Thoreau, Graffin, & the Punk Ethos

Clearly, an anti-establishment and authority-defiant approach is fundamental to both Thoreau and the punk aesthetic, and perhaps the most obvious connection between the two men and movements. In a scholarly book length follow up to his punk manifesto, Greg Graffin expanded on the punk ideal with Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God. In it Graffin explains punk’s challenge to the tyranny of institutional authority warning that “If people unquestionably give in to the massive force exercised by the oppressive institution that is the government, they will enable the people in power.” This criticism mirrors Thoreau’s assertion in Resistance to Civil Government about the relatively few bending the government to their will with the Mexican War. 

Prior to Graffin’s book Anarchy Evolution, Bad Religion’s song "You are the Government" had decreed “when people bend, the moral fabric dies,” and that concern is the essence of Thoreau’s abolitionist stance and the development of his most significant and enduring political work in the art of “Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau’s original thinking on government and the integrity of the individual who dissents began as his counterargument to William Paly’s “Duty of Submission to Civil Government” from The Principals of Moral and Political Philosophy. While scholars and historians widely acknowledge the lineage of Thoreau’s ideas running through the anti-colonialist revolution led by Mohandas Gandhi and the American civil rights protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the defiant beliefs can easily extend through the 1970s and 80s with the rise of punk. 

Granted, no one is aligning the historical struggles for abolition, independence, and civil rights with the kids raging in mosh pits during the early 80s. That doesn’t, however, discount the connection of the punk ethos linking back to the ideas of Thoreau. For, when Graffin “warns against blindly accepting the government directives and blindly conforming to their ideals,” he is channeling the transcendentalist concepts of self-reliance and civil disobedience. Graffin, Bad Religion, and the punks of the Lower East Side would certainly “accept the motto that government is best that governs least” and might even agree that “when men are prepared for it, that is the type of government they shall have.”

Thoreau the Educator

In Laura Dassow Walls' sublime Thoreau biography, she describes 1839 as a time when Thoreau's life truly blossomed. Coming out of the harsh economic market facing young people when Thoreau graduated amidst the Panic of 1837, which led to the country's first and most serious economic depression lasting nearly ten years, Henry and his brother opened their school, and he "rose to a position of standing and honor in his community." The Thoreau school was truly an exemplary model of education, extending far beyond the rote memorization of early America's classical liberal arts foundation. 

In a letter to Orestes Brownson, Thoreau had pondered why we should "leave off our education when we begin to be men and women? ... It is time that villages were universities," uncommon schools where citizens could pursue liberal studies for the the rest of their lives, banding together to fund the arts and learning, and make not a village with a few noble men, but "noble villages of men."

Thoreau: the Economist

While Henry Thoreau is often thought of as an environmentalist and a nature writer, based primarily on the reading public's knowledge his work Walden, or Life in the Woods, fewer people see Thoreau through his philosophy on work and economics. In fact, few people think of Thoreau as an economics writer even though the introductory section to his opus, Walden, is titled "Economy." Truly, Thoreau wrote at length on the natural world and man's relationship to his environment, but his retreat to Walden Pond was specifically designed and chosen for him to have time, space, and a viewpoint from which to critique a dynamic and changing economic situation in Concord and America at large. 

In the study Henry at Work (Kaag and Van Belle), Thoreau is portrayed as one who above all else "realized the power of money to warp our lives." Having graduated from Harvard in 1837 during the most serious economic crisis the young nation had yet faced, Thoreau both witnessed the rise of the consumer commercial economy in which surplus was a new concept, at the same time he experienced the dire fiscal situation facing many young graduates. In fact, as Robert Sullivan points out in The Thoreau You Don't Know, young Henry "went to the pond to make a point about work." Thoreau was actually an incredibly hard worker and industrious young man whose talents ranged from innovator of a new superior pencil lead to trusted surveyor of the Concord landscape.

And, "If you think Thoreau as anti-work, that is because Thoreau questioned "why we work" (Kaag and Van Belle). In embracing the natural world and being in tune with, rather than at odds with, his environment, Thoreau even challenged the Biblical notion of the work week and the Sabbath, opining that man should work one day a week and rest the other six. Imagine the views of church leaders and inheritors of the Puritan ethic with that one. Yet, Thoreau was no "do-little," as he is often mistaken to be and criticized for.  While Thoreau explains that his "purpose in going to Walden was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly, but to transact some private business the fewest obstacles," he was working to explore and develop an economic critique.

And despite those stated intentions of transacting private business, "an important part of of Thoreau's experiment turned out to involve basic economic questions: What is the best way to earn a living? How much time should be spent at it?" (Thoreau's Living Ethics, Cafaro). Few people ask these questions, though Henry believed people should first and foremost draw their own conclusions, rather than submit to standards established by institutions. For he believed the point of economics is not how much wealth an individual produces, but what sort of people that work and wealth makes us.

An interesting connection to punk culture, especially in the second wave California bands like Black Flag and Minutemen, is the serious work ethic exhibited by these musicians to simply work on their terms. Because the punk economy was small, most bands lived quite sparsely, often "hand-to-mouth," and that fiscal reality was fundamental to the band Minutemen's philosophy and ethic of "jamming econo," which basically meant doing things "as cheaply and efficiently as possible" (White Boys, White Noise, Bannister). 

FoCoMX 2025: Standout Performances, Discoveries and Memorable Musical Moments

"The streets are alive with the sounds of local music ..."  I was so excited to attend and write about this event for the second year in a row. Life is good in FoCo -- literally dancing in the streets

Every April, the streets of Old Town Fort Collins are filled with the sounds of live music. FoCoMX took center stage once again April 18-19, amidst cold, snowy weather that earned the event the nickname SnoCoMX. Its official nickname is "America's biggest little music festival," and this year's edition featured 400 acts representing every imaginable genre performing at thirty-plus venues across town.

My wife and I joined the annual celebration for the second year in a row, starting on the crowded, slightly snowy patio of Equinox Brewing, where singer-songwriter Michael Kirkpatrick kicked off the festivities with a solo set. The musician whose voice was once described as "an anthropomorphic brontosaurus that has popped out of a children's book to teach kids about the danger of playing with matches" set a warm, welcoming tone with folksy narratives about life, love, community and spirit.

... Read the rest of the story at Westword.com

Thoreauvian Punk Philosophy

Henry Thoreau is widely cited as an inspiration and patron saint by many diverse groups and varied ways of thinking. Far from simply an environmentalist or an abolitionist or an activist, Thoreau is a significant American philosopher. And the scope of my ongoing work "The Punk on Walden Pond" is specifically about viewing Thoreau and punk as belief systems. They offer distinct but common thoughts on "how to live."

The connection runs through themes of American history, specifically in writing and literature. For, Thoreau's essays, Whitman's poems, and Huck's narrative all can be considered precursors to punk philosophy. As punk scholar and curator of the St. Louis Punk Archive has noted, "It's a matter of intent," as opposed to rigid guidelines about the sound of the music or the style of clothing or the demeanor of the audience.

One need only look to the earliest underpinnings of punk culture in the late 1970s on the Lower East Side and a music venue/bar called CBGB's. With the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, and Blondie all playing at the same time, in the same venue, among the same scene, you have to see punk rock, especially American punk, as diverse and absolutely inclusive, and not just about a three-chord downstroke.

Kick off the Summer Music Season at FoCoMX in Fort Collins, Colorado

I was so excited to write this preview for FoCoMX, the "biggest little music festival in the country."

As the weather warms in Colorado, we can't help but think of music festivals. One of the largest and earliest festivals to kick off the season happens in downtown Fort Collins each April with FoCoMX, or the Fort Collins Music Experiment, which was created by the Fort Collins Musicians Association in 2008. Taking place across Old Town from Friday, April 18, to Saturday, April 19, this event features more than 400 bands at thirty-plus venues, and we have the lowdown on everything you need to "FoCoMX in style."

The festival kicks off at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 18, on the patio of Equinox Brewing with a solo set from the rich baritone voice of renowned Colorado singer-songwriter Michael Kirkpatrick, FoCoMA's 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree. After a brief proclamation from the mayor's office acknowledging April as Music Appreciation Month, Kirkpatrick will croon his soulfully whimsical folk narratives, and the festivities are off and running.

The key to a successful downtown music festival is a collaborative relationship with the community and businesses that support a nearly all-volunteer effort to spotlight Colorado music. "FoCoMX has become the quintessential Fort Collins weekend," says Karla Baise of Odell Brewing, a longtime festival sponsor. "The vibe runs high from the center of the floor at Washington's, our largest venue, to the sidewalks as people stop to hug each other, crossing paths on their way to see bands and friends play across town."

Read the rest of the story at Westword ... 

How Fort Collins Music Association Built a Thriving Scene

In my latest piece for Westword Magazine, I explore a unique music organization which cultivates the thriving indie music scene in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Fort Collins is a hotbed for live music with a diverse collection of venues that host national touring acts and local bands. And the key to FoCo's thriving music scene is a unique grassroots music nonprofit that feeds and cultivates the area's love of music: the Fort Collins Musicians Association, or FoCoMA.
The organization officially launched in 2007. It was simply a means of “the right people at the right time,” according to co-founding member and board president Greta Cornett, who is considered the driving force, glue and spirit of FoCoMA. Cornett, a CSU graduate, has been heavily embedded in Fort Collins local music scene since the mid-90s, playing trumpet in the band 12 Cents for Marvin and volunteering as a host of KRFC's Live at Lunch show.

In the early 2000s, numerous Fort Collins music venues had closed for a variety of reasons, and local musicians were struggling for places to play. Many bands were displaced, with national acts often bumping them from the few spots at bars and theaters.

So Cornett, Peggy Lyle, Dennis Bigalow and numerous other local musicians began meeting to discuss how to support each other and the music community. Lyle, who is now FoCoMA’s executive director, was working as the event director for the Fort Collins Downtown Business Association. Bigalow, another co-founder and current board secretary, was the music director at Fort Collins indie radio station KRFC, which is where he met Cornett.

The musicians would have Sunday afternoon hangs at Route 34, a local bar and bike shop founded by two CSU grads. What began as simple conversations sharing knowledge about the industry eventually became more formal education panels, professional development programs that the association continues to this day. At Cornett’s suggestion, the spot added live music to its offerings, becoming a new venue for musicians to gather. Those Sunday afternoons discussing goals for FoCoMA "opened our eyes to so many different scenes,” Cornett reflects. “We have great music up here, but no one knew about it."

... Read the rest of the story at Westword.com ... 

The Wild: from Thoreau to Punk

In a 1972 essay titled “In Wildness is Thoreau,” delivered at an annual literary conference, scholar Lewis Leary opines to have “us think briefly about the Thoreau who was a wild man, who let his hair grow long, … who dressed as he wished, and did exactly as he wished.” That wild spirit of resolute and uncompromising individuality is foundational to both Thoreau's thinking and the philosophy and motivation for punk rock and punk culture. 

Musician and rock journalist John Robb describes punk rock and punk philosophy as “the wild spirit, that outsider cry.” A key component for understanding that spirit is to separate it from the term "wilderness," which people often mistakenly believe Thoreau was referencing. It wasn't the wilderness, which is outside of us; it was the wild, which is within.

In the critical analysis America’s Bachelor Uncle: Thoreau and the American Polity, scholar Bob Pepperman Taylor asserts “... the heart of Thoreau’s revolt was his continual assertion that the only true America is that country where you are able to pursue life without encumbrance” (3) And “Thoreau exhibits a young person’s rebelliousness,” an insight with which Emerson would wholeheartedly agree. And similarly, nowhere and at no time is rebellion more about a youth than it is in punk rock culture. For Thoreau was attacking the complacency of the emerging American middle class, just as second wave punk Bands Bad Religion and Black Flag did in the 1980s Reagan America.

Albert Camus famously asserted "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." And like Thoreau in his experiment living in society but simultaneously outside of it, Dicki Hebdige said of punk in his book on subcultures, “No subculture has sought with more grim determination than the punks to detach itself from the taken-for-granted landscape of normalized forms …”

Jack Kerouac's Birthday

I came to Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation via Jim Morrison of the Doors.

It was during my middle school years that The Doors Greatest Hits was released, and I picked up the book No One Here Gets Out Alive, Danny Sugarman's rich biography of the Lizard King. That book became my reading list source, as the story of Jim's youth recounted his reading of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and other philosophers, as well as a vast list of other books. One passage in particular I can still recall mentioned how young Jim closed the book that had a profound impact on him, the story of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity.

I'd never heard of the book or its author Jack Kerouac, and I knew nothing of the Beat Generation. But I knew that if that book was a life changing experience for Jim Morrison, I was going to read it, too. Honestly, I'm not sure I really understood what I was reading after buy the classic paperback copy at Barnes & Noble, but I knew it was unlike anything I'd ever read, and I would be intrigued for many years to come by the works and life of Jack Kerouac.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”

   

Thoreau, Punk, & Music as Culture

The merging of a musical style and a philosophical movement is not unprecedented, and the connection between the concepts is actually a fairly obvious and significant part of cultural scholarship. In the book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock-n-Roll, esteemed writer, critic, and music historian Greil Marcus explores American culture through its music, a distinction which is integral to understanding the uniquely American voice and the genre of music that grew from that foundation. In explaining his goal of writing the book, Marcus notes, “It is an attempt to broaden the context in which the music is heard; to deal with rock-n-roll not as youth culture or counterculture but simply as American culture.” 

The symmetry between those ideas and cultural markers is integral to understanding the connection between an early nineteenth century philosopher and a late twentieth century music scene. Art is never created in a vacuum, and few critics or scholars would deny that environmental factors play a role in the development of music, paintings, books, and other cultural artifacts. Art is of the zeitgeist, and in this case, as Kevin Dunn asserts in the book Global Punk: Resistance & Rebellion in Everyday Life, “Punk sprang from a … social context [of] … alienation from social, economic, and political forces around them.” 

Clearly, similarities in both social influences and artistic reaction can be seen in the writings of Henry David Thoreau and the songs, styles, and scenes of punk.

The Philosophy of Thoreauvian Punk

While the life of Henry David Thoreau is extensively documented with generally broad agreement of his identity and legacy, the task of narrowing down a commonly accepted definition of punk is far more complicated. Punk by its very nature is resistant to codification, and because so much of punk history is scene and time specific, it can be difficult to agree on common elements. It is seemingly more difficultu to imagine and articulate a unifying "philosophy of punk."

Of course, that does not mean there has not been an extensive amount of research and writing that attempts to clarify and articulate the punk ethos. In fact, punk is one of the most well-researched and written about subcultures in American history. Almost from its earliest incarnations, writers and critics documented the scenes with commentary that went far beyond reviews of bands, songs, and shows. Thus, it’s not surprising that when Greg Graffin sat down to articulate a common vision and set of beliefs, punk would be discussed as not simply a musical style but “a way of seeing and experiencing the world.” 

Two noteworthy studies of punk which share Graffin’s view of punk as more than just a style of music are Craig O’Hara’s The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise!! initially published in 1999 at roughly the same time as Graffin’s manifesto, and the academic collaboration Screaming for Change: Articulating a Unifying Philosophy of Punk by Lars Kristiansen et al, published ten years later. Whatever the origin of punk, and the claims and theories are vast, the music scene and the movement that followed are a significant merging of numerous factors which all played a role in creating something unique, impactful, timely, and ultimately timeless. 

Putting punk then in a historical context is generally “launched down one of three distinctly separate trajectories: 1. Punk is a subculture; 2. Punk is a musical genre; 3. Punk is an authentic cultural expression.” These three angles are all significant components of punk, and establishing a connection back one hundred and thirty years requires synthesis of all. Though deceptively simple and obvious on the surface or to the uninitiated, punk has a long story to tell, one whose roots trace back to the fringe of Concord, Massachusetts in the early 1800s.

Patti Smith: Transcendentalist Punk

Patti Smith is a transitional moment and figure in the development of punk, and a closer look at her career reveals her as also a manifestation of the Thoreauvian influence on the punk genre and movement. As a multifaceted artist, Patti Smith, like Thoreau before her, is appreciated by multiple communities, making her a perfect synthesis of transcendentalism and punk. 

Music scholar/writer Simon Warner describes her as “a woman who carries Beat credentials,” and Smith has been connected to a wide swath of musicians ranging from Bob Dylan to Iggy Pop. Her style, presence, and status in the punk community from its very beginning in the Bowery on Manhattan's Lower East Side also serve as a testament to the idea that punk does not simply refer to the stripped down, amped up musical style associated with the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and the entire hardcore scene. 

Called the punk rock poet laureate and even the Godmother of Punk, Smith is an arguably atypical punk in terms of her music, and she has been known to say she never considered herself punk at all. Simply by nature of proximity to the music scene that emerged in the Lower East Side around CBGBs, she became associated with punk. Performing at the same time and in the same place as bands like the Ramones and Television, the punk label was inevitably applied, and Smith was certainly part of the community of bands and artists supporting each other. But more importantly, Smith’s presence and association simply broadened the definition of punk, assuring it was more about originality and authenticity than it was about speed and volume. 

Truly, one of the earliest and most significant qualities of punk emerged from the one sacrosanct rule for performing at CBGBs – no covers. The only requirement owner Hilly Krystal had in the early days was that bands play their own music. Just like Thoreau, they heard a call to march to their own drum beat, and that spirit of originality has been the punk rock ethos, and that ethos is Thoreauvian Punk. As far as originals go, Patti Smith is in rarified air, and her place in the punk ecosystem is a testament to the idea that punk rock is more about intent than a specific chord progression, drum beat, or sound.