{"id":481,"date":"2014-06-15T19:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/?p=481"},"modified":"2014-06-15T19:02:12","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T09:02:12","slug":"on-punk-and-politics-blogjune-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/2014\/06\/15\/on-punk-and-politics-blogjune-15\/","title":{"rendered":"On punk and politics [#blogjune 15]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Warning: this is one of those &#8216;back in my day&#8230;&#8217; [wags finger] posts.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m still a little deaf, battered and bruised after last night&#8217;s great Hard-Ons 30th anniversary gig at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. There was lots of jumping around, crowd-surfing, stage diving, beer spitting and rushing the stage. It was messy, loud and lots of fun.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The HARD-ONS - Girl In The Sweater (promo - Full version)\" width=\"676\" height=\"507\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bHX03lYlXrE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Hard-Ons aren&#8217;t the most political of punk bands. But Ray Ahn slipped in a few wry, funny comments on the current state of Australia. After pointing\u00a0out the diverse backgrounds of the band members &#8211; Korean (Ray), Sri Lankan (Keish), Croatian (Blackie) and Polish (Murray) &#8211; he threw up the middle finger to our Prime Minister and his refugee policies with a heart-felt &#8216;fuck you&#8217;. And he noted that our\u00a0current political climate made it the perfect time for young people (not old bastards like the Hard-Ons) to start lots\u00a0of punk bands.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The more severe the political landscape becomes, the more oppressive, the more valuable the imagination becomes.&#8221; (Jim Jarmusch\u00a0in\u00a0<em>Punk: Attitude<\/em>, a film by Don Letts)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While the New York\u00a0punk scene was not overly political in the 1970s, UK punk came out of a particular socio-political moment. So did some of Brisbane&#8217;s punk bands here in Australia. And US punk politicised through bands like Dead Kennedys.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Punk definitely had a major influence in the eruption of militant anti-corporate activism that first came to light over here in the Seattle protest &#8230; Fuck you to corporations, fuck you to branding everything, and fuck you to corporations having dictatorial control over society and governments.&#8221; (Jello Biafra\u00a0in\u00a0<span style=\"font-style: normal;\">Punk: Attitude<\/span>, a film by Don Letts)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the late 1980s and into the 1990s we also had heavily political rap like Public Enemy and N.W.A., and the riot grrrl movement (which had a big influence on me). Music can be a powerful tool for social and political comment, critique and satire. But I get the sense music in the new millennium has been partly about apolitical\u00a0musical creativity (if we&#8217;re lucky) and mostly about cashing in. When people think politics and music they don&#8217;t think of pissed off marginalised young people with loud guitars, they think of Bono.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s time that changed. Admittedly, it might have changed already. There might be a new generation of bands coming through who refuse to accept the current state of politics and our rampantly capitalist society. Hopefully they exist and I&#8217;m just too old or out of the loop to know about them.<\/p>\n<p>But if they don&#8217;t exist, they bloody well should. [Wags finger.]<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"676\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8jWWcxwNiKU?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Warning: this is one of those &#8216;back in my day&#8230;&#8217; [wags finger] posts. I&#8217;m still a little deaf, battered and bruised after last night&#8217;s great Hard-Ons 30th anniversary gig at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. There was lots of jumping&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/2014\/06\/15\/on-punk-and-politics-blogjune-15\/\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,72],"tags":[40,73],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-politics","tag-blogjune","tag-punk"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2X6WE-7L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}