Notes on Punk 2: Economics, Failure
- There's a rhetorical push pretty universally to get away from commercialism, "the mainstream".
- But, lots of early punks, especially in England, sold out early and hard, signing to big labels like CBS and EMI and becoming massive commercial successes (The Clash probably the best examples, but also The Sex Pistols, The Jam, etc.).
- So these bands - all formed around 1977, the same time as The Mekons - can be seen as having "failed" ideologically as punks by succeeding as commercial artists.
- In second wave punk (Fugazi, from Washington, D.C., are exemplary here), or "late punk economics" as Stacy Thompson calls it, you're only punk if you deliberately resists commercial success by refusing to have anything to do with it.
- The Mekons are interesting because they "succeed" in that punk way, but arguably by accident. In that they're actual failures, since they tried and failed to make it big, but their failure makes them the punkest of the whole English "Class of 77". Which brings us to: