Market failure: Punk economics, early and late

College Literature, Spring 2001 by Thompson, Stacy

A contradiction arises here that is not unique to Frith: he locates punk rock's potential power as an economic force in the moment when it seems capable of establishing an "independent, economic alternative" to "multinational record companies," yet its failure, he argues, lies both in its absorption into the Big Six and in its inability to maintain in England, or attain in the US., national but independent financial viability. He reads punk's economic failure as its broader cultural failure. I intend to argue just the opposite, that its economic failure is, in fact, a "punk success" of sorts. Writing on the English punk scene, Mark Sinker comments that "[all punk codes were always intended to fail" (1999, 136), and, although he is referring specifically to aesthetic codes, the same logic applies to economic ones. For punk to succeed, especially economically, would mean succeeding in the very realm-as Frith acknowledges-that it positions itself against, even if it succeeds independently of the majors. Such a "success" would amount to a profound betrayal of punk's commitment to economic resistance.

In Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons's The Boy Looked At Johnny, the coauthors, writing three years before Frith, invoke the same contradiction that Frith does. They comment upon the irony of punk rock beginning to obtain "Capitalist Corporate Structure Commercial Viability" (1980, 35) in 1977, and they bitterly observe that "[a]s soon as any ostensibly dangerous new musical phenomena appear in the sweaty clubs giving a righteous finger to the status quo, it [sic] is enticed in from the cold by the same old dangled carrots of sex/drugs/cash/fame and run through the mill of commercial assimilation. What were once sharp, angry fangs are rendered soft, ineffective gums" (88). But they also harangue the Ramones for failing to achieve chart success in England or the US. in the late 70s and the Damned for "failing to make the Top Twenty in 1976" (50). Similar arguments appear in Gina Arnold (1993) and in the majority of the articles/chapters in Sabin (1999).

Late Punk Economics

Frith, Arnold, Burchill and Parsons, and Sabin et al. declare punk dead at the moment that it slips beneath the radar of corporately controlled media outlets, but punk's success lies precisely in its commercial failure, especially when it is willfully induced, as is the case with the contemporary band, Fugazi, whose situation within punk I will turn to below. Punk for itself is never commercially successful, by definition. According to the logic of late punk economics, the moment that a "punk" band succeeds commercially, which for punks means working with a major label, it ceases to be punk. For example, in 1994, when the pop punk band, Green Day, signed with Reprise Records, which is owned by Time Warner, the band ceased to be punk; however, Green Day's early albums on Lookout! Records, which is independent of the majors, continue to be punk, although they have been tainted retroactively by the band's "sell out," resulting in the dilemma for punks of deciding whether or not to purchase music that hovers in an indeterminate zone between commercial viability and punk.