Art school manifestos, classical music and industrial abjection: tracing the artistic, political and musical antecedents of punk

This chapter charts and explores the complex cultural origins of punk in Britain through three different case studies, beginning with an exploration of the influence of the Situationist International (SI) on the punk ethos and aesthetic around the Sex Pistols. Secondly, it looks at the musical and artistic trajectory of the anarcho-punk band Crass and, in particular, the contemporary classical music tradition that informed the work of Penny Rimbaud et. al., from the late 1960s, to the formation of Crass in the 1970s. Thirdly, the chapter turns to the artistic influences of Neil Megson, later to be known as Genesis P-Orridge. Here, emphasis is placed on a timeline of artistic and political activities by P-Orridge, from his time in school, through his forming of the COUM Transmissions in the early 1970s, to the early days of the innovative musical ensemble Throbbing Gristle (TG), formed in 1975. The case studies contribute to a wider understaning of the richer cultural references, practices and traditions that early punk drew on.