Oliver Sheppard is a DJ, writer, sometime-musician, and otherwise professional luftmensch currently in Texas. He ran Cultpunk.com, the radio show Radio Schizo, and currently DJs the “No Doves Fly Here” postpunk event night in Austin. His work has appeared on Z Magazine’s website and in lots of anarchist/socialist magazines.
It was 1928 when Herbert Hoover coined the phrase “the American system of rugged individualism.” Socialism was growing in popularity, and attempts to paint the ideas behind the movement as dangerous were well underway. In the same speech, the President mentioned the perils of “state socialism,” something that would take away Americans’ freedom if it was ever attempted in the United States. (More…)
‘90s punk. What was it? Think of punk in the 1970s. A certain set of images, band names, and song titles immediately present themselves: The Ramones, Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks. Fast forward to the eighties, and a similar thing happens, even if many 1970s bands continued into the decade, and even if many bands thought of as 1980s bands, like Black Flag or the Dead Kennedys, actually began in the ‘70s. (More…)
In 1977, Chelsea released Right to Work. As with the term “public school,” “right to work” has opposite meanings in the US and UK. In America, it means the “right” of the government to override closed shop agreements between unions and employers, a contractual agreement companies should support. Except, since closed shops benefit unions, pro-market advocates don’t support it, and hypocritically call for state regulation. (More…)
In a Maximum Rockn Roll column in 2005, Felix von Havoc stated that we’re in the” throwback era” of music. Try as I might, I can’t escape the feeling that Havoc’s insight has been one of the more salient observations made in the past decade. It cuts to the core of a very important issue. Most music, mainstream or underground, is nowadays judged in terms of what it is a “throwback” to. Has rock reached a cultural cul-de-sac? (More…)
If the mission of ’77 punk was the resuscitation of rock & roll’s antisocial roots, postpunk amounted to an unfettered exploration of the musical and cultural spaces that punk had made possible. In England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage noted that as early as 1978, punk had fractured into two camps: The social realists on one side (The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers) whose fans would become the street punk, Oi!, and hardcore movements. (More…)
Burnt Cross are a pretty new band in the punk scheme of things. But you wouldn’t know this from hearing them. In fact, the four year-old duo’s songs often evoke the “instant classic” quality you immediately recognize in songs like Crass’s Banned From the Roxy, Conflict’s mid-eighties rants, and the perennial “some-band-you-know-from-the-