Punk Productions -Unfinished Business – Stacy Thompson

State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu

This was a sucker to get thru…. mainly because it is written in a way that would also turn me off if it would be published in my motherlanguage. The author Stacy Thompson is a assistant professor of critical theory and cultural studies at the university of Wisconsin – maybe that explains. The book is a academic analysis of punk and hardcore and full of words I never heard before. At least you can tell that Stacy knows what shes talking about. She gets into a few important scenes (NYC, CA, UK, DC, 2nd wave of Straight Edge in NYC, Riot Girls, Berkeley Lookout Pop Punk…). In the Chapter „Punk Aesthetics and the Poverty of the Commodity“ she explains the „problem“ of punk having with „making money“.

The following 2 chapters basically deal with the same issues just on different levels, using Dischord and Lookout as examples. The whole chapter about „Punk Cinema“ is crap, I think. The rest of the book has some valueabel information and good thoughts, if you manage to filter it out and have fun reading academic text. I have not. So if your english is very good and you study, get this. For the rest, dont put yourself thru this. Example..:

„…., I sketched the aesthetic attacks that punk has launched against the commodity market, while foregrounding the importance of grasping punks aesthetic practices in relation to ist economic ones.“ And believe me, that was an easy sentence, but I dont wanna tortoure you too bad. Paperback + 200 pages (dolf)

Isbn 0-7914-6188-2

[Trust # 117 März 2006]