This year marks 50 years of punk, and while punk is most definitely not dead, there’s an attitude within it that should be.
I launched my show Messy Lunch six weeks ago. It’s a great gig, where I get to take famous indie musicians to eat at some of London’s best restaurants. The whole thing has been mostly really well received – but there’s a nasty little subcurrent emerging in the comments.
Last week, our interview with the formidable Jason Williamson from the Nottingham post-punk electro band Sleaford Mods went online. He’s politically astute and speaks up about the economic and social disparity within the music scene. He is also a man of his word; selling subsidised tickets to Sleaford Mods gigs for people on the dole and spending much of his spare time working in a homeless shelter.
Jason has a new record out, a tour to promote – and also a pizza he’s made with London pizza chain Berbere (all profits go to War Child). This isn’t as random as it sounds as he knows about food – and even had a vlog, Baking Daddy, during Covid.
We ate at cool East London eatery, Acme Fire Cult, owned by the brilliant chef Andrew Clarke, who built the restaurant out of a parking lot. We were not eating at the Ritz; it’s a talented chef’s archaic, and – might I even say – “punk” vision. It’s affordable and definitely not fancy. The interview was great – Jason is just a cool guy, fantastic company and a great interviewee. It’s what happened on the release of the episode on YouTube that made my heart sink.
People seem to believe that eating in nice restaurants means he’s sold out his working-class roots. “Some anti-establishment shit this is! Good grief. This delivers the message of completely selling out to the capitalist dream,” ranted one. “When Punk goes Posh,” taunted another. “Jason – you’ve changed,” lamented a third. As comments started to pour in, it became plain Britain loves the idea of working-class heroes – but only if it looks like they’ve not actually made it.
I don’t understand this rhetoric. To me, Jason is proof you can be successful and make money as an artist, but still not reject your working-class roots. And what’s the point in any of it, if you’re not allowed to wallow in your success and, God forbid, spend your money on other forms of culture and art like eating out? Because that’s what restaurants are – a place for the chef’s self-expression, identity and creativity.
As a “posh girl” I’ve had a perplexing relationship with the scene from the start. I’ve been into punk since I was in my early teens. I had my hair coloured and shaved into all kinds of cuts. The day my dad died, I was 15 and ran off to drink bottles of White Lightning cider while sitting round the Eros fountain at Piccadilly Circus. Me and my friends used to make money by letting tourists take pictures of us, some ending up on London postcards.
Gizzi has been into punk since her teensI saw The Damned at the Marquee Club in 1994, I saw the Sex Pistols play Finsbury park in ’96, I saw Dead Kennedys play the Ballroom in 2000 and I’ve seen a tonne of real-deal bands like GBH, The Business, The Exploited, Crass and Cock Sparrer. My record collection would make John Lydon weep. I’m even engaged to the frontman of punk band Luxury Apartments, and I’m at gigs with him all over the world.
I’m trying hard to prove the authenticity of my punk roots, because there’s a prevailing narrative that, because I’m posh, I couldn’t possibly be genuinely punk at my core because I am not working-class.
In another episode of Messy Lunch, my co-host Leonie Cooper and I get to interview drummer Rat Scabies and bassist Paul Gray of one of the most important punk bands ever to exist, The Damned. Scabies talks a lot about his relationship with The Clash singer Joe Strummer.
Strummer’s father was a diplomat, and The Clash were considered a posh and privileged punk band. Strummer rejected financial gains to live on a boat with a dog on a string in true crusty fashion, while Mick Jones and Paul Simonon were working class “done good”.
As she’s ‘posh’ Erskine is trying hard to prove herself in the punk worldThe fact that the band came together is indicative of two things: that London is a place where people from all walks of life rub shoulders; and that there is a rebellious spirit inherent in some of us, no matter what our background. That you can’t fake.
Rat’s respect for Strummer as a man and a musician is undeniable, but in order for Strummer to be taken seriously by the scene he had to change his accent and sing about his beliefs as opposed to his experiences. But is that him posing as a “class tourist”? Or someone with ethics using their voice to talk about important things the elite don’t often get behind?
This discussion runs through much of Membranes bassist John Robb’s memoir Punk Rock Ruined My Life. John is from Blackpool and found the King’s Road punk scene snooty; more about art school and fashion than being fanatical about bands. He says you had to “scalpel yourself into many different shapes” in order to fit in.
This is a world built for the weird and the unboxable, but it seems to sit within a structure that is rife with inverted snobbery. Punk is a clusterf**k of questions on class. Where once I believed it rejected a system and everything that came with it, I’m starting to see it sometimes just reshuffles the same rules into a different shape. It feels less like rebellion and more like containment.
Jason eating a good meal doesn’t erase where he’s from in the same way I can still be from a posh family yet be anti-establishment – and love this music with a lifetime of stories tattooed into my soul.
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