Punk & Post-Punk - Current Issue

Sarah Records was an independent label active in Bristol from 1987 to 1995 famous for its many contributions to the UK indie pop scene from bands like Heavenly, the Field Mice and the Orchids. In 2015, the same year that the New Musical Express named Sarah as the second-best independent label of all time, the founders launched a digital archive to share photographs, press-clippings and other artefacts. While Sarah releases were often dismissed by the popular music press at the time as ‘twee’ – perhaps due to the label’s name and the gender of one of its founders – the archive provides a compelling counterstory (Martinez) of the label as an activist organization advancing political causes through its releases, advertisements and more. This article examines the political legacy of Sarah Records, a label that regularly advocated for feminism and socialism through its releases, by considering how its engagement with the press, its use of technology, and now its archive have worked to enact its political ideals and subvert dominant cultures.

This article studies the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through its different phases by looking at the case of Bogotá’s punk scene and analysing the activities of different collectives involved in the organization of music shows and other types of gatherings. We contribute to understanding those effects by answering the question of how the pandemic has transformed the creative, collaborative and political practices of its participants. We consider four periods of analysis: pre-pandemic, lockdown, new normal and post-peak reactivation. We use a mixed methodology comprising interviews with members of the collectives and the analysis of secondary data obtained from the social media posts made by these collectives. We use the latter to compare audience participation and reactions before, during and after the COVID-19 lockdown period with data from 2019, 2020 and 2021. A network analysis confirms the existence of a network of collectives identifiable as a central node of the punk scene. We find that remote activities were never considered more than a temporary and imperfect alternative from creative, political and economic perspectives. Economic impacts were severe and led to the closure of several collectives. Though a political discourse was not articulated as such by the scene, political thought and action aligned with social protests in Colombia and unified in opposition to market-oriented government policies in the cultural field. A slow return to in-person activities took place in the scene, leaving remote events behind, re-establishing live music at the centre of the scene and allowing for informal socialization among creators, producers and audiences. By looking at the three effects globally, we conclude that the punk scene did not recover completely and did not reach the level of organization it had before the pandemic.

Based on French expressions of contemporary punk culture, this article looks at the formation of the pogo during gigs. Although this dance is one of the characteristics of punk expression, it remains little studied. From an interactionist perspective, using a comparative approach between different ethnographic fields, the aim is to understand how the order of the pogo is negotiated by the actors involved. More than that, the aim is to understand how this improvised collective dance produces disorder and gives rise to a community experience. To do this, we are interested in the context in which the pogo takes place. Venues play a decisive role in the implementation of this dance and help to create a playful space–time. A new world of meaning is created: the pogodrome. From then on, the physical commitment of the participants is linked to the rules of the pogodrome, and the breaks in interaction reveal the limits of the framework thus formed. Finally, the pogo appears to be a tool for embodying disorder, both physical and sociopolitical. In fact, the pogodrome becomes a territory of disorder, taken over by communities of practitioners that sometimes last beyond the time of the concert.

Review of: Running at the Edge of Their World: The Suspect Device Fanzine Story, Tony Suspect and Gaz Suspect (2024)

Ticehurst: Earth Island Books, 288 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-91686-422-1, p/bk, £19.99

Review of: Destiny Stopped Screaming: The Life and Times of Adrian Borland, Simon Heavisides (2024)

Rotterdam: Stichting Opposite Direction, 499 pp.,

ISBN 978-9-09038-083-4, p/bk, £23

Review of: Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable, Rob Drew (2024)

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 205 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-47802-559-7, p/bk, $26.95

Review of: Punk Revolution! An Oral History of Punk Rock Politics and Activism, John Malkin (2023)

Lanham, MD: Rowman – Littlefield Publishers, 357 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-53817-172-1, h/bk, £25

Review of: Postanarchism and Critical Art Practices, Saul Newman and Tihomir Topuzovski (2024)

London: Bloomsbury, 198 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-35041-034-3, h/bk, £85.00