Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

The chapter opens with a voice less academic, if no less intellectual, offering a vivid description of the worsening London heat wave of 1976. As the heat persists and intensifies, society's narrative understanding of the heat shifts from playful, to bothersome, to, finally, something nearing apocalyptic. Tempers flare into race riots, inviting whites to demonize the images of urban blacks seen rioting on the nightly news. This strife and turmoil sets the stage for the collision of subcultures that would become the punk movement.

Punk begins as an unstable concoction. From America comes the minimalist aesthetic of The Ramones, with their street influence and self-denying bent. Adding glam rock's narcissism, nihilism and androgyny to '60s American soul, exotic reggae, and the speed of Northern Soul, serves to deconstruct rock music back to its more fundamental roots. This cultural collision develops an...