PNG PUNKS ROOL! I was punk before you were punk!

POCKETIKI Magazine - Bringing you...TIKI with a TWIST!

This picture is from a book I bought in a secondhand book shop in Barcelona. The book caught my eye as we were passing the shop on our way back to the apartment to head of for the airport. It must have been fate. The latest date I can see in the book is 1976, so I'm reckoning that with all the hassle in getting a book published, the photos must have been circa 1975 at the latest. Then how cool is this pre-punk PNG PUNK? Too cool for rock school, that's for sure!

I think the use of the safety pin as a punk emblem was first attributed to Richard Hell and probably imported to England my good ol' Malcolm. I had a great jacket bedecked with hundreds of safety pins and spray paint daubings back in '77! Those were the days. Anyway, take a look, I'm sure this is way earlier than punk rock as we know it.

What do you think Sven?

Trader Jim - Make mine a Mai-Tai!

[ Edited by: POCKETIKI 2007-10-16 15:29 ]

I think the roots of the safety pin as art statement goes back to 1968 and the situationists, when a poster by the May '68 art student collective Atelier populaire showing a young woman covered in surgical gauze and a safety pin jamming her lips closed was appropriated for the cover of God Save the Queen: HRH with a safety pin through her lips.

A lovely article about the situationist roots of punk here

But I think there is good argument whether the safety pinned savage is a representaion of cultural imperialism or a sublime example of "tiki Modern".