While it wouldn’t be right for New York City to lay full claim to Punk, the music could not have begun without New York City’s contribution to the creative dissatisfaction across youth culture worldwide. Punk needed the Ramones, it needed the 1977 Yankees as an object of disgust, it needed the pending dystopia of: it needed The Warriors:

That story is a retelling of Xenophon’s ancient Anabasis; people have always needed to escape out of something, someplace. We don’t intend Make Music New York to be that explicitly or entirely, but music is something we all use for escape from whatever ails or distracts us in the everyday. Punk started as an escape from so many things that were dull and decayed. So there’s no better way to kick off MMNY 2011 than to leave the city behind and escape to Punk Island.

Punk Island is this Sunday, June 19 – the event gets the leg up on the schedule, because Governors Island is closed to the general public during the week. This is a good thing! We want you to be able to enjoy six hours and and more than 50 bands worth of Punk in the beautiful sun (and as of today it looks like the weather will be good). It’s all free, all curated by ABC No Rio and the Punk/Hardcore collective.

The bands include Common Enemy, Less Life, White Collar Crime and the legendary AnarchoPunk band Zounds, with their first-ever US show. Bands will appear at eight stages, including the perfectly named Tinnitus Stage, and there will also be readings from Soft Skull Press poets Todd Colby and Sparrow.

We want everyone to have a great time, so please check out the Governors Island regs (scroll down the page) and the directions there. Enjoy the music and that great boat ride there and back across the harbor. Enjoy the present you, Punk fans, helped create, rather than what might have been:

. . . Because sometimes, you don’t need a clever title . . .

Yes, Punk Island is back for Make Music New York!  We are thrilled, juiced, pumped, jazzed – and every other possible listing in the Thesaurus for excited – to announce our fourth annual ferociously fun festival of punk music on Governors Island, this year in partnership with ABC No Rio, on Sunday, June 19.  It’s in anticipation of the MMNY festival itself because the island is closed on June 21 this year.  But it’s so big it deserves its own day, and island, anyway!

The quiet, serene setting will be transformed by more than 50 of New York’s loudest bands – performing on eight stages throughout the day – into a punk/hardcore paradise.  Free ferries will transport revelers every half hour, starting at the admittedly un-punk hour of 10am, but the earlier you get there the more Punk you get.

This is a very satisfying event for us because the DIY ethos of ABC No Rio and the punk community is an important inspiration for MMNY.  Since the musicians we work with all just step out and say, “I’ll play,” no matter the style or genre, there are no levels at all between any of the them.  Everything is in the streets, and there’s something about playing there that makes the opera singer as punk as the high school kids with the garage band, or the laptop musician with Garageband.  It’s a celebration where everyone is welcome.  ABC No Rio values giving musicians a chance to play in front of an audience, and have been making that happen for thirty years, without relying on managers, middlemen and the like.  That’s why we’re excited to have punk represented so strongly. . . . is there such a thing as too much free punk rock?  I guess that’s what you can find out!

Whether or not you can make it out to Punk Island, take a little time to go to the ABC No Rio website, or their home itself at 156 Rivington Street.  They have a darkroom for use, a ‘zine library, an art gallery and regular music shows.  It’s a place where Manny Farber’s “termite art” has been alive and quietly (or loudly) and irreversibly eating a space into the collective aesthetic of New York.  They are also raising money to build a new, ecologically sustainable building where they will continue to foster collective and collaborative creativity among artists and musicians.  It’s a worthy cause.

For all Punk Island inquiries, please contact punk@makemusicny.org or check out the facebook page (UPDATED with facebook link).

Punk Island, on Governors Island, is one of MMNY’s annual signature events: “a one-day experiment that turns the stately island into a punk rockers’ paradise” (NY Times). No one lives on the island, so the regular sound limits don’t apply — bands can play as loud as they want!

This year, Make Music New York falls on Monday, June 21st, a day that Governors Island is closed to the public.

So we’ve decided to hold Punk Island on Sunday, June 20th, starting at 10am and going until 2am on June 21st at the new Water Taxi Beach stage, where punk headliners will kick off the rest of Make Music New York in hardcore style!

As always, Punk Island shows are free — but to stay for the headlining acts after 6pm, you’ll need a $15 ferry ticket to get back in the evening. Tickets may be purchased from Slug at slug1369@yahoo.com.

This year’s astonishing lineup features over 100 bands on stages throughout the island.

CONFIRMED PUNK ISLAND BANDS: (A)TRUTH, Abserdo, All Rise, All Torn Up!, Angry & Broke, Angry Youth, Antispetic, Ashers (Mark Unseen’s new band), Assrash, Bad Luck 13, Battle Master, Betty Sue Aside, Blackout Shoppers, Blanks 77, Bloodbeat, Bloody Muffs , Broken, Bucket Flush, Buerger Wuerger, Burning Heads, Burning Streets, Bust It!, Captain Ronzo & The Thirsty Pirates, Caught in a Trap, Code Orange Kids, Combat Crisis, Common Enemy, Copyright Chaos, Crash Fist Fight, Cutthroat Society, Dead Aces, Dealin’ With It, Disaster Strikes, DOA, Dog That Bites Everyone, Drawback, Dude Man Bro, Endangered Feces, Factor X, Feet First, First Strike, Foo’s Stage, Fools on Sunday, Furiousity, Hessian, Hub City Stompers, Iconicide, Infernal Stronghold, Jenkem, Jonee Earthquake Band, JRS, Lethal Aggression, Live Not On Evil, Long Drop, Mary Magdalan, Mean Streets, Mental Abuse, Midnight, Mung Choke, Murder Majesty, Nancy and 2 Meteors, Negative Approach, No Abuse, No Redeeming Social Value, Nothing But Enemies/SCFC, NunSlaughter, Olde York, Oxblood, Percocettes (Percs), Pissant, Point Blank, Proles Blood, Psycho, Razors In The Night, Refuse Resist, Rentokill, Revilers, Seizure Crypt, Sewage, Sexual Suicide, She Likes Todd, Shelter Shock, Simplistic Genocide, Skum City, SpEd, Star Fucking Hipsters, Straphangers, Stress Bomb, Team Spider, The Blame, The Choices, The Clefts, The Dwarves, The Edukators, The Havnotz, The Misanthropes, The Pogo, The Rayguns, The Revilers, The Snails, The Underclassed, The Unpatriotics, Theatre Zombies, To Be Hated, Tough Luck, Trauma Team 666, Turbo AC’s, UFO VCR, Violent Society, Wifebeater, Wombat in Combat, Y69, Yo! Scunt, Zero Content

Want to join Punk Island with your band? No more stage space remains, but if you can bring your own generators, backline and equipment, it is still possible to create your own stage: email Slug at slug1369@yahoo.com for details.

The Governors Island Alliance, MMNY’s partner each year for Punk Island, is throwing a final end-of-season party on Thursday, October 8 from 5:30 – 8:00 pm at Water Taxi Beach, honoring all of the summer’s arts, cultural and educational programmers.

Tickets ($25) include transit to and from the Island, a free drink, a band and dancing.

To RSVP: Email elizabeth@rpa.org or call 917-546-4304.