“This Is Radio Clash”: First-Generation Punk as Radical Media Ecology and Communicational Noise

This chapter will argue that in relation to dominant communication media such as newspapers, radio and television, punk rock operated as a form of noise, less in the literal sense since noisy forms of rock music were already well established, but in the sense of communicational noise, as an excess of the standard requirements for rock music communication. More than just ‘ineptness’ in relation to professional recordings and instrumental prowess (Hegarty), punk was a short circuiting of mainstream media channels operating both by an alternative production of media and the production of events unassimilable by the mass media and especially radio and television. It will argue that the first generation punk band the Clash was as much a form of alternative world service radio, informing listeners about both local and global struggles for freedom and survival, as it was a band.