Punk History is for Pissing On: Notes on PZ77 by Simon Parker

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 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 heavily reliant upon the recounting of youthful memories is usually 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. 

 

 

IV. 

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 likes to see 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: 

 

"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]

 

Whilst aknowledging the benefit of his experiences in 1977, Williams 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, for me, punk history is for pissing on ...    

 

 

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) is 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] Grev 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.    

 

 

Michel Tournier on Education 2: Erotic Religiosity

It is not enough to love the young; 

they must know that they are loved - St. Don Bosco

 

 

I. 

 

I closed part one of this post [click here] mourning the fact that only rarely in an age of remote learning do teachers and their students form those close bonds that were common when education was about initiation in the old aristocratic sense of the term (i.e. becoming a good human being and member of society), rather than instruction in the modern bourgeois sense (i.e., becoming someone with the skills and knowledge valued by employers).

 

Perhaps, I tentatively suggested, we need to radically rethink the question of education and reintroduce an element of erotic religiosity back into the classroom; whether this be modelled on classical Greek lines, Loyola's order of Jesuits, or even upon Lawrentian lines in terms of the democracy of touch, is something that would obviously have to be discussed carefully and at length [a].

 

 

II.

 

The French writer Michel Tournier seems to favour the Catholic model, if only because this is the one with which he is most familiar. 

 

In his autobiography [b], he tells us that the two schools that occupy a special place in his memory among the dozen or so he attended in the course of a "chaotic scholastic career" [47], were both religious institutions; Saint Erembert's in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Saint Francis's School in Alençon. Each were far more successful than their secular counterparts "in preserving the initiatory aspects of education" [47].

 

Tournier explains what it was about Catholicism that particularly appealed to his youthful self and how this inclined him in later years towards the study of philosophy:

 

"The Catholic religion, with its rituals, holy days, theology, and mythology, served as a marvelous emotional counterweight to mathematics and the natural sciences, a counterweight without which the child or adolescent is afflicted by a sense of dryness and aridity. In any case, I cannot separate my memory of the theology [...] from the sumptuousness of ritual. Dunce that I was, I found in religious history and catechism an anticipation of what I later discovered in metaphysics: concrete speculation inextricably intertwined with powerful and brilliant imagery. For metaphysics is nothing other than the rigour of mathematics wedded to the richness of poetry." [47]   

Not that Tournier was smitten with other aspects of Catholicism: "I had little use for the bludgeon of dogma or for the zombie-like obedience and faith of the humble." [47] This is probably why he became a novelist and not a priest. He appreciated the fact that the Church initiated the child into a world that was both spiritual and sensual; a world that granted access to all - not just members of the nobility - to poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Alas, the institutionalised clergy also has another face, hideous, hypocritical, and hateful ...

"Having lost its temporal power, the Church signed on as handmaiden to the most constricted, conservative element of the bourgeoisie, whose interests and ideas it ardently adopted as its own. It continued to draw its teachings from the Gospel, but from the words of the Pharisees rather than those of Jesus. In other words, it began to preach respect for social hierarchies, money, and power as well as hatred of sexuality." [48-49] 

For Tournier, it's simple: in teaching a false morality (conservative and anti-erotic), the Church cannot possibly initiate the young into the good life. In a manner similar to D. H. Lawrence, he dreams of a Jesus fully resurrected in the flesh:

 

"Fear of the flesh has made the crucifix - a corpse nailed to two pieces of wood - the centre of Catholic worship in preference to all other Christian symbols [...] The Church has resolutely set its face against the dogma of resurrection in the flesh and attempts to ignore the fact that whenever Jesus encountered sexuality - even in the antisocial forms of prostitution and adultery - he defended it against the wrath of the Pharisees. [...] Prudes are ugly and impute their own ugliness to love, but when they spit on it, they spit on themselves. Loved and celebrated in those we love, the flesh is as radiant as that of Jesus on Mount Tabor." [49-50] [c]

 

Tournier continues:

 

"Sumptuous, subtle, and erotic - such is the initiatory Church of which I dream when I think back on how my childhood might have been. I thank my stars that the Church that actually raised me only partially betrayed that ideal." [50]

 

Sadly, those days are now remote - Tournier was born almost a hundred years ago (in 1924) - and secular education has pretty much triumphed:

 

"The revolution begun by the men of the Enlightenment is now complete. Emotional bonds, personal and possibly erotic relationships, pose no further danger of polluting the aseptic atmosphere of the classroom. Education, cleansed of every last vestige of initiation, has been reduced to nothing more than a dispenser of useful and saleable knowledge. Already computers are taking the place of teachers [...]" [50]     

But still the heart beats and the flesh quivers ... And tomorrow is another day ...

 

Notes

 

[a] I am aware of the danger that initiation can collapse into indoctrination and that models of pedagogy that flirt with ideals of pederasty can often serve as an apologetics for the sexual abuse of minors. In replacing modern teachers with tutors and mentors who care about more than exam results, we don't want to end up appointing orgres to the classroom (or even dangerous women like Miss Brodie). 

      On the other hand, if you banish the warm and magical aspect of education entirely from the official curriculum and prohibit all forms of amorous relations in the classroom, then you can be certain they will develop elsewhere and often in guises you wouldn't anticipate.    

         

[b] Michel Tournier, The Wind Spirit, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, (Collins, 1989). All page references given in the post refer to this work. 

 

[c] As Deleuze notes: "A certain number of 'visionaries' have opposed Christ as an amorous person to Christianity as a mortuary enterprise." See 'Nietzsche and St. Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos', in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, (Verso, 1998), p. 37.  

Notes on the Brodie Set

The Brodie Set: the crème de la crème of 
Marcia Blaine School 

Although reduced in number in Ronald Neame's film adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel, the composite characters who make up the cinematic version of the Brodie Set remain the crème de la crème ...

I. Jenny: the Sexy One

Jenny - played by Diane Grayson - is the natural beauty of the group; a Rose by any other name. She possesses instinct, but no insight and is, according to Miss Brodie, like a heroine in a novel by Mr. D. H. Lawrence, with a profile of deceptive purity and a willingness to cartwheel on command, primitive and free.

Thus it is that Jenny will one day be famous for sex; destined - in Miss Brodie's mind - to become Teddy Lloyd's lover and not merely his model. But Jenny is of no real interest to the randy art master and Miss Brodie's fantasy of her erotic value and Nietzschean potential to rise above the common moral code is woefully mistaken.

Jenny is, in fact, just an ordinary girl; more a pint of semi-skimmed milk than crème de la crème. She wants to be happy, like her parents; people who have sexual intercourse in the marital bed, lights off but nightclothes on, and don't have primes like Miss Brodie.    


II. Monica: the Plain One

Monica - played by Shirley Steedman - was good at maths and quick of temper. And although a rather histrionic child, easily moved to tears by poetry and tales of lost love, Miss Brodie ultimately thought her to possess very little soul. It is also Monica whom she initially suspects of betraying her.

Personally, however, I like Monica very much: she seems to me the sort of girl one might have a lot of fun with; always happy to go places and to do things. 


III. Mary McGregor: that Silly, Stupid Girl

Ah, Mary McGregor - played by Jane Carr - is the most malleable of the four girls, thus her attraction for Miss Brodie. Slow-witted and stuttering, she is bullied by one and all, meekly bearing the blame for everything that goes wrong. Sadly, as Sandy rather cruelly says: She died a fool.


IV. Sandy: the Clever Little Cat 

Sandy - played by Pamela Franklin (with such brilliance that she won a BAFTA for her performance) - is Miss Brodie's confidante. And thus, of course, best able to put a stop to her ... 

Miss Brodie thinks Sandy dependable, but far from her prime: it's a fatal misjudgement. For by the age of seventeen, Sandy has developed into a young woman of great insight and sexual precocity; something that Teddy Lloyd is quick to recognise and exploit, happily taking her as his mistress.

Miss Brodie also thinks Sandy would make a great spy. But Sandy is ultimately an assassin who regards her former mentor as a ridiculous woman. She also comes to understand the Brodie Set as an essentially micro-fascist formation; faithful to their leader and expected to serve, suffer and sacrifice.

Sandy clearly loves Miss Brodie and was closer to her than any of the other girls. But that's why she has to one day go too far and betray her; for we reward our great teachers not with loyalty, but by losing them so that we can at last become ourselves.

Judas was the greatest of disciples. And Sandy was the greatest member of the Brodie Set: the clever little cat that got the cream and learned how to kill without concern.   

Read: Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, (Macmillan, 1961).

Watch: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), dir. Ronald Neame, written by Jay Presson Allen, starring Maggie Smith in her Academy Award winning prime.

To view the original trailer for the above film, click here.