Nothing to Lose Punk 1970s - Caroline Coon

Nothing to Lose Punk 1970s by Caroline Coon / 36 pages, 5.5 x 8 inches, staple-bound, published by Cafe Royal Books

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The photography says:

Today, looking back at the photographs I took then, reminds us that all the musicians and fans creating such disruptive, universal perturbation were barely out of their teens: Johnny Rotten was just 20. Joe Strummer was 23. The average age of The Jam was 19, The Buzzcocks – 19, Subway Sect – 18. Poly Styrene, lead singer of X-Ray Specs, was 19, Ari-Up, lead singer of The Slits, was 14.

Over the last five decades, theoreticians in the cultural studies industry, historians, music critics and journalists have written enough about punk to fill an Atlantic trench. Every minute facet of the punk era has been forensically examined, loading on to the young shoulders of those who created it every conceivable expectation. A general theme has been a morose blaming of the musicians for not living up to their youthful aspirations.

However, I celebrate the success of punk, especially for the way that space was created for women and, as Ruth Adams (reader in Cultural and Creative Industries at Kings College) maintains: punk bands, with their support for Rock Against Racism, changed our white national identity by imagining “a multicultural, post-colonial future [...] which to a large extent has come to pass.”