As expressive as Svenonius is, though, the musician doesn’t think everyone is entitled to an audience. He took that stance during his June appearance on WAMU 88.5’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and he drives it home in newest collection of essays, Censorship Now!!, out Nov. 3 on Akashic Books.

The man who once argued in song that “Music’s Not For Everyone” devotes a chapter of Censorship Now!! to the idea that rock ‘n’ roll’s “legacy machine” — including your favorite band’s attempt to reserve a place in the canon — must be stifled.

Excerpted from Censorship Now!! copyright 2015 by Ian F. Svenonius, used with permission of Akashic Books.

DIY was the byword through post-punk and on to the “indie” era. Now, with the economy destroyed by computers, DIY is no longer a philosophy as much as a requirement. Everyone is required to look after each aspect of their own art-making/proliferation because — ever since the Internet demonetized art, photos, film, writing and music — there are few resources to support adjunct workers and technicians.

DIY now extends from the production of records, fanzines and show-promoting to all aspects of the rock experience, including fandom itself. Once, people venerated others. Now, under indie’s DIY paradigm, people must venerate themselves. Historicization of the group is therefore now its own responsibility. Not only must the records and tours be DIY (arranged and administered by the bands themselves), but the hype itself — the historical biopics, the “remember when” nostalgia, the reunion demands and the reissue records — is all self-generated.

Ironically, The Beatles — the biggest group of all, whose “invasion” unwittingly ushered in the corporate takeover of rock ’n’ roll — started the DIY self-historicizing trend with their 1995 TV special Anthology, designed to hawk the group to an audience who had grown up without them.

The Beatles were, at the time of its making, three distinct and fractious individuals— as well as a deceased member who had been sainted in death after publicly disavowing the group and heaping scorn on their achievements for a full decade. Each Beatle’s competing agendas and recollections are on display; the group members are perverse and contrarian, with the exception of Paul, whose pride of the group’s songs, success and what they meant to people is resolute and unflinching. George, on the other hand, nurses old resentments, Ringo is a slightly melancholic bon vivant with a cranky, sentimental view, and of course Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s widow, is the anti-Beatle in many respects, who claimed not to know who The Beatles were or that the group even existed.

“For all of the punk rockers’ stoic claims to independence, societal rejection and aversion to fame, they really long to have their flesh rended by a Dionysian mob of shrieking Beatlemaniacs.”

John Lennon, meanwhile, is a ghost who hasn’t been absorbed into a modern context or narrative. Lennon is stuck in time as a ’70s self-help house-husband — isolated, manic-depressive and revisionist — shrilly denouncing the crimes of the Fab Four. Throughout, Paul tries to put a brave face on the malaise of the other members. The group is collectively hungover from the trauma of Beatlemania and the toll it took on them, the expectations and alienation it engendered.

Their myth, with all these conflicts muddying what would seem like a straightforward tale of unprecedented popular success and innovation, will continue to thrive, not in spite of these conflicts but because of them. Other, more stable groups — such as The Rolling Stones, The Who and Oasis — have contrived similar fractious interpersonal dynamics in order to give their own groups some Beatles-esque resonance, and thus generate more mystery, conjecture and sales.

Punk and indie rock’s DIY hagiographies, though, don’t suffer the same internal contradictions and therefore feel more like the desperate advertisements they are. Typically not nuanced by democratic infighting, they are usually dull veneration, utilizing hapless stand-ins as directors to pretend that every shot and quote wasn’t designated by the star of the film. These are often “crowdsourced”; paid for by the fans themselves before the abomination becomes public and makes money as a commercial item, propagating more revenue for the star-turned-“icon.”

Such a status for their star is what these films strive for, as “icon” is essentially a brand, and a brand is something that’s digestible to the fully detached, the otherwise oblivious; the reduction of the person to the slimmest, slightest object for the marginally engaged. This is self-objectification in the hunt for immortal status, like a poignant Greek myth wherein the hapless mortal, in a search for foreverness, reduces her or himself to a piece of plaster so as to have a place in the halls of Olympus.

For all of the punk rockers’ stoic claims to independence, societal rejection and aversion to fame, they really long to have their flesh rended by a Dionysian mob of shrieking Beatlemaniacs. The fearsome promise of these barely adolescent “maniacs,” occupying hotels, breaking police barriers and screaming nonstop for blood, constitutes a formative ur-text for the rocker, one which he or she can’t shake. Its cosmic portrait of danger, magic and Lord of the Flies anarchy figures centrally in the early programming of the group member, who wants, expects and needs some version of it. Therefore, the modern DIY band — faced with the nonchalant peer-fan — looks outward to the masses for their own “maniac” mob, and takes what it can get.

Ian Svenonius reads from Censorship Now!! Oct. 27 at Busboys and Poets on 14th Street NW. Elsewhere: Check out Bandwidth’s February interview with Svenonius, and read the musician on how NPR killed college rock.

Nationwide this week is called Banned Books Week. At the D.C. Public Library, it’s called “Uncensored.”

Banned Books Week was established in 1982 to raise awareness of books that people want off the shelves. It’s not an issue limited to the McCarthy era — even now, parents, leaders and various interest groups rally to censor or remove books from libraries for all kinds of reasons. But the D.C. Public Library widens the scope of Banned Books Week, looking at any form of expression that’s been challenged, including music.

That’s why the library has made a playlist for Banned Books Week two years in a row, says Maggie Gilmore, a librarian in DCPL’s adult information services division. This year, the D.C. Public Library Foundation asked her to compile a list of songs with a dual theme: censorship and D.C. music.

Gilmore consulted her fellow librarians for ideas and solicited input from attendees at August’s D.C. Record Fair at Penn Social. This is the resulting playlist, streamable via Spotify and YouTube, below:

Bad Brains, “Banned in DC”
Chain & the Gang, “Free Will”
Parliament, “Chocolate City”
Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, “Run Joe”
The Evens, “Wanted Criminals”
The Cornel West Theory, “DC Love Story”
Ice-T, “Freedom of Speech”
Coup Sauvage & the Snips, “Don’t Touch My Hair” (JD Samson Remix)
Minor Threat, “Straight Edge”
Bikini Kill, “Rebel Girl”
Unrest, “Malcolm X Park”
The Blackbyrds, “Rock Creek Park”
The Roots with Wale and Chrisette Michele, “Rising Up”
Diamond District, “March Off”
Marvin Gaye, “Got To Give It Up”

The playlist comes across as a celebration of outspoken music — not hard to find in this town, Gilmore says.

“[D.C.] is a natural environment for people to discuss political issues,” Gilmore says. Plus, she says, the city’s constantly shifting population can aggravate local tensions.

“With D.C. having so many people moving in and out of the city, there’s always been tension in the various groups that are represented in D.C.,” Gilmore says. She cites D.C.’s signature funk sound as an example. “Go-go has always been challenged by those who may feel it’s obtrusive — and maybe not even the music itself, but the social scene around go-go.”

The playlist debuted at last Friday’s opening party for “Uncensored: Information Antics,” the library’s new exhibit in honor of Banned Books Week. The show remains on view at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library through Oct. 22.

Gilmore says “Uncensored” and this playlist are part of the library’s larger efforts to document and support local expression in all forms. DCPL’s D.C. Punk Archive has been in the works for a year now. Gilmore coordinates the library’s series of punk-rock basement shows, meant to highlight its punk collection. After this, the library focuses on archiving go-go, then jazz, Gilmore says.

“Trying to highlight local music, [D.C.’s cultural] history and current artists — that’s one of the main goals of the basement shows, to provide a space for bands to play,” Gilmore says. “So this was an opportunity to continue on that.”

Related: WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show airs a segment on Banned Books Week Tuesday at 1:32 p.m. Can’t tune in? The segment will be archived on kojoshow.org.

Warning: Some songs contain explicit lyrics.

Via Spotify: