These are two recently published items on punk, one the product of professional rock journalism and the other a fanzine produced within the scene – and both are disappointing. Sellout by Dan Ozzi is a book that might have described and explained issues about the non-commercial culture of DIY punk in the 1990s, and the conflict between this culture and the commercial imperatives of major record labels. But it doesn't do this. Each chapter explores the moment when a US band, from Green Day to Against Me!, abandons the culture and organisations that made it possible and signs a legal contract with a branch of the capitalist culture industry.
Completely lacking in any intellectual framework for describing this ‘sellout’, the author endlessly repeats the empty language of commercial rock journalism. Bands ‘ink a deal’ and jump to the world of tour buses, guided by a sympathetic employee of a subsidiary of a major record label. The benefits of the legal contract are listed by the author and the band has complete artistic control. A few pages later, Dan Ozzi is describing deteriorating personal relations among the band, and the cool A&R representative wants to change some songs on the upcoming album.
Lacking any critical perspective on the culture industry, Ozzi is left with meaningless cliches. Fugazi are ‘idealistic’ for refusing a major label contract. Tim Yohannan of Maximumocknroll is a self-righteous ‘cop’. It is easy enough to find some punk kid to say this, but the job of a serious writer is to provide intelligent analysis. Calling Yohannan, an activist with a coherent anti-capitalist worldview, a ‘cop’ is not serious analysis.
Success did not fall into Green Day's lap. The band hired a management and legal company to launch its commercial career in the music industry. Jawbreaker, which followed Green Day, carefully studied Donald Passman's All You Need to Know about the Music Business (Reference Passman2021). Although he has no concept of cultural intermediary, Ozzi's book repeatedly shows the key role played by industry figures such as Rob Cavallo. In his studies of the culture industry, Pierre Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1998) repeatedly shows how such figures erode the autonomy of artistic fields. Ozzi, however, is too busy writing about bands inking deals, dropping records and making meaningless statements about their DIY ethics to notice.
Because he lacks any concept of an autonomous artistic field, Ozzi endlessly repeats cliches about ‘the artist’ (a rebel, an outsider, preferably with blue hair) and the opportunities afforded by major record labels (Green Day ‘blew open the door’ for any band that cared to follow). And so opposition to the erosion of the artistic field and organisations that made it possible (volunteer-run venues, non-profit cultural centres and record stores, non-commercial record labels, employee-run record distributors) is only described by Ozzi as violence. Fans throw things, yell insults, guns are pulled (this is the United States). The author has no coherent framework for understanding why these autonomous spaces matter to participants in the field. This free space was mapped by Maximumrocknroll's city-by-city guide Book Your Own Fucking Life (1992). The guide was almost instantly out of date, but enough of the phone numbers still worked to locate the new free space (a rental hall, a church basement, an art collective), a punk collective house (a hot meal after the show, a place to sleep) and the new kid who had taken over putting on shows.
Ozzi mentions in passing art spaces and punk basements that put on shows. Yet for him the real narrative is the ‘discovery’ of the band by a record label employee, sometimes a young, poorly paid employee, sometimes not. The doxa and cliches of hundreds of band biographies are repeated with no critical perspective. The band, of course, will never abandon its creative ideals.
The person who is celebrated in this book is Craig Aaronson, a corporate A&R man, to whom a memorial paragraph is dedicated in the Epilogue. Tim Yo, who also died at a relatively young age from cancer, is not celebrated (remember he is called a cop). Green Day are celebrated for reaching millions of kids and planting countless ideas in the minds of young listeners. A Food Not Bombs table, or a kid putting on non-profit punk shows, might do that. Yet it is difficult to imagine what Green Day might teach anyone since most American kids already know how to be raucous teenagers.
This is a deeply confused book because Ozzi lacks any reflexivity about his own role as a cultural intermediary. The real story in this book is the role of people like Rob Cavallo, John Silva, Loren Israel, Craig Aaronson, Rick DeVoe, Kevin Lyman, Mary Gormley, Tony Brummel, Ben Lazar, Gary Gersh, Ron Handler and Pete Gilberga in the reproduction of a capitalist culture industry, as well as radio hosts who fail to understand the role of autonomous spaces such as Gilman Street, and many similar spaces around the world.
Cometbus is one of the most respected zines in the punk scene around the world. The zine almost never talks about bands, nor about having blue hair, nor about mindless mosh pits. It is a reminder that at least some of the punk scene is concerned with other issues. Punks have always been key volunteers in Food Not Bombs and issues of access to food. Most punks are vegan, not as a fashion statement but from a rejection of chicken and pig factory farms. Many punks choose used clothing not just because it is more fun but from a rejection of marketing and branding. One punk collective that I knew in Mexico in the 1990s spent far more time on their organic garden on the outskirts of Mexico City than in band practice.
Cometbus #59 was issued in 2020 and asks this question: what happened to the DIY punk scene of the 1990s? Where is it today? I have an interest in this, having researched and written a book on the topic (O'Connor Reference O'Connor2008). So there was a bit of professional jealousy that Aaron Cometbus got an interview with Epitaph Records (they didn't even answer my e-mail) and more relief when the interview turns out to be a dud. The next interview presented in the zine is with a guy who runs an organic vegan donut shop (an old punk). Then Thrasher magazine. My puzzlement turns into an admission that just about every punk kid in the 1990s had a skateboard. One of my most embarrassing moments at a weekend punk fest in the USA was being told off by a 15-year old boy for walking into the path of another kid's skateboard run: ‘You walked right into his run’.
Cometbus visits an anarchist bookstore (he is not an anarchist) which reminds me a bit of L’Insoumise in Montreal: an all-volunteer, collectively run bookstore and infoshop. Certainly every punk in the city would know about it. A few might even volunteer. Then he interviews Mike from Fat Wreck Records and the interview turns into personal rants (I also didn't get an interview with Fat Wreck). By the time Aaron gets to interview Josh MacPhee at Interference Archive it has become apparent that this zine (actually a short book) is about older punks (also a topic of academic research). Cometbus argues that Maximumrocknroll collapsed because it was unable to change (it continues as a website: https://maximumrocknroll.com). The topic is middle-age and death. The zine is titled Post-Mortem. Reflections on a Punk Life.
Now the thesis statement emerges. Cometbus thinks that the failure of alternative scenes is in not taking themselves seriously enough, in not valuing their skills and creativity. What if punk had professional fundraisers and advisory boards, applied for government grants. Not everyone needs to do this, of course. But the point (which I have tried to make elsewhere) is that punk is not a subculture but a position in the artistic field. Bourdieu has a name for this: small-scale production. Bands like the Ramones or Green Day which are often thought to typify punk are actually outliers. Cometbus ends with an interview about ABC No Rio, a punk space that I'd been to several times in New York City. The poorly built house (shows used to be in the basement) has now been demolished and is being replaced with a properly designed punk and art space.
