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Title: Punk Shows Author: CrimethInc. Date: July 30, 1999 Language: en Topics: punk Source: Retrieved on 3rd November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/1999/07/30/punk-shows
This was originally distributed as a pamphlet, after the CrimethInc.
action at the Atom and His Package show last summer, before the His Hero
Is Gone show, which ended up featuring mass nudity and wild dancing
during the E-150 set. The pamphlet included a lovely picture of our
friend Sally breathing fire at a Gilman Street show, which we lack the
technical skills to include here. Please feel free to adapt this flier
for your own community!
Punk shows. Punk shows us what we’re capable of in tight-knit
communities, it shows us how to have more fun, more experiences, more
life. If we let it, punk can show us just how much is possible in this
world. And punk shows are exactly the place for this to happen.
Do you remember when you went to your first punk show? It probably felt
like you’d discovered a whole new world, carefully hidden from the eyes
of your parents and teachers, where people danced and screamed and
dressed and talked and thought in ways that you’d never imagined before.
You kept going back because they kept challenging you, kept introducing
you to new things. Pretty soon punk was your secret world, where you had
adventures beyond anything that could happen in a classroom or an
office.
But there comes a time in every kid’s life when punk shows start to feel
stale. You feel like you know exactly what’s going to happen: some kids
will come together and talk about the same stuff, some bands will play
while people stand around or dance a bit, maybe a little rhetoric will
be thrown about, and then everyone will go home. Why even go anymore,
except out of a sense of duty, if you’re not going to be challenged and
surprised anymore? That’s why many people drop out and stop going to
shows.
We can either accept that punk shows have lost their novelty value and
are no longer entertaining (like the passive fucking spectators this
society has raised us to be), or we can do something to make them
entertaining and challenging again.
The Atom&H.P. show was fun because the audience got to participate in
their own way, to be creative and active too, rather than just dutifully
following the instructions of the performer or standing in slack-jawed
boredom. This made the show better for everyone. What we did together
that night wasn’t enough to revolutionize the concept of shows itself,
perhaps, but it was a little tiny taste of how much less predictable
they could be. THE HIS HERO IS GONE SHOW MIGHT BE SOMETHING MORE
We’re not encouraging you to just start heckling bands-that’s
inexcusable. We’re challenging you to contribute as much to these shows
as you expect the bands to. For each show, it should be possible for us
to add to the atmosphere with surprises of our own. This is a challenge
to you to outdo us, to surprise and and challenge us even more than we
can entertain and shock you with our tricks. If we all surprise each
other, then shows will be profound again for everyone, not just the
youngsters, and we’ll all have reasons to keep going.
A MESSAGE FROM THE CRIMETHINC. REVOLUTIONARY DANCE PARTY
shows new and fresh:
dresses up and dances (other theme shows include Halloween and
Valentine’s Day).
had only ten minutes to set up, play, and pack up. Six bands in an hour!
It would be awesome to make everyone’s favorite bands write songs just
for an occasion like that, or according to some other theme…
one show at which the first band set themselves on fire, the second band
set the stage on fire, and the final band performed with a tube filling
the room with carbon monoxide from a running car outside. The idea of
making a punk show a place to explore the boundries of life and death is
as thrilling to me as it is scary. They’ve also hosted punk rock
professional wrestling (complete with a cage, etc.) and a hundred other
crazy events.
one has before). Make up your own dances. Explore the freedom in moving
your body in new ways and shaking off the weight of self-consciousness
and routine.
shows, showing homemade films and videos, theatre, comedy, spoken word,
staging unexpected performance art… For that matter, try mixing up the
lineups of bands a bit, so things won’t be so predictable.
just music: have a potlatch (in which everyone brings gifts for the
bands and each other, instead of money), a costume party, a feast,
absurd competitions…
introduce unexpected elements, refuse to accept the rule of
expectations, strain against the fabric of reality itself. What else is
punk rock for?