“We see you burning and we can’t look away
All we created erupts into flames
How could we know how far you would fall?
Bewitched by the shadows that are cast on the wall”
From “Auroch” by GWAR
We don’t all connect to music in the same way. For some of us, music is at best background noise. We keep a radio station or playlist on and it serves as a pleasant accompaniment to the daily activities of our lives. For many of us, our connection to music is a bit more robust. We view music as great entertainment and we seek out our favorite artists to buy records and see shows. And still others among us take the next step to play music and thus develop music as a skill that we can actively enjoy in our lives. These are valid and important ways of relating to music, and in fact research suggest that engaging with music either by listening or playing can have significant emotional and physical health benefits.
And yet, for many of us, despite the positive impact music can have under these circumstances, relating to music in these ways is still something we consume at a bit of a distance. It’s something we do – it’s not something we are. But during our conversation on The Hardcore Humanism Podcast, Dr. Michael Bishop, a.k.a. The Berserker Blothar of GWAR, explained that for some of us, music is not simply an activity. It is a transformative narrative – an ongoing and dynamic interaction with music that can actually change the fundamental nature of how we understand and relate to ourselves. And in that transformation, we develop not only a love for music, but also a way for music to be an integral part of our self-concept — our musical identity.
While Bishop explained that this transformation and development of musical identity can occur in any musical genre, he specifically highlighted how this process emerged for him as a young man interested in punk rock. The key concept for him was how there’s a moment or a series of points when individuals will associate themselves with music such as punk rock and “when they realize what it means for them,” Bishop told me. “And those are very powerful, emotional, life changing moments for people. And I’m borrowing that concept from religious conversion narratives … where people sort of realize in a moment, what and who they are.”
Why would punk rock be uniquely positioned to become a part of one’s identity? One part of it is that when punk rock first emerged as an art form, it was inherently seen as dangerous. Punk rock at its core is a confrontation – performance art designed to challenge our understanding of ourselves as individuals and as a society. So, whether intentional or not, being a fan of punk rock was not simply a musical preference, it was an affront to the establishment.
As a young man, Bishop perhaps unwittingly shared that desire to confront the world around him and recalled a childhood memory of watching news anchor, Walter Cronkite reporting on punk rock as the latest youth trend in Great Britain. Cronkite showed images of punk rockers with safety pins through their cheeks and a band called Sex Pistols and asked, “‘Are these the kinds of things that we can expect on American shores?’” Bishop recalled. “And it was kind of posed as a threat, like it was a very threatening thing, like we hope this doesn’t happen here … I was obsessed … I knew it was something meaningful.”
Part of how we shape our identity is by expressing our beliefs socially. We may have a belief, attitude, or preference that we experience privately and this does shape our identity to some degree. But often it is how we express our experience on an interpersonal level that starts to fuse our beliefs with our identity. And soon, Bishop found that his private preference for Sex Pistols had strong meaning to others when presented socially. He described an interaction with his cousin that impressed upon Bishop the power of punk rock.
“I was spending time with my cousin … And he was like, ‘What kind of music do you like?’ I don’t even know why I said this, but I said, ‘I like the Sex Pistols. That’s my favorite band,’” Bishop explained. “And he had such a strong negative reaction against it, you know, like, ‘That is garbage. That’s not music. I don’t know what you’re thinking.’ And being the person that I was and the person I was becoming. That was really gratifying to me in some way.”
During our discussion, Bishop explained how these types of events can create a musical identity. He highlights the importance of our personal narrative – or the story we tell ourselves about who we are and what makes up our identity. Bishop described this narrative as an ongoing, dynamic and organic process. And his personal experience with listening to Walter Cronkite and interacting with his cousin about Sex Pistols was starting to shape the narrative around his musical identity as someone who wanted to challenge rather than simply accept the world in which he lived. “It somehow was reaffirming things that I already felt about myself…,” Bishop said. “That I was different, that I didn’t really belong in this place and doing these things.”
But the confrontation of punk was not simply societal. Yes the appearance of the artists and the lyrical themes of the music were often direct challenges to social norms. But as an art form, punk rock also shattered existing norms about what music was, and both could and should be. Bishop explained how this was a further part of his narrative that connected punk rock to his musical identity.
“I dropped the needle on Never Mind The Bollocks. And I was like, this isn’t music. I listened to it. And I was like, I don’t know why, but this, it really makes me very excited,” he described. “My sort of involvement with punk really followed this pattern … kind of undoing the expectations that I had for music, and being willing to allow those expectations to be undone.”
The combination of punk’s societal, lyrical and musical confrontation emboldened Bishop. And this was a near universal response to punk rock – it felt like anyone could do it. And this is where punk rock can be particularly well-suited for becoming a part of our musical identity. We may enjoy other forms of music – but unless we are virtuosos we can’t perform them. But Bishop explained how his punk rock narrative became stronger when he realized that he could actually play punk rock.
“When I listen to Led Zeppelin, I’m listening to something that I can’t do and that I can’t be. I can’t sing like that. I can’t play like that. I can’t be rich like that. I can’t look like that,” he said. “But with this music, I instantly recognized at a very young age that I could be like that. I could sing like that. I could play like that. And that, for me was hugely important … I became a fan and I became a creator at one time. And that I think, is actually … the particularity of punk rock, right? That’s the power of it.”
The power of punk rock goes a bit further by encouraging acceptance of different people and ideas and ways of doing things. And in this way Bishop’s musical identity helps facilitate a more general identity of being an open-minded and accepting person. “Not only a tolerance, but an atmosphere of encouragement … Here’s a stage. You don’t have to do this in your garage, in your basement. You can do it here and we’ll watch,” he recalled. “And we’ll do so uncritically or even if it’s critically, it’s critical but within a framework that somehow you can even identify with the person that’s criticizing you, right?
“It’s like we’re all somehow on the same side.”
Image Source: Rachel Naomi
