Punk and Disorderly: Acting Out Gender and Class in First-Wave British Punk

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A discussion of the the 1970s British punk scene, this book foregrounds the participation of women as performers and songwriters in early British punk, despite the fact that the genre has tended to be more commonly associated with its male musicians.

Early British punk rock is often associated with male bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Buzzcocks, or The Stranglers, whose songs capture and reflect a historical moment in Britain that was defined by unemployment, nationwide strikes, racial strife, and the growing sense of hopelessness within a seemingly deteriorating British Empire. While lesser-known, the work of female punk bands like Penetration, The Raincoats, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits, and X-Ray Spex also engaged with these themes, but added a gendered perspective on what it meant to be an underdog in Britain in the 1970s. Through a close reading of punk art, fashion, and music, this book examines how female contributors to the early British scene responded uniquely to the alienation expressed by their male peers, and demonstrates how social alienation was inflected both by classism and sexism in the work of those women who helped to shape the early British scene.

Author Bio

Karen Fournier is Associate Professor of Music at the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at the University of Michigan, USA. Her research focuses principally on issues of gender, sexuality, and class in British and American punk rock in the 1970s. She is the author of The Words and Music of Alanis Morissette (2015).