's
not as long as I want to meditate the same.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah. He died in nineteen ninety two of a stroke
at the age of seventy nine, and I've always wondered
whether he was going to get his own episodes, and
maybe he will one day, But I basically was like, hooray,
I got to talk about four thirty three guy. And
it's hard to overstate his influence on avant garde music.
Think of him as the first famous noise musician in
(21:52):
the modern sense. And he's going to influence some hippies
in the UK who are going to reinvent punk rock,
spearheaders genre called a narco punk, and dictate so much
of the radical political aesthetics of the Western world for
decades to come. But before someone can reinvent punk rock,
they have to cut to ads. It just happens. Actually,
(22:12):
Krass would fucking hate that I am doing this, But
that's what's happening right now. Because actually I have critiques
around class and crass, but we'll get to that later
because I understand the needs of working artists in a way. Whatever. Anyway,
here's ads. I have to put them here. Here they
are so before someone can reinvent punk rock, someone has
(22:39):
to invent punk rock. As to who did that, I
don't fucking know. People like to argue about it. There's
an awful lot of proto punk bands. Iggy Pop and
the band the Stooges from Detroit did some punk rock
shit starting nineteen sixty seven. MC five started also in
Detroit nineteen sixty three. There was another Detroit band, an
all black band called Death that was formed in nineteen
(23:00):
seventy one. Have you seen that documentary about them? I
think it's called a band called Death. It's so good.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I really I really want to see that.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah, and the Velvet Underground is seen as proto punk
out of New York City. Have you heard of this
band called the Dictators? No, I don't like them. They
formed in nineteen seventy three in New York. The New
York Dolls were from New York nineteen seventy two. Punk
rock absolutely came out of rock, specifically came out of
(23:29):
garage rock, a sixty genre that was centered around Detroit
and New York City. A lot of these bands were
leftist or anarchists, most notably MC five, a working class
band with ties to veteran of the Pod Up against
the Wall Motherfuckers, who were a New York City anarchist
street gang. But most histories of punk seem to agree
that punk, what we call punk today, was actually built
(23:51):
out of maintainstream acts, the ramones, the sex pistols in
the Clash. By nineteen seventy six, you've got a bunch
of the classic first punk bands, also like the Slits
and the Damned. As for the word punk, it actually
has a different etymology than I thought coming into.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
This weird Okay, I'd always.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Heard the like homosexual and like sex worker. Yeah, etymology,
that's what I thought. So it's two different etymologies that
got mashed together. The word punk is a reclamation of
a slur. I think most people know that Shakespeare used
the word a lot for female sex workers. There's a
(24:31):
song even older than Shakespeare called Simon the Old King
that says being drunk is quote a sin, as it
is to keep a punk.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I didn't realize that punk referred to a female sex worker.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
I had never heard that.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, that's the oldest English version of it, to quote
an article called the Rotten Etymology of Punk by JP Robinson. Quote. Meanwhile,
on the other side of the Atlantic, a new meaning
for punk grew, a meaning that had never been used
in Britain. Punk as rotting wood used for tinder and
(25:07):
eventually other things that smolder like fuses an incense. And
this was derived from the indigenous Lenape language.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
What this is amazing.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, and this is a stronger etymology. It became a
word for things that are kind of shitty, like bad
performances were punk shows.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
That's so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I love that there's indigenous idnology to that.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
That's so great.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah. And I think that the modern use of punk
derogatorily like don't be a punk or punk ass motherfucker
or whatever is actually pretty true to this old slang.
This like just something that's shitty, you know.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I love that. And then also it's like I think like.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
New York City is like Lenape territory, So I think
that's that's adorable.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Like, so it comes out of New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tons of music was being called punk in the nineteenth century.
In eighteen ninety nine, a West Coast guy named Otto
Wise wrote a skating review of some music he heard
in a music hall, calling it the most punk song
ever heard in a hall. And then it started being
(26:22):
used in the nineteen tens to mean sort of popular music,
non highbrow music. Wow, anything that is popular for being
kind of shitty and like lowbrow was punk. So then
people started using it positively as far back as like
nineteen tens, like yeah, so fucking what, we're not perfect
(26:42):
at this, we like it that way. There was like
all of these articles where people would say, oh, yeah,
so her voice is a little punk, but we like
it imperfect.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
That is fucking great. I uh yeah. I just went
on this like personal deep dive with.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Man and the Witch, like really really trying to like
fully understand what she's talking about, and it just gave
me such a beautiful sense of working class pride. It's
like it's like even way way way wa way way
back before there was you know, this idea of unions,
like working class people were just like doing all this
amazing organizing, and like so much of what we think
(27:22):
of as being union based was just like working class
people drawing boundaries for themselves and trying to have a
good life. So I love like when something that you
didn't think was as old shows up way back.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, totally, but kind of like we've been doing this forever.
And also just even that the like like punk almost
feels like almost a modern slang, not just the word
like punk, like punk rock, but like, yeah, don't be
a punk that feels very modern. It is five hundred
plus years old.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, I thought, like, you know, maybe fifties forties. No,
this is that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, there's like it's older than modern English the language. Yeah,
and it also became slang for delinquents, especially young gay men.
By the nineteen forties. It was slank in gay culture,
for the bottom in a gay relationship.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
That's what I thought. That's what I.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Thought totally, and that one might have also come in
from the British use of it, right, but like delinquents
who are kind of queer, very lowbrow. Of course this
gets applied to rock and roll. In nineteen sixty seven,
a journalist said quote, We've got kids out there in
Vietnam dying without a sound, and we've got punks here
(28:40):
who dress up like girls and make millions of dollars
doing it. The Rolling Stones were called punks, the Beatles
were called punks. Bob Dylan was called a punk, and
hippies were called punks. And it's funny because punk is
usually presented as an opposition to hippies. But it's actually
its natural growth. Really, it's dialectic. But I hate that.
(29:03):
I now know what dialectic means. I refused it to
just pretend I didn't say that. It's the thing that
responds to the thing.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Nah, I don't like I don't like it because it's
too political ease, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Oh yeah, and it means different things to every single
person who says it.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah, so I I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I like the idea of saying like it's part of
a conversation.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
I really try to bring things back to vernacular and
as much as you can.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Oh no, totally.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And I had such a hard time with Caliban and
the Witch, and I was longing for Prop to do
a translation.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah, totally. And there are some critiques to be laid
at the feet of that book in terms of its
accuracy around the Witch Trials. But oh yeah, that's a okay.
So when early punk bands were called punk, it wasn't
like these bands suck or this is a new genre,
(29:59):
but it was more we're keeping with this history of
being like, this is low brow, delinquent, kind of queer music.
And this got cemented when that band MC five, when
a reviewer called them punks in nineteen seventy two. This
is sort of when it kind of sticks. But it
didn't even have a specific sound, not until those specific
(30:20):
bands like the Sex Pistols, and then it suddenly did.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I got to be on stage with Wayne Kramer one time.
It was so so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Is that a sex Pistols?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Guy?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I can't remember names?
Speaker 1 (30:31):
He's from MC five.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Oh shit, Oh okay, that's way cooler. Fuck. Yeah. I
struggle all the time with music trivia because I just
literally can't remember names, which is why I actually kind
of like punk, because like the singer of Crass being
Steve Ignorant, I'm like, I can remember Steve Ignorant.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
You know, right, Yeah, And it's more about band names.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yeah, or art names like that totally yeah. But what
I can remember, Jolie is I can remember that I
need to do two ad break during each episode. I
remember that very well. And I bet you, dear listener,
remember the horrible jingles of our wonderful advertisers, whom I
(31:10):
all love very dearly. Here they are my favorite things
in the world, and we're back. So in nineteen seventy seven,
an anarchist magazine called Fifth Estate, which is still around,
(31:31):
actually wrote about this new punk phenomena and they talked
about its political content in an article called punk Rock,
Musical fad or Radical Kernel, which is a pretty like
that's a correct question to ask around punk absolutely and
basically they're like, is this punk rock thing? Is it anarchist?
(31:53):
Is it right wing? Is it mainstream pop? And much
like the Wall that says eat the rich and then
some racist stuff and then Bob was here, the answer
is yes, it is anarchist, it is right wing, it
is mainstream pop. It is everything punks good and bad
in that And actually, to be clear, when I say
good and bad, some of the bobless here is actually
(32:13):
some of the best punk I really like. I really
like cocksparuh. But maybe I'll find out that they're terrible people.
I don't know, but I really like some of the
OI from early times, the non racist stuff anyway. So
in that article they admit that they are old hippies
(32:33):
looking at this thing from the outside, so they're not
being like, we are the punks, right, but they've clearly
got a lot of knowledge. They talk about how there's
They identify three different strains of punk in nineteen seventy seven.
The most popular was the one in the UK built
around the sex Pistols, which was mainstream. Then there was
the New York scene around CBGB's as Fifth State puts it,
(32:55):
and I think this is a slightly reductive way putting it,
but Fifth State puts it. Groups like the Dictators merge
right wing lyrics manifest destiny disco with not so subtle
appeals to the fatish sato masochism now so popular in
the Big Apple. Not much there. That's their review of
the New York scene. I had never heard of the Dictators, which,
(33:19):
if you're a music person you're listening to me, you're like,
what I thought she was punk? I don't care. They
are legitimately one of the founders of punk. There are
one of the proto punk bands, and I swear I'm
not expressing this just because of my bias. It is
so bland. This is the blandest proto punk I have
ever heard. They recently reunited and put out a song
(33:39):
called Goddamn New York and it's a bunch of seventy
year olds with like a really low energy, fuck the
rich song that still manages to complain about Chinese billionaires
and a far right guy from the metal band Man
of War is in that band.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, that's very boring.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah. And then there was a third strain in nineteen
seventy seven, a West Coast punk that was more independent
and hated the record industry. And they're interesting because that's
like kind of what grows up in the UK, and
everyone attributes it to the UK. But West Coast punk
built a network of zines, some of which were just
about music, but some covered politics. A magazine called New
(34:19):
Diseases with diseases spelled wrong because they're punks was already
calling out Nazi punks with an article that read, Fascism
is on the rise. The time to renounce it forever.
Fascism is the negation and the end of the individual,
the end of creativity. Punk and anarchism is the shout
of the individual. It's creativity brought into our lives. It's
the end of the oppressor and not the myth of
(34:40):
the fascist dictator. It's not coy posing its revolution, which
is a very punk uh not very However, from Fifth
Estate's analysis, UK punk grew out of working class resentment,
while West Coast US punk grew out of a rejection
(35:01):
of middle class values. But I found another source that
argued something different that I found kind of interesting. Maybe
I find this interesting because whatever, if you're listening to
this podcast, you probably like weird history shit. So in
the early nineties there was a federation of anarchists across
the US called the Love and Rage Federation, and in
their newsletter an author named Christopher Day wrote this, It
(35:25):
was a bit of a long quote, but it's about
the political climate and the economic climate that punk came
out of. Quote. After the Second World War, a deal
was struck in the United States between major corporations and
the organized labor movement that basically guaranteed a large privileged
section of the working class steady improvements in its standard
of living in exchange for social peace and support of
(35:47):
the US military actions around the world in terms of consciousness,
if not always in terms of the economic position in
the overall process of exploitation. The effect of this deal
was to deproltarianize a huge section of the US workforce.
That deal was broken in the nineteen sixties. So basically,
it's saying like, after World War Two, a whole ton
(36:08):
of people, especially white working class people, became middle class.
And this is why everyone like dreams of the fifties
as like all the racists or like that was when
everything was perfect. It's because that's when more white people
got to be middle class. To continue the quote, that
deal was broken in the nineteen sixties when anti colonial
movements around the world and the Black liberation movement in
(36:30):
the US inspired millions of relatively privileged white youth to
openly oppose and defy the US war against Vietnam. At
the same time, the enormous expenditures the US was making
to wage the war were undermining US domination of the
world economy. The other industrialized countries were becoming more competitive.
Opek forced industrialized countries to pay more for oil, and
(36:51):
certain Third world countries like Korea and Brazil began to industrialize.
The global capitalist restructuring that has resulted has had several
main features. The most significant is the massive relocation of
the industrial production from the old imperialist countries to the
Third world. So basically it's like when the rust belt
starts rust belting to continue to quote. Hand in hand
(37:14):
with this de industrialization has gone a steady erosion into
standard of living of the US working class, both in
the form of lost jobs and wage cuts, and in
the form of cuts in social programs. While the worst
effects of this erosion have been borne by people of color,
it is important to note that the erosion has affected
the entire working class. Amongst the white working class accustomed
(37:34):
to middle class standard of living, the brunt of the
changes have been borne by their children as they have
entered the workforce. Young workers have always had to take
cruddier jobs at lower pay. What is different this time
is that those lower wages are not the first step
in a progression of better paying jobs. Rather, they are
a dead end. As probably the longest quote I've done
(37:57):
on this show, but it's so fascinating to me, and
I quoted at full in full, because this is what's
happening now.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Absolutely yeah, it's just a it's just another it's another
like level of degradation.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, and like all of these people who got promised
to be middle class are not middle class. And a
lot of people who are promised upward mobility into the
middle class are not. That is not available to them.
And I remember reading something there's like a it was
like a tweet or something. It's like, oh, the last
time that this happened, we at least got some good
(38:33):
music out of it, right.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Yeah, I think about that, but it's that's uh you
and I feel how kind of evil that is that, like,
you know, it's getting harder and harder to make a living,
and especially for artists, and to say like, oh, make
some grow, grow some beautiful flowers out of this shit.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah. And what's funny is it's like I hate to
deny people the flowers that they might be able to grow.
But one of the major differences is that even though
they were seeing erosions in the social systems, they had
more to begin with, exactly. And so like a lot
of people, especially in the UK, a lot of early
(39:19):
punk comes out of working class people or dropouts of
middle class who are able to live off of welfare,
you know, or like shitty, low paying jobs are enough
because of access to social services, and so like, we
don't we don't have that this time.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
And they also had that because of mass class solidarity
coming out of the Second World War, like people people
were like, well, we survived this horrible thing, so we're
gonna at least have healthcare.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah totally. And now you know, because when you look
at this like long quote, you're like, oh, well, they,
you know, sent jobs overseas, and you're like, theoretically, what
the right wing is claiming to do, and I don't
think that they'll have particular success with this is to
bring jobs back to the US by like through tariffs
and stuff, right, prioritizing US made stuff. But they're pairing
(40:14):
it with even further gutting of all social services. Like
so it's not actually helping the American working class at all.
I doubt I have to convince anyone who listens to
that show of this, but like.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, they're just making people more desperate.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah totally. And so instead it's like, oh, yeah, there
will be some jobs here and they will be absolutely
the worst. So in the seventies, workers were suddenly I'm
not quoting anymore, workers were suddenly forced to compete with
workers in other countries like Mexico and Malaysia. A lot
of this early history of punk and anarchism that I'm
pulling a lot of this from comes from a zine
(40:49):
put together by an anonymous editor, and that zene is
called Rebel Close, Rebel Songs, Rebel Pose, and it was
like someone who like literally went to the microfish and
read all the old stuff to put it together. And
the editor of that zcene says, quote places like Mexico
and Malaysia incidentally, places that have raging, fucking punk scenes
that are centers of anarchist ideas and activity.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
I don't know about Malaysian anarchism.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
That's awesome, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
So I know a little bit about Malaysian punk, and
it's mostly through the anonymous editor of the scene and
some of the people around that scene. And I want
to know more about It's like interesting because people like,
we'll talk about it later when we get further and
further into how anarcho punk kind of brought anarchism back
way more than I realized. And it didn't just do
(41:39):
it in the Western world. It like spread and developed
its own traditions everywhere and anyway. It's cool.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, because music doesn't have borders.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah, as John Cage put it doesn't have imaginary mountain ranges.
I really like that way of imagining borders. And people
were promised a future and they were told to work
within the system to improve the system. You know, they're
coming out of the sort of hippie era and people
are like, oh, okay, well we have a few environmental
protections now and don't worry, everything's going to be better
(42:10):
and you know whatever. And people kept seeing that that
wasn't happening, and so punk came with a promise, and
its promise was there is no future. You know. Its
promise was like, nah, that's all a lie. But dear listener,
you'd better hope there's a future because you're not going
to get to hear the rest of this four parter
(42:31):
until the future. Thank you, Thank you. When we come
back on Wednesday, we're going to talk about the rise
of punk in the UK, and we're going to talk
about how a bunch of not young hippies met a
young punk and started a band that changed the world.
But if people want to hear your band that it's
like kind of like it's funny because like Kress didn't
(42:51):
do this alone, and they very much know they didn't
do it alone, and like, but they're the like the
one that people talk about the most. And I'm doing
it too, you know, But why am I saying that?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, everybody's part of a scene.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, and like we collectively create a culture that influences
and changes things. But if you want to hear the
one that you do, how can they do that?
Speaker 3 (43:16):
You can find my music in all the places, you know,
it's everywhere. My band and my illegal name is Jolie Holland.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Oh yeah, you got you like lucked out with a
legal name that works for a band.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
It's the only thing my father gave me.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I'm actually curious, like where you see yourself in the
tradition of punk, cause, like I maybe just because I
like first started hearing your music when I started hanging
out and like squats and things like that, and so
it was like around the same time I started hearing
like things that would be classified as punk. And I
would guess that most people don't classify your music as punk,
but like the like broader world of that, I'm curious
(44:03):
how you see yourself fitting into that.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
You know, I was.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
A homeless street kid and we played the weirdest music,
you know. And then like I recorded my record Catalpa,
which is just like all it was all just like
home recordings for just like really really flaky shit.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
There's like three coughs on that record. And then it.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Was taken it face value as like so called folk music,
although you know, it's like I know a lot about
traditional music, and there's kind of a grounding of traditional
music in my work, but it's not it's not all
of what I do. And then that record blew up
and it was like in the top ten in the
(44:54):
college charts on both coasts, like twenty years ago, and
it blew my mind, like I because I had never
played the East coast at that point because I'm from
Houston and I was living on the West coast. And
then I started playing shows with that band, and it
(45:15):
was so hard to figure out even how to present
it because it it was all.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
The flakiest shit, you know. Katalpa is so flaky.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
And then we recorded Escondido, which is a lot more together.
That record it's whatever, it's a studio record, yeah, and
I went out and I started playing shows. And this
was in my late twenties, and I started playing shows
with that you know material, and I was on a
punk rock label. I was on Anti, which is a
(45:47):
sidiary of Epitaph Records, and I had like a you know,
NPR audience and it blew out my mind.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
I was like, there's people wearing khaki pants in this audience,
and it totally freaked me out because like I, you know,
I was just such an outsider and it was like,
who are these people?
Speaker 1 (46:12):
You know, it was very it was very confusing.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
So it's been I'm really happy that you heard my
music in that context because to a lot of people, yeah,
I just think, like, you know, my music does come
out of a microcultural context. So it's always been bizarre
fitting in. It's never been fully natural.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
I mean, the mainstream craves authenticity, and not even always
necessarily in a bad way. I think that people who
live outside of subculture feel like they're missing something, and
so when people who come from inside of subculture are like, hey,
here's a thing and it's available to you, but it
comes from subculture, I think people eat that up.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
You know, if you want to hear part of the
scene that I was in.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Listen to this absolutely atrocious noise music from band camp
called Donut Band. Okay, I love it so much.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
And are you on this?
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, Okay, you won't recognize me. I'm just like playing
some weird violin or something.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Okay. Well, that's where we're going to leave it for today,
and when we come back Wednesday, we're going to talk
about UK punk and we're gonna talk about weird hippies,
and we're going to talk about music that I think
is cool and interesting. And oh, I've got to shout
out my own things. I have a book coming out
about punk rock Scooby Doo. See it's punk rock and
(47:44):
well it's the third book in the Daniel Kaine series,
which someone is called punk Rock Scooby Doo and I
like that way of describing it. And it's a third book,
but it also stands alone because it's a bit of
a prequel. And I'm going to be kickstarting it in March,
which might be very soon if you're listening to this
in twenty twenty five, and you can back it. And
(48:06):
I'm gonna have audiobook versions of all three books in
the Daniel Kine series. So if you really want to
hear all of them, you can, and you should do that.
I guess if you want, all right, I'll see everyone
all on Wednesday. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is
(48:27):
a production of cool Zone Media and more
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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