<nettime> Was the new economy the punk rock of the last decade?

["David Garcia" <davidg@xs4all.nl>]

Was the new economy the punk rock of the last decade?

Punk was the movement that finally demystified being a rockstar.
Traditional musical skills of even the most basic kind were ditched. the
paradigmatic punk band would only need (accompanied of course with the right
attitude and or haircut) to thrash away at their instruments and concoct a
bold sloganising dittie 'anarchy in the UK' 'God Save the Queen'. All you
needed to be a rock star was energy (lots of it) attitude (even more of it).
And for a few months some of them were right!

well for a while I've had this de ja vu thing of thinking I was back in the
late 70's when every one I knew seemed to be in a band but this time round
everyone has a dot.company. Types of people who  generation ago would have
talked about 'selling out' are now ONLY selling out, to the highest bidder.
Money is cool, money is the new black, youth culture has organised itself
around money as never before. Money doesn't buy culture it is culture. Just
as once you didn't need to hold a tune to be a rock star this time round you
don't have to make a profit to be a billionaire. So what if its only for a
week. In the future will every one be a millionaire? Yes but only for 15
minutes.

So can we learn anything from what happened when the punk bubble burst?
When the emperors clothes were only held together with safety pins. Well
interestingly punk never went away. It is still with us. From the wild
speciation of those heady days a surprising amount made the transition into
the pop version of viability and the DIY approach to fashion, music and art
is still visible-particularly in Brit. art from T.Emin to D.Hurst the 'in
you face' combination the  entrepreneurial punk ethic/aesthetic remains with
us and can still be re.freshing.  In much of indy pop culture. the
territories opened up turned out to be real and the insights and procedures
are continually  re-purposed and re-mixed for new eras. And when you see
footage of the sex pistols in full frenzy you realise that they were even
better than we thought at the time. Whatever they could or couldn't do they
were a bloody good band

I have only one fear of pursuing this spurious analogy and that is that punk
was followed by the pathetic...sigh.... 'New Romantics'... sigh...

Are we in for the New Romantic economy? Geert Lovink please put this on the
agenda of your conference so that we me know how it will look. Personally
I'm waiting for the grunge economy. I'm told it won't be long.   

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