Punk Productions: Unfinished Business

Interruptions: Border Testimony(ies) and Critical Discourse/s

by Stacy Thompson

Stacy Thompson's Punk Productions offers a concise history of punk music and combines concepts from Marxism to psychoanalysis to identify the shared desires that punk expresses through its material productions and social relations. Thompson explores all of the major punk scenes in detail, from the early days in New York and England, through California Hardcore and the Riot Grrrls, and thoroughly examines punk record collecting, the history of the Dischord and Lookout! record labels, and 'zines produced to chronicle the various scenes over the years. While most analyses of punk address it in terms of style, Thompson grounds its aesthetics, and particularly its most combative elements, in a materialist theory of punk economics situated within the broader fields of the music industry, the commodity form, and contemporary capitalism. While punk's ultimate goal of abolishing capitalism has not been met, the punk enterprise that stands opposed to the music industry is still flourishing. Punks continue to create aesthetics that cannot be readily commodified or rendered profitable by major record labels, and punks remain committed to transforming consumers into producers, in opposition to the global economy's increasingly rapid shift toward oligopoly and monopoly.

Genres: Music, Punk

228 pages, Paperback

First published August 12, 2004

Reviews

[joshua sorensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

gave me a newfound appreciation for punks although never manages to square the whole issue of "punk scenes accidentally fostering racists" and seems to, if not outright celebrate, at least somewhat endorse the death of disco, which i don't terribly appreciate either

[Rowland Pasaribu · Rating 2 out of 5]

From a longer review: Punk Productions is a series of essays by (Mr.) Stacy Thompson, whose areas of expertise can only be rewarded financially by the largesse of the American University system. Thompson's teaching interests are marxism, psychoanalysis, film studies, and utopian studies - a line that runs from dementia to delusion. This book is an American update of the equally masturbatory Subculture, The Meaning Of Style, by Dick Hebdige. Thompson manipulates and fabricates punk history in economic/political terms using the jargon of theories formulated for an era over 160 years ago - which in practice has consistently led to suffering, fascism and genocide. Unfinished Business is laughable but not funny, and it's a shame a mind as large as Mr. Thompson's couldn't be put to positive use, like solving crossword puzzles. Instead he practices educational pedophilia.

A healthy portion of the book is unreadable if you're not familiar with marxist concepts, which are wordy, esoteric and self-referential in order to appear consequential. By necessity I skimmed through most of the marxist phraseology, which had all the allure of NAMBLA's rationalizations for child fricking. Buried in the book is a decent amount of accurate information on times and dates, so at least it has that, but the fun of the book is reading how he deliberately misrepresents certain scenes so they'll fit his narrative. The ones he covers are New York, California, Washington DC, Hardcore, first wave Straight Edge, Riot Grrrl, and Lookout's Pop-Punk. As a follower of the generally discredited field of psychoanalysis he also likes to pepper in stupidity from that branch of the talking cure. Most things in the book are dealt with in terms of "desire".

He gets the 70s NY scene wrong, saying the CBGB's scene was a desire to resist commercial labels and financial gain. Of the Ramones, who thought their competition for the airwaves was the Bay City Rollers, Thompson writes "The first Ramones album and the cost of its production spoke to punk's desire to gain and democratize access to the means of production." Occam's Razor, that the simplest of two competing theories is usually correct, is mandatory for whacking through the weeds of this book. He intellectualizes things that don't require it, and then manipulates that into validations for his proselytizing. Thompson pretends punks are mindful, willing participants in the narrative of seizing the means of production, opposing capitalism and not creating commodities. Pure BS. The NY scene was all about getting signed to a major and selling as many units as will sell. Everybody knows that. The Ramones were given very little time and money to record a record that didn't need studio trickery and a lot of time to record. That's all that was.

There's a certain level of intellectualism that's proportionate to a subject. Once crossed it's all nonsense and becomes less about the subject and more about the writer's agenda, which in Stacy Thompson's case is the underpinnings of recent history's most spectacular mass murders and shared misery. I'm no great intellect. I prefer the simple explanations of complex ideas. Hooray for smart people, but a beautiful mind is a terrible thing to waste on toilet droppings. Marxism is how smart people prove how dumb they are. Punk Productions only proves the thesis that the world's filled with over-educated idiots, many who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.

[Stacy Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not write this dumb ass shit!! Someone is trying their hardest to destroy my reputation and trying to convince everyone to hate me. Their goal is to destroy me and have everyone turn their back on me so I have nothing and no one left in life. This person or person(s) has been taking on my identity on the internet and making profiles pretending they are me spreading lies, and rumors, and making it out as me doing the stuff I didn't do and say. There have been deep fake videos and A. I generated photos and content spread all over the internet that is just straight fucking bullshit! Just like the 56 other books I supposedly wrote on here, which as I was going through the books I supposedly wrote,(which are just ugly-ass journals.)
I started to wonder who could have done this? Then it hit me when I saw the journals because the only person who knew I had to make a journal for my college school project last year was ???
I wonder who that person could've been? Suspicious!!!


P.S. Eat My Ass

[pallascat · Rating 3 out of 5]

good but i simultaneously don't know about all that. perhaps i ought to learn.

[Cary Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first (and still only) book about punk subculture that moves beyond just analyzing band lyrics, and instead analyzing its cultural products, economics, and primary behaviors. Essentially examining what punks do and not just what punks say, which any participant in this subculture should realize can be very different. In a sense, it loses a little bit of the psychic sense of punk (alienation, personal charismas, gang mentalities, furious personal creativity and sacrifice) but its analysis of the social activity and production, and its attempt to impose objective/empirical research rules, was very thought-provoking.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! While I don't think there is a whole lot of new information in it that punk lovers don't already know, I think the author has a unique perspective on punk and I thought her analysis of it was pretty interesting. This is also a really good resource for people interested in the anarchist-punk movement specifically, in fact the section Thompson wrote about the band Crass was my favorite part of his book. Overall, his explanations and analysis of the DIY and anti-capitalism aspects of punk music are my personal favorite highlights of the book. I would recommend this for people who are interested in the history and nuances of punk.

[Stevie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an extremely in depth definition of what it means to be punk.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had some good info but it was a bit unnecessarily difficult to read. Read it for my music history class of punk.