It all began with Crass… at least, it did for our guest for our fifth episode, Matt Grimes. Going to great lengths to get Crass’ album Feeding of the 5000 (1978), Grimes explains his introduction to punk and his immersion into punk through anarcho-punk, which became a critical prism opening up ways of framing the world and making sense of its systemic processes. These critical and creative processes--rather than the ‘End Result’--are what Grimes values in his punk pedagogy. And, we get into community and communities, reggae, diaspora, Birmingham’s historical music contributions, and much more. But if you’re here for soccer, err, football, Matt Grimes is a proud Millwall fan. His story of team support draws on the complexity of multigenerational place-based cultural connections and intergenerational shifts. Turning back to our PSP focus, Grimes shares insights about memory, nostalgia, temporality, and aging in punk per his seminal co-edited collection with Laura Way: Punk, Ageing and Time (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). 

About Our Guest 

Matt Grimes is the General Secretary of the Punk Scholars Network and co-ordinates the PSN International affiliates. He is a member of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR) where his research interests include anarcho-punk and DIY punk scenes; ageing within popular music scenes; popular music, memory and nostalgia; DIY music cultures/subcultures and scenes; music industries, innovation and entrepreneurship. Matt sits on the editorial board for the PSN Global Punk book series, Punk & Post-Punk and Riffs: Journal of Experimental Writing on Popular Music. Matt is also Course Director for the BA (Hons) Music Industries and a Senior Lecturer in Music Industries and Radio at Birmingham City University, where he teaches primarily on the BA (Hons) Music Industries course in the Birmingham School of Media, as well as on a range of undergraduate and post-graduate programmes across the Birmingham Institute of Media and English and Faculty of Art, Design and Media. Publications include the co-edited Punk Now! Contemporary Perspectives on Punk (2020) and Punk Identities, Punk Utopias: Global Punk and Media (Intellect, 2021).