When it comes to the history of punk rock in the United States there are few cities as significant as Washington, D.C. Scott Crawford’s Spoke: Images and Stories from the 1980s Washington, DC Punk Scene adroitly uses both photographs and oral histories to capture the importance of what can best be described as a cultural revolution within the nation’s capital. As expected, Crawford documents the rise of such seminal hardcore punk groups as the Bad Brains, Minor Threat and Rites of Spring. Yet equally rewarding is the attention that he pays to those acts that existed in the shadows of these luminaries. In Spoke, bands like Void, Iron Cross and Fire Party—an all-female quartet whose politically-infused anthems predated the Riot Grrl movement—are presented as vital components to the overall evolution of the city’s music scene.
