Title: When post-punk tribes go to war: “I got hit with one of those bottles but was relieved it hit my hip and not my guitar!”
Pleased to say that my submission to the Punk Scholars Network USA/Canada conference has been accepted. This is an in-person conference taking place on August 6 & 7 at DePaul University, Chicago.
Of course the kids have said they will come along with me to keep an eye on me 🙂 Briefly, this paper expands on an episode from my recent autoethnographic account of my involvement in the UK post-punk music scene in the early 1980s. The goal is to feed in to the history of post-punk subcultures, i.e. ‘tribes’. The 1st photo below shows me playing in Strawberry Switchblade, a cult post-punk band, at the Brockwell Park Greater London Council ‘Save the GLC’ festival, on 4th August, 1984. The 2nd image below is a poster and shows the lineup.
Submission extracts:
Was the violence due to the New Model Army fans (some wore clogs and threw flower)? Or Class War? Or Skinheads? ... Autoethnography engages and compels responses from audiences and other participants, this is key for me in that I ‘explicitly acknowledge, call to, and seek contributions about my account from the audience and fellow travellers’ (Adams et al., 2021, p. 7 paraphrased).
A final draft (2 pages) can be downloaded from: https://tinyurl.com/4vphw3vk