Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland

Abstract

Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland is a written history of a people that normally do not have histories written about them: small-town teenage and twenty-something misfits forging a musical and cultural scene despite the societal forces that would rather they did not exist. It is the kind of history that is archived in bedroom closets and passed down in conversation and local lore.This book is as close to a primary document as a book of its type could be. Most of its twenty-four pages of references are personal correspondence and conversations with the people who lived the scene between the late 1970s and the early 2000s. One of its authors is a figure in the book, and the pictures that accompany its pages were dug up from the personal collections of those involved. The authors do a good job, however, of positioning the happenings in Peoria within the broader political and musical culture of the time. Punks in Peoria is written from the inside, by those who were part of it, so the voice is sincere, sympathetic, and positive with enough retrospective clarity to be critical and honest when necessary. The authors are aware of the dynamics of race and gender within the culture and acknowledge those realities while taking a clear feminist, anti-racist, and gender-affirming stance.While few of the bands or figures in the book could be described as central to anything outside of central Illinois, some did go on to storied musical careers rooted in the quirky Peoria scene. But more importantly, this book, through a deeply detailed case study, tells the story of the musical culture that most amateur musicians lived in the punk rock scene across the country and has captured this moment in American history in a heartfelt snapshot.It often felt like reading the story of any American city. The specifics are less important than the process, the culture, the piece of life they represent and encapsulate. It is an important account of the mechanisms of countercultural movement in music and in general in the years preceding widespread access to the Internet: like the origins and transmission of local slang, and how social cliques and personal identity interacted with music before social media, which makes this work so timely.Significantly, this book is a monument to how youth can come together through punk music to create a world that they want to belong to from scratch. Most readers will come away reminded of someone they knew in high school or shows they attended in college; and, for anyone that had a band of friends that booked DIY shows in ill-suited community spaces to create music of questionable sound quality while also making great memories, moments of this book will read like a personal memoir.For those who did not live this time in Peoria, it can be hard to grasp the long lists of band names and subgenres of punk rock. Such unfamiliarity is significantly ameliorated by the online resources created by the authors and others. Jonathan Wright has a YouTube channel that includes video of the Jesus Lizard's concert detailed in chapter 12. Punks in Peoria has a YouTube channel of its own that includes several recording compilations of hard-to-find material. There are also two extensive compilations of Peoria punk music on the MixCloud station Cities and Signs Radio, and an accompanying record available from Alona's Dream Records. Punks in Peoria has a Linktree page that can direct you to many of these and other resources.For Peoria locals who grew up in this period, this must be a remarkable narrative that both rekindles old memories and helps clarify them in context. If only every city could have an account like this of the growth of its musical cultures. Until then, we will have to live vicariously through the contributions of Wright and Barrett in Punks in Peoria.