The Don Letts film, Punk: Attitude, follows the lineage of punk from its origins in New York to it's heyday in London and beyond. The film is structed chronologically, with the information being presented through archival live footage of bands, and through interviews with many reputable authors, musicians, and zine writers. The film is, unfortunately, lacking in detail and thorough investigation, perhaps the result the limitted presentation techniques. Nonetheless, the film is certainly entertaing and provides at least a blueprint of the punk scene and its ties to the New York movement.The film perpetuates the notion that the Velvet Underground were the forefathers of punk, situating their music and their scene prominantly at the start of the documentary. As Henry Rollins says, "Lou Reed and his crew making this a-tonal music coming from art and heroin and death in the middle of 'feel good' - that's punk rock!" Like previous texts, the film also acknowledges the importance of Andy Warhol, referencing significance he had in shaping the scene and the attitude from which punk developed. This point is mentioned only fleetingly. Further investigation is provided in Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart.
Whereas previous texts have suggested a disdain for the hippie movement, Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols communicates his admiration for them, and even ventures to say that hippies were the first punks. Whether they were reviled or respected, their existence is still important because it created a mainstream image of the West Coast counter-culture to which the East Coast could be diametrically opposed. This binary allowed for propulsion of the NewYork underground image into the media and formed the basis of a new culture with which those to whom 'hippie-dom' was too alien could relate. As Siouxsie Sioux states, "the Velvets stood out from that whole hippie culture." It is interesting to note that Velvet Underground were not just oppositional to mainstream society, they were also oppositional to other more wide-spread counter-cultures. (Now that's punk).
The importance of the New York Dolls is not ignored in this documentary. Thier influence in the UK is expanded upon, with Chrissie Hynde noting that all the punk bands owned their albums. This shows the influence they had on not only the local scene, but the emerging British punk scene. Their association with Malcom McClaron is also mentioned, an association that cannot be overstated as it evidently helped shape McLaren's important later work in the UK. It was McLaren who convinced the Dolls to adopt the red 'Communist' aesthetic in an attempt to provoke outrage. It was a shift that would, as John Holmstrom notes, mark the end of glam and the beginning of punk. Unfortunately, it also marked the downfall of this influential band. Members, noteably Johnny Thunders, would continue to play major roles in the punk scene.
It is easy to see common points of reference emerging between the New York scene and the subcultural theory of locality. Venues such as Max's Kansas City (home to the Velvets) and the Mercer Arts Centre (home to the Dolls) were popular lower East Side venues hosting many alternative bands. The motif of cross-dressing and blurring of genders is not only an affect of the embracing of postmodernity but an important link between especially the Velvet (in their early lyrics), then Lou Reed's solo image, and then the New York Dolls. Both of these exemplars had an association with Andy Warhol, and both produced their debut albums independent of a record deal in mind. Lastly, both recalled images of urban decay. Further research will surely uncover more similarities, but it is fair to suggest that New York itself was an important factor to these bands and therefore punk as a whole.
Soon after the demise of the Dolls, CBGB's opened its doors. This documentary includes a detailed look at the regular bands (such as Television and Suicide) and their different stylistic developments. "Some of these bands I wouldn't classify as punk, but they had the punk attitude," says CBGB's owner Hilly Krystal.
Popularity was the was an unfortunate result of and for the New York scene. The bands who constitued the core of the scene were signed to major labels, and were thus expected to tour. Soon enough there were few bands permanently situated in New York, and the concurrent death of punk and the New York scene seems to reinforce the importance of locality to punk. Further will be more fruitful, but I am inclined to think that this importance of Locality is tied to the importance of authenticity.
"Punk rock wasn't even a thought at that time... but the seeds for punk were certainly being sown by the Dolls and by all the bands that had come previous to that, such as the Vevlets and the Stooges and the MC5" (Roberta Bayley, photographer).
The documentary is very entertaining and definitely affirms the New York scene as figuring prominantly in the genesis of punk. It does lack an academic edge in that it uses little more than interviews to connect the dots, without researching the dots themselves. Nonetheless, it does reinforce the importance of the Velvet Underground and the New York scene as a whole and show, more so than other texts, how widespread the influence of these bands was.
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