DANCE OF DAYS: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capitol - Review

Thrasher Magazine, Dec, 2001 by Oakland L Childers

For a lot of people, Washington, DC is not just the nation's seat of power or the home of countless museums, monuments and memorials. It is also a city where a musical revolution started more than 20 years ago. Mark Andersen spent a good part of the last two decades documenting DC punk scene in all its glory and folly After interviews with over 100 people, Andersen and his colleague Mark Jenkins have published Dance of Day Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capitol, a 400 page behind-the-scenes documentation of DC punk subculture Besides the sheer enormity of the task that is writing a book, Andersen-an activist and co-founder of Positive Force, a punk collective--had the added problem of trying to be as honest as possible showing both the good and bad side of people in the scene, many of whom are his friends and neighbors.

Dance of Day details Bad Brains vocalist HR's homophobic rantings and Ian MacKaye's fiery temper as a young punk, among other things. "Many of the people in the book, I'm not just a far o f," says Andersen, "they're also my friends; however, what's the central impulse of punk? For me it is looking for the truth. Truth is the great liberator, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be easy. It would be a betrayal of that punk ethic or spirit for this to be something that created icons blowing people up to be larger than life." Andersen says airing people's dirty laundry wasn't always easy, but in the end, made the book more of a historical document than a PR fluff piece. "I admit that there are places where there was stuff had to put in the book that I felt uncomfortable about, that I knew would make some of my friends uncomfortable," says Andersen. "But by and large I think people understand that the factual basis to what I'm doing is pretty solid. My intent is an honorable one. History that falsifies itself is less than worthless." Showing DC's punk elite as mortals was part of the aim of the book according to Andersen, who says that such simple honesty can be the catalyst for many people to explore their own creativity. It's not to get people to look back 'then' and wish they'd been there," says Andersen. "It's to get people to understand how important and filled with possibility it right now is. What made the first Ramones record so empowering? You listen to it and you're saying, 'Damn, I could do that.' The point is that essential spark of punk which is pointing people toward their own possibilities and encouraging them to be creators rather than just simply consumers," Check Soft Skull Press at www.softskull.com.