Next week, Bill Caraher is going to hang out with some pretty fun guys and talk about punk rock in the  Trump era at Ojata Record in Grand Forks. The event is partly to celebrate the publication of Brian Schill’s new book, This Year’s Work in the Punk Bookshelf, Or, Lusty Scripts (Indiana University Press, 2017), which he and Bill chatted about over on the North Dakota Quarterly page in November and the book that Bret Weber and Bill Caraher wrote, The Bakken: An Archaeology of an Industrial Landscape (NDSU Press 2017). 

There will be bands: June Panic and the Semaphores and Mistaken Thieves.

There’s a free book: Punk Archaeology (The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota 2014).

Here’s a link to the Facebook event page. The press release is below the flyer.

Local authors and bands to talk “Punk in the Trump Era”

GRAND FORKS—On Saturday, January 20, 2018, a handful of current and former UND faculty will occupy the stage to discuss “Punk in the Trump Era” at Ojata Records in Grand Forks. 

Representing the fields of history, music, archaeology, social work, and cultural studies, Bill Caraher, Chris Gable, and Brian Schill will hold an open conversation about what, if anything, punk subculture contributes to contemporary political discourse in the United States today, especially with an eye toward the current American President.

“For all its dissonance and noise, punk rock music has always offered some salient commentary on contemporary politics,” Caraher says. “With the world seemingly more and more chaotic and dissonant all the time, today seems like a readymade opportunity for those who think about punk seriously to stoke this conversation.”

According to Schill, the panel very much expects audience participation in the free, public event, which will be moderated by UND Social Work professor and Grand Forks City councilperson Bret Weber.

“While the politics of punk are often stereotyped as left-leaning, they’re often much more ambiguous,” adds Schill, who performed in punk clubs across the country with a variety of bands in the late-1990s and early-2000s. “Some punk bands have joined the so-called resistance movement, but there are a lot of Trump supporters among those who also identify as ‘punk,’ including former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten and the punkier members of the alt-right.”

The event doubles as a book release party of sorts as each of the faculty are promoting recent scholarship they’ve produced on (post)punk, politics, and North Dakota:

·       Caraher is co-author of The Bakken: An Archaeology of an Industrial Landscape (NDSU Press, 2017) and published the title Punk Archaeology (The DigitalPress@UND) in 2014

·       Weber is Caraher’s The Bakken co-author and has studied the social impact of North Dakota’s oil boom

·       Gable is the author of The Words and Music of Sting (Praeger, 2008) and The Words and Music of Sheryl Crow (Praeger, 2016)

·       Schill is the author of the literary history of punk and postpunk music, This Year’s Work in the Punk Bookshelf, Or, Lusty Scripts (Indiana University Press, 2017)

The panel will serve as the opening act for performances by two local punk/indie bands: June Panic and the Semaphores and Mistaken Thieves.

The event, sponsored by Ojata Records (aka Dogmahal) and agricouture.org, begins around 7 p.m.

###

Brian James Schill
Founder, agricouture.org
agricoutures@gmail.com