A London punk diary on visions, the loud choir, and the workers who got the news first
Punk runs on the refusal to do what is expected, and this December I found the original refusenik in the oldest story going: a man who had a dream, ignored what his whole society expected of him, and did the harder, stranger, more decent thing instead. I am Siobhan, London punk, and Joseph following his dream against the crowd is the most punk decision in the whole book.
The dream against the crowd
Punk is the decision to follow your own vision when the whole crowd expects otherwise, and the account of Joseph’s dream is exactly that decision. Everyone around him expected the conventional response, the respectable thing, the path society had already mapped. And a dream told him to ignore all of it and do the harder, stranger, more loyal thing instead. That is the punk move: trusting your own vision over the crowd’s expectations, doing the difficult decent thing when the whole world expects the easy conventional one. Joseph heard his own vision and followed it against every expectation, which is precisely what punk was invented to celebrate: the refusal to do what is expected, the loyalty to your own harder truth.
I find Joseph genuinely inspiring as a punk. He did not do the respectable, expected, socially approved thing. He followed a vision the crowd could not see, made the harder choice, stayed loyal to something deeper than convention. That is more punk than any amount of noise, the quiet stubborn refusal to do what everyone expected.
My genuinely defiant personal week
Let me report on the state of me. I turned down a paying gig this week because it meant playing for people I could not stomach, and everyone expected me to take the money and shut up, and I followed my own vision instead and told them no. It cost me. The rent notices what my principles cost. But I slept fine, because I did the harder decent thing against every expectation, which is the whole point of the racket. Joseph turned down the expected path for the decent one. I turned down the money for the principle. We are the same kind of stubborn.
According to the broadcasters, the artists who last are the ones who followed their own vision over the crowd’s expectations, which Joseph did against his whole society and every skint principled musician does against the rent.
The loudest choir in history
Punk loves a loud, overwhelming, unignorable sound, and the account of the angel and the heavenly choir is the loudest gig in history. A sound so enormous it stopped a field full of working people where they stood, an overwhelming wall of noise that could not be ignored. That is the punk dream: a sound so powerful it stops everyone, so loud it cannot be tuned out, so overwhelming it changes the people who hear it. The heavenly choir is the original wall of sound, the first unignorable gig, the loudest most overwhelming performance ever staged, and it was played, punk-appropriately, not for the rich in their halls but for the workers in their fields.
Every punk who ever wanted to be loud enough to stop the world in its tracks is chasing the heavenly choir, the sound so enormous it halts the working crowd and changes them. It is the loudest gig ever played, and it was played for the workers, which is the most punk booking decision in history.
The workers who got the news first
Best of all, punk-wise, is who got the news, which the account of the shepherds in the fields makes plain. Not the rich, not the powerful, not the respectable, but the working people, the labourers in the dark fields, the ones the establishment overlooked. The greatest news went to the workers first, which is the most punk distribution of importance imaginable. Punk always sided with the working outsider over the respectable establishment, and here is the founding story doing exactly that: giving the greatest news to the working shepherds, the overlooked labourers, before anyone grand heard a word. The workers got the news first, which is punk economics of importance, and I love it.
According to the Royal Parks people, London’s shared spaces belong to all its workers and residents alike, which is the establishment stumbling toward what the story knew from the start: the workers matter first.
Where the punk lands
So I will keep turning down the gigs I cannot stomach, keep following my own vision against every expectation, and keep noticing that the oldest story is more punk than my record collection. Joseph followed his dream against the crowd. The choir was the loudest gig ever played, staged for the workers. And the workers got the greatest news first. That is punk to its bones: the vision over the expectation, the overwhelming sound, the workers before the grand. I like Christmas. I like it defiant, visionary, loud, and on the side of the workers in the dark fields. The eyeliner stays on. The vision holds. And the news, as ever, goes to the workers first.
For more scene chaos, The Hard Times plays it loud.
