Peruvian Punk as a Global Means of Underground Production

Abstract

Starting from the context of Lima, Peru’s 1980s underground rock scene, I develop a theory of punk as a means of global underproduction and discursive undercutting. The aim is to think of punk in contrast to understandings of capitalist tendencies toward over-production, the specifically aesthetic dimensions that over-production takes within cultural industries, and the ways punk production becomes tied to irruptive discourses of disregard for public norms. I explore this theoretical framework by analyzing one of the Lima underground’s most iconic examples, the band Narcosis’ demo cassette first recorded in a garage in 1985, now circulating in digital and limited edition vinyl.

Notes

1. This was in fact during one of Peru’s most volatile political periods (i.e., amid the rise and fall of the Shining Path). Due to space and a desire to focus elsewhere, I refrain from any real analysis of the political context. However, this is a crucial part of a book now in production (see Greene, Punk).

2. In the more technical Marxist sense over-production has to do with a correlation of historical tendencies that inevitably lead toward repeated crises: the historical drive towards technological efficiency in commodity production; the increasing disproportion of dead (i.e. mechanized) to living (i.e. human) labor; the related tendency for profit rates to fall.

3. For the uninitiated, this was the famous news headline in late 1976 that followed the Sex Pistols’ live interview by Bill Grundy and had the double effect of scandalizing an entire nation and announcing the existence of “punk rock” to most of an unaware world (Savage 257–60).

4. Other early cassettes released soon after First Dose include: the compilation titled Vol. 1 with songs by Leusemia, Zcuela Cerrada, Guerrilla Urbana, and Autopsia; a full-length cassette by Autopsia titled Sistema y Poder; Vol. 2 which included 13 newer bands. Dozens of others followed in subsequent years.

5. Equally telling was the emotional reaction that Narcosis produced in Medellín. An underestimation in venue size resulted in a mass of punks being refused entry, at which point an angry punk mob took over a public park and clashed with police, producing one fatality and dozens of injuries.

6. Here is a short list of other ’80s Peruvian punk bands, originally produced on demo cassette and now released on limited edition vinyl: G3, “Un Nuevo Enemigo,” LP; Kaos, EP; María T-Ta y el Empujón Brutal, EP; Ellos Aun Viven, EP; Pánico, EP; Volumen I, LP; Autopsia, “Sistema y Poder,” EP; Descontrol, LP. In most cases, they were initially released by small independent labels in the US and a small percentage of the records (sometimes as few as 10 per cent) were shipped to Lima to be sold by the band members.

7. Thus a 2008 edition of Leusemia’s 1985 LP (the main example of ’80s punk vinyl produced domestically by Peru’s now defunct Virrey label) was released on vinyl by the independent label, Lengua Armada, run out of San Francisco by Martín Sorrondeguy of Los Crudos/Limp Wrist. Ataque Frontal’s 1987 EP, originally released on vinyl by the French label New Wave by on the basis of a cassette recorded in Lima, was re-edited and released in 2005 by a small US label named Burrito Records.