Punk’s popularity anxieties and DIY institutions as ideological (anti-)state apparatuses

Abstract

Abstract In the 1990s United States, an increasing number of punk and punk-inspired bands made their way into the mainstream. This commercial success and popularity provoked profound anxiety within the underground punk scene, which had spent the 1980s building a DIY (do-it-yourself) network of zines, venues and independent record labels and prided itself on its autonomous cultural production. In the pages of punk zines, the overwhelming response to punk’s newfound visibility was to insist that punk remain underground, protect the scene from outsiders and cast out punk bands that signed contracts with major record record labels or even became too popular on independent labels as traitors. So-Cal punk, a style that fused 1980s hardcore with melodic vocals, occasional lead guitar parts, technical precision and more professionalized production, went from being praised for its innovations in the pages of punk zines to being castigated as a generic attempt at commercial success. The debate over DIY versus ‘selling out’ was guided by a fear that the mainstream viability of a few would dilute punk’s ethos of rebellion and compromise its integrity. While much ado has been made of DIY in recent scholarship, the robust discourse within the underground punk scene defending DIY as ideological principle and decrying ‘selling out’ has not yet been adequately chronicled or critically interrogated. This article draws on four prominent punk zines in the 1990s United States – HeartattaCk, MaximumRockNRoll, Profane Existence and Punk Planet – to elucidate the construction of DIY discourse in response to the newfound 1990s popularity of punk. Rather than romanticizing the DIY underground, this article critically evaluates the assumptions underpinning it, such as extolling the autonomous individual and small-scale production, or the notion that distance from the dominant cultural apparatuses automatically portends a praxis of rebellion.