PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022)
by Simon Parker
'Ah, those days... for many years afterwards their
happiness haunted me.
Sometimes, listening to
music, I drift back and nothing has changed.' [1]
I.
Conceived, designed, narrated, and edited by Simon Parker - and published by an independent co-operative he established in 1996 to celebrate and promote contemporary Cornish
writing - PZ77 is "a unique story of
time, place, friendship, community, and an almost obsessive passion for
making music" [2].
The book features more than ninety personal accounts, across 392 pages, from old punks like himself who grew up in a place "others came for their holidays" (Penzance) [3].
It's not the kind of book I would normally read (for reasons we'll come to shortly).
However, as a 40 page extract from the work - the first five tracks - is the chosen text for discussion by the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) [4] this coming week - a group with which I'm associated - I thought I'd take this opportunity to assemble (and share) some thoughts in advance ...
II.
There are, as Russ Bestley reminds us, now hundreds of books on punk in the mid-late 1970s, and it sometimes feels as if everyone and their dog who was in any way connected to the scene has now had their say on the subject or shared their memories of the time.
For those over a certain age, punk nihilism has now given way to punk nostalgia; the chaos of a life lived blissfully in the moment (now/here) has been replaced with a comforting and conformist vision of the past.
In other words, instead of going with the flow of events and strange becomings that carry them beyond the constraints of a fixed identity, many old punks - just like many old hippies before them - now prefer to relive the past as best they can at the Rebellion Festival [5] and produce narratives which reinforce the mythology of punk by "re-articulating variations of the same story, often through
a nostalgic lens centred on personal experience and memories" [6].
III.
To be fair to Parker, PZ77 might be read as an attempt to give a voice to many punk fans whose stories and memories of the time might otherwise have gone unrecorded, thereby expanding our understanding of punk (certainly as it unfolded in Corwall in 1977).
As Bestley rightly points out, "punk's standard
narrative has become so deeply embedded, its cultural and historical position so neatly summarized,
that there is a desperate need for alternative perspectives that might sustain a sense of engagement
and highlight new contributions to knowledge within a tired and over-familiar field of study" [7].
However, from what I've read of the work, I don't like it ...
And the reason I don't like it is because, as a Deleuzian - and as a member of the extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars [8] - I don't like writing that attempts to impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience and I don't like writing that is merely a form of personal overcoding; i.e., an opportunity for an author to give whatever it is they write about a familiar face that somehow resembles their own.
Any form of writing that is reliant upon the recounting of youthful memories is more often than not going to be not only bad writing but dead writing; for as Deleuze says, literature dies from an excess of autobiography just as surely as from an overdose of emotion or imagination [9].
Rather than transport us away from Oeidpal structures towards a zone of indiscernibility where we might lose ourselves, PZ77 attempts to take us back to a better time where we might rediscover our passions and dreams, renew old friendships, etc.
Whereas I still believe in the ruins, Parker believes in building a sense of community. The interviews with participants in his project indicate a level of acceptance that punk has become part of mainstream culture; nice people, performing nice gestures, and leading nice lives, etc.
Ultimately, I was never going to like a book written by an obsessive Ramones fan: they may have been Sid's favourite band, but they were never my favourite band.
And whereas Parker, a grammar school boy from a Methodist fishing village who always sees the good in people is, by his own admission, "always thinking about music" [10], I don't care about the music; to paraphrase Malcolm, if punk had just been about the music it would have died a death long ago.
It's his best mate, Grev Williams, however, who really irritates me. Thinking back to the Summer of Hate, he ponders just how important the period was to him really:
"Punk
bursting into our lives was hugely invigorating and
inspiring [...] but I'd be lying if I said I found any
expression of my inner self in it [... and] the idea that I was revolting
against my background and community would be
wholly false. I was blessed with the strength of
knowing where I came from, I didn't want to smash
it up - I loved it. Punk wasn't a spit-filled, nihilist
cul-de-sac for me, it was a launch pad. As a budding
musician it provided opportunities and informed
my attitude, not my taste. [...] Anyway, long story short
and truth be told, I didn't hate or revolt against
much [...] [11]
Williams concludes that, whilst still aknowledging the benefit of his experiences in 1977, he has to ask himself whether he was ever really a 'punk': "As with so much, I'm really not sure." [12]
It's not, of course, my role to help him decide the matter.
But I would say, given his confession above - every aspect of which (apart from his uncertainty) - I find objectionable - that whilst he may or may not have been a punk, he was clearly not a Sex Pistol as I understand the term; i.e. in a manner largely shaped by McLaren's description in the Oliver Twist Manifesto (1977) - click here - and the ideas developed in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980).
I look forward to discussing this with other members of the SIG, including Russ Bestley [13]. However, I won't be buying a copy of Parker's PZ77. For those who like this sort of thing, as Miss Brodie would say, this is the sort of thing they like: but, as I've hopefully made clear, I don't.
Notes
[1] J. L. Carr, A Month In The Country (Harvester Press, 1980).
This quote was used as an epigraph to PZ77. It should be noted, however, that the narrator of the novel goes on to ask himself would he have always remained happy had he somehow been able to stay in the same time and place. And the answer is: "No, I suppose not."
[2] I'm quoting here from the Scryfa website: click here.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) are an informal collective operating out of the University of the Arts London (UAL), concerned with what we might briefly describe as the politics of style and offering resistance to temporal colonisation; i.e., the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different.
I have published several SIG-themed posts here on Torpedo the Ark, which can be read by clicking here.
[5] For those who don't know, Rebellion is the biggest independently run punk festival in the UK, that takes place each summer in the historic Winter Gardens, Blackpool. I haven't been and I don't want to go to this family-oriented event which celebrates Punk in all its forms with the blessing of the local council. For further information, click here.
[6] Russ Bestley, 'Going Through the Motions: Punk Nostalgia and Conformity', in Trans-Global Punk Scenes: The Punk Reader Vol. 2. (Intellect Books, 2021), pp. 179-196.
[7] Ibid.
[8] This wonderful phrase was coined by Peter York to describe the denizens of 430 King's Road (i.e., the SEX people). It was used in his article 'Them' that appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976) and is cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.
[9] See the post dated 30 August 2013 entitled 'A Deleuzean Approach to Literature' - click here.
[10] Simon Parker, PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022), p. 11.
[11] Grav Williams quoted by Simon Parker in PZ77 ... pp. 38-39.
[12] Ibid., p. 41.
[13] Russ Bestley's own review of Simon Parker's PZ77 can be found in Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 12, Issue 1 (Feb 2023), p. 131 - 134. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to gain free access to this text online, so couldn't discuss it here.
