The Sound of Subterranean Scuzz-Holes: New York Queer Punk in the 1970s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article provides a historical and theoretical account of a tradition of LGBTQ-oriented punk music in New York City during the 1970s. Queer punk – a scene comprised of LGBTQ people and shaped by discourse around gender and sexuality – was central to U.S. punk’s most infamous moment in a way that has largely been ignored. In order to make sense of why, I draw on period criticism and historical research into the LGBTQ community in New York, suggesting that New York punk participated in a new moment of queer cultural representation that Rosemary Hennessy terms “queer visibility.” I further theorize this by recourse to the claim by Tavia Nyong’o that punk exists in a “frozen dialectic” with queerness. Ultimately, early punk’s ferment and ferocity stem from its doubled identification with and renunciation of queer culture.