The Ramones broke up two decades ago, Iggy Pop is rounding 70 years old and the modern layman’s conception of punk music is likely limited to Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy — but don’t be fooled.
As those who bear its resilient, vibrant torch have been affirming in crowded, dimly lit concert halls and on festival stages for decades, punk is very much alive. It’s just not the same punk your grandparents warned your parents about when they were teenagers.
On Monday night, the UNControllables — an anarchist collective formed by UNC students in 2012 — will kick off their Radical Rush week with “Punk in Anarchism, Anarchism in Punk,” a discussion of the intricate relationship between punk rock and anarchism as well as the surges in both of these movements since the 1970s and beyond.
Madeleine Scanlon, a senior Spanish and women’s and gender studies major, said the group chose to open Radical Rush with the discussion to offer a lighthearted event before some of the more politically and ideologically driven events later this week. Still, the music and the movement share a mutual mindset.
“We can think about punk having this do-it-yourself mindset or methodology. It’s about not spending a lot of money, making your own clothes, making your own music, developing your own style,” Scanlon said. “It’s a counterculture, and I think particularly in the punk scene in the 80s and 90s, that mentality became politicized, and it really meshes well with anarchy.”
While the UNControllables set up camp in the Pit to advertise their brand of anarchy, punk in Chapel Hill lives in intimate venues like Cat’s Cradle and Local 506. Since Local 506 opened, the venue has hosted punk bands from subsects across the broad spectrum of punk rock. Though they all live under the umbrella of punk, each show, band and crowd offers their own flavor to the music.
Stephen Mooneyhan, Local 506’s talent buyer and general manager, knows these shows intimately. In addition to his duties at Local 506, he plays in a hardcore punk band himself and has been going to shows since middle school, when he was introduced to the genre in a coffee shop in his hometown of Lincolnton. To Mooneyhan, more than just the music, times and fashion have changed since punk’s conception.
“Whenever it started becoming a thing that people could identify it by, it’s a mentality, but it never was supposed to be a mold,” Mooneyhan said. “So it is dead, in the sense of a singular thought. But it’s not in the sense that a lot of people still enjoy things that they enjoy, and that’s kind of the point. It’s just the label is outdated.”
What hasn’t changed is the tight relationship shared by punk bands, the venues that house their controlled chaos and the fiercely loyal fans.
