Punk (magazine)

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Punk - also known as Punk Magazine - is a music fanzine from New York City that was published in 1975 by graphic artist and comic artist John Holmstrom , publisher George E. "Ged" Dunn and "resident punk" (" Punk on duty") Edward "Legs “McNeil was founded. At the beginning, the main purpose of the magazine was to give the underground music scene in New York a journalistic platform in the mid-1970s . A major influence on the establishment of the term punk as a genre name for the music played by the bands in this scene is ascribed to him. All three founders also worked as authors for the magazine. The first edition of Punk came out in January 1976; by 1979 a total of seventeen issues of the magazine had appeared. Several new editions have appeared since 2006.

history

An underground music scene had developed in New York in the mid-1970s, the center of which was the CBGB music club on the Bowery in downtown Manhattan . The variety of styles of the bands performing there at that time - among others Television , Blondie , Patti Smith and the Ramones - was initially referred to as "Street Rock" by club owner Hilly Kristal .

The term punk , originally a derogatory term for people viewed as inferior or a failure, gained popularity in the first half of the 1970s in the regional US music press, in magazines such as Creem , Bomp and Aquarian - initially as a fashionable label for such different performers like Bruce Springsteen , Patti Smith and the Bay City Rollers . The band Ramones, founded in 1974, also had a piece called Judy Is a Punk in their repertoire as one of their first compositions .

John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil had met in Connecticut high school and met again in September 1975 as students at the New York School of Visual Arts . The graphic artist Holmstrom studied animation there with Will Eisner and with Harvey Kurtzman , founder of MAD magazine . When Holmstrom, Dunn and McNeil started their magazine to provide a forum for the local underground music scene, they initially planned to call it Teenage News . Legs McNeil, who referred to his role on the editorial board as "punk on duty," suggested the word punk as the name for the new magazine "before anyone else claims it." Accordingly, the editors called their office on Tenth Avenue in Manhattan “Punk Dump” (German, meaning: “Garbage dump”). In addition to reports on the local music scene, the magazine should reflect the lifestyle of its authors. Holmstrom received an essential inspiration for the content of Punk Magazine from the music of the New York proto-punk band The Dictators , who satirized the everyday culture of young people on their debut album, released in 1975:

“Holmstrom figured the magazine should be a combination of everything we were interested in - reruns on TV, drinking beer, laying women, cheeseburgers, comics, B-movies, and that crazy rock 'n' roll that except us apparently no one was standing. "

- from an interview with Legs McNeil in 1996

Punk Magazine's workforce changed a lot in the early years. First Ged Dunn left the magazine in early 1977, and McNeil left a little later. In 1979 the magazine ceased to appear. It was supposed to be reissued in 2001, but the events of September 11, 2001 put that plan on hold. The magazine Punk was not revived until 2006 and is still designed and published under this name by Holmstrom today.

Style and content

The first edition of Punk Magazine in January 1976 in December 1975 in the area of trendy restaurants in Manhattan with small posters with the headline "Punk is Coming!" Announced. It contained as a cover story an interview with Lou Reed recorded in the CBGB , who was depicted in a caricature by Holmstrom on the front page, as well as, among other articles, an interview with the under the heading "Ramones - Rock 'n' Roll - The Real Thing" Ramones. One of the people most frequently represented in the magazine is the singer of the Ramones, Joey Ramone , who was almost never missing in any issue.

The graphic style of punk was inspired by MAD magazine. The front pages of the magazine featured photos and caricatures of musicians as well as cartoons. The content of the booklet initially consisted of deliberately amateurish music journalism with a mixture of interviews, concert reports, comics and cartoons drawn by Holmstrom as well as photo comic stories.

Others

  • In the late 1970s, through his publications as a comic artist and cartoonist for Punk Magazine, John Holmstrom was twice commissioned to help design album covers for the punk band Ramones: for their album Rocket to Russia (1977) he illustrated the back of the case and the inner case, for the Ramones album Road to Ruin (1978) he created the illustration on the front of the record case. In 2003 Holmstrom drew the cover illustration for the Ramones biography On the Road with the Ramones ; In 2005 he contributed a multi-page comic to the Ramones anthology Weird Tales of the Ramones .
  • Legs McNeil published in 1996 together with the author Gillian McCain a documentation of the development of US punk, in which he and other interviewees also give detailed information about the development of Punk Magazine (see section "Literature").

literature

  • Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain: Please Kill Me - the uncensored story of punk . Koch International GmbH / Hannibal, 2004. Standard work on the history of US punk from 1967 to 1992. ISBN 978-3-85445-237-9
  • The superman !!! - Chapter on Punk Magazine in: Steven Lee Beeber: The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's - A Secret History of Jewish Punk . Chicago Review Press, Chicago 2006. ISBN 978-1-55652-761-6
  • Jon Savage: England's Dreaming - Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock . Abridged German-language edition, Edition Tiamat published by Klaus Bittermann Verlag, Berlin 2001. ISBN 3-89320-045-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b McNeil: Please Kill Me , p. 250
  2. ^ A b Monte A. Melnick, Frank Meyer: On Tour with the Ramones . Sanctuary Publishing, London 2003. ISBN 1-86074-514-8
  3. ↑ a b c d e Savage: England's Dreaming , pp. 119 ff.
  4. ↑ Cover of the first edition on the magazine's official website
  5. ↑ John Holmstrom, quoted from Savage, p. 120
  6. ↑ a b McNeil: Please Kill Me , p. 255
  7. ↑ Beeber: The Heebie-Jeebies , p. 128 f.
  8. ↑ Beeber: The Heebie-Jeebies , p. 131
  9. ^ Mc Neil: Please Kill Me , p. 251
  10. ^ McNeil: Please Kill Me , p. 254
  11. ↑ Beeber: The Heebie-Jeebies , p. 132
  12. ↑ Accompanying text to Weird Tales of the Ramones , anthology (three audio CDs, one DVD, comic book ). Warner Bros. Records Inc./Rhino Entertainment Company 2005.