Archive for 2015

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[ecrea] Book Announcement: Underground

Tue Nov 10 08:20:26 GMT 2015




Daniel Makagon, Underground: The Subterranean Culture of DIY Punk Spaces (Microcosm Publishing) http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/5401/

Underground is all about the history and future of DIY punk touring in the USA. Daniel Makagon explores the culture of DIY spaces like house shows and community-based music spaces, their impact on underground communities and economies, and why these networks matter. He shows that no matter who you are, organizing, playing, and/or attending a DIY punk show is an opportunity to become a real part of a meaningful movement and to create long-lasting alternatives to the top-down economic and artistic practices of the mainstream music industry. Punk kids playing an illegal show too loudly in someone's basement might not save the world, but they might just be showing us the way to building something better.

The book is divided into four sections:

The first section is an introduction that describes my connections to punk dating back to the early 1980s and frames punk shows as one of the most important ways that DIY is done.

The second section explores the ways that DIY punk shows offer an alternative to mainstream approaches to live music. This section begins with an examination of different types of live music options for punks in the 1980s. I then discuss how early efforts to do DIY shows changed in the 1990s when mainstream culture industries started scouring the punk scene for the next Nirvana. Finally, I write about efforts by punks in the 1990s to move beyond local and regional shows and link up with punks in other areas to develop a sustainable national touring network.

The third section focuses primarily on house shows with some discussion of volunteer-run community spaces. In this section I write about the challenges with sustaining houses because of problems with the police, landlords, and neighbors. I talk about the experience of house shows, including the ways that choices of residents to do BYOB shows or create a sober space helps shape the vibe of a house show. I also discuss what punks gain and give up when they decide to host shows in their houses. The chapter about volunteer-run spaces explores the ways that a more permanent space can offer a more public face for a local punk scene (compared to the hidden “ask a punk” features of houses) but also comes with a new set of challenges.

The final section examines some other types of DIY spaces used by punks to host shows and assesses how the development of new media technologies in the past decade has negatively and positively affected the experience of DIY shows. This section also discusses the problems with many punk’s maintaining a commitment to a $5 show.

I interviewed a lot of people involved with the DIY punk scene, but the book is not a collection of interviews (as we tend to see with a variety of oral history books released in the past few years). Instead, I flesh out an argument about the historical development of DIY touring and the emergence of house shows/volunteer-run spaces as a way to enact DIY ideals.


Adam Pfahler, Jawbreaker

"Daniel Makagon was there, and he's likely forgotten more about DIY than many of you will ever know."


Zack Furness, editor of Punkademics

"DIY punk shows and the communities they bring together have always been the heart and soul of punk culture. They stitch together all the music, moments and makeshift venues that give our collective ‘underground’ the kind of shape and meaning that makes it worthy of the name and worth claiming as our own. Underground is the first book to explore this subject matter in depth and with such substance, care and attention to detail. In conjunction with incredible stories and insights gleaned through his years of extensive interviews, Daniel Makagon draws upon ethnographic research and an expansive knowledge of punk media to construct new histories, lucid analyses, and a cartography of DIY punk that speaks to the importance of space, place, communication, and culture."


http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/5401/

Take care,
Daniel
________________________
Daniel Makagon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
College of Communication
DePaul University
Lincoln Park Campus
Office: Byrne Hall #463
2219 N. Kenmore

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