Beyond Rip It Up: Towards A New Definition Of Post Punk?
So why does post-punk work so well as a brand when its content remains amorphous? Reynolds himself defined it as "less a genre of music than a space of possibility". Yet we can't lose sight of the fact that the Latin qualifier means after, subsequent or later. Some limitation on duration is also necessary, though application can't be merely calendar-defined. We have to respond to the term with some reference to musical discipline and its entanglement with punk itself. Is there a compelling argument for digesting the period 78-82 as a single musico-sociological unit? I know not of such a beast. Unless you deconstruct the repeated message broadcast from 1978 onwards that punk was 'dead' and that a new dawn was implicit from that point. But punk wasn't dead. Some of its most critical interventions still lay ahead.
