"Perhaps after the show I should be killed, flash-frozen for maximum freshness and put on display [at the Smithsonian] with all the other relics."
Henry Rollins, LA Weekly
DC punk is being historicized in 2014 to an astonishing degree. Two brand new crowd-funded, feature-length documentaries about the 80’s harDCore scene will be out by the end of the year -- Salad Days and Punk the Capital -- both include new interviews with key participants and rare, raw footage. Sonic Highways - Dave Grohl’s new HBO documentary series - just aired an episode based in DC focused on telling Grohl’s personal story of growing up in suburban Virginia and getting involved in the DC scene as a teenage drummer. Dischord Records http://www.dischord.com/ has been documenting the DC punk scene for three decades but - despite the continued existence of DC punk - recent releases have all been reissues - Fugazi First Demo, Slant 6 Soda Pop Rip Off and Soulside Trigger/ Bass. The Washington DC public library is actively developing a punk archive http://dclibrary.org/punk in coordination with University of Mariland and Georgetown University and - as if that’s not enough - Henry Rollin’s recently talked about the history of the DC punk scene at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Those of us who grew up participating in the 80’s hardcore scene might wonder what relevance all this archival work may or may not have for future generations. Does the punk archive encourage the next generation to actively create their own scene or does putting so much emphasis on the past foster passive consumerism in the form of nostalgia? This question resonates with me personally as Bikini Kill Records is currently preparing a reissue of our demo tape. I decided to contact some of my friends in the DC punk scene to check in with them about this stuff.
What does nostalgia mean to you? Is there a good side to it or is it primarily negative?
SHARON CHESLOW: Nostalgia is a beneficial way to learn from the past, through thoughts and feelings - the key is not to get stuck there.
CHRIS BALD: My own nostalgia for my own past is contained in my own memories. When it becomes a studied subject the history is diluted and mutated through the opinions and misunderstandings of outsider observations. It is unfortunate that nostalgia has become a product thereby creating a demand that is too often satisfied by tall tales.
CYNTHIA CONNOLLY: A person is nostalgic when they need to find, retrace or relive something in their life for their own verification of the life they did live. Documentation is purely to mark down with ink that actions had happened that are important to remember not for personal self interest but for the greater good of a community or as a whole people.
IAN SVENONIUS: Nostalgia is like reminiscences for one's youth or dead friends or a place one lived or a lost time. The recent spate of documentaries, beginning with the riot grrl books and films and now the DC things could be seen as not so much nostalgia as a struggle for history, legacy and one’s place in the firmament of events.
ALLISON WOLFE: There can be a danger of pure nostalgia and lack of broader context. Time and resource constraints often help lead to fabricated categorizations and to diverse people, stories, and threads getting left behind. Real experiences get written out of existence while journalistic mistakes become encyclopedic reality.
ERIN SMITH: There's such a ridiculous amount of documentaries, articles, and reissues going on about similar things involving DC at the moment that I'll be really relieved when everyone just goes back to simply making NEW art to keep the scene going NOW.
KATIE ALICE GREER: Nostalgia is false. It usually means looking back fondly on days of yore, perhaps prioritizing a past time's importance or necessity over that of the present. In music world, it is a highly consumable product. Very easy for people to digest a contextualized history with footnotes, photos, and an explanation of Why These Things Matter. I love learning about history and appreciate the past but to romanticize things that have already happened and ignore the present is to miss an opportunity to figure out what is going on right now!
There's a fine line between documentation - reissues, documentaries, scene histories - and a "glory days" type ossification of the moment that happens and I'm always trying to describe and negotiate that space. History, in general, is political. Does viewing oneself as a historical subject encourage participation? Can you speak to this idea with regards to punk/radical youth culture?
SHARON CHESLOW: Instead of glorifying the past, we can use it as a model to create something new in the present, which can impact the future. It's important to question the past, think independently, and participate in creating culture that isn't dictated by others. Documentation can change the dominant historical record. It can be art in and of itself. It can prove what is possible.
CHRIS BALD:People who want to document time periods they were actually involved with still tend to glorify things that were not really such a big deal and delete negative aspects even though they are completely important pieces of the picture. Outsiders are even worse in this respect because they have their own incorrect overviews or agendas sublimating the entire writing or filming process.
CYNTHIA CONNOLLY: The reason I wanted to put together the Banned in DC was to make sure that the cultural epiphany is not forgotten and that the documentation will remind us that it can happen again. That we have that potential.
MOLLY NEUMAN: I used to look at listings in the weekly paper for shows and bought Banned in D.C. when it came out and felt like there was a world really close I couldn't be a part of. There's something so massive about that book, especially that it was published so close to when the photos were taken. I was lucky enough to finally meet and know the people in the book and ultimately be a part of a new D.C. scene that had a different but connected legacy.
IAN SVENONIUS: Because punk is youth based, and also anti idolatry, there is immediate wariness when one hears about an attempt to historicize it, and yet- because it is also a highly moral movement- there is a desire to do right by the originators and pioneers, who are typically mined for ideas and uncredited by the vultures who exploit their remains. History is fascinating and always interesting -- even if its insulting to the participants who are erased from it -- because its just an interpretation of events which can be challenged at any time. The book Please Kill Me can be seen as a refutation of Jon Savage's England’s Dreaming for example.
ALLISON WOLFE: Who is written into history and who is written out? Whose story gets told? Who has the opportunity, the time, the funding or the platform to tell their story? Who, through privilege or marginalization, even feels or is told that their story is worth telling?
ERIN SMITH: Too much focus on what came before downplays the incredible scene of young bands in DC today- bands like Priests, Dudes, Hemlines, Cigarette, Foul Swoops, Teen Liver, Girl Stabs, Peoples Drug, Flamers...as well as bands with veterans in them like Ex Hex, Coup Sauvage & the Snips, Kid Congo & The Pink Monkeybirds, Deathfix, and Chain & The Gang...the entire great new scene going on at Comet Ping Pong. When we look at the past, we must remind everyone of the great CURRENT scene going on in DC, which is more exciting than it has been in a few years.
KATIE ALICE GREER: History is entirely political. Who tells the story, who is cast in its content, and who gets erased is, as the saying goes, determined by the victors.
How does it feel to see harDCore/punk from your vantage point today? Can you relate to the kids just discovering this scene today? Is there anything you want to say to that kid beyond the records /zines/artifacts themselves?
SHARON CHESLOW: The past can often be a great barometer of the present, which can then help us navigate the future.
CHRIS BALD: Band reunions are a sore point for me in that in no way are you really seeing who or what that band was in its original incarnation. It is a distortion of what was and an admission to what has become of the people involved. Life is too divergent to each of us individually, what and who are these bands and people now? Certainly very different than who they were and in my opinion merely cover bands at this point. There was a band here in Louisville a few years back called 'The New Mexico' they were 15 year olds who played hardcore exactly the way we did 30 years before them, they could have a track on Flex Your Head and no one would know the difference. Certainly they were nostalgia buffs but the intensity and age group they played with/for had a real honesty about it. Where do they fit in historically? Derivative imitations ultimately but in their own scene they equaled any great hardcore band I have ever seen.
IAN SVENONIUS: The histories are all garbage as far as being accurate. They are typically revisionist and serve the actors' own agendas which are typically ego driven but are also a struggle to guide the narrative of history and meaning.
ERIN SMITH: Know your history and use that as inspiration to go out and do your own thing. A scene can't exist entirely on nostalgia alone.
ALLISON WOLFE: I am in many ways interested in seeing punk/D.I.Y. pre-internet music scenes documented. I also love oral history/story-telling and the idea that everyone has their own truths. I prefer to hear it straight from the horses’ mouths, where “objectivity” isn’t claimed and real people exist outside of and in spite of some sterile scholar-defined meaning and timeline.
KATIE ALICE GREER: I love the history of the music community I come from. In studying it, I can both appreciate the sounds and dialogues already created, and see where I can take my art. Like, what is the next part of the conversation?
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