Punk's Not Dead, It's in Witness Protection (Part 2 of 2)

Le Tigre has always been a unique band. The group’s original line-up consisted of Kathleen Hannah, former front-woman for feminist punk band Bikini Kill, Sadie Benning, a renowned experimental video artist, and zine publisher Johanna Fateman3. When Benning left the band, she was replaced with J.D. Samson, an activist and artist who was a founding member of an experimental dance troupe called “Dykes Can Dance.”4 Thus, the band has strong ties to the avant guard art scene, something that not many punk bands can claim today.

The music they put together is distinctly political in style. Their most recent album, This Island, featured an entire song made up of sound clips from anti-war protests that were held on the day that the War on Iraq was declared. Their music has a fiercely feminist agenda, and their tour in 2004, during the presidential election, featured voter registration booths in an attempt to mobilize their fans.

Certainly, what Le Tigre does has the attitude of punk rock, but does it have the sound of punk? Le Tigre’s music started out as lo-fi electronic music with heavy emphasis on cheap sound effects and manufactured drumbeats. As the band has evolved, their electronic sound has become more lush and polished, giving them a more mainstream, professional sound, but it is still heavily electronic. This is not to say that Le Tigre’s music is completely devoid of guitars or basses (although it may be completely devoid of any physical drums, I’m not entirely sure about that), but emphasis is always placed on electronic music. Their live show—at least the one I’ve seen—uses very little in the way of live instrumentation. Instead, the show mostly features the three band members singing their songs over prerecorded music while performing mock-cheerleader routines in front of large video screens playing bizarre, experimental videos. How can this be called punk?



According to Le Tigre’s own website:

When pulled over by the Texas highway patrol searched, and questioned individually, each member of Le Tigre answered this question (without prior knowledge of the other responses or hesitation) "we play feminist punk electronic music." Apparently the questioning officer was satisfied with this description as we were calmly instructed to throw the remains of the joint we were carrying by the side of the road, obey the speed limit in Texas and, in the future, keep all prescription drugs in the original bottle with the pharmacist's label! We have yet to see our albums appropriately filed in the FEMINIST PUNK ELECTRONIC section that is so popular at most record stores, but we can dream can't we?5

Le Tigre can retain their ties to the punk community because of their insistence on labeling themselves as punk. Even though their music sounds nothing like the traditional definition of punk that we’ve looked at, their own insistence in calling themselves a punk band allows them to retain that label. However, a good deal of this power they retain in labeling themselves comes from Kathleen Hannah and her connection to the punk scene. Having been a veteran of the riot-grrl6 scene in the 1990’s in her band Bikini Kill, which had a much more traditional punk sound, Hannah is lent some credibility that other experimental punk artists don’t have. If Kathleen Hannah calls her band punk, few will argue with her because of her history in the punk scene. By punk standards, she has earned the right to the label by cutting her teeth in a “real” punk band.


Socialist punk-rocker Dennis Lyxzén was the frontman for the 1990’s punk band The Refused and is currently the lead singer of The (International) Noise Conspiracy. He has, additionally been a member of several other smaller punk acts over the years. Lyxzén’s first band, The Refused, started out as a straight forward hardcore punk band, but grew to develop more of a metal and electronic influence into their music. Their final album would hardly have been considered punk rock at all had it not been for its title: The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombation in 12 Bursts. The title clearly references Ornette Coleman’s 1959 record The Shape of Jazz to Come, which was a seminal record in the free-jazz movement of the 60’s that broke down all the conventions of jazz and music in general. The Shape of Punk to Come disregarded most of punk’s conventions, including electronic elements, metal elements, seven and eight minute songs, and one song which featured a string section. The album, ironically, had a major influence on the “hardcore” bands that came after it, despite the fact that these bands are rarely ever referred to as “real” punk bands.

The philosophy of the album can be summed up by the lyrics to its sixth track, “New Noise”:

How can we expect anyone to listen/If we're using the same old voice?/We need new noise,/New art for the real people.7

This philosophy is expanded on in the album’s liner notes: “we all need to recognize that style in contradiction to fashion is necessary to challenge the conservatism of the youth cultures placed upon us.”8 The Refused, in their later years, believed that punk needed a new direction and a new sound and that, to remain mired in the old sound of punk was too conservative for what the punk movement was really supposed to be about. They saw that the only way to keep the genre revolutionary was to allow it to take on revolutionary new styles.

Lyxzén’s current band, The (International) Noise Conspiracy, couldn’t be farther away from The Refused in terms of their sound. While The Refused was a hardcore punk band with elements of metal and electronic music, The (International) Noise Conspiracy draws heavily on mod-rock influences with bouncy, keyboard oriented music and infectious hooks and melodies. By comparison to The Refused, The (International) Noise Conspiracy are downright tame. Yet the philosophy of t(I)NC is no different from that of The Refused, both in their philosophies about their politics and their philosophies about their music:

We wanted to do a band that played soul music, but punk rock…[a]ll of us used to play in hardcore and punk-rock bands, and we had this will of distortion to hide behind. And we wanted to do something that could give people the same energy and the same intensity, but without the big amps and everything - use a small amp with an undistorted guitar and make the same noise with it.9

In live performances, Lyxzén still talks about bands like The Clash and Bad Religion as being his main influences (notice the image of The Clash in the video above), and he still calls his music punk rock, despite the distinct mod-rock sensibility his new band has developed. Yet, a large part of this is because, over the course of his career, he has “earned” the right to call all of his music punk rock because of his early days in The Refused where he played more traditional punk rock. Furthermore, having named the last Refused album The Shape of Punk to Come he left little room for anyone to argue against his genre categorization.


Many see punk rock as a genre in decline. I suppose the reason this frustrates me so much is that I see the obvious solution to its decline staring me right in the face. This is a case of orthodoxy run amok, allowing traditionalists a stranglehold on what can and cannot be called punk rock. When the sitcom, as a genre, made its transition from the traditional three-camera format to the single-camera format which has become more popular these days, there were no legions of die hard fans arguing vehemently that sitcoms in the new form were not “true” sitcoms. Perhaps this is because the sitcom is a genre with no social group formed around it and, therefore, there was nobody invested enough in the genre to cry foul. However, the other difference between the sitcom and punk rock, is that the sitcom is finding ways to evolve and survive with new innovations while punk rock, or what is traditionally referred to as punk, is dying of stagnation. The only way the genre of punk could ever be saved is by acknowledging these new groups, like The (International) Noise Conspiracy and Le Tigre, as part of the punk rock family, and allowing the music to follow the natural course of evolution that it wants to take.




3 "Jo's Herstory." Le Tigre World. 18 Apr. 2009 http://www.letigreworld.com/sweepstakes/html_site/fact/jofacts.html.
4 Liss, Sarah. "Le Tigre: Punk Sample Friends Boogie to the Revolutionary Beat." NOW Magazine. 18 Apr. 2009 http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2002-08-22/cover_story.php.
5 "Just the Fact's, Ma'am." Le Tigre World. 18 Apr. 2009 http://www.letigreworld.com/sweepstakes/html_site/fact/content.html.
6 Riot-Grrl is a feminist subgenre of punk rock.
7 Lyxzén, Dennis. "New Noise." Rec. 1997. The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombation in 12 Bursts. By The Refused. Eskil Lövström, 1998.
8 The Refused. The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombation in 12 Bursts. Rec. 1997. Eskil Lövström, 1998.
9 "A groovy Swedish-flavoured left turn." Interview with Ben Rayner. Toronto Star [Toronto] 8 Nov. 2001.

Punk's Not Dead, It's in Witness Protection (Part 1 of 2)

Well, now that I’ve got my own little corner of the internet to spout off about whatever tickles my fancy, I thought I’d do a blog about something that I’ve written about before in my Livejournal, in papers for my undergrad classes, even in a poem. After spouting off about this informally for a while, I figured I’d put it down on wax here for everyone to read.

As those who know me are aware of, I’ve been a punk fan for quite a long time. The music and the culture drew me in when I was a teenager and I was trying to impress a girl who was really into the music. It amazes me how far the music has come since its humble origins in 1976.1 A small club in New York city, originally designed for country, bluegrass and blues music, started a small music scene where the artists played something so radically different, it shifted the entire direction of music for the next 30 some odd years. Every major musical movement since then has been directly influenced by punk: post-punk, new wave, alternative and indie-rock all have a direct relationship with punk rock. Even heavy metal, which is often seen as punk’s opposite or arch nemesis, has been heavily influenced by punk over the past three decades. Essentially, punk was the restart button for rock music, virtually erasing the prog-rock bands that immediately proceeded them, resetting rock music to the place it had started at in the 1950’s only, now, it had a bit more edge to it.

The earliest definition of punk was restrictively simplistic: three chord songs that are two minutes long, played with a lot of distortion. Clearly, an entire genre could not be born out of a definition as limiting as that. Obviously, the definition was not held to very strictly, as this definition would exclude the 8-minute long opuses of Flipper or guitar-less acts like Suicide or The Screamers, all of which are referred to as punk rock with little debate. Additionally, the early punk bands were all composed of members who were not raised on punk, considering how recently the genre had developed, but had other musical influences which they, of course, incorporated into their styles. Thus, we had punk mixed with rockabilly in the band X, punk mixed with British invasion style rock in The Jam, punk mixed with 50’s style girl group music in Blondie, and punk mixed with everything from reggae to blues to early hip-hop in The Clash. These innovations made for a genre that was diverse and creative and had the ability to evolve far past the boundaries of its original definition.

Therefore, if we can’t abide by the original definition of punk rock, what kind of definition can we propose for it? I would suggest a much looser version of the original definition: chord based rock music, usually played on the guitar, which is often characterized by a loud, abrasive, and confrontational sound. This definition leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but rightfully so. For a genre to have survived for over thirty years, as punk rock has, it would need to have a definition broad enough to allow for innovation and experimentation. Essentially, punk has been abiding by this definition for most of its life, even as many punk fans claim that the original definition still applies.

Recently, for class, I’ve been reading Jason Mittell’s Genre and Television, one of the few texts ever written on genre theory in television. It makes me wish that such an in-depth genre theory study could be done with rock music, especially since, unlike television, rock music creates distinct fan cultures and customs around different genres which would be fascinating to study. Unfortunately, while television has clearly defined genre lines that are used to categorize shows in TV Guide, rock music has blurry genre lines that are subject to much heated and, at times, vicious debates amongst the fan communities.

It’s these arguments over genre distinctions that have gotten the punk rock genre, and community, into trouble. Traditionalist punk fans argue for the purity of punk rock with the famous slogan “Punk’s Not Dead.” Normally, when they invoke this slogan, they are referring to the continued existence of traditional punk bands, which abide by the original definition of the genre or, at least, come as close as possible to that original definition. This, for traditionalists, is what punk should be, and anything that does not fit into that original definition is ruining the purity of the genre. Unfortunately, it seems that these traditionalists have taken control of the genre definitions.

For a genre to evolve, it would, inevitably, need to take on new characteristics. Punk has certainly done this but, because of a desire by traditionalists to keep the genre “pure,” bands who have introduced radical innovations have been labeled as something other than punk. This is despite the fact that these new bands do fit into the broader definition of punk that I have proposed and which, as I’ve stated, punk has essentially been abiding by since its inception. Thus, when I used to tell people that, in my opinion, The Blood Brothers were the best punk band of the 21st century, I would be met with laughter by traditionalists who told me that The Blood Brothers were not a punk band. When I asked what genre they should be categorized under, I heard responses like “hardcore”2 or “post-hardcore” (whatever that is). Yet, The Blood Brothers were a chord based rock band with a distinctly abrasive style of music, which was, arguably, even more abrasive than the original punk bands of the 1970’s. This has been the situation for a lot of bands that have a punk sound that sounds different than the traditional norm, such as At the Drive-In or Pretty Girls Make Graves. Some are relegated to the genre of “hardcore,” while some are placed into the virtually definition-less genre of “indie rock.”

A few of these innovative bands that don’t fit into the usual definition of punk rock have tried to take control of their own genre categorizations by refusing to refer to themselves as anything other than punk. To give two specific examples, I want to next take a look at experimental feminist band Le Tigre, as well as the multiple bands of Dennis Lyxzén.

To be continued...



1 There is much debate as to when punk officially started. For simplicity’s sake, I usually refer to it as having started with the release of The Ramones’ self-titled album in 1976.
2 I find this genre name particularly confusing and problematic since there are already three existing genres which contain the word “hardcore” in their name—hardcore punk, hardcore rap, and hardcore techno—and all three are often referred to as simply “hardcore” for short. Thus, having a genre that is known simply as “hardcore” is particularly confusing.