edited by Daniel Sinker

We Owe You Nothing is a collection of select interviews from Punk Planet magazine from the late ’90s and early noughties. Most of the interviewees are musicians from punk bands, but also people from the ’biz side––people running record labels or distribution networks––as well as individuals and groups involved in politics that mattered to often left-leaning punks, like Noam Chomsky or representatives from Ruckus Society or Voices in the Wilderness. The end result is mostly about punk music and culture, but includes important discussions surrounding ethics and morality, society, and life.

I often enjoy reading interviews, but there’s something particularly special about a collection like We Owe You Nothing, where the interviewer knows enough about the interviewee’s work to move beyond a superficial introduction, and the interviewee feels comfortable enough, as a result, to be candid with his answers. Right from the first interview, I knew I was in for a treat reading this book: When Ian MacKaye from Fugazi relates his father’s perspective on the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood, I could feel the sincerity. This wasn’t rehearsed marketing; this was real. Sharing in such a thing helps readers to witness even a glimpse of someone else’s experience, and it helps to better understand the human condition. While I didn’t find all the interviews to be equally interesting, most, if not all, managed to maintain this level of honesty.

From this depiction, I got an overall sense that the people working on Punk Planet found themselves within an aging movement struggling in many ways to maintain the original, simpler essence that drew many people to it. This on its own doesn’t suggest that it was necessarily dead or dying, or even that there was a lack of value in the then-current output, but more that there was significant splintering within the movement and also threats from the mainstream to steal the punk soul and mangle it in the process. This seemed to bring a general distrust and a lack of cohesiveness with it, which served to at least damage what made the underground such a vibrant community a decade before. However, We Owe You Nothing brings to mind discussions of the failure and decline of countercultural movements of years past. (Jack Kerouac’s lament that American society was more and more rejecting the simple life he fought for in The Dharma Bums and Hunter Thompson’s analysis of the failure of the psychedelic movement in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are the big things I’m reminded of, specifically.) This makes me consider that We Owe You Nothing may, in fact, be a historical record documenting the decline of punk culture, though likely not the music.

But, even if I’m wrong about the last point, punk’s similarities to cultural upheavals from bygone eras likely more strongly demonstrates that, if a single movement loses direction and ultimately dies out, the spirit endures––though it likely morphs into something that doesn’t superficially resemble its previous incarnation. There are still people out there who believe that people are more important than money, countries, or corporations; that you shouldn’t have to conform to live a meaningful life; and that some things are worth fighting for, even if public opinion is against you and even if it comes with personal risk. The trick then becomes finding where it goes, what it becomes next.