Jeffrey loves that Dr. Manhattan loves him back!
Check out the Wikipedia entry for 'Anti-folk' and you will find that the origins of the movement are as clear as Pete Doherty's contribution to music and of course, the boundaries of the genre itself. According to the vast, factually-sound information available, the bulk of which was probably found scribbled in organic mustard on a gastro napkin, Anti-Folk supposedly kicked off circa 1984 in New York City, the brainchild of artist, musician and founder/director of Environmentally Sound Promotions, Darryl Cherney. The chosen venue for whatever it was that happened was The Speakeasy in Greenwich Village (of course), although exactly where The Speakeasy is/was no one seems entirely sure. It may have even been pickle.
Around the same time, or even perhaps for the same event (who knows?) Roger Manning, an NYC based singer-songwriter who played an 'aggressive' acoustic music (well, as aggressive as you can get on an acoustic guitar), printed Anti-Folk t-shirts. What was on the t-shirts is not revealed, but we must note at this point that Manning should not be confused with psychedelic, LA-based musician Roger Joseph Manning Jr. In fact, no one should...ever. Anyway, Manning's description of his own musical style (the aggressive, acoustic Manning that is, forget Roger Joseph Manning if you can) probably best encapsulates the spirit of the Anti-Folk 'movement':
"My music developed in the streets, subways, and dance clubs of New York City throughout the 1980s. The result was a style of solo performing that was dynamic enough to allow me to play in places where solo acts were not ordinarily accepted such as rock and dance clubs. Lyrically, the songs were wordy and dense, shaped, like the Beat movement, "by a life of hitchhiking, street singing, low-income living, disgust with authority" and a "pondering the mysteries of love and beauty". - Roger Manning
By the end of the 80s, Manning describes his style as having evolved into an "incestuous cluster-fuck of Jack Kerouac, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Sonic Youth, Public Enemy, The Clash, Woody Guthrie and Big Audio Dynamite.
"Various fellow downtown New York performers, including King Missile (John S. Hall) and Billy Syndrome were strong influences as well. These others and I are associated with the beginnings of New York's "Anti-Folk" scene which came together in the mid-80s." - Roger Manning
Meanwhile, another NYC singer-songwriter called 'Lach', who handily points out on his MySpace page that "MySpace doesn't recognize Anti-Folk as a genre" (we're not sure we do yet either), was busy founding The Fort, an illegal after-hours club on the Lower East Side, after a booker at Folk City told him his music was "too punk". The Fort's opening coincided with the New York Folk Festival, so Lach called his own event the 'New York Anti-Folk Festival'. Yeah, that'll teach them, he thought. And surprisingly, it did, as the Anti-folk Festival has outlived the original New York Folk Festival and still continues to be held today.
So what becomes clear (if anything) from our brief, toe-dip excursion into the history of Anti-Folk, is that Anti-folk is very much a bohemian, politically aware genre of music which has its roots in many different genres besides folk, most notably punk. Which is why we suspect, after "constantly being asked what Anti-Folk is", the comic book drawing, couch-surfing darling of the Anti-Folk scene, Jeffrey Lewis, gave us this in reply: "The History of Punk on the Lower East Side, 1950-1975":