Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland by Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett

Abstract

Reviewed by: Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland by Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett David Woken Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett, Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. xi, 238 pp. $22.95 (paper). In Punks in Peoria, Jonathan Wright's and Dawson Barrett's account of the underground youth music scene in Peoria, Illinois, Gared O'Donnell of local band Planes Mistaken for Stars remarks on their decision to move to Denver: "I guess in your early twenties … Peoria was a great place to be from, but it wasn't a great place to stay" (171). Many of us who first encountered underground music in the declining Rust Belt towns that dotted the Midwest did indeed find our hometowns better places to be from than to stay, and Wright's and Barrett's account of youth seeking escape from the stifling confines of their culturally conservative and economically stagnating surroundings is a welcome addition to studies that complicate canonical accounts of punk rock and broader do-it-yourself (DIY) youth culture that focus on the most famous bands and major cities. "There is no obvious place for Peoria in the punk rock pantheon" (7), they note, yet the story they [End Page 85] tell makes a powerful argument for paying attention to peripheral cultural scenes around the world, and it provides useful context to understand how discontented midwestern youth sought creative expression amid the economic and social changes sweeping the industrial heartland. Based on local news reports, zines, social media reminiscences, and, most importantly, interviews with a wide range of participants in the Peoria DIY scene, Punks in Peoria tells a rollicking story of youth culture in a town that is synonymous with conservative middle-American values and tastes. The book chronicles bands that enjoyed local notoriety but largely failed to burst onto the national stage. Shows thrown together in diverse spaces (fairgrounds, college gymnasia, record stores, skate parks, rented VFW and American Legion halls, short-lived all-ages night clubs, private houses, and even an abandoned mental hospital) occupied informal spaces familiar to those who experienced similar small-town scenes. Enlivening the text are colorful profiles of local characters like long-running shock artist Bloody F. Mess, explanations of local slang like the regional term for an outsider teen ("cornchip"), and descriptions of short-lived show spaces that entered local legend like the Airwaves skate park and anarchopunk Tiamat Records. The authors also provide accounts of legendary shows by internationally famous (or infamous) acts that demonstrate how DIY culture offended the sensibilities of staid Midwesterners while offering ecstatic liberation to the young. These included GG Allin's scatological 1985 performance that saw him chased off by police and Legionnaires after just two songs, and a 1999 show by anarchist metallic hardcore provocateurs Catharsis that ended in the band leading the audience into the alley behind Tiamat for a round of impromptu drumming and fire-dancing that stopped only when police arrived to shut the event down. Wright's and Barrett's focus remains firmly on telling details and anecdotes about the local musicians, zinesters, and show organizers who built and re-built their scene, and their stories make for entertaining and engrossing material. The opening chapter paints a vivid picture of pre-1980s Peoria, an industrial town of breweries, distilleries, and the Caterpillar tractor factory, and home to a strong union tradition. But it was also one of the most segregated cities in the nation (a fact noted in the stand-up comedy of the town's most famous son, Richard Pryor) and one with a reputation for conservative, middlebrow sensibilities despite the fact that it had long been a stop for vaudeville and blues musicians traveling between Chicago and St. Louis. Yet this sort of big picture falls short in much of the rest of [End Page 86] the book when they consider DIY youth culture. They do succinctly sum up one of the core tensions in punk rock, between nihilistic rejection and positive change, by contrasting Bloody Mess's shock antics with the positive DIY spirit of Peoria's first hardcore punk band...