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Collage of punk coverage in zines.

Why America Still Needs Punk Rock

A brief history of our most rebellious musical genre, as seen through its DIY zines.
by Grant Wong via Current Affairs on August 19, 2025
Meme of white Gen X voters in their ironic cynicism.

We Care a Lot: White Gen Xers and Political Nihilism

Since the 2024 election, liberals, progressives, and the left has been wringing our collective hands over why Trump won yet again.
by Mindy Clegg via 3 Quarks Daily on December 20, 2024
Mike Dirnt, Billy Joe Armstrong, and Tré Cool from the band Green Day.

How Green Day’s American Idiot Pitted Punk Against George W Bush

Twenty years ago, a trio of Calfornian stoners released a polemic against Republican America that politicised a generation.
by Pippa Bailey via New Statesman on September 30, 2024
Black and white photo of the outside of a bar, with "CB GB: OMFUG" written on an overhang, and graffiti and posters on the walls and windows

Real Estate Developers Killed NYC’s Vibrant ’70s Music Scene

In the 1970s and early ’80s, NYC’s racially and ethnically diverse working-class neighborhoods nurtured groundbreaking rap, salsa, and punk music.
by Kurt Hollander via Jacobin on February 11, 2024
Part of a Xerox poster with the words "punk with copymachine" in front of a face
partner

Xerox and Roll: The Corporate Machine and the Making of Punk

On the 85th anniversary of the first xerographic print, a collection of punk flyers from Cornell University provides an object lesson on anti-art.
by Alex Houston via JSTOR Daily on October 22, 2023
Front cover of Kevin Mattson's book, "We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and THE REAL CULTURE WAR of 1980s America."

Mapping Punk Rock in the Early 1980s

The nationwide spread of a counterculture.
by Glenn Dowdle via Northwestern University Knight Lab on August 15, 2022
Four women (L7) sit on a bench together wearing jeans and jackets.

The Women Who Built Grunge

Bands like L7 and Heavens to Betsy were instrumental to the birth of the grunge scene, but for decades were treated like novelties and sex objects.
by Lisa Whittington-Hill via Longreads on June 29, 2022
Crowd at Black Flag concert

The Unraveling of SST Records

Jim Ruland’s book on the legendary punk label helps explain why we lack a meaningful counterculture today.
by Michael Friedrich via The New Republic on May 3, 2022
The Dead Kennedys against a graffiti wall.

Punk Versus Reagan

A new book on American punk paints the movement as the last gasp of left-wing cultural resistance in the 1980s.
by Alexander Billet via Jacobin on November 9, 2020
Black and white photo montage of the cover of We're Not Here to Entertain, with a punk rock singer and Ronald Reagan, superimposed on a background of Minor Threat playing on stage.
partner

Remember Punk Rock? Probably Not...: The Real Culture War of 1980's America

When most people hear the word “punk,” they think of drug addled, nasty behavior. The truth is, it was driven by a visceral hatred for the president.
by Kevin Mattson via HNN on August 30, 2020

Dead Kennedys in the West: The Politicized Punks of 1970s San Francisco

The new punk generation made the hippies look past their prime.
by Lincoln A. Mitchell via Literary Hub on October 22, 2019

The Forgotten Story of Pure Hell, America’s First Black Punk Band

The four-piece lived with the New York Dolls and played with Sid Vicious, but they’ve been largely written out of cultural history.
by Cassidy George via Dazed on August 8, 2018
The Dead Kennedys band.

America Needs a Definitive History of Dead Kennedys…And Here’s Why It Won’t Happen

"I pledge to laugh / At the Flag / Of the United States of America..."
by Will Greer via Tropics of Meta on July 30, 2018

Nazi Punks F**k Off

An oral history of how Black Flag, Bad Brains, and other hardcore acts reclaimed punk from white supremacists.
by Steve Knopper via GQ on January 16, 2018
Man wearing a Ramones t-shirt.

Name Three Songs: How Band Tees Became Cultural Symbols

When Barney's is selling Black Sabbath shirts for $175, does it change the cultural credibility of your favorite vintage band tee?
by Grace Yanucci via The Saturday Evening Post on December 31, 2024
The Go-Go's on July 30, 1981. From left, Kathy Valentine, Charlotte Caffey, Jane Wiedlin, Belinda Carlisle, and Gina Schock.

We Got the Beat

How The Go-Go’s emerged from the LA punk scene in the late ’70s to become the first and only female band to have a number one album.
by Lisa Whittington-Hill via Longreads on January 16, 2024
Katherine Rye Jewell standing in front of a tree and brick building on Vanderbilt University's campus.

‘Live From the Underground’ Details the Influential World of College Radio

What made those left-of-the-dial broadcasts so special during the 1980s, ‘90s and 2000s?
by Michael Patrick Brady via WBUR on December 5, 2023

Afloat with Static

Jenny Turner reviews "Face It" by Debbie Harry.
by Jenny Turner via London Review of Books on December 14, 2019

The Monitor: The Punk Album that Predicted Our Politics

How Titus Andronicus drew on Civil War lore to frame contemporary social divides.
by Alex Sayf Cummings via Tropics of Meta on November 4, 2017
Bruce Springsteen

What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Springsteen

The new Boss biopic robs his music of its mythic American qualities.
by Mark Asch via The Atlantic on October 24, 2025
Black and white image of a long road with a car in the distance.

Living in the Shadow of Your Father’s Iconic Song

Sarah Curtis: “Maybe we’ve just learned what my teenage daughter does not yet fully know: that to be held to a law is often to be loved.”
by Sarah Curtis via Literary Hub on October 9, 2025
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing at Nationals Park in Washington, DC.

The Springsteen Generation

How the Boss provided a 50-year-long soundtrack for the last of the Baby Boomers.
by David Corn via Mother Jones on August 21, 2025
"REM" musicians pose in front of a mirror.

How R.E.M. Created Alternative Music

In the cultural wasteland of the Reagan era, they showed that a band could have mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal.
by Mark Krotov via The New Yorker on November 13, 2024
Photograph of Drag stars: Lady Bunny, Misstress Formika, Sweetie, Anna Conda, Tabboo!

A Nearly Complete Oral History of the Pyramid Club

The Pyramid Club is the stuff of downtown New York legend. In the 1980s, a tiny little dive bar became ground zero for the exploding New York drag scene.
by Michael Musto, Mickey Boardman, Sister Dimension, Linda Simpson, John Kelly, Scott Lifshutz, Steve Buscemi, Lypsinka, Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, Billy Beyond via Paper on October 24, 2024
Trent Reznor

Knots, Ties, and Lines: “The Downward Spiral” at Thirty

Nine Inch Nails, the Manson Family, and the contradictions of Los Angeles.
by Gianni de Falco via Cleveland Review of Books on July 16, 2024
Michael Knott playing guitar

Michael Knott, Who Changed The Course of Christian Rock, Dies at 61

An entire industry wouldn't exist without him, yet few know his name. In his songs, Knott challenged the faithful to examine their faults and hypocrisies.
by Lars Gotrich via NPR on March 14, 2024
Woman creating a "zine", using a presumably Xerox photocopy machine.

American Counterculture, Glimpsed Through Zines

Zine-making is a tradition shared by the young and alienated, people enamored with the fringes of culture. Can a museum exhibit capture its essence?
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on February 14, 2024
A turntable and records.

What’s Old is New Again (and Again): On the Cyclical Nature of Nostalgia

Retro was not the antithesis to the sub- and countercultural experiments of the 1960s, it grew directly out of them.
by Tobias Becker via Literary Hub on December 13, 2023
Lou Reed in front of a photography setup.

The Canonization of Lou Reed

In a new biography, the Velvet Underground front man embodies a New York that exists only in memory.
by Jeremy Lybarger via The New Republic on October 17, 2023
A picture of the author as a teenager with his parents, in his bedroom decorated with rock music posters.

My Dad and Kurt Cobain

When my father moved to Taiwan, a fax machine and a shared love of music bridged an ocean.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on August 15, 2022
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