'Jesus was a punk'

Remember the late 1970s? If you were around back then you'll know that punk was all everyone in the music industry was talking about.

The Sex Pistols, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren (the photo on McLaren's Wikipedia site was taken by me) were being outrageous, and The Clash were tearing up the music rule book. Across the Pond, the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop (so called 'Godfather of punk') were similarly disruptive.

Punk rock was loud and basic, a distorted, fast moving and very aggressive form of music that captured the imagination of an entire generation of young people. The boundaries were blurred between the bands and their audiences, and it seemed as though anyone could join in. Punk overturned the acceptable norms and challenged conventions, because it was raw and honest, and it took no prisoners. Kids were angry about society, seeing injustice and corruption everywhere they looked, and they wanted their voices to be heard. But punk was more than just loud protest music.

An entirely new subculture emerged, influencing fashion, jewellery, cosmetics, hairstyles, dance, film and TV, art ... in fact most of the creative and expressive arts were disrupted in some way by a new wave of anarchic, do-it-yourself ideology. It also spawned new political movements, and loosened the grip record companies held over bands. To say that punk was a flash in the pan is underestimating a significant momentum of youth that ultimately changed the way bands and artists worked and made their impact.

It seems that punk is making a comeback. Or, to quote some of the proponents of the genre - it never really went away. There are dozens of Christian Punk bands currently active, on both sides of the pond, and the UK is seeing a resurgence of interest from many. Peter 118 (pictured above) are one of the newest wave of Christian punk bands to lend credence to this claim. As a trio, they generate an impressive wall of sound reminiscent of the Pistols. Their faith is conveyed strongly through their music and they are very, very busy on the gig circuit, both in the UK and across Europe.

I caught up with the trio after their set in the Big Top at Creation Fest 2018 to find out what drives them to continue to play music that is rooted in a revolution that is now over 40 years old. Back then, John Lydon famously declared there was 'no future'. The members of Peter 118 might disagree with that statement. When I asked the band whether Christian living and punk were mutually exclusive, one of the members responded with 'Jesus was a punk'. Find out what she meant when she made this claim. Click on the red arrow below to hear the full story.


Photo credit: Liberty Pearl

Previous Creation Fest interviews: Philippa Hanna: Beautiful Horizons

Creative Commons License
'Jesus was a punk' by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pioneers of CCM: Parchment

Image
Keith, Sue and John in 1972 I have told this story before, but it bears repeating. I came to faith in early September 1973 after a day at the Bromyard Folk Festival where I heard a folk-rock trio called Parchment play. I can still remember the rich aroma of the trampled grass that had been baking all day under the warm canvas, as the hot late summer sun beat down upon the large marquee we were sat in. The stage was small, and rather make-shift, but the sound system was powerful, and the microphones on their stands glinted silver. Parchment came onto the stage, looking a little dishevelled and Bohemian, and also quite hairy - and performed a short set that included several of their new songs, but also the CCM classic Light Up The Fire. It was this song that hit me like a ton of bricks. The classic chorus is still sung in schools and churches all over the world today: 'Light up the fire, and let the flame burn. Open the door let Jesus return, take seeds of His Spirit and l...
Read more

Dartmoor prison blues

Image
This is continuation of my short series of posts about how I became involved with Contemporary Christian Music. Previous posts are listed and linked at the foot of this post. Me c 1980 I met Roger Lenk while we were both at Marjons in Plymouth (then a teacher education college). I soon discovered that Roger identified as a 'Messianic Jew' - someone who had been born into the Jewish tradition, but had accepted Yeshua (Jesus) as his mashiach (Messiah). We actually first met during a journey up to Dartmoor Prison where we were both billed to play at an event organised by Youth for Christ. It was a daunting trip for me, because Dartmoor Prison can be a forbidding place at the best of times, and we arrived at Princetown that autumnal evening as an eery fog was drifting in over the moors and the sun had already set. The granite walls of the prison stared at us gauntly, and the sodium lamps cast a sickly yellow hue over the stonework. As the large gates of Dartmoor slammed sono...
Read more

Just Vinyl

Image
I've spent a lot of time in the studio over the last week or so, recording programmes for my new show which will air this Autumn on CrossRhythms radio  (see dates below!) The show is called Just Vinyl, and it features classic Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) tracks, drawn largely from the 1970s and 1980s. I'm playing exclusively vinyl because it has a particular quality and although there are a few clicks and pops every now and then, I think this just adds to the beauty of the medium. Many of the artists I'm featuring are giants of the genre, pioneers of CCM when it was in its infancy, when very few of the musicians were full-time. Today, Christian music is big business - there are radio stations, record labels and management/touring companies dedicated fully to promoting it. Back in the day, very little of this existed, and those who were involved in pioneering CCM had to forge their own pathways. It was not easy to finance ventures into Christian music - most musi...
Read more