CRANKED UP REALLY HIGH: GENRE THEORY & PUNK ROCK by Stewart Home
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND ENGLISH EDITION
In the eighteen months since Cranked Up Really High was first published I've had plenty of feedback, both good and bad. However, it seems that a lot of those reviewing the book misunderstood my thesis, since it was often described as an 'I was there account of punk rock'. As anyone who bothers to read the book can see, I am actually disputing the contention that there was any 'centre' to the punk rock 'phenomena' to be 'at'. The cover strapline on the first edition declaring the work to be 'an inside account of punk rock', used the term 'inside' in a phenomenological rather than common sense fashion. The confusion many reviewers exhibited about this can only be attributed to stupidity. I was not responsible for the title of the Italian translation "Marci, sprochi e imbecilli 1976-1996: la rivolta punk non si e mai fermata" (Castelvecchi, Rome 1996), which was genuinely misleading.
Much to my delight, "Cranked Up Really High" succeeded in getting up the noses of anally-retentive record collector scum, who now have to suffer my scorn alongside that of various individuals responsible for bootlegging ultra-rare super-dumb sleaze-bag thud from the late seventies and early eighties. That's punk for you punk, if you ain't up for slagging the things you dig most, then you just don't have the necessary ATIITUDE! 'Scuse me while I pour myself a shot of McClelland's finest Single Malt Islay Scotch Whisky. That's better! Anyway, while record collector scum fail to understand that the point of accumulating info is to marshal it into an argument, they have their uses as trivia merchants who can be consulted by those who know that facts alone are useless things. There is a huge difference between playing DUMB and being genuinely STOOPID. This explains why I rate the Queers and loathe lumpen-intellectual Britpop wannabes like Blur and Oasis.(1)
Strangely, not a single reviewer picked up on the fact that throughout the book I parody various styles of rock Journalism'. Instead, I was offered advice along the lines of "Masterswitch didn't disappear completely, they changed their name to Jimmy Edwards and the Profile and later evolved into Time UK with Rick Butler from the Jam". As though I give a flying fuck about a bunch of non-league losers. Moving from junk to punk, classic seventies platters keep making it onto CD, two of the best recent releases being the " Short Sharp Shock: Independent Recordings UK 1977" compilation and "Outrage & Horror" by the Art Attacks. I did the excellent band interview in the booklet accompanying the latter CD and both releases are on Overground, parent company of Codex who published the book you're holding in your hands. Buy the product suckers, I want Overground to shower me with free CDs. Likewise, although the reference to McClelland's in the proceeding paragraph may strike some readers as gratuitous, it is called placement and I'm hoping the company will ship me a free crate of their finest Islay Whisky as a reciprocal gesture of friendship.
Stewart Home, London, December 1996
Footnotes:
1. Please note that the introduction as published was censored by the typesetter (an occupational hazard when an independent publisher gets a close friend to typeset, this also happened at AK Press with "What Is Situationism: A Reader"). I have been unable to locate an 'original' copy of this introduction, but have altered this censored sentence to reflect my scorn for specific Britpop bands, although what I originally said may have been slightly different to my 'restoration'.
Next: Introduction to the 2011 Spanish edition
Cranked Up Really High contents
More Home takes on punk rock: No Future conference lecture / chapter on Punk in "The Assault On Culture" |
