IN CANADA:

THE TRANSLATION OF AN INTERNATIONAL

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

KATIE VICTORIA GREEN

In partial fulfilment of requirements

for the degree of

Master of Arts

April, 2011

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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada ABSTRACT

PUNK FASHION IN CANADIAN CULTURE: THE TRANSLATION OF AN INTERNATIONAL SUBCULTURE

Katie Victoria Green Advisor University of Guelph, 2011 Dr. John Potvin

This thesis discusses the emergence of the and its subsequent effects on broadening the understanding of marginal identities in Canada. Using an investigative research approach involving the cultural theory of identity construction through use of interview data, material and visual analysis, the main goal of this paper is to understand the

Canadian experience of punk and the role of within this subculture. After conducting interviews at various local punk shows in Ontario and , it became apparent that Canadian punk is unique but is framed in response to punk that previously formed in the United States and Britain. Despite their efforts to remain marginal, Canadian punks still rely on Canadian cultural stereotypes to establish themselves as a legitimate punk culture unique from its predecessors. By using fashion to communicate a specific marginal identity, Canadian punks connect to the larger historical and symbolic discourse of punk. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study would not have gotten off the ground without the help and support of so many people. First and foremost I would like to thank Dr. John Potvin of the

University of Guelph's School of Fine Art and Music for his endless support and ironclad patience throughout my years at Guelph. I would also like to thank my advisory committee, Dr. Alia Myzelev and Dr. Catharine Wilson, for their helpful advice and guidance over the past two years.

1 would particularly like to thank all those that donated their time and words which provided the real backbone of this study. Those people are (in no specific order):

Chris Walter, Bev Davies, wendythirteen, Mr. Chi-Pig, the boys from Broadcast Zero,

Todd Serious and the Rebel Spell (especially for opening up their home and tour bus to me), Matt and Subsistance, Jan and Ang, Colin Lichti, Steve Stumble, Brian Wicks and the entire random assortment of audience members, bands, and crazy characters that I encountered during my travels. If I have missed anyone, know that I am truly sorry but eternally grateful.

On a more personal level I would like to extend my deepest love and thanks to my entire family. Mum and Dad, you are two of the most awesome people I know and I consider myself very lucky and honoured to be your daughter.

Finally, one last big thank you goes out to Nick for his love, friendship, and putting up with my insanity.

i Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii

Table of Contents iii

List of Figures v

Introduction 1

1.1 Organization of Thesis 4

1.2 Art History and the Birth of Fashion Studies 6

1.3 Cultural Studies and the Language of Subcultural Style 8

1.4 Translating Punk's Visual Language 15

1.5 in Canadian Culture 18

1.3 Methodology 21

Chapter 1: Origins of 27

2.1 Anarchists and Anti-Heroes: Punk Fashion in the late-1960s 28

2.2 Anarchy in the UK: Punk Fashion in the late-1970s 31

2.3 American Hardcore: Punk Fashion in the 1980s 37

2.4 Punk in Canada 42

2.5 What is Canadian Punk? 44

Chapter 2: Discussion 51

3.2 The (Punk) Body as Text 53

3.3 Modification versus Mutilation 55

3.4 Constructing Gender in Punk 58

3.5 Maturation of Style 62

3.6 Initial Introductions to Punk 66

3.7 Overcoming Geographical and Communicative Barriers 72

iii 3.8 D.I.Y. Fashion 77

3.9 The Festival of Utopic Space 81

3.10 The Creation of Cultural Memory 83

3.11 Readdressing the Question: What is Canadian Punk? 86

Conclusion 90

Bibliography 96

Appendix A - Schedule of Dates and Locations 102

Appendix B - Information to Participants/Interview Consent 103

Appendix C - Photograph Consent 106

Appendix D - Copyright Material Permission 109

Appendix E - Figures 110

iv List of Figures

Introduction:

Fig 1.1: Little Big House, Kamloops, British Columbia. © Katie Green

Fig 1.2: Hammond United Church, Maple Ridge, British Columbia. © Katie Green

Fig 1.3: Elk Lodge #373, Campbell River, Island. © Katie Green

Fig 1.4: Bully's Rehearsal Studio, New Westminster, British Columbia. © Katie Green

Fig 1.5: Rearview Mirror, , Ontario. © Katie Green

Chapter 2:

Figure 2.1: Drummer for the Rebel Spell, Rearview Mirror, Toronto, Ontario, 8 June 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.2: Anonymous Female Audience Member (Femme Fatale), Rearview Mirror, Toronto, Ontario, 8 June 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.3: Anonymous Male Audience Member (Street Warrior), Rearview Mirror, Toronto, Ontario, 8 June 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.4: Bare-chested Male Enjoys Himself at the Rebel Spell Show, Maple Ridge, British Columbia, 10 July 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.5: wendythirteen, Funky Winkerbeans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.6: Example of D.I. Y. fashion, New Westminster, British Columbia, 11 July 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.7: Nick Shrubsole - "Support Your Local ," Funky Winkerbeans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.8: Lead Singer of Shlonk, Bovine Sex Club, Toronto, Ontario, 22 June 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.9: Interior of the Bovine Sex Club, Toronto, Ontario, 22 June 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.10: Entrance to Washrooms, Bovine Sex Club, Toronto, Ontario, 22 June 2010. © Katie Green

Figure 2.11: D.O.A. in Trafalgar Square, London, , 1981. © Bev Davies

Figure 2.12: Dave Gregg (D.O.A.) in England, 1981. © Bev Davies Introduction

"No red dresses allowed!"

This rather blunt statement was yelled at me at a punk show in Kamloops, British

Columbia. Kamloops marked the first stop on a British Columbian tour that 1 had embarked upon as part of the research for this study. Eager to establish myself as a hard-hitting researcher of the punk scene, I had been attempting to politely climb over two gentlemen who were sitting in front of the entrance when one of them decided to make a point of calling out my ensemble. As he sneered at me, what I should have done, in retrospect, was to muster up a degree of confidence and assert my position as a travelling companion of the band. At least that might have garnered some degree of respect on account of the perceived authority that comes with the statement "It's okay, I'm with the band."

Instead, I stammered out: "It...it's not red, it's um, coral." Luckily, just as I finished exclaiming this brilliant comeback, the man sitting next to him (who just happened to be the owner of the venue) assured him that I was indeed "cool." After receiving this quasi-security clearance, I was begrudgingly let into the show.

While this anecdote can be laughed off as an amusing little memory from my research travels, it also illustrates a distinct system of exchange between members of a particular subculture and a perceived "outsider." In this instance, the seriousness of the threat of rejection is irrelevant. Regardless of the intent, my immediate entry into the venue was stopped based on a single visual, sartorial assessment. What is important is how this incident conjures up questions concerning the development of a community and the social order that exists within it. Clothing plays a key element within this social order as it helps members of a particular subculture to recognize and read each other as part of the same group. As a

1 newcomer I was easily identified within this tight-knit community of punks. Only when I

was accepted by an assumingly respected member of the scene was I allowed the freedom to

move within it. For someone to enter this subculture with no outward, visual indication of

their membership, their right to exist within the community of punk must be earned through

other means, such as being established as a legitimate contributor to punk's historical and

visual culture.

One way that subculture is defined is as a social group or class, sometimes perceived

as lesser in importance or size, which is defined by ethnic, regional, or economic

similarities.1 These groups display particular behavioural patterns that distinguish its

members from what they perceive to be a larger, "mainstream" society.2 Subcultures are

usually represented as non-normative based on their specific interests and practices. These

groups are conscious of their differences, however, and may choose to represent themselves

as marginal.3 A second definition of subculture refers to it as a bacteria culture which is

derived from a larger organism.4 In the context of a discussion of punk, this second definition

is quite compelling. To understand the term "bacteria" as referring to an organism that is generally parasitic in nature, it is easy to see a link to early manifestations of punk.

Rather than feeding off organic decay, British punk style developed off of what it perceived to be the urban and social decay of society. During the early to mid-1970s, fashion designer collaborated with her partner, and manager,

Malcolm McLaren, on clothing designs that would eventually be known as the epitome of

British punk fashion. Inspired by the and metal zippers, buttons, and snaps of biker

1 '"subculture, n.". OED Online. November 2010. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/view/Entry/192545?rskey=kjkqig&result=l&isAdvanced=false 2 Ibid. 3 Ken Gelder, The Subcultures Reader, second ed. (: Routledge, 1997), 1. 4 '"subculture, n.". OED Online. November 2010. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/view/Entry/192545?rskey=kjkqig&result=l&isAdvanced=false 2 culture, Westwood also incorporated elements of sexual fetishism, such as rubber clothing

and straps.5 In the United States, punk fashion drew inspiration from the image of

the iconic . In keeping with America's strong middle-class presence,6 American

punks donned leather jackets and torn , forming a style of punk that was invested

in depicting its members as "individualist survivors."7 American punk style also inspired

multiple subgenres of punk who wanted to associate with its original ideals of individualism

and live-for-the-moment attitudes.

By appropriating images from "mainstream" culture and distorting them to create this

independent, threatening appearance, both American and British punks strove to separate

themselves from their decayed surroundings. In some ways Canadian punks have adopted the

same aesthetic of isolation made popular by their American and British counterparts. While

simultaneously separating themselves from one faction of society, they also use this

aesthetic, however, to link themselves to a larger discourse of punk fashion.

The primary goal of this thesis is to illustrate and understand the Canadian experience

of punk and the role of clothing within this subculture. In January 2011, ,

former member of Black Flag, publicly noted that even though "Vancouver punk outfits

D.O.A. and the Subhumans were revered and influential [...] the coastal city isn't often

mentioned alongside London, New York or Washington as a hotbed of the caustic genre [of

Q punk]." Despite being home to the first three all-female punk acts in North America (the

5 "430 Kings Road - Vivienne Westwood." Vivienne Westwood, no date. http://www.viviennewestwood.co.Uk/w/contact/terms-and-conditions 6 Michael Brake, Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth Cultures and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain and Canada (London; New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1985), 144. 7 Marilyn DeLong and Juyeon Park, "From Cool to Hot to Cool: The Case for the Black " in Men's Fashion Reader, eds. Andrew Reilly and Sarah Cosbey (United States: Fairchild Books, 2008), 173. 8 Nick Patch, "Henry Rollins Says Canada Doesn't Get Enough Credit for Punk Scene." News 1130,17 January 2011. http://www.newsll30.com/entertainment/article/170689--henry-rollins-says-canada-doesn-t-get- enough-credit-for-punk-scene 3 Curse, the B-Girls, and the Dishrags) as well as seminal bands such as D.O.A. who helped usher in the "new wave" of punk in the 1980s, Canadian contributions to punk have largely been ignored and only until recently, as with the example of Rollins, has there been evidence of an effort to reclaim lost Canadian voices to the discourse of punk.9

Several questions I intend to address are 1) how did punk fashion, which originated in

London, England and New York, emerge in Canada and what reaction did it receive? 2) How do punks use fashion to communicate cultural meaning and identity across a vast geographical scale? And finally, 3) is there anything truly unique to the Canadian interpretation of punk and its fashion? The lack of academic literature on punk in Canada reflects the difficulty of describing Canadian identity in general due to the complexities of the culture itself.10 Because of this lack, it would be difficult to develop a thesis on Canadian punk fashion using sources only concerned with the history of punk. An interdisciplinary approach to this study helps to ground it in the larger discourse of visual culture and fashion studies.

Organization of Thesis

This thesis begins with a literature review that illustrates what disciplines have informed my methodology, what gaps exist in the current literature on punk fashion, and where my research fits within the scope of the scholarship on this topic. Beginning with "Art

History and the Birth of Fashion Studies," this section traces the emergence of fashion and cultural studies as distinct disciplines before discussing subcultural style and the translation of this style as a visual language. Following this, a brief overview of academic research

9 Liz Worth, "A Canadian Punk Revival: As Punk Turns 30, Canadian Pioneers Reunite." Exclaim!, June 2007 http://exclaim.ca/Features/Research/canadian_punk_revival_as_punk_turns_30_canadian_pioneers 10 Michael Brake, Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth Cultures and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain and Canada (London; New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1985), 144-5. 4 regarding Canadian punk establishes the obvious lack in information that exists on the topic.

This chapter concludes by outlining the research methods I used to conduct this study and the obstacles I encountered.

The first chapter provides a brief historical overview of the emergence of punk fashion in Britain and the United States. The sound and look of punk did not originate on

Canadian soil. Therefore, it is pertinent to understand the punk scenes in London and New

York during the 1970s and 1980s in order to comprehend how punk fashion transferred over into Canadian culture. Following this, the incorporation of first-hand interviews helps to build a framework for understanding the lived experience of participants and their self- perceptions of what exactly constitutes "Canadian punk." I argue that understandings of

Canadian punk identity have formed out of the confusion surrounding Canada's national identity.

The second and final chapter begins by looking at initial reactions to emerging punk styles in Canada as represented in various Canadian news outlets. The sudden appearance of punk youth in Canadian cities caused a variety of reactions in the media which reflected the 's uneasiness towards punk and its transformation of the "natural" body. Issues of versus mutilation, constructions of gender roles, and the negotiation of changing identities in a subculture oriented towards youth will be discussed. After reviewing personal accounts of initial introductions to punk, this chapter discusses various methods of communication that Canadian punks use to communicate individual and group identities, including the role of D.I.Y. () and the transformation of physical space into sites for cultural memory.

5 Art History and the Birth of Fashion Studies

The realm of fashion studies is a relatively new discipline and understanding its development requires a closer examination of the history of dress. The first serious application of researching historical dress was found in the discipline of art history during the post-war period in Britain.11 The recording of this history was left to dress curators and historians who participated in categorizing and describing the physical aspects of dress and the ever-changing face of fashion.12 Representations of clothing found in paintings as well as the dating of articles of clothing were seen as important tools in the areas of authentication and connoisseurship.13 James Laver (1899-1975), considered to be a founding figure in the research of historical dress,14 was employed as Print Curator at the Victoria and Albert

Museum in London and accidently became interested in the study of fashion history through the practice of dating pictures in the collection.15 In his book, Costume and Fashion (1969),

Laver uses his training as an art historian to explore the form and material of dress.16

Beginning with the early civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, Laver discusses the history of costume, from the ancient Greeks and Romans up until the mid-1960s to 1970s (what he calls "the era of individualism),"17 using art work and artefacts from each period in history as examples for his discussion. The linear nature of Laver's work is reflective of the traditional approach to art historical studies at this time and has dictated the progression of fashion

11 Christopher Breward, "Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress," Fashion Theory 2, no. 4 (1998): 301. 12 Jennifer Craik, Fashion: The Key Concepts (Oxford; New York: Berg Publishers, 2009), 8. 13 Christopher Breward, "Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress," Fashion Theory 2, no. 4 (1998): 301. 14 Jennifer Craik, Fashion: The Key Concepts (Oxford; New York: Berg Publishers, 2009), 8. 15 Ibid. 16 James Laver, Costume and Fashion: A Concise History (Norwich: Jarrold and Sons, Ltd, 1969-1982), 7. 17 Ibid., 252. 6 history writing• • ever since.• 18 Laver is known for following three principals of dress, developed from the theories of Thorstein Veblen and John Flugel: 1) the Hierarchal Principal

- people dress to confirm their position in society to others, 2) the Utility Principal - clothing is worn for practical purposes, i.e. to keep warm, to protect the skin, and 3) the Seduction

Principal - clothing is worn to attract members of the opposite .19 For Laver, the first two categories relate to male attitudes towards clothing while the third relates to female 90 attitudes. The "economic and psychosexual patriarchal views of women's frivolity and subjugation" made popular by Veblen and Flugel find their influence in Laver's principals.

Yet when Laver republished A Concise History of Fashion in 1969, he concluded that the

Seduction Principle would outlast Hierarchal and Utility principals in both women's and men's fashion. Laver's theories utilized clothing to illustrate a distinct symbolic system

-y i which could be used to understand society. By today's standards, if the Seduction Principal is still a function of clothing and body adornment, it needs to be opened up to include multiple understandings of sexuality in order to be considered legitimate.

In the 1970s, a new school of art historical studies began to emerge and with it a different approach to the study and understanding of dress. Rather than focusing on authentication and connoisseurship, the social and political context of clothing were

• • • "yy • prioritized. Linear approaches to historical research were now being re-examined in order to create room for multiple viewpoints and personal histories that had previously been ignored. Issues of social identity, gender, the body, appearance, and representation were brought to the forefront by theorists working with the theoretical and analytical tools of

18 Christopher Breward, "Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress," Fashion Theory 2, no. 4 (1998): 301. 19 Valerie Cumming, Understanding Fashion History (Hollywood: Costume and Fashion Press, 2004), 35. 20 Ibid. 21 Jennifer Craik, Fashion: The Key Concepts (Oxford; New York: Berg Publishers, 2009), 10. 22 Christopher Breward, "Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress," Fashion Theory 2, no. 4 (1998): 301-302. 7 Marxism, structuralism, semiotics, and feminism.23 Elizabeth Wilson has encouraged academics to take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of fashion.24 She challenges reductionist theories relating to the study of fashion which were popularized by Jean

Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, and Veblen. According to Wilson, these pessimistic theories are taken up by those who argue that fashion promotes unnecessary consumption, encourages class and gender issues, and that it is unnatural, non-functional and therefore ugly.26 Wilson has suggested a new direction for the understanding of fashion's development:

What is needed, perhaps, for its analysis is what Georges Devereux called a 'double discourse', that is, any single form of explanation of fashion will inevitably be reductionist, and we must not only, in Devereux's terms, allow that there may be more than one possible explanation, but go further and say that only a multiple (interdisciplinary) explanation will be adequate to the fashion phenomenon. 7

In the context of punk fashion, Wilson's rationale for an interdisciplinary approach is a sensible one. Rather than reduce the punk aesthetic to simply a reaction against a single issue, for example the class system, capitalism, consumerism, or "displacement of psychological trauma," the work of researchers must reflect punk's multifaceted surface.

Cultural Studies and the Language of Subcultural Style

There are two original schools of thought in regards to research on subcultures. The first is the Chicago School which was established in the Department of Sociology at the

University of Chicago in 1892. At this time, Chicago was the second largest city in the

23 ibid., 302. 24 Currently a Visiting Professor of Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London 25 Elizabeth Wilson, "The New Components of the Spectacle: Fashion and Postmodernism." In Postmodernism and Society, eds. Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (London: MacMillan Ltd., 1990), 217-221. 26 Ibid., 222. 27 Ibid., 221-222. 28 Ibid., 217. 29 Ken Gelder, The Subcultures Reader, second ed. (New York: Routledge, 1997), 19. 8 United States and was home to a large number of European immigrants. Sociologists of this school were primarily concerned with urban sociology which was the study of social groups living in the city. One example is Robert E. Park's The City, published in 1925. According to Park, the city is a site for the socialization of groups who settled in urban areas to establish

11 their own "moral region." Several years later in 1964, Milton M. Gordon published

Assimilation in American Life which altered Park's theory of "cities within cities" to "worlds within a world." For Gordon, subcultures were institutional rather than urban and were not necessarily always deviant.

The second school of thought on subcultures is referred to as the tradition. From 1964 to 2002, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at

Birmingham University in England reshaped research models on subcultures.34 The first director of CCCS, Richard Hoggart, published Uses of Literacy in 1957. In this book,

Hoggart moved away from the Chicago School's methods of "urban sociology, criminology, and participant observation."35 Instead, Hoggart and the Birmingham school focused on analyses of "popular media, popular culture, literature, and 'everyday life.'"' One example is Resistance Through Rituals (1975), a collection of essays on youth subcultures in post-war

Britain edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci influenced CCCS researchers, including Hall and Jefferson, along with other Left-leaning cultural theorists such as Louis Althussier and Roland Barthes.37 This suggests that they were more interested in textual analysis than first-hand accounts of and field work in subcultural

30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 20. 32 Ibid., 21. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 81. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 83. 9 •>Q communities. In contrast to traditional approaches to the history of art and design, cultural studies treats objects• as complex language systems rather than products of authorship.• 39 In the 1960s, the discipline of cultural studies was still based on the assumption that a person was required to have a literary background in order to read different aspects of society.40 In the words of Christopher Breward, "cultural studies finds its history in a literary rather than a visual tradition, and objects of study reflect those roots, existing as texts to be decoded in the present, rather than reflections or remains to be recovered from the past."41

Traditional scholarship on punk culture takes one of two roads. The first utilizes a linear approach to the history of punk's visual aesthetic while the second, in a more theoretical vein, reads punk style as a tool for ideological resistance.42 What has resulted within the academic sphere is that punk has been reduced down to its core elements in order to understand it as an authentic cultural phenomenon.43

In 1979, Dick Hebdige44 published Subculture: the Meaning of Style, which is considered by many to be one of the first analytic approaches to studying punk. In this book,

Hebdige analyses a selection of British youth movements through the use of theories informed by Marxism, structuralism, and semiotic theory developed from the work of Roland

Barthes. For Hebdige, every aspect of culture contains a semiotic value 45 Semiotic analysis, first developed by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and later taken up by Barthes, is

38 ibid. 39 Christopher Breward, "Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress," Fashion Theory 2, no. 4 (1998): 306. 40 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 8. 41 Christopher Breward, "Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress," Fashion Theory 2, no. 4 (1998): 303. 42 Frank Cartledge, "Distress to Impress? Local Punk Fashion and Commodity Exchange." In Punk Rock, so What?: The Cultural Legacy of Punk, ed. Roger Sabin (New York: Routledge, 1999), 143. ,bid' ZProfessor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Santa Barbara. 45 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 13. 10 constructed around the idea of the "sign" which is the "anchoring unit of communication within a language system."46 The process of signification involves dividing the sign into its individual parts which includes the signifier (the physical form of the sign), and the signified

(the sign's underlying meaning; the "mental concept" and associations that arise from it).47

According to Breward, any meaning that is derived from the sign is created from the subconscious relationship of these two parts and is therefore "culturally relative" rather than fixed 48

Several different definitions of "culture" exist which are, according to Hebdige, often contradictory in nature.49 Culture can be defined in a more classical manner as representing

"a standard of aesthetic excellence," and also in an anthropological sense as referring to a way of life that expresses meaning and value in art, institutions, and behaviour.50 The difference between these two definitions is the leap the second one takes to include the study of relationships within everyday life.51

The communication system of everyday life is made up of signs (which are often taken for granted), i.e. the "elements in communication systems governed by semantic rules and codes which are not themselves directly apprehended in experience."52 As Hebdige explains, "Barthes set out in Mythologies to examine the normally hidden set of rules, codes and conventions through which meanings particular to specific social groups (i.e. those in power) are rendered universal and 'given' for the whole society."53 According to Hebdige,

46 Christopher Breward, "Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress," Fashion Theory 2, no. 4 (1998): 306. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 5. 50 Ibid., 6. 51 Ibid., 7. 52 Ibid., 13. 53 Ibid., 9. 11 the seemingly ordinary objects that construct the punk aesthetic present a challenge to hegemony, the dominant power.54

Punk is a system of communication, both verbal and symbolic, and can be referred to as a distinct language. Since language is a fluid construct, it changes depending on context and each era adds words, creates new meanings, forgets phrases, or changes spelling so that over time it becomes an almost unrecognizable form to each succeeding generation.

Language is not often rendered completely unrecognizable because traces of root words still retain their meanings despite additions made by future generations. Yet with the creation of new slang terminology, those who do not partake in this new culture of language need the assistance of a translator to aid in their understanding.

In this context, articles of punk fashion can be understood as words in a coded system of language, or in other terms, as "gestures, movements towards a speech which offends the

'silent majority.'"55 The idea of fashion as a language is taken even further by Alison Lurie in her book The Language of Clothes, where she states that if fashion is a language, then it must contain a vocabulary and a grammar.56 Therefore, by applying Lurie's analysis to the context of punk, each individual member of this subculture would have their own set of

"words" and "personal variations of tone and meaning."

Take for example a pair of basic jeans. On their own, the pants represent one word in a larger vocabulary of a wardrobe. The wide array of jean styles that are available already come with their own distinct tone and meaning which is initially created by the designer and ready to purchase for the consumer. The number of different combinations of grommets, stitching, and colour is endless and affects how the consumer reads the article of

54 ibid. 17. 55 ibid., 18. 56 Alison Lurie, The Language of Clothes (New York: Random House, 1981), 4. 12 clothing (and also, how that consumer is read by others) as conservative, dressy, casual, ugly, sexy, or various other interpretations. Once a punk begins to manipulate the garment through shredding or ripping the material and the addition of patches, safety pins, paint, that single word (the pair of jeans) becomes inflected with the various tones and meanings of punk culture. The combinations of clothing that punks choose to put together would be like foreign words or dialects to "members of mainstream culture."57 Hebdige also applied this idea of punk containing its own system of grammar when he wrote that "the punks wore clothes

• • • CO which were the sartorial equivalent of swear words, and they swore as they dressed."

"Humble objects,"59 such as a safety pin, a razor blade, among other examples, are appropriated by subordinate groups in order to create coded messages which, according to

Hebdige, "express, in code, a form of resistance to the order which guarantees their continued subordination."60

Previous studies on the punk subculture have primarily concentrated on British manifestations of the movement.61 One reason for this influx of British youth studies may be the result of a clear link from traditional class problems found in British culture which can easily be reflected in that culture's youth. In 1984, Simon Frith published a sociological examination of British subcultural theories, The Sociology of Youth. In this book, Frith looks at various approaches to the study of youth culture beginning with delinquency theories of the 1930s, functionalist approaches popular during the 1950s and 1960s, and finally the

Marxist approach to subcultural theory applied by theorists such as Hebdige in the 1970s.

57 Ibid. 58 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 114. 59 Ibid., 18. 60 Ibid. 61 For example, see Hebdige (1979), Hall and Jefferson (1975), Savage (2001) 13 Similar to Hebdige, Frith writes that youth groups have a distinct style in how they dress, speak, and participate in social gatherings but that there is an assumption that these shared activities also reflect shared values.62 Frith argues that it is the task of the sociologist to get at the meaning behind observed behaviour which he says has been the typically British approach to the study of youth cultures. In the section on "Sub-cultures and Style," Frith critiques the approach many sociologists have taken to the study of youth subcultures, stating that:

Punks and and Mods and Teds are unlikely (unless they've done Sociology A-Level) to talk about 'winning cultural space', 'resistance at the ideological level' or the 'magical reclamation of community' [...]64

In other words, researchers must be careful not to assume layers of meaning that were not intended by those they observe. Youth styles may be considered a form of resistance because the use of social signs gives members "a sense of control over their own lives," not necessarily because every sign is a challenge to "bourgeois ideology."65

While Hebdige traced the beginnings of punk to British working-class causes, Tricia

Henry66 attributed punk's beginnings to the intellectual middle-class scene of in the mid-1960s.67 According to Carrie Jaures Noland, by acknowledging the influence of late 1960s musicians, Henry allows punk to have a much more self-conscious and literate beginning than the mass media allowed. The differing opinions of Hebdige and Henry about the beginnings of the punk movement demonstrate that punk ideology, and subsequently its

62 Simon Frith, The Sociology of Youth (Lancashire: Causeway Press Ltd., 1984), 8. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., 45 65 Ibid., 46. 66 Tricia Henry, Break All RulesI Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (Ann Arbor; London: UMI Research Press, 1989). 67 Carrie Jaures Noland, "Rimbaud and : Style as Social Deviance." Critical Inquiry, 21, no. 3 (Spring, 1995): 586. 14 fashion, originates in multiple locations under different circumstances. If the creation of a punk community is not fixed to a specific location, time period, or circumstance, then it is pertinent to investigate how Canadians have borrowed elements from previous punk communities and translated it into their own understanding.

Translating Punk's Visual Language

Translation is often thought of as the literal changing of one form into another, the most common example is the changing of one foreign text into another. To perform a translation is to encounter a changing form that is asking to be recognized not only in its original state, but to be made recognizable in the form of another.68 A binary opposition develops between the original text and its translation where the original work is "an unchanging monument of the human imagination ('genius'), transcending the linguistic, cultural, and social changes of which the translation is a determinate effect."69 In other words, if punk fashion which emerged during the 1970s was seen as "original punk," then any interpretations of this style created after that time period would be placed within the realm of the "translated copy," and therefore be subject to a fixed time period with a delineated beginning and ending.

This binary finds its place within a hierarchy of cultural practices grounded in romantic expressive theory which ranks translation as the lowest on its scale.70 As a result of this binary, the translator is also subordinated to the original author. In order for the

68 Kristina Huneault, "Miniature Objects of Cultural Covenant: Portraits and First Nations Sitters in British North America." RACAR, 30, no. 1-2 (2005), 94. 69 Lawrence Venuti, Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology (London; New York: Routledge, 1992), 3. 70 Ibid. 15 translation to be considered "successful," it needs to convincingly mimic the appearance of the original.71

Poststructuralist theorists such as Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida sought to unravel the binary between original and translation by questioning the exact meaning of "originality" and "authorship." Derrida helped to develop the idea that there is more than one level of translation that exists. The original text is itself a form of translation, just as "derivative and heterogeneous" as the translated copy. When it was first emerging, British punk fashion was a style that was considered to be a youth movement that had never been seen before but in fact it derived from a multitude of sources: historical and contemporary; high and low culture. This vast collection of influential sources on punk fashion is described by Jon

Savage, a British broadcaster and music journalist, in his history of punk rock entitled

England's Dreaming (1991):

On speed, swearing, spitting and puking, they borrowed from Rimbaud, Mao and the Situationists, but also from pornography, cartoon culture and the tabloids.73 Punk was 'a portent with its polysemy of elements drawn from the history of youth culture, sexual fetish wear, urban decay and extremist politics,' and it 'spoke of many things: urban primitivism; cheap, second-hand clothes; the fractured nature of perception in an accelerating, media-saturated society; the wish to offer up the body as a jumble of meanings.'74

Since fashion is a visual language, it could be argued that the need to define an original source of punk fashion could be held up to the same scrutiny as traditional theories of verbal translation. This traditional view rests upon the idea that language (fashion) is static.75 As

71 Ibid., 4. 72 Ibid., 7. 73 Elizabeth Wilson, Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts (: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 231. 74 Jon Savage, England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. 230. Quoted in Elizabeth Wilson, Bohemians: The Glorious Outcasts (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 231. 75 John Johnston, 'Translation as Simulacrum." In Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London; New York: Routledge, 1992), 43. 16 with language, fashion is never "unchanging and completely defined" and the meanings of its forms change and create new understandings over time.76

In this sense, new members of the punk subculture participate in a process of translation. They are translators of a style that has been subject to change and re- interpretation over a long period of time. What they produce takes the form of a combination of new and old punk styles, as well as items from other cultural sources, which in turn generate new meanings in the construction of individual punk identities. This process is criticized by those who believe in a "pure" (static; authentic) punk aesthetic, while encouraged by others who see these adaptations as branches of punk's dedication to personal freedom and individualism. Wilson identifies punk as modernist because it challenges the idea that fashion represents conforming to some standard of nature.77 This is strongly evident in early women's punk fashion which saw a deliberate effort to denaturalize the body, such as shaving off their , which simultaneously pushed the boundaries of accepted taste and gender roles and make sex appear as something unnatural and ugly.

Many translations of punk style could be considered "successful" because they so carefully copy the original look of punk that it is sometimes hard to see if anything has changed. The gaze assists in this (mis)recognition. Lurie explains that the system of signs communicated by clothing begins its transmission before two individuals begin to interact with each other verbally:

Long before I am near enough to talk to you on the street, in a meeting, or at a party, you announce your sex, age and class to me through what you are wearing - and very possibly give me important information (or misinformation) as to your occupation, origin, personality, opinions, tastes, sexual desires and current mood. I may not be

*lbid' 77 Elizabeth Wilson, "The New Components of the Spectacle: Fashion and Postmodernism." In Postmodernism and Society, eds. Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (London: MacMillan Ltd., 1990), 216. 17 able to put what I observe into words, but I register the information unconsciously

Most punks will not come right out and say that their supposed individual style has been copied from other sources. This would contradict the individualism that punk so proudly promotes. Nor will they blatantly explain every symbolic meaning behind the items of dress they choose to wear. Part of this visual system of communication relies on the viewer's gaze and their own constructed meanings and assumptions about the visual codes they receive.

Punk Rock in Canadian Culture

In a cross-comparison of British, American, and Canadian youth cultures conducted

by Michael Brake in 1985, he concluded that Canada's confusion about its national identity comes from its historical links to Britain and France and its diffusion into American culture due to the close proximity of the two nations. To Brake, the attempt to locate youth cultures in Canada is a more complex situation than in either Britain or the United States, due partly to the complex nature of the development of Canadian culture itself.79 He states that British youth cultures have a clear relationship to traditional class struggles while in America, there is a large high school culture as well as problems existing with the strong force of ethnic and

OA working-class minority groups. He argues that "the appropriate signs for identity are clearly there, and whilst one may, for example, differentiate West Coast punks from British punks, the former being more attracted to style, and more aggressive than the latter, both styles are native to their immediate context and reinterpret the artifice of fashion into a subculture

78 Alison Lurie, The Language of Clothes (New York: Random House, 1981), 3. 79 Michael Brake, Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth Cultures and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain and Canada (London; New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1985), 144. 80 Ibid. 18 which makes sense in the local environment."81 He concludes that if there is individualism in

Canadian subcultures, it is on an "individualistic rather than a collective level."

In the late 1970s, the ability of Canadian punk to develop on a collective level was restricted due to a combination of Canada's geography, which made touring between cities difficult, and the hostility towards this new on the part of the Canadian press.

For example, in a CBC news segment recorded on 27 September 1977, reporter Hana Gartner interviewed band members from Teenage Head, The Poles, and The Viletones at a five hour concert in Toronto.84 Her closing comments dismiss punk as "a put on," claiming that the most offensive part of punk rock is "the seventeen year olds who actually believe what the punks are saying. That life is boring, meaningless. That self-inflicted wounds and living for

Of today is good for you." In another CBC news report from 12 June 1978, "Toronto's

Nightmare," those who donned the punk wardrobe were viewed as "purveyors of futility, anger, and just plain bad taste."86 In particular, Toronto's Viletones came under public fire because of lead singer Steven Lecki (formerly known as "Nazi Dog") and his penchant for self-mutilation on stage, sparking an outcry in the media which shouted "Not Here, Not

Them."87

During the course of my research I consulted two Master's level theses on Canadian

Punk, both of which are not focused on Punk fashion but do devote one chapter each to

81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., 145. 83 Liz Worth, "A Canadian Punk Revival: As Punk Turns 30, Canadian Pioneers Reunite." Exclaim!, June 2007 http://exclaim.ca/Features/Research/canadian_punk_revival_as_punk_tums_30_canadian_pioneers 84 "Canadian Punk Rock," The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Aug. 3, 2003. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/clips/762/ 85 Ibid. 86 "Toronto's Nightmare," The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, July 15 2008. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/clips/764/ 87 Paul McGrath, Fanfare (1977) from: Viletone.com. "Viletones." Blair Richard Martin, 2007. http://www.viletone.com/ 19 discussing style. The first of these two studies, written by Michelle Dumas for the University of Guelph in 2001, investigates a single punk subculture in a Southern Ontario town to explore the meaning of punk between 2000 and 2001. She concludes that the two forms of

OA punk style are "hardcore" and "stereotypical." I agree with Dumas that the punk fashion of the mid to late 1970s (what she refers to as "stereotypical" punk) and the styles from 1980s

American hardcore can be considered as two distinct, and arguably the most dominant, manifestations of punk style. It should be noted, however, that punk fashion is continually changing. Even within these two forms of punk style there exists a multitude of sub-styles that were created as a response (for example, the hardcore style of punk can be divided into

an several distinct categories such as , old school, , and others).

The second study, written by Stephan Gaetz and published by York University in

1985, creates an ethnographical study of Torontonian punks and relates his research to anthropological and sociological studies of youth.90 Arguing that there is more to punks than their fashion and music, Gaetz examines all aspects of punk life, including organization and group structure, approaches to work and leisure, and the process of change within the punk community.91 In relation to how much of punk's style is an actual form of rebellion, Gaetz writes that punk is a process of encouraged continual change and that this constant re-

QO forming assures its 'rebellious' content. In other words, the styles and symbols of punk are

88 Michelle Dumas, '"Punk in Drublic': Gender, Politics, Resistance, and Producing Punk Rock in a Small Canadian Town." MA Thesis (University of Guelph, 2001), 85. 89 Ross Haenfler, : Clean-Living Youth, , and Social Change (New Brunswick; New Jersey; London: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 11-17. 90 Stephen Anthony Gaetz, "Youth Expression in the Eighties: A Network Analysis of the Punks of Toronto." MA Thesis (York University, 1985), IV. 91 Ibid., 2. 92 Ibid., 214. 20 so easily adopted by mainstream culture that punk must find new ways to invent itself for

QT fear of its rebellious nature being stripped of all meaning and rendered as a passing fad.

In comparison to the other sections of this literature review, this section on Canadian

punk is the smallest. This apparent lack of scholarly articles concerning not only the

formation of the punk subculture in Canada but the creation of Canadian punk identities

illustrates a serious gap in literature on Canadian youth cultures. My discussion on Canadian

punk identity, therefore, will be based upon how scholars have historically understood

Canada's national identity. The inclusion of first-hand interviews is an attempt to reclaim

part of the unrecorded history of punk in Canada.

Methodology

Several obstacles needed to be overcome in order to properly conduct research on

Canadian punk. The first challenge was to determine the geographical scale of the study.

Although it is possible to focus on one single punk community mid all the nuances and

aspects of that single scene, as demonstrated by Gaetz and Dumas, it only provides one piece

to a much larger puzzle. Canadian journalist Liz Worth recently published an oral history of

the Toronto punk scene (2010). She presents an assortment of interviews from bands and

others involved in Toronto's punk community to the reader in an uncensored, transcribed

format. She muses in her introduction that when it came time for publication, "resistance

really came from Canadian editors and literary agents. For the most part, no one wanted to

touch a book about punk in Toronto that so obviously excluded the rest of Canada. That's

just the Canadian way. It's an attitude that I hope won't last much longer."94 Unfortunately

for Worth, this is attitude will continue for quite some time until Canada comes to terms with

Mlbid" 94 Liz Worth, Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond (Montreal: Bongo Beat, 2009), 5. 21 the fact that maybe its so-called "non-existent" or "confused" national identity is its national identity. In other words, Canadians need to embrace the idea that their identity has been sewn together from a number of different fabrics to make a whole.

The Canadian punk scene can be broken down by each province and in turn, each province can be broken down by regional differences. Unfortunately, undertaking such a large-scale study was beyond the time constraints of this project. Toronto(Ontario) and

Vancouver (British Columbia) were chosen as anchoring points based on their involvement in early developments of Canadian punk. Research began in Toronto during June 2010 and I travelled to Kamloops, British Columbia to join several bands that were in the midst of a cross-Canada tour (See Appendix A). While not able to physically travel to provinces beyond

B.C. and Ontario, touring allowed for a surprising opportunity to with punks from almost all parts of Canada, including Quebec, the Prairies, and the Maritimes.

The second challenge was organizing the collection of interview data based on the challenges presented at each type of venue. The choice to collect first-hand evidence at small, local concerts was a deliberate one. In contrast to Stephen W. Baron's study of the Canadian

West Coast Subculture published in 1989, in which Baron observed and conducted interviews with groups of punks living on the street,951 chose to go directly to the social gathering places where scene members from various social and class backgrounds interact and, in many cases, consciously construct a punk look. Several different examples of concert venues are represented in this study. These include a house show (Fig 1.1), a church (Fig

1.2), a local Elk lodge (Fig 1.3), a jam hall (Fig 1.4), and various bar/club venues (Fig 1.5).

95 Stephen W. Baron, "The Canadian West Coast Subculture: A Field Study." The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 14, no. 3 (Summer, 1989): 289-316. 22 Each venue presents a different type of audience as well as new challenges in terms of conducting first-hand interviews.

Venues where there was access to alcohol seemed to result in a rowdier crowd which in some cases interfered with the collection of interview data. Often it was necessary to ask

participants to conduct interviews outside of the venue so that background noise would not

interfere with the recording of these sessions. At times it was required that interviews be

completed in sections if a participant was called away to perform other tasks at the event.

In total, approximately thirteen structured, one-on-one interviews were collected

which consisted of an exchange between myself and one participant. Nine more interviews

were conducted where two or more participants were interviewed as part of an informal

group exchange. Out of these twenty-two interviews, twelve were collected at one of the

concert venues mentioned previously (both structured and unstructured). Three structured

interviews took place at an arranged meeting , such as a local coffee shop or a private

residence. Finally, four structured interviews were conducted through a series of e-mails.

While participants were not asked to reveal their age, observation roughly estimates that

people interviewed ranged from eighteen to fifty years of age. About eight interview

participants were female while the majority of participants were male.

Before interviews were recorded, the nature and purpose of the study was explained

to all potential participants. Only interviews and photographs where written permission was

given for their use have been included in this study. No attempt was made to mislead

potential participants. It was explained that participation was voluntary and that participants

reserved the right to keep certain information confidential or withdraw their consent at any

time (See Appendix B). Many of the structured interviews were arranged with particular

23 members of the Canadian punk scene (i.e. people who are considered to be well-known within the scene, such as band members, club owners, photographers, etc.) in advance of our meeting.

While questions were prepared in order to keep the conversation on track, the interviews were conducted as casual interactions, allowing the interviewer and interviewee the freedom to let the conversation develop naturally. Unstructured interviews included information collected from randomly chosen, anonymous participants who were usually audience members at each location. In order to protect the anonymity of these participants, the transcribed copy of each interview uses pseudonyms for those who answered questions and all other references to persons not included in the study have had their names removed entirely. The unstructured interviews were often conducted in larger groups of two to three people, or more, which provided a more open, comfortable environment for participants to share stories, thoughts, or debate issues with one another. Informal questions were asked during these sessions but when the conversation went too far off topic, planned questions were asked to put it back on course. The average length for a structured interview was anywhere from one to two hours while unstructured interviews were considerably shorter depending on how many people were answering questions and the enthusiasm of the participants. Time and travel constraints hindered the collection of some interview data where there was no other option but to e-mail participants the interview questions and consent forms. Interviewing participants in person is the preferred method as it limits their ability to carefully edit their answers while also helping to build a better rapport between researcher and participant.

After each interview was recorded, permission was asked for a photograph to be taken of the participants (See Appendix C). Photographic evidence helps to portray the 24 current trends in Canadian punk fashion. Reactions to being photographed varied from some participants being very open to having a snapshot taken, to others refusing outright. Some participants, while not objecting to being photographed or having that photograph published, objected to signing any waivers releasing their image for publication. These images were not used in the publication of this study. It became necessary to begin taking general photographs of the audience as the bands performed so that no individual would be singled out, but rather discussed in the context of the larger group. Although I had been present at many different local punk shows in the past, I was conscious of the fact that no one appreciates a tourist within their scene who treats them like animals at a zoo. A certain degree of trust had to be established beforehand. This trust was often gained through the permission of another

"confirmed" member of a particular scene. It was advised by my travelling companions that when approaching potential participants, I should begin by introducing myself as being with the bands and only after that explain my academic reasons for being on the road. This method proved to be successful in obtaining permissions from participants in part because bands are often perceived as being leaders of any particular local scene and so I was seen as having some degree of importance or legitimacy for being associated with them.

Ross Haenfler, in his study of the American Straight-Edge scene (2006), explains this phenomenon: "bands serve as the primary shapers of the group's ideology and collective identity."96 In terms of the physical space of a venue, band members are physically separated from the audience either by a stage or a barrier of PA (public address) systems. Band members are also allowed the freedom to move within all spaces of a venue, including those areas which the average audience member is barred from entering, such as the backstage area or green room. This perceived and physically articulated "importance" within the scene could

96 Ross Haenfler, Straight Edge: Clean-Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, and Social Change (London; New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 9. 25 also be extended to photographers as I noticed that when I was taking photographs of a band, the crowd would often give me a wide berth and allow me to take position in the best possible viewing spot.

The third difficulty I encountered in preparation for this study involved recognizing my position as a researcher and acknowledging my own assumptions about the Canadian punk scene that were created out of my participation within it. Nostalgia colours the memory of our experiences but as a researcher, reality may not equal what is remembered. Since my teen years I have found multiple ways to participate in punk and my experiences left me with a set of assumptions about what constituted "punk" which were challenged as my research progressed. In addition to conducting structured interviews, casual conversations, and taking photographs I participated in other ways such as loading and unloading band equipment and starting the occasional mosh pit. Although the personal relationships and opinions I developed through the course of this study have assisted in the development of my arguments, I made a conscious effort not to let my own impressions colour the beliefs of those I interviewed. Their voices have been truthfully represented in this study to the best of my ability.

26 Chapter 1: Origins of Punk Fashion97

The meaning of the word "punk" has changed over the course of time. Both Shakespeare and

John Keats used it as a synonym for "prostitute."98 Western culture adopted the word to refer to the passive man in a homosexual relationship, most often used within the context of prison slang.99 It has since been popularized to refer to anything that could be considered

"contemptible, despicable; thuggish; cowardly; inexperienced, [or] raw."100 While outside of the punk sphere this term retains some of its negative connotations, over time it has become a positive marker which members of this subculture proudly go by.

Hebdige notes that the word "punk" has become part of a distinct language of

"fantasy and alienation" where its original values have been reversed101 in order to construct a positive identity for those that call themselves punks. The following chapter will examine the development of the punk subculture, beginning with the literary proto-punk102 movement in New York City during the mid to late-1960s. Some of the fashion trends of this decade greatly influenced the punk explosion that would occur in Britain during the 1970s. Its influence could still be seen in the emerging punk styles of American punks during the

1980s, a time when the supposed "end" of punk had already occurred. After establishing the

97 This section has been adapted from a previous publication: Katie Green, "Plastic Punk: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Punk Aesthetics," Arthattack 2 (March, 2009):42-56. 98 "Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1623) v. i. 178 "She may be a Puncke: for many of them, are neither Maid, Widow, nor Wife". 1819 Keats, Let. 14 Feb. (1931) II. 329 "A squeeze of the hand from a great man, or a smile from a Punk of Quality"" "punk, n.l and adj.2". OED Online. November 2010. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/view/Entry/154685?rskey=5fzW4G&result=l&isAdvanced=false 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Charles Winick, "Uses of Drugs by Jazz Musicians," Social Problems 7, no. 3 (Winter, 1959): 240-253. Quoted in Dick Hebdige, Subculture the Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 162. 102 The term "proto-punk" is used here to refer to early, pre-punk influences (styles that would have been formed before the mid-1970s). 27 historical framework for current punk fashion styles, this chapter then turns to early manifestations of punk in Canada.

Anarchists and Anti-Heroes: Punk Fashion in the late-1960s

1 A1? In 1964, Lou Reed, a musician and song writer from Brooklyn, met fellow musician John Cale.104 Inspired by the Beat poets of the 1950s,105 such as Jack Kerouac and

Allen Ginsberg,106 Reed and Cale needed to find a way to freely experiment with their unique musical and lyrical styles and therefore formed the influential rock group The Velvet

107 Underground in 1965. Reed was the main songwriter of the band and his songs often

1 Aft contained references to subjects considered to be offensive or distasteful. Venus in Furs, from the and Nico, from 1967, contains lyrics referring to sadomasochism; where one derives pleasure from the infliction of pain. The song title itself is taken from a novella written by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch in 1870 (from which the term

"masochism" is derived).109 The lyrics include images of clothing relating to sadomasochism which is seen later on in the clothing designs of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren.

The song plays as follows, weaving an image of a seductive underworld adorned in leather and furs:

Shiny, shiny, shiny of leather

Whiplash girlchild in the dark

Comes in bells, your servant, don't forsake him

103 Tricia Henry, Break All the Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style {Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989), 7. 104 David P. Szatmary, Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll, Sixth Edition (New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc., 2007), 148. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Tricia Henry, Break All the Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989), 11. 109 Ibid., 13. 28 Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Downy sins of streetlight fancies

Chase the costumes she shall wear

Ermine furs adorn the imperious

Severin, Severin awaits you there110

To match Reed's lyrics which were commonly nihilistic, as well as their sound which was amateur at its best, despite their formal training,111 a signature visual style was born as well. The Velvet Underground's fashion and stage presence matched their move away from

119 accepted mainstream trends. Their wardrobe has been described as "an intentionally rough look that served to distance them from the general public, using black leather jackets, black jeans, black vests, black boots, T-, sweatshirts, and dark sunglasses to achieve an

« * appearance that suggested the look of bohemian gangsters."

The black leather jacket is one of the most iconic pieces of the punk rock wardrobe and its popularity within the scene has not dwindled. This item is a tool for attracting immediate attention because any light that reflects off of metallic zippers, buttons, and snaps draws the eye to the jacket's silhouette which emphasizes either the slenderness of the wearer's torso, or their muscularity.114 The black leather jacket is not limited to its visual aesthetic as it is an item that interacts with the other senses as well. Touching the smooth, durable surface of the leather reinforces it as a second skin to the wearer; an impenetrable

110 Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico. Verve, 1967. LP. 111 Tricia Henry, Break All the Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989), 15. 112 Ibid., 16. 113 Ibid., 16-18. 114 Marilyn DeLong and Juyeon Park, "From Cool to Hot to Cool: The Case for the Black Leather Jacket" in Men's Fashion Reader, Andrew Reilly and Sarah Cosbey, eds. (United States: Fairchild Books, 2008), 168. 29 armour.115 The smell of earthy, tanned leather is only experienced upon close contact to the body116 and is instantly recognizable. Yet leather is not so much a skin as it is a dead hide;117 the remnant of a once living creature that was stripped of its hair, skin, and limbs. Leather can be dyed any number of colours, but black leather in particular emphasizes the aura of death that surrounds it.118 The shade of black is described as having "a clear affinity with notions of chaos and entropy" which would make it appealing to a social group like punk which is focused on the breaking down of ordered systems.119 This combination of sinister death and violence creates a power that is imbued in the garment and transferred to the wearer as soon as they place it over their own living skin.

The reason why the leather jacket may have been adopted by underground rock groups like the Velvet Underground, the MC5, the and others, is because it is an icon for the male identity. Men's fashion identity relies heavily on the association of different types of garments with certain types of men, such as musicians, bikers, cowboys, and soldiers. 1^1 The image of the leather jacket has been manipulated and changed by many

199 different cultural groups to their own needs, but for punk culture, it may have been

19^ representative of the "individualist survivor", otherwise known as the anarchist or the anti- hero.124 For example, wore the jacket as reminiscent of the iconic 1950s greaser image, which can be illustrated by Marlon Brando's character in The Wild One (1953). Punk

115 ibid., 169. Ibid. 117 John Harvey, Men in Black (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 245. 118 Ibid. 119 F., Jose Blanco, "Punk Male Fashion and the Aesthetic of Entropy," in Men's Fashion Reader, Andrew Reilly and Sarah Cosbey, eds. (United States: Fairchild Books, 2008), 205. 120 Marilyn DeLong and Juyeon Park, "From Cool to Hot to Cool: The Case for the Black Leather Jacket" in Men's Fashion Reader, Andrew Reilly and Sarah Cosbey, eds. (United States: Fairchild Books, 2008), 172. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid., 176. 123 Ibid., 173. 124 Ibid., 173-174. 30 bands from the 1980s to the present have increasingly accessorized their leather jackets with patches, studs, and paint in order to construct their own individual identities. In youth cultures, the black leather jacket carries with it past values of the wardrobe of social groups that saw themselves outside of class hierarchy while simultaneously aspiring to be seen as

1 elite communities. The jacket acts as a symbol of the distance they strived for from mainstream trends while at the same time, showing the power they held while being seen as isolated and sometimes threatening figures within the sphere of the urban jungle. While the black leather jacket has assimilated into the mainstream fashion market, it still retains an element of menace which ensures its continued place of importance within the punk

1 0f\ wardrobe.

Anarchy in the UK: Punk Fashion in the late-1970s

Western fashion styles in the 1970s were influenced by the cultural precedent that had been left by the of the 1960s. The 1960s was a decade of political radicalism and cultural liberation. At the end of the Vietnam War, student fervour towards political issues had all but faded, but other forms of cultural radicalism, such as sexual freedom and drug

1 97 cultures, spread throughout the next decade. American journalist Tom Wolfe referred to the 1970s at the "Me Decade," because of the self-indulgence that was illustrated by excessive fashion styles.128 Characteristics of 1970s popular fashion were defined by extreme distortions in size, as with wide lapels, bellbottoms, ties, and platform shoes. These styles, along with many others, drew more attention to the body and performance of the self which related again to the wave of narcissism that was sweeping through contemporary society:

John Harvey, Men in Black (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 246. 126 Ibid., 248. 127 Valerie Steele, "Anti-Fashion: The 1970s," Fashion Theory, 1, no. 3 (1997): 280. 128 Ibid. 31 As the rules of taste and propriety were deliberately violated, the fashion system spawned crushed vinyl burgundy maxi-coats, avocado-green ultrasuede pants-, electric blue lycra "second-skin" bodystockings, and silver lurex halter tops. Polyester shirts were open to the waist, and dresses were slit up to the crotch.129

Fashion historian Valerie Steele argues that from about 1970 to 1974, fashion was a

continuation of the late 1960s themes of "conspicuous outrageousness," "retro fantasies," and

"ethnic influences."130 The latter half of this decade responded to the excess of the

generation by promoting youth, freedom, equality, and anti-capitalism; values that would

• 1^1 characterize manifestations of punk during this era.

For punks, the fashion of the 1970s was viewed as either characteristic of

unnecessary, over-the-top excess or seen as dry, bland, and drab. In the words of one

interview participant, "the '70's was a land of brown and Polyester, and I wanted something faster with a bit of colour."132 That faster and more colourful option was manifested in the boom of punk fashion that occurred during this period. At this time, American punk bands

were centered on New York City's Bowery district, specifically around the club CBGB.133

Often considered one of the fathers of punk rock style, , lead singer of the

Voidoids, ripped up his shirts and cut his hair into short spikes which were inspired by

French poet, Arthur Rimbaud.134

Coincidently, the influence of Rimbaud also found relation to other influential punk

figures. Rock journalist Caroline Coon wrote that Johnny Rotten, lead singer of the Sex

129 Ibid. 130 Ibid., 281. 131 Ibid. 132 Brian Wicks (member of Tirekickers, Down Belows, South End), email to author, 28 November 2010. 133 David P. Szatmary, Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll, Sixth Edition (New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc., 2007), 235. 134 Ibid., 237. 32 Pistols, "was like a young Rimbaud: thoughtful, angry, beautiful."135 The 1970s was a decade of Rimbaud with musical references made to him by such musicians as Patti Smith, Bob

Dylan, and Jim Morrison. The reason why New York musicians were so taken with the

French poet was because the myth of Rimbaud built him up as a countercultural rebel.

Rimbaud represents the pivotal angered young rebel. Throughout his thirty-five years, Rimbaud turned against formal institutions whose purpose is to guide the moral compass of adolescent life, such as his family (his dominating mother, in particular), his college teachers, and the priests at his parish church.138 In his writing, Rimbaud would rebel against the accepted forms of nineteenth-century French poetry and society in general.

Wallace Fowlie, in his book on the relationship between Rimbaud and Jim Morrison (1994), draws attention to the opening line of Rimbaud's "Ma Boheme": Mes poings dans mes poches crevees ("my fists in my torn pockets"). This single line illustrates the defiance and hostility of a sixteen-year old boy rebelling against the structure of his family life.139 For

Fowlie, as a young man, Rimbaud was forced to "learn how to improvise and play impurity and to cultivate his hate. He had to forge a mask which would conceal all his unused tenderness of an "exiled angel." He condemned and cursed the affectionate part of his nature in a voluntary exercise of schizophrenia."140

Returning to Caroline Coon's description of Johnny Rotten as a young Rimbaud, both men challenged the confining institutional space in which they lived as adolescents. They

135 Jon Savage, England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. 230. Quoted in Elizabeth Wilson, Bohemians: The Glorious Outcasts (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 58. 136 Carrie Jaures Noland, "Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance." Critical Inquiry, 21, no. 3 (Spring, 1995): 581. 137 Ibid., 584. 138 Wallace Fowlie, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel as Poet (United States: Duke University Press, 1994), 3. 139 Ibid., 9-10. 140 Ibid., 37-38. 33 also both verbally confronted the constraints of established artistic practices (in poetry for

Rimbaud, and song for Rotten). Rotten, along with the entire punk movement, took this confrontation a step further but moving beyond words to a full-on visual assault that challenged preconceived notions of acceptability and taste in fashion.

During this period, bands also experimented with androgyny, as illustrated by the most notorious example of the .141 The Dolls' outfits are described as consisting of "see-through outfits, ballet tutus, strapless dresses, halter or tank tops, fitted trousers (often worn without underwear), high heels, bouffant , pieces, and full makeup of rouge, eye shadow, lipstick, and mascara."142 In October 1974,

Malcolm McLaren, a clothing designer who would later go on to manage the infamous punk rock act, The Sex Pistols, flew from London to New York to become the manager of the New

York Dolls.143 They had met a year earlier in London when the New York Dolls had visited the store McLaren owned with Westwood at 430 King's Road.144 Uninspired by the hippie movement of the 1960s, Westwood and McLaren opened "Let it Rock" in 1971 which was based on their own interests in 1950s clothing, music, and rebellion.145 Originally, the store supplied drape jackets, narrow-cuffed pants, and crepe-soled shoes as was popular in the

British movement.146 When the Dolls walked into his store, McLaren was

141 F, Jose Blanco, "Punk Male Fashion and the Aesthetic of Entropy," in Men's Fashion Reader. Andrew Reilly and Sarah Cosbey, eds. (United States: Fairchild Books, 2008), 204. 142 Ibid., 204-203. 143 Tricia Henry, Break All the Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989),it>id 44. 145r "430' Kings Road - Vivienne Westwood." Vivienne Westwood, no date. http://www.viviennewestwood.co.Uk/w/contact/terms-and-conditions 146 The Teddy Boy movement was a British youth style that took cues from the era of Edward VII (as "teddy" is the informal version of "Edward"). In terms of fashion for men, this style was characterized by long velvet- collared jackets, "drain-pipe" pants, and sideburns. Tricia Henry, Break All the Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989), 44. 34 fascinated by their style which seemed to be the complete opposite of the fashion trends that

he and Westwood had been working with.147 McLaren had no previous experience managing

bands but had always had an interest in fashion, partly inspired by the

musicians he met through the store.148 His influence over the New York Dolls had more to do

with fashion than anything else and one element that he introduced into their clothing was the

incorporation of the hammer-and-sickle motif.149 Used in much the same way as how he

incorporated the swastika into British punk fashion, the use of these images was more for

their shock value rather than using them to make any broad political statements.150 In later

years, many punks have said that their style of dress had no relation to anything political but

was just a fun way to dress up.151 However, even a nihilistic stance is a political stance and

the of British punks was indeed political, anti-establishment, and shocked the

nation.152

In 1972, the store on Kings Road was revamped as "Too Fast to Live, Too Young to

Die," and included many of the provocative T- designs which eventually led to McLaren

and Westwood being charged under the obscenity laws.153 In 1974, the shop underwent

another transformation and was renamed Sex,154 which sold, according to Westwood

"Teddy boy, n.". OED Online. March 2011. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/198514?redirectedFrom=teddy%20boy (accessed April 05, 2011). 147 Ibid. ™ Ibid., 71. 149 F., Jose Blanco, "Punk Male Fashion and the Aesthetic of Entropy," in Men's Fashion Reader. Andrew Reilly and Sarah Cosbey, eds. (United States: Fairchild Books, 2008), 203. 150 Tricia Henry, Break All the Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989), 72. 151 Elizabeth Wilson, Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 135.

lb'd' "430 Kings Road - Vivienne Westwood." Vivienne Westwood, no date. http://www.viviennewestwood.co.Uk/w/the-story/kings-road 154 Tricia HiHenry, Break All the Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989), 72. 35 "rubberwear for the office."155 Westwood referred to the styles they collaborated on as

"confrontation dressing" where elements that could be considered "normal" in dress were visibly contradicted.156 Hebdige compares this style to Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades in that "the most unremarkable and inappropriate items - a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon - could be brought within the province of

1 ^7 punk (un)fashion". Finally in 1976, around the time that the Sex Pistols were gaining more commercial success, the shop was reopened as Seditionaires. The clothing designs by

Westwood at this stage in the store's history combined the rubber, zips, and straps of sexual fetishes with a new handmade, do-it-yourself aesthetic.158

The initial reaction to Westwood's confrontational designs, and the British punk style in general, was one of horror.159 Punk fashion in the 1970s can be viewed as a "fight and hate" reaction to the peace and love philosophy of the hippie culture of the previous generation. While hippie culture made use of second-hand items and objects from foreign cultures in their dress, the punks took this another step further in the inclusion of trashy and kitsch materials.160 However, it was not long before elements of punk started to appear in clothing designs of international fashion houses.161 While some of the more extreme and threatening elements of punk style, such as T-shirts that incorporated images of pornography and swastikas were left out of punk-inspired styles, ripped clothes and safety pins soon

1 fSJ became popular elements in runway designs. For example Zandra Rhodes, a British

155 "430 Kings Road - Vivienne Westwood." Vivienne Westwood, no date. http://www.viviennewestwood.co.Uk/w/the-story/kings-road 156 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Routledge, 1979), 107. 157 Ibid. 158 "430 Kings Road - Vivienne Westwood." Vivienne Westwood, no date. http://www.viviennewestwood.co.Uk/w/the-story/kings-road 159 Valerie Steele, "Anti-Fashion: The 1970s." Fashion Theory, 1, no. 3 (1997): 289. 160 Elizabeth Wilson, Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 173. 161 Valerie Steele, "Anti-Fashion: The 1970s." Fashion Theory, 1, no. 3 (1997): 289. 162 Ibid. 36 fashion designer, was inspired by the punk look popularized by McLaren and Westwood. In

1977, Rhodes earned the title of "princess of punk" with her pink and black jersey collection

1 f\X complete with holes and beaded safety pins. Certainly Rhodes stands as a strong example

to the filtering of punk styles and icons into the mainstream fashion market. In contrast to

Westwood, Rhodes' designs with their bright colours and bejewelled safety pins created an exaggerated femininity, while it can be argued that Westwood's designs challenged the construct of female sexuality by contradicting accepted forms of female dress and turning sexuality into something ugly.

American Hardcore: Punk Fashion in the 1980s

In the 1980s, the United States saw the rise of women in the workforce alongside the rise of the young urban professional, or yuppie.164 In order to compete in a masculine coded environment, women began to take on characteristics typically associated with men (for example, the shoulder pad became popular working attire for women as broad shoulders were often associated with masculine dominance). Men's fashion historian Farid Chenoune best articulates pervasive conceptions of masculinity in the 1980s; referring to the decade as being:

A period that projected multifarious images of the all-conquering male. Against a background of laissez-faire attitudes, rugged individualism, private enterprise and general financial euphoria only slightly dampened by the financial crash of 1987, the Reagan and Thatcher years extolled the new heroes of an unbridled free-market economy - Wall Street's "golden boys," junk bond whiz kids and high-powered managers...It was not easy for ordinary people to exist in this atmosphere of increased competition... In a world of media hype and increasingly abstract social relationships, it became more than ever important to remain present and visible.165

163 "Zandra Rhodes Biography." Zandra Rhodes.com, no date. http://www.zandrarhodes.com/biography/indexbiography.html. 164 Lynne Luciano, Looking Good: Male Body Image in Modern America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001), 134. 165 Farid Chenoune, History of Men's Fashion (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), 307. 37 Advertisements aimed at the male market attempted to sell not just products, but also a certain type of masculine identity which they felt their audience wanted.166 Many of these male identities were based upon hegemonic male traits. Hegemonic masculinity involves a

"common-sense" understanding of characteristics associated with being male which control the behaviours of men despite the fact that this understanding may be very different from the realistic male experience.167 In other words, there is a divide between who a man feels or thinks he is, and who he would like to be.168

As advertising agencies devoted time and money to exploring a new male fashion market, all forms of popular culture catered to an idea that masculinity could be constructed, adapted, and changed to suit the wearer. The "New Man" of the 1980s was considered to be

"a man who is aware of his body not just as a machine but as an object of sexual attraction enhanced by his choice of clothes and ways of wearing them."169 In reaction to this, the fashion industry created multiple masculine markets in order to reach a larger consumer group.170 Some of the demographics created by the fashion industry included the thrill- seeking action man, the intellectual cosmopolitan, and the conservative traditionalist,'71 none of which relate in any sense to the concept of a punk masculinity. By dividing men into distinct and separate personality types, advertising and marketing agencies were allowed to

• • 17") focus their efforts on particular groups based on lifestyle and behaviour.

166 Tom Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and Consumer Culture 1900-1950 (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 145. 167 Ben Crewe, Representing Men: Cultural Production and Producers in the Men's Magazine Market (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2003), 28. w lbid- 169 Jennifer Craik, "Fashioning Masculinity: Dressed for Comfort or Style" from The Face of Fashion (London and New York: Routledge, 1994) 199. 170 Ibid. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 38 On 2 February 1979, , for the Sex Pistols, died from a heroin

overdose in New York City. This was almost four months after the murder of his girlfriend,

Nancy Spungen; a crime that Vicious had been accused of committing. After his death, a

note was discovered in his pocket that read: "We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half

of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle

1 71 boots. Goodbye." With this twenty-one year old result of the most extreme elements of the

punk lifestyle buried in his leather and boots, many felt that the end of punk had come. But

can a movement that is confrontational in both its visual aesthetic and ideology ever

confrontational disappear completely? Chris Walter, Canadian author and founder of the

Vancouver-based independent publishing company, GoFuckYerself Press, stated it best when

during an interview he told me that punk only dies for the people who leave the subculture.174

Therefore, punk could theoretically die at any point in time, but only on an individual basis.

In the 1980s, although some of the first generation of punk left in disillusionment after the

death of Vicious, the essence of the subculture still remained.

On 20 January 1981, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president of the United States at

his first inauguration. In the early 1980s, Reagan's platform was to re-model America as a

1950s fantasy.175 Along with the uncertainty about how Reagan's reign would affect basic

civil liberties, American youth were living in a world where culture was at its peak and

the remnants of 1970s stadium rock (Journey, the Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac, for example)

were still dominating popular music.176 Because of the close proximity of the two nations,

Canadian punks in the 1980s were experiencing the same boredom and anxieties as

173 Maxim W. Furek, The Death Proclamation of : A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy of Goth, and Heroin (i-Universe: 2008), 101. 174 Chris Walter (author), interviewed by Katie Green, JJ Beans Coffee Shop, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 2010. 175 American Hardcore, directed by Paul Rachman. 2006. DVD. 176 Ibid. 39 Americans. As Henry Rollins has stated, "Punk rockers love to hate Reagan worldwide."* 177

This is evidenced by the song "Fucked up Ronnie" from the album Bloodied but Unbowed

(1984) by Vancouver's D.O.A. The reason Reagan struck such a cord with punks was because he represented a threat to the progress made in areas of free speech and equal rights

I for those not categorized as white, rich, or male. Just as the first generation of punks were accepting their demise, a second generation was being born out of an environment dominated

by political conservatism, uncertainty, and boredom. This second generation would later be

known as American Hardcore.

The term "hardcore" was coined by Vancouver's D.O.A. with the release of their

album Hardcore 81} 79 The term implies a stripping down of the excess elements of punk style to its basic core elements. This attitude was reflected in the musical styles of American

bands from this period that created simple but aggressive songs that were seen as the

1 sn manifestation of youth: fast, angry, loud and unpredictable. The distinctly American style

of hardcore was a reaction against the increased number of American punk fans dressing in

the styles found in London. Punk fashion had changed from what Westwood and McLaren

had created in Britain. It could still be considered "anti-fashion," but spikey-haired punks

with safety pins through their cheeks were replaced with large, bare-chested men who

adopted some of the styles of early punks but combined it with an increased interest in

tattoos, surfing, and skateboard cultures.181 Hardcore punk was epitomized by an

exaggerated form of masculine aggression. The violence of the American scenes became so

intense that by 1985, the hardcore movement had dissolved because the violence became

177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid. 181 Punk: Attitude, directed by . 2005. London: FremantleMedia, 2005. DVD. 40 "too central" and "alienating."182 While some women participated as musicians (for example,

Kira Roessler from Black Flag), they most often acted as record keepers of the scene by

becoming photographers, videographers, or writers of concert reviews.183 The reaction to this

exaggerated machismo and the role of women within the subculture is something that will be

returned to and discussed in greater detail in chapter two.

In this period, punk fashion had combined the aesthetics of both British punk and

American hardcore so that from the 1990s up until the present there has been a melding of

both styles into several distinct forms of punk fashion. For example, one form of American

hardcore was referred to as "straight-edge." Straight-edge (often written as sXe) participants

are traditionally identified because of the application of large black X's to the back of both

their hands. These individuals listened to punk rock but the black X's indicated that they

abstained from many other things such as alcohol, drugs, tobacco, and casual sex.184 The

origin of the black X's comes from the ritual of marking underage hands to ensure they did

not illegally purchase alcohol at a concert. Although straight-edge is seen as an off-shoot of

the punk movement it is also in contrast to it because of punk's strong desire for individual

freedom which negates sXe's strict moral code.185 Many individuals who identified as sXe

adopted the "Old School" style of punk (i.e. the styles from the early 1980s American hardcore scene) because they wanted to "associate with punk rockers who reflect punk's original ideals such as individualism, disdain for work and school, and live-for-the-moment attitudes."186 This old-school look is still popular within the punk scene and can often be identified as those wearing dirty or torn jeans complete with hand-sewn patches and patched

182 American Hardcore, directed by Paul Rachman. 2006. DVD.

M lb'd" Ross Haenfler, Straight Edge: Clean-Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, and Social Change (London; New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 1. 185 Ibid., 9. 186 Ibid., 12. 41 jean jackets covered with metal spikes or studs.187 It should be noted that this popular style of punk is also referred to as "" in some circles, possibly originally referring to the wearer's disregard for hygiene.

There is an East Coast-West Coast divide in the United States that has informed the creation of multiple manifestations of hardcore punk. The Los Angeles, California scene was seen as frustrated and suburban. With the creation of slam dancing, where audience members would repeatedly slam into each other, this visual expression of their frustration was

188 transferred over to the Washington, D.C. scene. In Washington, a town where parents of punks most likely were involved with politics or academics, the punk scene was characterized as transient and self-loathing, but also intellectual. 1 80 D.O.A. was seen as an anomaly because for Americans, it was hard to imagine how punk could emerge in a country dominated by trees, mountains, and snow.190 Nevertheless, punk scenes were forming independently of each other throughout Canada and the remainder of this chapter will be devoted to exploring the Canadian punk identity.

Punk in Canada

Both the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the Ottawa Citizen claimed that 1977 was the year that punk rock finally made its way to Canada.191 This happened to be the same year that the Sex Pistols and the Clash released their debut . The Clash's release in April coincided with the violent confrontations in London between National Front

187 ibid. 188 American Hardcore, directed by Paul Rachman. 2006. DVD. 189 Ibid. 190 Ibid. 191 See: "People: Margaret Trudeau Surfaces," Ottawa Citizen, 20 July 1977, 75, and "Gzowski Interviews Iggy Pop." The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Mar. 11, 2008. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/102-2806/ 42 marchers and anti-Nazi protestors.192 It was also the same year that the Sex Pistols were fired from their , EMI (Electric & Musical Industries Limited).193 Canadian headlines from this year, while occasionally tracking the antics of London's "wayward youth," were concerned with more locally-based gossip, such as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's separation from his wife and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raiding Keith

Richards' (guitarist for the Rolling Stones) Toronto room and arresting him for drug possession.194 The arrest of Richards was the latest example of the over-indulgent nature of

1970s rock and roll. Audience members in Toronto stood outside music venues shouting "No more Beatles! No more Stones! We just want the Viletones!"195 With newspapers reporting on the growing new subculture of punk led by the Sex Pistols in Britain, and American bands such as Iggy and , Patti Smith, and the Ramones196 crossing the border to perform in Toronto, Canadian youth were exposed to a louder and faster form of music that rejected the excess and glitter of stadium rock.

Canadians were aware of the turbulent nature of punk's emergence in Britain because of international news reports that documented the strange new fashion trends popularized by

British youth. "Fads and trends don't come into town in response to public need," read one

107 article printed in the Ottawa Citizen. The author claimed that it was the observation of other cultures which popularizes new trends, with punk rock being no exception. Assured

192 Wikipedia contributors.,"1977 in the ." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 23 February 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1977_in_the_United_Kingdom&oldi=415424345 193 Ibid. 194 Wikipedia contributors. "1977 in Canada." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Feb. 14, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1977_in_Canada&oldid=413972629 195 "Destructive Punk Rock Masochism," from: Viletone.com. "Viletones." Blair Richard Martin, 2007. http://www.viletone.com/ 196 Liz Worth writes that the 1976 performance of the Ramones at Toronto's New Yorker Theatre "lit a spark for Canadian punks," suggesting that some Canadian youth were already avid fans of this new subculture well before the media announced its debut in Canada. Liz Worth, "A Canadian Punk Revival: As Punk Turns 30, Canadian Pioneers Reunite." Exclaim!, June 2007. http://exclaim.ca/Features/Research/canadian_punk_revival-as_punk_tums_30_canadian_pioneers 197 Charles Gordon, "Our Home and Native Gland is Our Punk Rock," in Ottawa Citizen, 26 October 1977,49 43 that punk would "inevitably" come to Canada because of rising unemployment rates, the author predicted that:

Canadian punk rock, sources indicate, will be different from the brand now rampant in the U.K., where the typical lyric tells of pushing a baby carriage down a flight of stairs and setting fire to a nun [...] Canadian punk rock will be more concerned with changing social and political attitudes and particularly with the unity crisis.198

The "unity crisis" mentioned here refers to the continual debate concerning Quebec's separation from Canada. The relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada is representative of a cultural divide that contributes to Canada's national identity crisis.199 This identity crisis has direct correlation to the formation of Canadian punk. This is because cultural (and subcultural) groups in Canada are forced to negotiate a concrete understanding of their identity within a dominant culture that already feels threatened by the loss of a perceived national identity.

What is Canadian Punk?

At first glance, it seems redundant to follow a section entitled "Punk in Canada" with one that asks "What is Canadian Punk?" but they are different in meaning. "Punk in Canada" implies that the subculture has been transplanted here from somewhere else, like a touring band that has made its way to Canadian soil for the very first time. "Canadian Punk Rock," on the other hand, suggests a new breed of punk which has emerged out of the social and political context of this country and its population. Answering the question of what exactly is the Canadian interpretation of punk and its fashion is about as easy as finding a clear

**lbid* Kieran Keohane. Symptoms of Canada: An Essay on the Canadian Identity (Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 21. A second relation exists in the contrast between Canada and the United States as two similar cultures in close proximity to each other. Finally, there is also the place of indigenous peoples and immigrant/ethnic groups within Canada and how these groups contribute to the image the country as an expanding cultural mosaic. 44 explanation for what defines Canadian culture or its national identity in general. Rather than an all-encompassing single definition of "punk," the key to understanding this subculture is acknowledging the multiple interpretations of its visual style which go together to produce a larger discourse of punk.

As discussed in the introduction, punk culture has been reduced down to its core elements in order to be more easily understood by those outside of the subculture. This same method has been applied by scholars in order to understand and recognize the symbols of

Canadian culture which can be broken down into three core elements: climate, geography, and history.200 Each one of these viewpoints contributes to a larger, more complex understanding of Canada's national identity. Within these categories, the core values of this national identity begin to emerge. These values of survival, tolerance, equality, order, and peace-keeping201 all reflect Canadian stereotypes which not only construct an imagined identity for Canadians on a national level, but on an international level as well. The same process occurs in the construction of a punk identity. The core elements that punk has been reduced to (anarchy, defiance, survival, and others) contributed to an imagined identity that is on the same level as nationalism. Nationalism is an imagined identity because it exists in the minds of its members, the majority of which will never personally interact with each other.202

As Benedict Anderson writes in his book Imagined Communities (1983): "Communities are to be distinguished not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are

200 Keith Spicer, "Canada: Values in Search of a Vision," in Identities in North America: The Search for Community, Robert L. Earle and John D. Wirth, eds. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995), 16- 18. 201 Ibid., 18-24. 202 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London; New York: Verso Press, 2006), 6. 45 imagined." What defines Canadian punk identity is not the accuracy of the claims made by its members, but how they perceive themselves as being punk.

The inclusion of opinions and stories recorded from first-hand interviews attempts to incorporate the "lived experience" into the realm of theoretical analysis and historical fact. In preparation for this thesis, I took on the role of participant-observer at local punk shows across Canada, even joining several Canadian punk bands as they toured across the country.

These bands included Broadcast Zero (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario), Subsistence (Montreal,

Quebec), and the Rebel Spell (Vancouver, British Columbia). From this vantage point, I was able to go beyond passive observation and personally interact with and relate to members of several local punk "scenes" (a term used to describe pockets of punk at the local level).

Through these exchanges it soon became apparent that the Canadian punk subculture is not a single voice but many and its members do not always speak as one. At the end of several interviews, I asked participants a single question: is there anything different or unique about Canadian punk specifically? In short, there was no definitive answer given by participants but rather a multitude of contrasting opinions.

Despite notions of punks as anti-authoritarian and completely outside of mainstream culture, in some cases their attitudes on the uniqueness of Canadian punk still connect to this imagined national identity. For instance, Canada's climate and geography factored into a number of opinions regarding what was different or unique about Canadian punk. Some participants felt that because of the harsh conditions of Canada's geography and weather patterns, Canadian punks have evolved to become "tough as nails" in order to survive.204 In his discussion of the erotic nature of the Canadian wilderness, Kieran Keohane writes that

203 Ibid. 204 wendythirteen (Club owner), interviewed by Katie Green, Funky Winker Beans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. 46 Canada has symbolically become a "body in pain; the lack of the body, the body that exists as the body that is being coerced torturously into being, that is not yet born and that is always in danger of dying."205 Canada, therefore, in lacking a definitive identity, is always in danger of having its culture disappear.

Scholars have traditionally understood Canada's identity as a crisis and Canadian punk identity has formed in relation to this. The idea that Canadian punks have to harden themselves to survive suggests that they perceive something to be threatening their existence.

During a conversation with Matt, the lead singer of Montreal's Subsistence, he felt that

Canada as a country has a lot of problems (in terms of a political and social context) and that every punk band relates to these problems differently by telling their own individual story. At the end of this statement, he jokingly said "S.O.S.!"206 Although Matt said this statement in jest, it relates to the idea that Canadian punks are trying to survive and define themselves in a country that is lacking in a solid identity of its own.

Even though the image of a desolate and unforgiving snow-covered environment is characteristic of worldviews of Canada, it does not necessarily match up with reality. Yet this imagined narrative is crucial to Canada's self-identity because it imbues the population with a sense of resourcefulness and hardiness.207 In the urban spheres of London, England or New

York City, punks formulate a hardened exterior in order to combat the concrete jungle. In contrast, pride and pleasure is experienced by Canadian punks in the idea that the natural elements have caused them to be born with a survival instinct that is deemed intrinsic to the stereotypical punk identity and lifestyle. Even when participants lived in a heavily populated,

205 Kieran Keohane, Symptoms of Canada: An Essay on the Canadian Identity (Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 125. 206 Matt (lead singer of Subsistence), interviewed by Katie Green, Funky Winker Beans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. 207 Keith Spicer, "Canada: Values in Search of a Vision," in Identities in North America: The Search for Community, Robert L. Earle and John D. Wirth, eds. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995), 16. 47 urban centre or suburb this self-perception persisted. For some Canadian punks, this has manifested itself in their musical styles and they are assured by the belief that Canadian punk rock is harder, faster, and as one participant said, populated by "lumberjacks."

The pride and pleasure experienced by Canadian punks in their resourcefulness is perceived as a defining characteristic that separates them from British and American punks.

This attitude was demonstrated in a discussion with Jan, the lead singer of the Rotten from

Kitchener, Ontario. He illustrated the resourcefulness of not just Canadian punks, but

Canadian musicians in general when he spoke of how they overcame challenges presented by the harsh climate of winter:

I wonder if it almost if it had something to do with the Canadian winter, you know what I mean? [...] You can't really jam in a garage in January here, that's way too cold. So I mean for writing and getting your shit together you have to get it done rather quickly throughout the summer months. You don't have all year round to friggin' get it done like California and Britain does.209

The accuracy of this claim is not important. What is important is how this comment reflects how some Canadian punks perceive not only their individual selves, but their local punk community at large. This relates once again to the idea that Canadian punks are threatened by the potential loss of their identity and thus cling to cultural stereotypes as a way to establish themselves as a legitimate punk community, independent of its British and American counterparts.

Participants who felt that Canadian punk was unique from previous manifestations of punk style were aware of Canada's international reputation as a peace-keeping country, which had an effect on their concept of national and group identity. They felt that because of

208 Jan (Lead singer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010. 209 Ibid. 48 the reputation Canada has as a progressive, peace-keeping country that there is more • i n possibility for Canadian punks to be taken seriously in terms of political and social issues.

Because of Canada's close proximity to the United States, they had also formed opinions on

American identity that were based on that country's cultural stereotypes. For instance, the stereotypical perception of Canada as a polite, accommodating nation is created to counteract the negative stereotype of the United States as a dominating, conservative power or police state. In a conversation with Ang, the drummer from the Rotten, she defined Canadian punk based upon what it is not (in this case, it is not American). This is once again reflective of the previous argument that Canadian identity is partly based upon its relationship with the United

States:

I think that Canada is a bit like Europe in that it really does support its music maybe more than like, the States. [...II think that Canada works together. They don't argue ^11 and they don't fight each other [or] compete.

For every person who thought Canadians bring a unique perspective to the punk subculture, there were those who did not believe a distinctly Canadian style of punk existed.

Chi Pig, lead singer of S.N.F.U. felt that dividing punk by its regional or national roots was the same as dividing it based on gender or race and the following quote is representative of the general feeling of those who believe that punk style is the same in every city and in every country:

Doesn't matter where you're from [...] That's like saying, how does white punk compare to black punk. Punk is punk. [It] does not fucking matter where you're from. If it's good, it's good. [...] It's the attitude, it's the mindset. It's a lifestyle.212

210 Darryl Sharpe (Owner of Little Big House), interviewed by Katie Green, Little Big House, Kamloops, British Columbia, 8 July 2010. 211 Ang (Drummer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010. 49 The above quote implies that the concept of punk transcends borders in order to become an international community. In terms of style, Canadian punks have linked themselves to this larger community through their adoption of fashion trends that emerged in both Britain and the United States twenty to thirty years earlier.

While the answer to "What is Canadian Punk?" remains ambiguous, the comparison between Canadian national identity and the formation of punk in Canada has created, at least for some, a unique identity for Canadian punks. This unique identity is partly based on pre­ conceived notions of what it is to be Canadian. While these stereotypes are not necessarily an accurate representation of Canadian punk culture, they succeed in allowing Canadian punks to separate themselves from their British and American counterparts. As already stated, the fashion styles of Canadian punks helps to link them to a larger international community. Yet within the borders of Canada itself, these styles are created and worn in order to communicate distinct messages between subcultural members as well as used to negotiate a space for themselves within the dominant Canadian culture. Perhaps what makes the punk subculture appealing to a Canadian is that, accurate or otherwise, it allows for the opportunity to construct a clearly defined, independent identity that is stronger than Canada's national identity.

212 Mr. Chi Pig (Lead singer for SNFU), interviewed by Katie Green, Funky Winker Beans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. 50 Chapter 2: Discussion

The initial reaction to punk style by the Canadian media (and by proxy, the general Canadian

public), was one of uncertainty and uneasiness, as well as a need to explain why Canadian

youth were suddenly being swept up in a craze that so clearly advocated a nihilistic

destruction of the body. Most CBC news reporters during the late 1970s until the mid-1980s

appeared unabashedly inexperienced with punk's sound and aesthetic. During that time,

Canadian punk fashion was described as consisting of "tight black jeans with bondage

chains, halter tops made out of garbage bags, and leather jackets," and that punks were

"kids with polish in their hair, playing out-of-tune guitars and questioning anything established."214 Those interviewed insisted that the punk look was not about violence but this

response was typically met with disbelief.

In a segment broadcasted on 2 April 1985, CBC host Valerie Pringle interviewed a

12th-grader from Victoria, British Columbia named Amber Zadworny-Isacson.216 Described

by Pringle as a "thoroughly modern young woman," Amber donned a patched jean vest over

a black t-shirt, a black arm band, and heavy make-up. The hair on the right side of her head is

shaved while the left side hangs down and shields her face like a bleach-blonde veil. In the

beginning when they discuss the reactions her look receives from other people, Pringle

appears surprised when Amber admits that she doesn't dress as a punk to receive attention

"People: Margaret Trudeau Surfaces/' Ottawa Citizen, 20 July 1977, 75 214 "Gzowski Interviews Iggy Pop." The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 11 March 2008. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/102-2806/ 215 See "Being Punk in Victoria, B.C." The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2 January 2004. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/clips/771/, "Canadian Punk Rock." The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 3 August 2003. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/clips/762/, and "Gzowski Interviews Iggy Pop." The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 11 March 2008. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/102-2806/ 216 "Being Punk in Victoria, B.C." The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2 January 2004. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/clips/771/ 51 but simply because the look supports her political affiliations. Pringle then enquires as to whether Amber is in school and if her parents support her - questions which are both positively responded to by Amber. While viewing this exchange it appears as if Pringle is searching for a definitive reason why a teenager would choose to dress as Amber does. When she realizes that her first assumption about shock value is wrong, she searches for answers within the realm of problems at school or in the home. Pringle's questioning illustrates the idea that any action perceived to be a form of defiance must be questioned and reasoned with 917 in order to understand it.

In Los Angeles during the late-1980s contrasting opinions from counsellors and 71 R therapists highlighted some of the worries of parents whose children turned into punks.

One side of the debate argued that for most kids, punk was simply a passing phase while the other argued that punk music had the ability to completely absorb children and bring them into a world of anti-social behaviour and Satanism.^ JQ The latter side of the argument stated that parents must take a hard-line approach, advising that "if the child won't do it on his own, the parents have to go into the child's bedroom and remove the posters, the albums and the clothes [...] Then they have to take him to the barber to get his hair cut, or to the hairdresser to get the color changed." The theory behind this was that by simply changing the outside appearance of the body, the internal body would somehow be "cured."

217 Martin Chalmers, "Heroin, the Needle and the Politics of the Body." In Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses, edited by Angela McRobbie (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman Inc., 1988), 153. 218 "Centre advocates 'de-punking' teens," in The Los Angeles Daily News, SAT edition, :[SAT Edition] The Los Angeles Daily News, Toronto Star, 22 March 1986, LI. 219 Ibid. 220 Ibid. 52 The (Punk) Body as Text

The reaction of the Canadian media and attempts to physically change punks go

beyond mere reactions to the subculture itself and extend to the larger binary opposition

between the healthy, "natural" body and the diseased, "unnatural" body. Although in the

1980s there was a celebration of the body and its pleasures, this celebration also witnessed a

resentment of the body. The body of choice was well-toned and fit which suggested self-

discipline and control over expressions of aggression.222 On the opposite end of the spectrum,

a body that has been marked through modifications such as tattoos and piercings represents a

deliberate attempt at defiance against "the healthy order and good sense."223 Even the dying

of hair with vibrant, artificial colours and shaving it into a mohawk or liberty spikes224

signifies a deliberate attempt to play with the body's natural appearance.

Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Gilles Deluze are theorists who all wrote

of the body as a text which is marked, traced, and written upon by "various regimes of

institutional, (discursive and nondiscursive) power."225 Elizabeth Grosz writes that the marks

on the surface of the body are not just superficial because they also produce an underlying

individuality or consciousness. For Grosz, the marks made by tattoos, piercings, or other

221 Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politic of Bodies (New York: Routledge, 1995), 1. 222 Ruth P. Rubenstein, Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture (Colorado: Westview Press Inc., 1995), 186. 223 Martin Chalmers, "Heroin, the Needle and the Politics of the Body." In Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses, edited by Angela McRobbie (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman Inc., 1988), 151. 224 "" refers to a way of styling the hair in long, thick, upright spikes. The style, associated with the punk subculture, is so named because of the resemblance to the spikes on the head of the Statue of Liberty. Wikipedia contributors, "Liberty Spikes, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopeida, 21 February 2011,03:30 UTC, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liberty_spikes&oldid=415064521. 225 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), 116. 226 Ibid, 116-117. Grosz bases her theory on Jacques Lacan's notion of the Mobius strip; a three-dimensional figure eight. Like the strip, tracing the outside of the body would lead to its inside without once leaving its surface. 53 body modifications act as inscriptions and messages left upon a blank page.227 But the surface of the body can also contain meanings and transmit messages that are not as visible or permanent as a tattoo. These multiple messages can be erased, rewritten, or redefined so that the surface of the physical body becomes a complicated text used to read an individual's character. As Grosz writes:

The messages or texts produced by this body writing construct bodies as networks of meaning and social significance, producing them as meaningful and functional "subjects" within social ensembles.228

In the context of punk, the surface of the body becomes marked not only through changes in hair colour or the addition of body modifications, but through the messages that are ascribed to the punk body by the first impressions of others (both inside and outside of the punk subculture). For those in the punk scene, the messages ascribed to their physical appearance can be read by other punks in order to recognize and read each other as part of the same social group.

During an interview conducted with Nick Shrubsole, lead singer of the Kitchener-

Waterloo based band, Broadcast Zero, we began to discuss the purpose of punk fashion and he told me an anecdotal story from one of his band's trips to Vancouver. While on

Vancouver Island waiting for the ferry to back to the mainland, Shrubsole, who admits to not dressing as a "stereotypical" punk, asked his friend what the point was of her dressing as a punk. She replied: "it's so we know who's in the club," a response which Shrubsole initially laughed off. A few minutes later while on the boat, a young man dressed in full punk garb walked by them and nodded a greeting to Shrubsole's friend who likewise reciprocated.

Ibid., 117 228 ....

54 When asked if she knew who the man was she reiterated: "we just know we're in the club."229

This anecdote illustrates the system of visual communication created through punk fashion. Beginning with the instantaneous moment of the gaze, unconscious and conscious recognition of the symbols of punk's aesthetic helps to communicate messages to fellow members of this subculture. Along with advertising an individual's musical tastes or political affiliations, these articles of clothing can be used to communicate deliberate messages of support and unity to the members of the Canadian punk community. In relation to my personal experience of being nearly entry into a punk show in Kamloops, it appears that punks use fashion as legitimate tool for determining who belongs to their scene (who to trust, to accept, to share social space and ideas with) and who does not. The manipulation of the body's surface, therefore, simultaneously communicates Canadian punks as being separated from a culture perceived as "normal" or "mainstream" and a connection to a larger, international subcultural identity.

Modification versus Mutilation

The deliberate choice to pierce the natural boundaries of the body's surface and to play with the textual markings that influence how an individual is read by others, demonstrates that the body itself is a construct. Tattoos and piercings have evolved from the eighteenth century view as marks of the exotic "noble savage" into attempts to search for a unique, creative identity. While "modification" implies an adjustment or revision of the body

229 Nick Shrubsole (Lead singer of Broadcast Zero), interviewed by Katie Green, Guelph, Ontario, November 25, 2010. 230 Martin Chalmers, "Heroin, the Needle and the Politics of the Body." In Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses, edited by Angela McRobbie (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman Inc., 1988), 152. 55 and its physical appearance, for some, depending on their personal taste, it can just as easily be referred to as "mutilation," which implies an irreversible disfigurement.

The public display of self-mutilation is a more extreme method of playing with the surface of the body. Self-mutilation produces a stronger reaction from a spectator than a piercing or tattoo and there was a time when cutting the body occurred on stage during a live punk show. During their first and only American tour, Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex

Pistols, performed on stage covered in fresh blood from having recently been head-butted in the face by a fan as well as having carved the words "gimme a fix" with a razorblade into his chest. Iggy Pop, lead singer of the American punk band The Stooges, was also known to cut and scratch himself during live performances.

In an interview with CBC's Peter Gzowski on 11 March 1977, Iggy Pop admitted that most of the marks on his body came from his own fingernails. Gzowski admitted honestly that he has never seen Iggy Pop perform but simply wants to know the reason behind the performer's acts of self-mutilation. For the outside observer, the self-mutilated body must be examined at a greater depth in order to understand why it exists. In the words of Michael

Chalmers, a London-based journalist and translator, this perceived suffering "has to be brought to talk, to reason, in order to become meaningful suffering. The suffering has to be for something, for an end, for general principles, or for material needs; has to fit into a chain of cause and explanation."231 For Iggy Pop, he insisted that what he does on stage has no purpose and responded to Gzowski's question with:

Why? Because you see, what sounds like to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius: myself. And that music is so powerful that it's

231 Martin Chalmers, "Heroin, the Needle and the Politics of the Body." In Zoot Suits arid Second-Hand Dresses, edited by Angela McRobbie (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman Inc., 1988), 153. 56 quite beyond my control and when I'm in the grips of it I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain either physically or emotionally.2 2

The trend of self-mutilation on stage continued in Canada with Steven "Nazi Dog"

Lecki, lead singer of the Viletones from Toronto. Described as the ultimate personification of the "unhealthy" marked body, Lecki appeared on stage complete with his dyed hair spiked and taped into position, missing front teeth and a pale, gaunt body which one reviewer referred to as "a map of scars and stitches." Before eventually abandoning the self- destructive nature of his live performances and the Nazi caricature he had created for himself, Lecki had been known to invite audience members to throw bottles at the stage and then ask them where he should cut himself.234

This invited interaction between performer and audience is one of the key elements of performance art. In performance art, the artist takes the place of the art object and as the audience is confronted with the unfolding of the piece their reactions or participation also

'yif. becomes an essential part of the performance. What is important to understand about performance art is the artist's intention. The intention of Lecki's self-mutilation may not have been in the name of art but he performed these acts with the purpose of creating an atmosphere of shock, disgust, and fascination. To compare Lecki's performance with Yoko

Ono's Cut Piece, which was performed five times between 1964 and 1966, an interesting contrast emerges. In Cut Piece, Ono would sit on stage in silence while spectators were invited to cut pieces of her clothing off with scissors until she was naked. Ono originally

232 "Gzowski Interviews Iggy Pop." The CSC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Mar. 11, 2008. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/102-2806/ 233 "Destructive Punk Rock Masochism," from Viletone.com. "Viletones." Blair Richard Martin, 2007. http://www.viletone.com/ 234 Ibid. 235 Jieun Rhee, "Performing the Other: Yoko Ono's Cut Piece." In Art History vol. 28, no. 1(February 2005), 96. 236 Ibid. 57 conceived the piece to represent the power of giving but because the image of male

participants ("aggressors") versus the silent female ("victim") drew attention to the potential

violence of the performance, it has later been read as a proto-feminist work.237 The most

blatant differences between Cut Piece and Lecki's performance is that while they both

invited audience participation (and both had spectators in charge of where exactly to cut),

Ono only invited spectators to cut off pieces of clothing while Lecki was physically cutting

into his own flesh. As well, unlike Ono's performance Lecki retained control over his own

body. Lecki chose whether or not to follow through on the orders from his spectators. By

remaining in control Lecki challenged the limits of the audience itself; daring them to witness

how far he could actually go in his self-mutilation.238 Like Cut Piece, self-mutilation at a live

punk show is about testing the boundaries of art and performance. Both of these examples

allow the audience to receive something beyond witnessing a stationary art object or a band

performing music. They witness the gradual unfolding of "nonsensical" acts which forces

them to question their own limits of looking and participation.239

Constructing Gender in Punk

Just as punk style forces into question the nature of the body, so does it question the construct of gender. Wilson, in her essay on "Fashion and Postmodernism," writes that fashion often crosses gender boundaries, changes stereotypes, and "makes us aware of the

Ibid., 103. 238 Another punk performer worth mentioning in relation to self-mutilation and pushing the limits of the performer-audience interaction is GG Allin (29 August 1956 - 28 June 1993), lead singer of the American punk rock band, the Murder Junkies. Allin was best known for his live performances (typically performed in the nude) which usually included urinating and defecating on stage, corprophagia (the consumption of feces), self- mutilation, and physical confrontations with audience members. The 1994 documentary Hated: GGAIlin and the Murder Junkies, directed by Todd Phillips, is the definitive record of Allin's life but should only be watched by those with a strong stomach. 239 Ibid., 101. 58 masquerade of femininity."240 Some punk women play up the stereotypes of feminine beauty through mockery; treating it as a form of kitsch by exaggerating their sexuality. 1970s punk fashion for women best exemplifies what is meant by the word "kitsch" in that it appropriated the symbols of sexual fetishism, pornography, and prostitution (such as fishnet tights and the prevalent use of rubber, leather, and vinyl) and subverted them in order to render sexuality as something worthless and vulgar.241 Because the lifestyle of punk demands that its followers construct a hardened exterior in order to survive, other punk women downplay their femininity slightly by adopting more masculine punk styles, such as combat boots, leather or jean-studded jackets, and mohawks and combining them with more female standards of dress, such as a skirt (Fig 2.1).

Often female punk fashion appropriates the image of the femme fatale through the use of fishnets, , and luscious red lips to give off the suggestion of a mysterious but dangerous woman. Before a punk show at the Rearview Mirror in Toronto, I spoke with a young woman whose outfit was the perfect representation of the punk femme fatale because she combined a -like top with ripped animal-print nylons and a made out of bullets

(Fig 2.2). By transforming sexuality into something to be feared, Canadian punk women refuse "to accept the division of women into sexless Madonnas and sexual Whores."242

Statistically, men seem to have outnumbered women in the punk scenes of the 1970s and the number of female participants continued to decline later on with the American

Hardcore movement. Even in 2010, the majority of Canadian punk bands consist of all-male members and just through observation of audience attendance, punk does appear to be a

240 Elizabeth Wilson, "The New Components of the Spectacle: Fashion and Postmodernism," in Postmodernism and Society, edited by Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (London: MacMillan Ltd., 1990, 233. 241 Valerie Steele, "Anti-Fashion: The 1970s." Fashion Theory, 1, no. 3 (1997): 292. 242 Ibid. 59 "white boys club."243 Articles of male punk dress vary from a more simplified look of a band

T-shirt with jeans or shorts (sometimes decorated with a simple chain or a few patches), to a fully-armoured look that suggests a type of street warrior (Fig 2.3). Female punks can adopt these same looks but only male punks choose to attend punk shows topless (Fig 2.4). While women's punk dress uses female stereotypes to construct a subverted femininity, male punks appear to perform an exaggerated masculinity that celebrates muscularity and aggression.

In discussions with participants, many felt that the reality of the punk scene does not perfectly reflect what has been written in historical accounts of the subculture. Todd Serious, lead singer of Vancouver's the Rebel Spell (which, coincidentally, has two female band members), noted that:

On paper, that is through the philosophers among us with the sobriety to write anything down, punk is inclusive of everyone. In practice, through the drunken masses who seem to represent the bulk of punk, there is still a vein of sexism that is very similar to that in mainstream culture. 44

While some participants felt that women in punk have the ability to participate in the same roles as men,245 many others acknowledged issues that still exist within the subculture.

During a show at Kitchener's Circus Room, I had the chance to speak to a female drummer who had recently moved from St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador to Waterloo, Ontario.

She mentioned that the typical response of people who find out that she's in a band is to assume that she is the singer.246 This odd assumption points to a larger discussion of the separation of women and men into their "biologically determined" social roles. Women are

243 Colin Lichti (Former lead singer for Hostage Life), email to author, 17 January 2011. 244 Todd Serious (Lead singer for The Rebel Spell), email to author, 18 September 2010. 245 Ang (Drummer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010, and Jan (Lead singer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010. 246 Female Punk (Drummer), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010. 60 often regulated to the realm of emotions and the body while men govern the realm of logical

thinking and technology. Historically, because singing is connected to the body through

voice, performers are not considered to be as technically skilled as guitar players or

drummers.247

The position of the singer (center stage and under the spotlight) renders them as

sexual objects to be desired by the audience. It should be noted that this can occur whether

the singer is male or female. Eve Sedgwick, in her book Between Men (1985), describes the

triangle of two men competing for the attention of the same woman where the bond between

the two men is stronger than their lust for the woman.248 The rivalry for the woman is

socially acceptable and hides -erotic nature of the men's relationship by projecting

their hidden desires onto the woman.249 The object the men project upon does not have to be

a woman, but "could be a common goal, such as playing music."250 The concept of the male

gaze is traditionally focused on the woman as a way to objectify her and confirm their own • 1 * masculine power. With the performer-audience relationship, the woman is replaced by the

performer on stage as the gaze's object of focus 252 Those performing on stage, as well as

audience members, work up such a sweat during a live performance that the clothing they

wear begins to stick to their bodies. Their forms become more pronounced because of the clinging fabric. Just as in art, when a nude is made to appear more sexual by the slight coverage of material, so does the body when covered in wet fabric because it draws attention

247 Rebecca Daugherty, "The Spirit of '77: Punk and the Girl Revolution." Women and Music, 6 (2002): 27. 248 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York; Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 1985), 21. 249 Matthew Bannister, White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Indie Guitar Rock (England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006), p 100 250 Ibid. 251 Ibid. 252 Ibid. to what is hidden beneath.253 Since the audience's attention is focused more on the band

playing than their own selves, it is the band members who become hyper-sexualized

individuals. The potential for this transformation into hyper-sexualized bodies to take place

between two males denotes a homosocial aspect of the subculture. The term homosocial

denotes a type of bonding between members of the same sex in which the male gaze focuses

on the performer, identifying with him while simultaneously desiring him.

The role of clothing within the punk subculture has the ability to reveal the

masquerade of femininity and masculinity. Through appropriating stereotypical elements of

clothing for both men and women, punks can choose to exaggerate a particular characteristic

or borrow elements from outside the perceived "norms" for male or female dress.

The Maturation of Style

As I have discussed, a healthy, unmarked body traditionally represents purity, youth,

and a readiness for work.254 During the 1980s, in order to compete not just in the working

world, but in the social world as well, people became more focused on how their bodies were

being read by others. Certain characteristics about the body are openly marked as

unfavourable and as people age, as Erving Goffman has suggested, they are "placed into a

non-desirable social category and have to deal with the problem of lack of acceptance by

society."255

A more recent example of this can be found in an episode from the Canadian makeover television show, Style by Jury. The premise for the show involves inviting

253 Dirk Gindt, "A Gorillalike Highly Potent He-Male Reeking of Sex: Ingar Bergman's Production of Tennesee Williams' 'A Streetcar Named Desire'". Guest Lecture, 13 November 2008. 254 Martin Chalmers, "Heroin, the Needle and the Politics of the Body." In Zoot Suits arid Second-Hand Dresses, edited by Angela McRobbie (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman Inc., 1988), 151. 255 Ibid. 62 unwitting participants to audition for a makeover show before revealing that they have already been selected to participate. Right before they reveal this knowledge, a panel of strangers gives their honest opinions about the contestant's appearance. These judgements are revealed in the form of a montage video which spurs on the contestant to endure trips to various cosmetic doctors, a make-up artist, fitness instructor, and therapist before topping it all off with a shopping spree for new clothes. The episode entitled "Scary Mary No More,"

(which originally aired on 17 April 2007), features the makeover of Marika Suha, previously

known as "Scary Mary," a prominent figure in Toronto's early punk scene.256 After hearing from the jurors that her look was "way past the cut-off date" the first step in Suha's

makeover was a trip to the psychologist to determine why she couldn't let go of her punk look (eventually linking it to the death of her mother).257 Only after revealing her new look to a second jury to hear their first impressions was the transformation considered a success.

The case of Marika Suha brings into question the belief that by changing the outside appearance, the inside personality will change as well. In an interview conducted with Rock

N Talk, an online video archive consisting of interviews with figures considered as culturally relevant to Toronto, Suha discussed with the host her continued participation in and love for the punk scene. This suggests that although Style by Jury succeeded in changing her outside appearance, she still retained her loyalties to the punk subculture. This idea of changing a look based on the first impressions of strangers suggest that in some ways our culture is still concerned with how our bodies are read and understood by others. It also suggests that fashion styles have a timeline which is dependent upon the wearer's age. The

256 "Marika Suha aka Scary Mary," Pentagram Studios 666, no date. http://www.pentagram666.com/videos.html2806 257 "Marika Suha, Style by Jury," Metro Halifax online, 7 March 2008. http://www.metronews.ca/halifax/comment/article/13931-marika-suha 258 "Marika Suha aka Scary Mary," Pentagram Studios 666, no date. http://www.pentagram666.com/videos.html2806 63 question is, how do Canadian punks negotiate their identities in a subculture that is primarily geared towards youth?

Colin Litchi, member of Toronto's the Victim Party and former lead singer of

Hostage Life and Marilyn's Vitamins, who is now in his mid-thirties, discussed the changing role of an "aging punk," saying that when he was younger his priorities were to tour the country playing shows. While his love for the music has not dwindled, he feels that the idea of travelling and sleeping in a van isn't as appealing as staying home on certain evenings with his wife. As he gets older, Lichti still requires that the clothing he wears reflect his musical tastes because he wants to be identified as a member of the punk subculture. For

Lichti and his friends who first became interested in punk as teenagers in the early 1990s, they joke that "the only way to age gracefully as a punk is to dress like an 80s , sans the 32 hole combat boots."J ft 1 In the late 1960s, skinhead culture in Britain grew alongside culture in response to the hippies of Carnaby Street (a shopping district in London that was the center of radical hippie fashion).262 By cutting their hair into short, cropped styles and wearing wide Levi jeans, combat boots, and plain or striped button-down shirts designed by (a clothing brand Lichti also wears), skinheads became a "caricature of the model worker." By adopting this look, Lichti and his friends can link themselves to early manifestations of British punk fashion while maintaining a more professional image.

259 Colin Lichti (Member of the Victim Party, former lead singer of Hostage Life), email to author, January 17, 2011. 260 Colin Lichti (Member of the Victim Party, former lead singer of Hostage Life), email to author, January 17, 2011. 261 Ibid. 262 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 55. 263 Phil Cohen, "Sub-Cultural Conflict and Working Class Community," in W.P.C.S., vol. 2 (University of Birmingham: 1972), quoted in Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 55. 64 Brian Wicks, member of the Tirekickers, Down Belows, and South End (all from

Toronto), described his own style of dress as a "mixture of all the great subcultures that have come before"264 which suggests that as people age in the punk subculture, their styles and self-perceptions change as well and become an amalgamation of multiple cultural identities.

In some cases it can be difficult to narrow down a single identity to one specific subculture and in fact it is possible for individuals to claim membership to more than one. In the words of Steve Stumble, lead singer of the Sick Boys and the Lucky Ones, as well as owner of

Stumble Records (a punk record label based out of St. Catharines, Ontario): "My style is a mishmash of Punk Rock, Oi!, & .. .figure that out cause I sure as hell can't."265

Punk is something that was never meant to be a concrete form. Although some may mourn what they see as the rapid commercialization and degradation of punk's original aesthetic and ethics, punk exists as a form whose natural purpose is to be moulded and changed over time. Rather than a complete erasure of punk's original look and mandate, new forms of punk fashion simply add on to what has already come before. What we are left with resembles a patchwork quilt where new members simply add on to a larger composition. In the words of Chris Walter, "[Punk] mutates and it splits into different things [...] it's about personal freedom. So it changes for me and it changes for other people as well."266

Inevitably, all punks must face their own maturation and the gradual progression of their scene. For some, this maturation is visually manifested as changes in their clothing styles

Brian Wicks (member of Tirekickers, Down Belows, South End), email to author, 28 November 2010. 265 Steve Stumble (Owner of Stumble Records), email to author, 7 December 2010. 266 Chris Walter (author), interviewed by Katie Green, JJ Beans Coffee Shop, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 2010. 65 while for others, it seems that the longer you live a punk lifestyle, the more you will end up looking like a punk despite your clothing choices.267

Initial Introductions to Punk

At the beginning of this chapter, it was stated that in their attempt to understand the reasons why someone would choose to dress like a punk, Los Angeles therapists came up with two explanations: 1) the punk subculture is a fad and parents should not worry because in some cases an individual's obsession with punk fashion is nothing more than a passing phase, and 2) the punk subculture is a dangerous entity that has the ability to absorb children into a criminal lifestyle. After interviewing participants for this study and hearing their stories about how they first became involved in the Canadian punk scene, it appears that both sides of this debate are equally viable. Although, instead of the second explanation I offer instead that while the punk subculture does have the ability to completely absorb people into its lifestyle that does not assume that it will be a negative lifestyle. While for some people punk will never go beyond a slight infatuation, for others it becomes an integral part of their identity. At the point where others move on from punk, these individuals find new ways to participate and contribute to the scene itself. This section discusses cases of individual introductions to punk and the multiple meanings punk offers to people in search of a concrete social identity.

At the beginning of each interview participants were asked to describe how they first became involved in the punk scene. Some of the participants shared similar experiences but it soon became clear that although their recollections shared some similarities, there is no definitive prescription for subscribing to punk. One gentleman that I met on my first night in

267 Jan (Lead singer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, October 16 2010. 66 Kamloops explained how he felt that he had just recently found his style after previously dressing as a "rap-skater guy," which consisted of jeans, oversized T-shirts, and a sideways baseball hat. Colin Lichti initially identified with the culture of music until he was about fifteen or sixteen years old before gradually becoming disillusioned with the lyrical content. According to Lichti, he was

[...] feeling less and less connected to that style of music, largely in part to the increasing sexism in the lyrical content as well as the increasing presence of religion. Everyone seemed to be talking about [Louis] Farrakhan back then and I thought he was a racist homophobe.269

The choice to leave one subculture for another is illustrative of the idea that cultural scenes, like the punk scene, are subject to the changing identities of their members. In this instance, Lichti was already feeling disconnected from the culture of hip hop before he was introduced to punk. His initiation into punk culture came in the form of a friend handing him a copy of Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, an album released in 1987 by the

American punk band The . Lichti described the feeling he experienced upon listening to this new form of music:

What struck me about the music was the lack of filler. It was fast and to the point, catchy but devoid of wankiness and self-indulgence. And then there were the lyrics. Everything Jello Biafra270 was saying I could relate to. It was like listening to a two minute pat on the back.271

The experience that Licthi describes of being verbally patted on the back is very similar to my own initiation into punk. Like Litchi, there was a feeling of reassurance and also release, almost as if I had been forcing myself into a mould that did not fit and had just been waiting

268 Male Punk (audience member), interviewed by Katie Green, Little Big House, Kamloops, British Columbia, 8 July 2010. 269 Colin Lichti (Member of the Victim Party), email to author, 17 January 2011. 270 Lead singer of the American punk band. The Dead Kennedys. 271 Colin Lichti (Member of the Victim Party), email to author, 17 January 2011. 67 for the catalyst to my expulsion. Punk gives its members access to an alternative social world where they can identify with and relate to other subculture members. It should not be assumed that the punk subculture is composed of a collection of people who come together based entirely on shared likes. Lichti's initial disillusionment with the sexism and overt religious aspect of hip hop combined with his identification with 's brand of political punk suggests that what might bring people together in punk might actually be a case of shared dislikes.

Many participants shared Litchi's seemingly natural attraction to the sound and style of punk. For example, in my discussion with Ang she explained that her introduction to punk was as simple as an old boyfriend making her a mixed-tape of punk music featuring

Canadian punk acts like the Forgotten Rebels and the Pissed. In a similar instance, Steve

Stumble said that his introduction to punk came when a friend and his older brother played him a mixed-tape of music by Gen-X, the Clash, and the Ramones. It wasn't until a few years after this experience that Stumble began to frequent live punk shows.274 Both Stumble and

Ang were introduced to punk through a personal connection and in fact most participants that

I interviewed mentioned an older family member or friend as being intrinsic to their introduction to punk. In cases like these, punk becomes a lineage where members of the subculture pass on its music and style to the next generation in order for the subculture to grow.

272 David A. Locher, "The Industrial Identity Crisis: The Failure of a Newly Forming Subculture to Identify Itself," in Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World, Jonathon S. Epstein, ed. (Oxford; Massachusetts: Blackweli Publishers, Inc., 1998), 101. 273 Ang (Drummer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010 274 Steve Stumble (Owner of Stumble Records), email to author, 7 December 2010. 275 Henry Rollins, Punk: Attitude, dir. Don Letts, DVD, FremantleMedia, 2005. 68 One example of the development of a punk lineage involved Nick Shrubsole and his cousin Brian Wicks, both of whom I interviewed separately. Wicks, the older of the two cousins, had been introduced to punk music by his sixteen-year old friend when he was only seven and stated that the appeal of punk was in its disorder, danger, and excitement:

My favourite at the time was listening to "Road Runner" off the album The Great Rock and Roll Swindle by the Sex Pistols because Johnny [Rotten] gives up on the song and there was a picture of topless punk girl on the inlay. How could that not impress a seven year old? When I was a child, if somebody built a bike jump, I wanted to jump further, if we found a bridge to jump off, I would go first. The music was exciting and I wanted to be excited276

As he got older, Wicks's interest in punk music eventually led him to joining a band and bringing his younger cousin to see live performances. What was attractive about punk for

Shrubsole was something he referred to as its "bitter optimism," meaning that:

We're not going to get anywhere. But we're gonna keep trying. I like that sort of resilience. I think it's that frustration and anger that goes along with bitter optimism that you [...] want to ask yourself why you just keep doing it [...] But you just keep going.

While Wick's was drawn to punk for different reasons than his cousin, Shrubsole's introduction still retains the basic element of being attracted to something new; something that spoke to him directly. Both cousins felt exhilarated and attracted to the potential punk offered. In Wick's case, the experience was so profound that he brought his cousin into the subculture in the hopes that it would generate a similar feeling for him. If Shrubsole in turn decided to invite others into punk for similar reasons, then the lineage of the subculture would continue to grow. In order to have this experience, individuals must be part of the subculture which means also being part of the fashion trends that are associated with it.

276 Brian Wicks (member of Tirekickers, Down Belows, South End), email to author, 28 November 2010. 69 Almost every participant stated that they were quite young when they found punk with most specifically mentioning that they were thirteen years old. This age signifies the change from a child into a teenager, which for many adolescents is a momentous event.

Adolescence itself is a loaded term as it describes all the issues that arise during the transition to adulthood.777 Independent personalities start to take form at this age and so it would make sense that the appeal of subcultural style lies in the fact that, for some, punk represents a 37ft rejection of adult institutions and an alternative way to grow up. During our interview, Mr.

Chi-Pig, who grew up in , and was a teenager during the late 1970s, described the dangers of growing up punk in a community that didn't support it. In response to the harassment from high school jocks, he asserted that:

I just don't want any part of [their] life. I'm gonna lead my own life [...] Way back in the day, we're talking like 1979, there was really not a uniform. You did what you did [...] but you wanted to be outrageous to make a statement because it pissed other fucking people off and it got me fucking beat up every week but it was fucking so well worth it. It's like, I don't want to be like you and you've just proved something. You who just beat me up, you proved what I thought about you all along [...] and then it was like, OK well let's start this band and warp people's minds in a different [way] [...] See the line? The picket fence? I'm jumping that picket fence and we're going that way [...] Fucking burn that fence.279

Note that Chi-Pig does not simply settle for crossing the line of acceptable behaviour, but opts for destroying it completely. His use of the term "burn" denotes a literal and emotional purging of the frustration with accepted norms and modes of behaviour set in place for youth.

277 Simon Frith, The Sociology of Youth (Lancashire: Causeway Press Ltd., 1984), 6. 278 Ibid., 16. 279 Mr. Chi Pig (Lead singer for SNFU), interviewed by Katie Green, Funky Winker Beans, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 9 2010. 70 Several participants identified with the feeling of therapeutic purging, with one individual referring to punk as a "musical catharsis,"280 suggesting that they had found an

-JO 1 arena to openly express their pent-up anger and energy. In the Gzowski interview mentioned earlier, Iggy Pop, deliberately or otherwise, likened punk to psychoanalysis when he said that "I don't know Johnny Rotten but I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into

what he does as Sigmund Freud did." This emotional element transforms the punk scene from a place to hang out on the weekends to a source of group therapy for those who seek it out.

The first-hand accounts of reasons why participants were attracted to punk demonstrate that despite the initial fears of the Canadian public in response to punk's first emergence, Canadian punks were being drawn to the more positive aspects of the subculture.

Punk provides an arena to vent frustrations about the social order in Canada as well as acts as a meeting ground for subcultural members to bond together. The punk fashion trends that were popularized in Britain and the United States are used by Canadian punks as a way to translate their own personal manifestos and identities. What makes Canadian punk unique, therefore, are the ways in which they overcome Canada's geographical and communicative barriers. By using fashion to overcome these barriers, Canadian punks are attempting to create a unified Canadian punk scene, as opposed to remaining in isolated regional networks.

280 Jan (Lead singer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010. 281 Chris Walter (author), interviewed by Katie Green, JJ Beans Coffee Shop, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 2010. 282 "Gzowski Interviews tggy Pop." The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 11 March 2008. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/102-2806/ 71 Overcoming Geographical and Communicative Barriers

As previously mentioned, the word "scene," as it is used in the context of this study, refers to pockets of punk at the local level but it can actually be applied to any subcultural group. The punk scene, the hardcore scene, the hip hop scene, the jazz scene - each one of these signifies a distinct social world with implied boundaries set in place to delineate where one scene ends and another begins. These boundaries are not concrete, however, and are subject to the mobility and changing nature of social and personal identities.283 Even the existence of scenes that are created based on country (the Canadian punk scene), city (the

Calgary punk scene) or area code (the 519 punk scene), despite having the concrete boundaries of a physical, geographical location, are still subject to the movement of people in and out of the scene as their identities change and re-form.

One of the problems with creating a single unified Canadian punk scene is finding a way to create a single culture with a population that is spread thinly across a vast geographical scale and in close proximity to another strong cultural identity, the U.S.A. In the early days of Canadian punk, individual scenes across Canada were isolated from each other because of a combination of geographical and communicative challenges. Being the second largest country in terms of area has both benefits and liabilities. In one respect,

Canada's size allows for a greater amount of living and recreational space but its large size poses economic problems for its relatively small population.284 For example, a straight-line from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador consists of over

283 Ken Gelder, ed., "The Field of Subcultural Studies," in The Subcultures Reader, second ed. (London; New York: Routledge, 1997), 11. 284 Ralph R. Krueger, "Canada's Physical Geography," in Understanding Canada: A Multidisciplinary Introduction to Canadian Studies, William Metcalfe, ed. (New York; London: New York University Press, 1982), 22. 72 three thousand miles. For a punk band to undergo a cross-country tour would be costly especially when considering that most bands would need to transport not only people but their equipment as well. The majority of Canadian punk bands do not have access to the funds that a major record label would provide so if a cross-country tour is deemed necessary, the cost would be placed upon the band itself. In 1977, Joey "Shithead" Keithley (of

Vancouver's D.O.A.) travelled with his former band, the Skulls, to Toronto because they had heard about the scene forming around the club, The Crash 'n' Burn. Unfortunately, by the time the band arrived in Toronto, the Crash 'n' Burn was closed for good and they were forced to turn around and head back to Vancouver.286

Televised images of American and British punk bands, along with articles published in newspapers and magazines were just a few of the ways in which punk was able to infiltrate

Canadian culture. The publicity surrounding the Toronto punk scene in particular reached the consciousness of bands across Canada, hence the Skulls' ill-fated trek to Ontario. Yet many bands still found it easier to travel in a north-south direction as opposed to heading out to the opposite coast. For example, while bands in Toronto were able to travel up towards the major cities of Ottawa and Montreal, or down to New York to participate in the scene at

CBGBs, bands in Vancouver would often travel down to California.287 Nick Jones, from

Vancouver's Pointed Sticks, explained in an article by Liz Worth that because Canadian

285 Ibid. 286 Liz Worth, "A Canadian Punk Revival: As Punk Turns 30, Canadian Pioneers Reunite," Exclaim.ca, June 2007. http://exclaim.ca/Features/Research/canadian_punk_revival-as_punk_turns_30_canadian_pioneers 287 In the documentary, American Hardcore (date), a map of the U.S. is shown that illustrates the locations of several influential bands by placing their logo over their home state. D.O.A. is the only Canadian punk band included on this map (their logo is placed in an ambiguous location, directly on the border between the U.S. and Canada). This is illustrative of the acknowledgement that because of D.0.A.'s ability to play shows in California, their style of punk and its fashion was a direct influence on the creation of the American Hardcore movement. No other Canadian bands are mentioned in the film and D.O.A. is only related to the West Coast style of hardcore. 73 punk bands were hesitant to make the journey across Canada, it was easier to set up connects south of the border:

We knew what was going on in Toronto, but it was easier for us to go play in California than it was for us to go and play in Toronto [...] I think the Vancouver scene, because we were so far away, it was a bit more autonomous because we didn't get all the bands coming through, so we didn't really have models that Toronto bands did. The Viletones, the Ugly, the B-Girls — none of those bands ever made it out here."288

In an interview with wendythirteen (Fig 2.5), former manager of The Cobalt located in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, she stated that when she was thirteen years old, her aunt brought her back some postcards from England which depicted images of British punk women. Upon seeing those images she knew instinctively that she belonged to the punk

movement. In another example, rock photographer Bev Davies remembered seeing the

Ramones performing "I Wanna Be Sedated" on television in Vancouver and liking what she saw. Later Davies noticed a poster advertising a D.O.A. show. Having been banned from performing at the University of British Columbia, the band responded by advertising a concert called "Banned in Vancouver" and performed just outside of Burnaby. Davies attended this show with some friends but unlike her friends who only saw the show as a one­ time adventure, Davies felt like she had just seen "the second coming of Christ."290 As a budding photographer without a subject, this show inspired Davies to attend future gigs.

288 Liz Worth, "A Canadian Punk Revival: As Punk Turns 30, Canadian Pioneers Reunite," Exclaim.ca, June 2007. http://exclaim.ca/Features/Research/canadian_punk_revival-as_punk_turns_30_canadian_pioneers 289 It should be noted that wendythirteen specifically asked for her name to be stylized as it is shown in this text. She also mentioned that she received these postcards when she was thirteen and that she is now forty- five years old. Therefore she would have received these images approximately around 1978. wendythirteen (Club owner), interviewed by Katie Green, Funky Winker Beans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. 290 Bev Davies (photographer), interviewed by Katie Green, Hammond United Church, Maple Ridge, British Columbia, July 10 2010. 74 Eventually she would befriend D.O.A. and take some of the most iconic photographs of early 9Q1 Canadian punk.

The access to information about Canada's punk scene is related to the second challenge facing the developing of early Canadian punk scenes: the communicative concept.

This concept refers to the understanding that a wide array of communicative devices (for example, railroads, highways, telephones, magazines, newspapers, computers, broadcasting networks, and others) can be used as tools for connecting people across time and physical space. In the internet age, Canadian punks have the ability to connect with local punk scenes across Canada and around the world in a matter of seconds. If The Skulls were to make their trek to Toronto today then all that is necessary would be for them to go online and send an email to promoters across the country, booking shows from the comfort of their own home.

The internet has become a place for information and consumption which has allowed for the amplification of group identity.293 Whereas record shops were once sites for social meetings and printed fanzines294 were sources for punk news updates, the internet has replaced both. Simply entering the name of a local punk scene into an internet search engine will bring up a variety of results ranging from histories of local scenes, lists of punk bars and venues, downloadable music of local punk bands, as well as chat rooms and forums where members of the scene can post concert listings, want-ads for new musicians, or simply debate punk-related and more general topical issues. Not only does the internet allow for the instant access of punk music and social connections between individual scenes, but it also provides a

291 Ibid. 292 D. Paul Schafer, The Character of Canadian Culture (Markham, Ont.: World Culture Project, 1990), 14. 293 Carles Feixa and Pam Nilan (eds.), "Global Youth and Transnationalism: the Next Generation," in Global Youth? Hybrid Identities, Plural Worlds (New York: Routledge, 2006), 208. 294 Fan magazines; small amateur publications which publish such items as reviews, interviews, and concert listings. 75 wide range of sources selling punk fashion. Stores like and D-Tox provide instant access to an entire collection of punk couture and Fred Perry, a British clothing line, prides itself in its connection to musical subcultures, as evidenced by the inclusion of a section of their website (titled "Subculture") which is entirely devoted to promoting independent and underground bands.

If someone is interested in becoming part of the punk subculture but unsure as to where to begin, the internet offers a variety of instruction manuals that list step-by-step instructions on how to become an "individual." One article, entitled "How to Become a Punk

Rocker" lists and explains nine easy steps, which are as follows:

1. Listen to punk music,

2. Go to your local record store

3. Wear shirts with band logos on them

4. Attend gigs and shows put on by your favourite band

5. Wear studded things

6. Remember it's all about being yourself!

7. Read books, TV isn't that great for being punk

8. Forget all about fashion alone and care about something

9. Make your own stuff.

It seems contradictory to create a list of rules for a subculture that prides itself on the individuality and independence of its members. In fact this new form of "plastic punk," a phrase which implies a cheaply reproduced copy that lacks in underlying meaning, has left a

295 Carles Feixa and Pam Nilan (eds.), "Global Youth and Transnationalism: the Next Generation," in Global Youth? Hybrid Identities, Plural Worlds (New York: Routledge, 2006), 208. 296 "How to Become a Punk Rocker," Connor Flemming, et al (eds), Wikihow.com, 9 February 2011. http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Punk-Rocker 76 few Canadian punks feeling cynical about the popularization of punk fashion.297 On the

opposite side of the debate, if the punk subculture had set out to achieve anything, it was to

challenge preconceived notions of fashion, identity, gender, and the body itself, as well as

carve out a positive space for those who considered themselves to be punk. The fact that

punk may not receive such a strong reaction from those outside the subculture may be the

victory of the punk aesthetic. Whether the public is actually more tolerant or just being

polite, punks can walk down the street in most cities and towns in Canada without fear of

violent retribution.

D.I.Y. Fashion

Despite the availability of clothing that is pre-ripped, patched, and ready for purchase

by the punk consumer, many participants I spoke to still believe in the punk philosophy of

D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself). The example of The Skulls travelling independently to Toronto

without the aid of a record label also falls under this category. The idea is that if punks want

to achieve anything (for instance, record a CD, go on tour, starting a record company, create

a clothing line), then they should do so without any money or help from an agent or major

record label.

The concept of independence also translates to the use of punk clothing. In talking

with wendythirteen about her style of dress, she told me that her clothing choices are often

based on issues of function and practicality. Describing her look as a type of "uniform," she

noted that when shopping for clothes, she purchases a large quantity of the same item.298 By

reducing her wardrobe to a select number of items, wendythirteen succeeds in reducing the

297 Group of four anonymous punks (audience members), interviewed by Katie Green, Elk Lodge, Campbell River, Vancouver Island, 10 July 2010. 298 wendythirteen (Club owner), interviewed by Katie Green, Funky Winker Beans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. 77 amount of time spent buying new clothes, thereby partly removing her from the consumerist nature of the fashion market. She also avoids becoming a recipient of what is known as "." Fast fashion refers to a marketing tool where clothing designs move from the catwalk to the retail store so customers can quickly purchase the latest trends.299 The customer must purchase trends as soon as they appear in store because the nature of fast fashion dictates that once stock has run out, it will not replenish the same item.300 The large quantities of the same shoe, the same underwear, the same jeans, etc. that wendythirteen buys suggests that there is a practical mindset in punk fashion which advises that if you have found something to wear that is comfortable and suits your basic needs, then there is no need to purchase anything in excess. Todd Serious, lead singer of the Rebel Spell from Vancouver, linked this method of purchasing clothing to punk's rejection of consumerist ideals, stating that:

I wear simple but functional clothing and I wear it until it falls apart. The less clothing I own, the less money I have to spend on it. The less I spend, the less I have to work. The less I work, [...] the less I contribute to the destruction that humans have dubbed progress.301

The D.I.Y. practice of homemade shirts and vests are evidence of a refusal of the

"5 (YJ , , rituals of consumption. While on tour I was able to observe D.I.Y. m practice, such as when several girls who had purchased some over-sized band T-shirts went through a process of cutting them up so that the shirts could be tied back to fit their small frames. During my last night, I helped sew a large patch on the back of a friend's hooded sweatshirt using dental floss rather than thread because I was told that the floss would ultimately last longer. The

299 Tony Hines, Margaret Bruce, Fashion Marketing: Contemporary Uses, second ed. (Oxford; Burlington, MA: Elsevier Ltd., 2007), 44. 300 Ibid. 301 Todd Serious (Lead singer for The Rebel Spell), email to author, 18 September 2010. 302 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 103. 78 manipulation of manufactured garments links to the larger characteristic of punk of borrowing from other sources and rearranging them to create new meanings and images. As I was told by one punk girl at a show in Guelph, Ontario: "I'm original, baby. I do whatever I want...Everything I buy I have to destroy it. It has to be destroyed to be beautiful."303

A current popular D.I.Y. look for both male and female punks includes a vest (usually denim) that has been decorated with metal grommets, studs and a mixture of hand-sewn patches, buttons, or handwritten designs and phrases (Fig 2.6). This vest is typically worn over top of a black hooded sweater or T-shirt, coupled with black jeans which may or may not be decorated as much as the vest. The modification of existing articles of clothing are for

Hebdige what marks subcultures off from "more orthodox cultural formations."304 The modification of clothing through its combination with other objects and materials is connected to Hebdige's theory of punk as a bricolage.305 In bricolage, basic elements of fashion can be combined in an infinite amount of ways in order to continually generate new meanings. In some ways, punk fashion is related to the Surrealist art movement of the early

19th-century in that through the juxtaposition of ordinary objects that exist in separate realities, these objects can transform into a surreality that subverts their original meaning.306

Nick Shrubsole found a way to participate in this system of communication through writing his own personal slogans on ordinary T-shirts. These slogans advertise his personal manifesto for the successful continuation of Canadian punk. One example of a shirt he created for this purpose reads "Don't be an Asshole" on the front while the back of the shirt reads "Support Your Local Scene (Fig 2.7). Through the simple addition of white acrylic

303 Female Punk (audience member), interviewed by Katie Green, Molly Blooms, Guelph, Ontario, November 5, 2010. 304 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (England: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1979), 103 305 Ibid., 103-5. 306 Ibid., 105. 79 paint this ordinary t-shirt has been transformed into a tool for inciting youth of any community to become actively involved in their scene. The origins of this shirt go back to when Shrubsole was first introduced to the punk scene by his older cousin. He was told that he should start making his own shirts simply because "that's what Joe Strummer [lead singer of the Clash] did." The first design he made read "support your 519," referring to the regional area that covers most of Southern Ontario. The slogan was altered to read "support your local scene" because he realised that while his band was on tour, the "519" numbers would hold no significant meaning to people outside of this specific area. It is interesting to note that stickers advertising Broadcast Zero also do not read "Kitchener Punk Rock," but "Canadian

Punk Rock." During our interview, Shrubsole explained the thought process behind this decision:

Realizing that we're going across the country, nobody's going to know where Kitchener is and we have to broaden ourselves to a wider community [...] We're part of the Canadian punk rock community which stretches [...] from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland. [...] It's about punk rock throughout Canada, and it's still just as arbitrary, but that's where we play.307

The deliberate choice to wear or not to wear certain clothing based on political, social, and ethical concerns suggests that the fashion of this subculture is not simply an aesthetic system but a resistant art-political system as well.308 Not all members of the punk subculture have the ability to intervene in larger political and social systems so for some, the easiest way to attempt this is through "interrupting the flow of imagery, sound, and text,"309 which is achieved by Canadian punks through the creation of their own clothing.

307 Ibid. 308 Crispin Sartwell, Political Aesthetics (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2010), 99-100. 309 Ibid., 100. 80 The Festival of Utopic Space

The atmosphere of a live punk show is related to a spatial practice known as utopics.310 Utopics refers to a form of spatial play whereby the Utopian outlook a social group wishes to project is translated through the attachment of their ideas onto a specific space.311

In the context of punk this involves the creation of identities through their performance in a

1 *) space that acts as a central locality for the subculture itself. This performance of identities in a public space goes back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe with the idea of the spectacle. During this period, the bourgeoisie frequented such locations as coffee houses, salons, and lodges in order to assert their identity within the public sphere.313

To understand punk is to become engaged in a complete aesthetic experience. In his book on political aesthetics, Crispin Sartwell refers to this idea as "the festival"314 where each element of punk - the fashion, the posters, the body modifications, the sound, and the physical movement - combines to create a gestalt environment where the whole is greater than all of its parts.315

At each location I visited, there was proof of a conscious effort to be part of this visual aesthetic. Although nothing that I encountered on tour was as violent or gritty as a

Viletones concert, punk performances are still concerned with putting on a spectacle for the audience that generates palpable, visceral energy. One of the most interesting spectacles I

310 Kevin Hetherington, Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics (London; Thousand Oaks, California; Greater Kailash, New Delhi: SAGE Publications Ltd., 1998), 123. 311 Ibid. 312 Ibid. 313 Ibid., 143-144. 314 Crispin Sartwell, Political Aesthetics (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2010), 121. 315 Ibid., 120. 81 encountered during my research occurred while I was standing over the lead singer of the

Toronto-Vancouver-Tokyo based band, Shlonk, as he writhed on the floor mid-song while dressed in a full Minnie Mouse costume (Fig 2.8). The camp and irony of this spectacle was emphasized as Shlonk continued their set list and the singer's initial strange but unsoiled appearance disintegrated into a mess of sweaty dishevelment.

Watching Shlonk perform as their lead singer writhed on the floor, all my senses were engaged. It was not just about the visual aesthetic of the scene, but the sound of the band combined with the distortion and feedback that screeched through my eardrums. It was also the warm smell of too many sweaty bodies packed into a small space that grew in intensity as people moved in time to the music. The lead singer had taken over the space in front of the stage where a mosh pit316 would typically have formed but if one had formed then the senses of touch and taste would also have been engaged.

From the outside, mosh pits appear as violent displays of masochistic chaos. Yet pits are governed by a distinct set of rules which if ignored results in some form of bodily harm.

The occasional cut lip or blackened eye serves as a badge of honour for those who have survived the intensity of the mosh.317 As the mosh pit grows in size and strength, the division between the stage and the floor is obscured. Audience members jump on stage or thrust their faces towards a microphone to share singing space with the band. In this moment, bodies mash together in a mix of sweat, blood, spit, and energy to the point where every sense becomes engaged. As audience members open their mouths to sing or yell out what sounds

316 The term "mosh pit" refers to the area in front of a stage where audience members thrash about and intentionally slam into each other (a dance style known as "" or "slam dancing"). "mosh, n.". OED Online. November 2010. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/view/Entry/253542?redirectedFrom=mosh%20pit 317 Ross Haenfler, Straight Edge: Clean-Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, and Social Change (London; New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 20. 82 like a guttural battle cry, it is likely that they will actually taste splatters of sweat and in some cases, blood (and not all their own in either case).

The Creation of Cultural Memory

The ability of subcultural members to transform an ordinary physical space into a social space is what is referred to as "the TAZishness of the punk movement,"318 by Sartwell.

He is referring to the TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) developed by Hakim Bey (born

Peter Lamborn Wilson), an American political writer, essayist, and poet. Bey originally based this idea on a historical review of pirate Utopias.319 The most basic explanation of TAZ

(according to Sartwell) is to create a space where subcultural or "subversive" activities can go on undetected. Once authority figures (like the police, for example) are aware of these activities and enforce institutional surveillance, then the space is dismantled and reconfigured • • • in a different location. On the surface this cycle of creation, destruction and reassembly appears chaotic but underneath the surface there lies a distinct system of organization and alertness on the part of the subcultural members.

One of the major issues facing punk scenes across Canada is the lack of available space for the creation of new meeting places. Take for example a city like Calgary, Alberta.

Calgary's punk scene was large in the 1980s, and then collapsed briefly before regaining strength in the 1990s. The loss of all-ages venues in Calgary has contributed to the scene struggling to continue, with many shows being forced into underground locations or house shows.321 The same issue is not restricted to Calgary, but present in cities across Canada.

318 ibid., 101. 319 Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, second edition (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2003), vii. 320 Crispin Sartwell, Political Aesthetics (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2010), 101. 321 Calgary Punks, interviewed by Katie Green, Hammond United Church, Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Interview July 10, 2010. 83 Without access to all-ages venues, many punks fear322 that the decreasing influx of younger punks will eventually cause their scenes to disappear (that is, until the next wave of TAZ begins anew).

The very first stop on my tour through British Columbia was a located in

Kamloops, referred to as the "Little Big House" by the local punk scene members. Darryl

Sharpe, the owner of the house, spoke about the ability of the space to create a community and how he feels compelled to stay for fear of its collapse during his absence:

This place is about being [...] a community where musicians and music fans and artists can live and play shows [...] It's kind of a miracle house because not really many people phone the cops and it's surrounded by apartments and parties are pretty crazy here [...] I might leave eventually but it's really hard to leave this place [...] I've been here the longest out of anybody and if I leave then it's like people aren't going to hold their shit together.323

The importance of physical space to a subculture is that it contributes to the formation of group identity and cultural memory. Punk venues are social meeting places where punks can exchange ideas and become immersed in their own culture. Not only do punks frequent these venues to watch the bands perform, but where they can participate in their own performance as fashionable bodies on display. The loss of such communal space signifies a breaking down of social order. Loyalty to a specific space can develop amongst subcultural

322 See: Todd Serious (Lead singer for The Rebel Spell), email to author, 18 September 2010, Ang (Drummer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010, Jan (Lead singer for The Rotten), interviewed by Katie Green, The Circus Room, Kitchener, Ontario, 16 October 2010, Nick Shrubsole (Lead singer of Broadcast Zero), interviewed by Katie Green, Guelph, Ontario, 25 November 2010, and Audience Members (Campbell River), interviewed by Katie Green, Campbell River, Vancouver Island, 9 July 2010. 323 Darryl Sharpe (Owner of Little Big House), interviewed by Katie Green, Little Big House, Kamloops, British Columbia, 8 July 2010. 84 members when that space has existed long enough to become representative for a local scene.

In other words:

For those who reject the norms and beliefs of society, such places facilitate the ordering of a new identity or identities. In this geography of the elsewhere, margins become centres, centres become margins, and the meaning of centres and margins becomes blurred. Those who see themselves as marginal or different are likely to see such places as socially central to their alternative values and beliefs."324

Years after punk clubs have closed their doors subcultural members will still view those spaces as nostalgic, sacred grounds (for example, CBGBs in New York City, the

Cobalt in Vancouver, and the Crash and Burn in Toronto). These spaces become imbued with the energy of the social gatherings they house and represent one element in the realistic, lived experience of Canadian punks.

In order to demonstrate the process of creating a site of cultural memory in the punk subculture, the space of the museum can be compared to that of a Canadian punk venue.

Museums are institutions that are designed to house and display cultural artifacts. The role of the museum is to create a sense of cultural identity or nationhood through the display of objects that have been collected based on their perceived cultural significance.325 To compare this practice to a punk venue, at Hamilton, Ontario's This Ain't Hollywood, visitors are greeted with a collection of punk memorabilia that covers the walls. Images of Teenage Head and the Forgotten Rebels are a permanent reminder to the current generation of punks who attended shows at the location where the roots of their subculture started. Even the name of

324 Kevin Hetherington, Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics (London; Thousand Oaks; New Delhi: SAGE Publications Ltd., 1998), 124. 325 Karen E. Till, "Places of Memory," in A Companion to Political Geography, John A. Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, and Gerard Toal, eds. (Maiden, MA; Oxford; Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003), 293. 85 the venue is taken from a Forgotten Rebel's song as a tribute to the Hamilton punk scene's hometown heroes.

Punk venues as sites of cultural memory are similar to the space of a museum in that they both attempt to create a public, social space that is imbued with a sense of nostalgia and cultural identity. While museum curatorial practices are perhaps more methodical than the interior decorating of a punk club, both spaces create a dialogue with the people that enter them. As an individual walks through the narrow space of the Bovine Sex Club in Toronto, for example, they are confronted with an overwhelming amount of seemingly random objects attached to the walls and ceiling (Fig 2.9). Like the punk subculture itself, punk venues visually represent a sense of chaos and disorder that is quite different from the carefully constructed narrative of a museum. Marks of memory, like graffiti or the application of band stickers (Fig 2.10), become permanent messages for the community at large. Many audience members take it upon themselves to contribute to the culmination of messages left on its surface. Similar to the alteration of the surface of the body, these marks transform the physical interior of a punk venue into a text. They overlap and build up over time and some disappear while others stand out, but each mark holds different meanings and messages for the individual that encounter them. Following the walls of a punk venue it is possible to trace the history of its lived experience.

Readdressing the Question: What is Canadian Punk Rock?

During my research, I was only able to visit punk scenes located in British Columbia and Ontario and so I cannot comment on whether each province has a distinctly unique punk scene. I was able to speak to punks from Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, and Alberta, but those interactions did not provide me with enough information to construct an accurate representation of those scenes in their entirety. In terms of fashion, I did not detect any major differences between the styles of punks in Ontario versus those in British Columbia. The only example I heard of Canadians using fashion to signify a regional or national identity was told to me by Bev Davies when she recalled her trip with D.O.A. to England in 1981

(Fig 2.11).

Davies recalled that while the general public seemed used to seeing people dressed as punks, it was the British punks who were the most taken aback by the appearance of these young Canadians. British punks at the time, according to Davies, donned the typical punk look of leather jackets and Mohawks. In contrast, their guitarist Dave Gregg327 walked around London dressed in long underwear with , baggy pants, and a mac jacket

(which is a type of thick, long sleeved, plaid shirt). As Gregg walked down King's

Road in London, he would gradually remove layers of clothing until the arms on his long underwear would be flapping behind him328 (Fig 2.12). For West Coast punks in the early to mid-1980s, the mac jacket became a popular local symbol. In his autobiography, Joey

"Shithead" Keithley, lead singer of D.O.A., noted that the colour of the jacket was an important code to decipher what area of B.C. you were from: "Guys from Surrey wore green ones, guys from North Van wore purple ones, and guys from East Van and Burnaby wore red." This style would later go on to inspire the flannel look of the Grunge scene in the 1990s because of these musicians going to D.O.A. shows when they were younger.330

326 Bev Davies (photographer), interviewed by Katie Green, Davies' home, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 2010. 327 Gregg now plays for the Real McKenzies from Vancouver, B.C. 328 Bev Davies (photographer), interviewed by Katie Green, Davies' home, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 2010. 329 Joey Keithley. I, Shithead: A Life in Punk (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2003), 153. 330 Ibid. 87 The only way I could personally discern between Ontario punks and those in B.C. was by reading the patches sewn on their garments. If there was an over-abundance of

Vancouver bands represented on an individual's jacket, then I could assume that they might be from British Columbia, but without actually speaking with them this would only remain an assumption. The example of D.O.A. and their mac jackets is evidence that elements of

Canadian punk did find ways to diffuse into, and create meaning for, other music cultures.

Rather than witnessing a distinctly Canadian style of punk fashion, it became obvious through my first-hand interactions that Canadian punks have found other ways to contribute to the development of the subculture. Through location alone Canadian punks have faced challenges in the steps towards creating a unified punk scene. In some ways the Canadian punk scene is still divided by province or region rather than seen as one national subculture.

In recent years, the internet has helped bridge the gap between communities not just in

Canada but around the globe. Even the tour that I was invited to go on this summer which featured bands from British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec demonstrates the ease in which different punk communities are now able to link together. The rallying call to "support your local scene" implies that individual scenes need to be nurtured by those who consider

•ji themselves members at any level. The collective conscience of the scene demands loyalty and by attending shows or finding alternate ways to participate, punks demonstrate their devotion.332

Through their ability to manipulate the contours of the body, gender, clothing, and physical space Canadians punks succeed in creating their own position within the larger punk discourse. The self-perceptions of what it means to be a Canadian punk vary on an individual

331 Ross Haenfler, Straight Edge: Clean-Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, and Social Change (London; New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 22. 332 Ibid. 88 basis as are the meanings that attract people to the subculture. It is through a conscious effort to create marks of memory where Canadian punks will succeed in being cemented into the history of punk culture.

89 Conclusion

I began my research with the idea that I would discover a truly Canadian interpretation of punk's visual culture. In reality, Canadian punk fashion is an amalgamation of all the iconic images of British and American punk that filtered into the Canadian conscience through various media outlets. When a Canadian punk puts on their leather jacket, decorated with patches of local bands, and spikes their partially shaved head into a mohawk before stepping out for the night, they are doing more than constructing a visual representation of their personal identity. They are also connecting themselves to the larger historical discourse of punk.

Canadian punk is unique but it is framed in response to the punk subcultures that previously formed in the United States and Britain, much like Canadian national identity itself. The self-perceptions of Canadian punks have formed out of the identity relationships that have fractured Canada's self-image (i.e. its relationship to the United States, its ties to its former colonial nations, as well as the cultural divides that exists between the provinces and different social groups within Canada itself). Despite their efforts to remain marginal,

Canadian punks still rely on Canadian cultural stereotypes to establish themselves as a legitimate punk culture unique from its predecessors. The self-perceptions of Canadian punks, even if misrepresentative of the actual experience of most Canadians, remain dependent on the perception of Canada as a young culture still struggling to carve out its place in the world. In this way, Canadian punks reverse the meanings of these stereotypes to create a positive identity for themselves.

In contrast to previous studies on punk, I chose to focus primarily on the role of fashion and visual culture in understanding punk identity. Other studies I encountered have

90 viewed the subculture from either a sociological perspective which focuses on issues of deviant behaviour, or from a literary perspective which views the subculture purely as a system of signs and codes. Although I have based my methodology on a combination of these and other scholarly approaches, interpreting this subculture from the perspective of visual culture affords me a different perspective. Looking specifically at fashion and visual culture in relation to punk allows the researcher to consider larger issues of identity in relation to a variety of sources that include, but are not limited to, nationhood, gender, body constructs, and physical space.

Approaching potential participants regarding a study which focuses on the visual culture of punk was sometimes met with resistance. This was because of the assumption that a study on fashion would reduce the subculture to its supposedly "meaningless" surface and ignore larger issues that are represented in punk's lyrical content and philosophies. Yet even those participants had a difficult time admitting that fashion was not an important facet of the subculture. In fact, many begrudgingly admitted that for better or for worse, the messages they were attempting to communicate through punk could not be as easily received without the assistance of its fashion. The patched and distorted visual style of punk reflects the disjointed nature of the Canadian punk scene in general.

Through their manipulation of the body as well as the physical spaces in which they inhibit, Canadian punks continually participate in the creation of marks of meaning and memory that contribute to not only how they understand themselves, but how they are understood by others. This concept once again separates my research from previous studies on punk in that it acknowledges that there is not one singular definition of what constitutes

"punk." I make no assumptions that every participant in this study has the same understanding of the term "punk" or that they will all continue to participate as punks in the 91 future. Canadian punk has been formed much like Canada's national identity crisis and as such it is open to the possibility of its own continual identity crisis and processes of redefinition.

Although the physical landscape of Canada initially hindered the creation of a unified punk identity, the internet has assisted in bringing local Canadian punk scenes closer together. As a result, the communication of a specific group identity and rallying messages of support and unity are more easily transferred, recognized, and reciprocated. Whether it is the visual rejection of consumerism through clothing or assembling a physical space of cultural memory Canadian punk fashion presents itself as a legitimate and deliberate choice by its members to present themselves as a single unified culture.

My research is important in that fact that it fills a gap in the lack of academic literature on the Canadian punk subculture. Only within the last ten years or so have researchers become concerned with a project to reclaim Canada's contribution to one of the world's most recognized subcultures. My inclusion of personal accounts from subcultural members helps to disrupt the historical discourse on punk and reclaim voices that have not yet been heard. The amount of primary source material collected for this study (both in terms of interview material and photographs) is overwhelming. The issues and opinions regarding

Canadian punk are not limited to the topics I have covered, allowing for a continuation of this project in order to more thoroughly illustrate the Canadian experience of punk.

Due to time, transportation, and financial constraints, the geographical scale of this study was restricted. Although an attempt was made to investigate more than one region, it was impossible to include samples of local punk scenes from every Canadian province and territory. This is the first step in constructing a broader understanding of

92 Canadian punk culture. Future scholarship may be able to build from this research in the analysis of other scenes, such as those found in Montreal, Winnipeg, and St. Johns. By engaging with the members of local scenes in each province and territory, a greater sense of the self-perceptions of Canadian punks versus their actual lived experience can be developed.

Each province and territory is distinguished by differences in physical geography and cultural practices. A larger investigation would allow for these elements to contribute to an understanding of how local networks of punk communicate as well as how they understand themselves in comparison to the Canadian punk subculture as a whole.

Additional future studies that could be formed from my research could include a more in-depth investigation of D.I. Y. practices. The D.I.Y. movement is considered by some to be a grassroots movement which focuses not only on the creation of homemade clothing but is the basis for many successful independent business ventures. Many American retail chains are establishing locations in Canada and in terms of fashion, consumerism is still dominated by marketing tools such as fast fashion and large box superstores that eliminate local business. This is not just limited to fashion, however, as many punks have extended D.I.Y. practices to the growing of their own food (with some adopting a vegan lifestyle as a result333). A research project focused on the creation of smaller, Canadian D.I.Y. businesses would be beneficial for those interested in studying economic concepts of Canada as well as the formation of grassroots organizations.

Aspects of my research also benefit discussions of verbal and non-verbal strategies of communication and the ways in which different social groups interact with each other.334 The

333 In relation to punk fashion and its predominant use of leather, future research could also investigate ways in which Vegan punks construct a traditional punk look with non-traditional materials. 334 Future studies could also compare Western manifestations of punk to those that are forming outside this already heavily studied realm. 93 theoretical contributions in the section on local punk venues as sites for the creation of cultural memory are applicable to other social groups beyond punk because ultimately it is an investigation concerned with the interaction and performance of bodies within a physical space. Cities and the buildings within them are constructed around the movement and interaction of people. Future research could extend my discussion on utopic spaces to investigate how people physically move within a space, how they order themselves in that space, as well as how one location can be considered a site of cultural memory for multiple social groups.

Before I embarked on my research travels I considered my own role as both a researcher of punk and a participant. I have long since shed the more extreme punk elements of my wardrobe because the personal meanings that I as an individual gain from the style of punk fashion will forever be linked to my teenaged identity. As I have matured, it is harder to fit within that particular identity construction.

So while I reminded myself of the dangers of researcher bias and was careful not to allow my own nostalgia to colour the results of my research, I did not consider the response that my own wardrobe would receive. As a result I was almost rejected at the outset of this study from a subculture of which I have participated in since the age of twelve. This rejection was based simply on my choice to wear a coral, lace-back tank top (not, as it has been suggested, a red dress).

As this example demonstrates, fashion acts as the first indicator of an individual's perceived identity. In my own local scene I would not have been questioned, but newcomers are expected in some ways to establish themselves beyond mere aesthetic. In a larger sense, this has been the same experience for the Canadian subculture in general. Even in 2011,

94 Canadians are still relying on the approval of perceived "authorities" of punk in order to justify our position in its historical timeline and continual development.

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101 Appendix A

Schedule of Dates and Locations

The follow is a list of the dates and locations included in this study:

8 June 2010 - Rearview Mirror. Toronto, Ontario

22 June 2010 - Bovine Sex Club. Toronto, Ontario

8 July 2010 - Little Big House. Kamloops, British Columbia

9 July 2010 — Elk Lodge. Campbell River, British Columbia

9 July 2010 - Funky Winkerbeans. Vancouver, British Columbia

10 July 2010 - Hammond United Church. Maple Ridge, British Columbia

11 July 2010 - Bully's Inc. Rehearsal Studio. New Westminster, British Columbia

16 October 2010 - Circus Room. Kitchener, Ontario

5 November 2010 - Molly Bloom's. Guelph, Ontario

102 Appendix B

UNIVERSITY VHUELFH

CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH

Punk Fashion in Canadian Culture: the Translation of an International Subculture

You are asked to participate in a research study conducted by Katie Victoria Green, from the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph. The results from this study will be contributed to a Masters Thesis in Art and Visual Culture.

If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Dr. John Potvin, Primary Faculty Investigator (Telephone: 519-824-4120 ext. 56741, E-Mail: [email protected]).

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

This study will look at the development of Punk fashion subcultures in areas across Canada, from the early 1980s until today. By studying this particular subculture from a Canadian perspective, the Investigator will attempt to answer the question of whether the Canadian experience of Punk and its fashion, symbols, and meanings are different from that of its American and British counterparts. The three main goals for this research project are as follows: 1) understand how Punk fashion first transferred over into Canadian society and how its meanings have been adapted by youth in both rural and urban areas; 2) assess whether or not subcultural groups in Canada contribute to a more complete understanding of Canadian identity; 3) illustrate the culture of contemporary Punk fashion and the construction of community. Through these main goals, issues of class, gender, and race will also be addressed as well as how these issues develop in the scope of a Canadian social and political context.

PROCEDURES

If you volunteer to participate in this study, we would ask you to do the following things:

• Read this written consent form in full. Before agreeing to participate in this study, please make sure you have the Investigator answer any questions you may have.

• If you choose to participate, please sign and date this form and return it to the Investigator. A copy may be provided to you upon request. Please inform the Investigator if you wish to remain anonymous (see below: "Confidentiality").

• The date and time of all interviews should be arranged in advance with the Investigator. It is expected that each participant be involved in one interview which should last no longer than one hour. The participant should understand that while the Investigator has prepared certain questions (see attached), other questions may come up during the course of the conversation. Therefore, the duration of any interview may be adjusted depending on the preferences of the participant(s) and Investigator.

• It should be noted that all interviews will be recorded. A transcribed copy of the interview will be provided to the participant.

• The Investigator may contact the participant by phone or e-mail after completion of any

103 research in order to ask follow-up questions or clarify any basic information.

POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS

There should be no potential risks or discomforts to any participants in this study. If you feel that you are uncomfortable at any point in the study, please inform the Investigator or the Primary Faculty Investigator (see above) and you will have the option to withdraw (see below: "Participation and Withdrawal").

POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY

A study on subcultural fashion in Canada is important because of the information it may add to the larger study of youth and leisure in Canada, as well as how clothing can contribute to the development of Canadian identity in different cultural groups. While there is a large amount of literature on subcultural fashion, very few studies have been conducted on subcultures in Canada. The information revealed through this study may be the starting point for future areas of research in the fields of fashion theory, Canadian studies, and cultural studies.

PAYMENT FOR PARTICIPATION

No payment will be offered to participants for involvement in this study.

CONFIDENTIALITY

Every effort will be made to ensure confidentiality of any identifying information that is obtained in connection with this study.

Interviews will be recorded, transcribed, and then stored as password protected files on the Investigator's personal computer. Only the Investigator will have access to the materials used for this project. Printed files will be kept in a locked cabinet to which only the Student Investigator will have access.

Participants reserve the right to review or edit any information pertaining to their specific interview whether in an audio recorded or transcribed format.

Participants have the option to remain anonymous. Please inform the Investigator if you wish for certain information to be kept confidential. The Investigator will respect the wishes of all participants in issues of anonymity and confidentiality.

All information collected for this study is strictly for educational purposes. This study will be published through the University of Guelph and not through any other publisher. No financial gain for the Investigator or commercialization of this study is expected. Interview material will be destroyed one year after publication of the final thesis paper. No information collected through this study will be sold or used for other purposes.

PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL

You can choose whether to be in this study or not. If you volunteer to be in this study, you may withdraw at any time without consequences of any kind. You may exercise the option of removing your data from the study. If you choose to do so, all material pertaining to your specific interview will be destroyed. You may also refuse to answer any questions you don't want to answer and still remain in the study. The Investigator may withdraw you from this research if circumstances arise that warrant doing so.

RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS

104 You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your participation in this research study. This study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through the University of Guelph Research Ethics Board. If you have questions regarding your rights as a research participant, contact:

Research Ethics Coordinator Telephone: (519) 824-4120, ext. 56606 University of Guelph E-mail: [email protected] 437 University Centre Fax: (519) 821-5236 Guelph, ON N1G2W1

SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT/LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE

I have read the information provided for the study "Punk Fashion in Canadian Culture: the Translation of an International Subculture" as described herein. My questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have been given a copy of this form.

Name of Participant (please print)

Name of Legal Representative (if applicable)

Signature of Participant or Legal Representative Date

[The name and signature of the legal representative is ONLY necessary if the participant is not competent to consent. If the participant is competent, please do not include these options.]

SIGNATURE OF WITNESS

Name of Witness (please print)

Signature of Witness Date

[The witness is ideally NOT the Investigator, but if there is no readily available alternative, the Investigator can act as witness.]

105 Appendix C

UNIVERSITY VfiUELPH

PERMISSION TO PHOTOGRAPH AND REPRODUCE IMAGES

Punk Fashion in Canadian Culture: the Translation of an International Subculture

You are asked to participate in a research study conducted by Katie Victoria Green, from the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph. The results from this study will be contributed to a Masters Thesis in Art and Visual Culture.

If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Dr. John Potvin, Primary Faculty Investigator (Telephone: 519-824-4120 ext. 56741, E-Mail: [email protected]).

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

This study will look at the development of Punk fashion subcultures in areas across Canada, from the early 1980s until today. By studying this particular subculture from a Canadian perspective, the Investigator will attempt to answer the question of whether the Canadian experience of Punk and its fashion, symbols, and meanings are different from that of its American and British counterparts. The three main goals for this research project are as follows: 1) understand how Punk fashion first transferred over into Canadian society and how its meanings have been adapted by youth in both rural and urban areas; 2) assess whether or not subcultural groups in Canada contribute to a more complete understanding of Canadian identity; 3) illustrate the culture of contemporary Punk fashion and the construction of community. Through these main goals, issues of class, gender, and race will also be addressed as well as how these issues develop in the scope of a Canadian social and political context.

PROCEDURES

If you volunteer to participate in this study, we would ask you to do the following things:

• Read this written consent form in full. Before agreeing to participate in this study, please make sure you have the Investigator answer any questions you may have.

• If you choose to participate, please sign and date this form and return it to the Investigator. A copy may be provided to you upon request. Please inform the Investigator if you wish to remain anonymous (see below: "Confidentiality").

• By agreeing to participate through the signing of this document, you are giving permission to the Investigator (Katie Green) to photograph your likeness or an item of clothing belonging to you, as well as consenting to the reproduction of said images in the final project.

• The Investigator may contact the participant by phone or e-mail after completion of any research in order to ask follow-up questions or clarify any basic information.

POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS

There should be no potential risks or discomforts to any participants in this study. If you feel that you are uncomfortable at any point in the study, please inform the Investigator or the Primary Faculty Investigator (see above) and you will have the option to withdraw (see below: "Participation and Withdrawal"). 106 POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY

A study on subcultural fashion in Canada is important because of the information it may add to the larger study of youth and leisure in Canada, as well as how clothing can contribute to the development of Canadian identity in different cultural groups. While there is a large amount of literature on subcultural fashion, very few studies have been conducted on subcultures in Canada. The information revealed through this study may be the starting point for future areas of research in the fields of fashion theory, Canadian studies, and cultural studies.

PAYMENT FOR PARTICIPATION

No payment will be offered to participants for involvement in this study.

CONFIDENTIALITY

Every effort will be made to ensure confidentiality of any identifying information that is obtained in connection with this study.

All photographs will be stored digitally as password protected files on the Investigator's personal computer. Only the Investigator will have access to the materials used for this project. Printed files will be kept in a locked cabinet to which only the Student Investigator will have access.

Participants have the option to remain anonymous. Please inform the Investigator if you wish for certain information to be kept confidential. The Investigator will respect the wishes of all participants in issues of anonymity and confidentiality.

All information collected for this study is strictly for educational purposes. This study will be published through the University of Guelph and not through any other publisher. No financial gain for the Investigator or commercialization of this study is expected. Photographs will be destroyed one year after publication of the final thesis paper and will not be published in any other study without explicit permission from the participant. No information collected through this study will be sold or used for other purposes.

PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL

You can choose whether to be in this study or not. If you volunteer to be in this study, you may withdraw at any time without consequences of any kind. You may exercise the option of removing your data from the study. If you choose to do so, all material pertaining to your specific interview will be destroyed. You may also refuse to answer any questions you don't want to answer and still remain in the study. The Investigator may withdraw you from this research if circumstances arise that warrant doing so.

RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS

You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your participation in this research study. This study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through the University of Guelph Research Ethics Board. If you have questions regarding your rights as a research participant, contact:

Research Ethics Coordinator Telephone: (519) 824-4120, ext. 56606 University of Guelph E-mail: [email protected] 437 University Centre Fax: (519) 821-5236

107 Guelph, ON N1G2W1

SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT/LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE

I have read the information provided for the study "Punk Fashion in Canadian Culture: the Translation of an International Subculture" as described herein. My questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have been given a copy of this form.

Name of Participant (please print)

Name of Legal Representative (if applicable)

Signature of Participant or Legal Representative Date

[The name and signature of the legal representative is ONLY necessary if the participant is not competent to consent. If the participant is competent, please do not include these options.]

SIGNATURE OF WITNESS

Name of Witness (please print)

Signature of Witness Date f The witness is ideally NOT the Investigator, but if there is no readily available alternative, the Investigator can act as witness.]

108 Appendix D

UNIVERSITY ynuELPH

PERMISSION TO PHOTOGRAPH AND REPRODUCE IMAGES

SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT/LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE

I hive read the information provided for the etudy "Punk Fashion in Canadian Culture: the Translation of an International Subculture" as described herein. My questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have been given a copy of this term. feB/. Name of Participant (please print) $&c * Nfcme of Legalegal JRepresentative (if applicable) Jlittt /J 0 Signature of Participant or Legal Representative.. Date

[The name and signature of the legal representative is ONLY necessary if the participant is not competent to consent. if the participant is competent, please do not include these options.]

SIGNATURE OF WITNESS

k.Am Name of Witness (please print) ^±LdlLt+co .^^jgrMjreofVVItness Date 'J

[The witness Is ideally NOT the investigator, but if there is no readily available alternative, the Investigator can act as witness.]

109 Figure 1.1 - Little Big House, Kamloops, British Columbia. ©Katie Green

110 Figure 1.2 - Hammond United Church, Maple Ridge, British Columbia. © Katie Green

111 Figure 1.3 - Elk Lodge #373, Campbell River, Vancouver Island. © Katie Green

112 Figure 1.4 - Bully's Rehearsal Studio, New Westminster, British Columbia. © Katie Green

113 Figure 1.5 - Rearview Mirror, Toronto, Ontario. © Katie Green

114 Figure 2.1 - Drummer for the Rebel Spell, Rearview Mirror, Toronto, Ontario, 8 June 2010. © Katie Green

115 Figure 2.2 - Anonymous Female Audience Member (Femme Fatale), Rearview Mirror, Toronto, Ontario, 8 June 2010. © Katie Green

116 Figure 2.3 - Anonymous Male Audience Member (Street Warrior), Rearview Mirror, Toronto, Ontario, 8 June 2010. © Katie Green

117 ii *< *i ,\ li 1114 *1 »< • »,«!< *1 * > ii 'itfi * ••I *•< *i • •(

Figure 2.4 - Bare-chested Male Enjoys Himself at the Rebel Spell Show, Maple Ridge, British Columbia, 10 July 2010. © Katie Green

118 Figure 2.5 - wendythirteen, Funky Winkerbeans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. © Katie Green

119 Figure 2.6 - Example of D.I.Y. fashion, New Westminster, British Columbia, 11 July 2010. © Katie Green

120 Figure 2.7 - Nick Shrubsole - "Support Your Local Scene," Funky Winkerbeans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. © Katie Green

121 Figure 2.8 - wendythirteen, Funky Winkerbeans, Vancouver, British Columbia, 9 July 2010. © Katie Green

122 Figure 2.9 - Interior of the Bovine Sex Club, Toronto, Ontario, 22 June 2010. © Katie Green

123 Figure 2.10 - Entrance to Washrooms, Bovine Sex Club, Toronto, Ontario, 22 June 2010. © Katie Green

124 Figure 2.11 - D.O.A. in Trafalgar Square, London, England, 1981. © Bev Davies

125 Figure 2.12 - Dave Gregg (D.O.A.) in England, 1981. © Bev Davies

126