"Putting out a lit cigarette on somebody's wrist created a permanent circular white scar, so getting a Germs burn was definitely a full commitment, especially if you were branded by Darby personally, although anyone who already had a burn in the Germs' circle was officially empowered to give anybody else one. Darby also believed that all events in our cosmology, especially the rise and fall of different civilizations and cultures were all cyclical -- ideas he'd bagged from Oswald Spengler, a controversial German social theorist with an authoritarian streak that he'd boned up on in private." Jim Ruland interviews Brendan Mullen, author of Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs.

COPYRIGHT © 2002, 3 A.M. MAGAZINE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



3AM: How did you come to be interested in The Germs and Darby Crash?

BM: I opened up a band rehearsal business off Hollywood Boulevard in June 1977, which gradually morphed into an illegal BYOB club space on weekends called the Masque, and met the Germs and Darby through Chris Ashford who was a clerk in one of the hip record stores at the time. He was their friend-manager who talked me into letting them play a gig there, and, of course, the night they did changed the entire direction my life would take.

3AM: Tell us about the cigarette burns, which were, allegedly, a sign of allegiance of the band's fans.

BM: Nothing alleged about that at all! Darby launched the cigarette burn insignia soon after he changed his original stage name from Bobby Pyn when I first met him in '77 to Darby Crash by early '78. He was big on the symbolism of circles, hence Circle One and the blue circle armbands he designed. And putting out a lit cigarette on somebody's wrist created a permanent circular white scar, so getting a Germs burn was definitely a full commitment, especially if you were branded by Darby personally, although anyone who already had a burn in the Germs' circle was officially empowered to give anybody else one. Darby also believed that all events in our cosmology, especially the rise and fall of different civilizations and cultures were all cyclical -- ideas he'd bagged from Oswald Spengler, a controversial German social theorist with an authoritarian streak that he'd boned up on in private.

3AM: What do you know about Darby's trip to England and his subsequent obsession with Adam & The Ants? Who did Darby hang out with in England?

BM: He went to England for a month or so in early summer of 1980 with a woman named Amber, his latest patron, a woman he lived with for a while who picked up the tab for everything. They stayed with Amber's friend Jordan who was a key designer-stylist in the classic Britpunk fashion look. According to Amber, Darby asked Jordan to give him what people called the "Mohawk" hairdo, although "Mohican" was actually the correct name, something Darby kept pointing out, but to no avail. Mohawk stuck in the vernacular. Mohican didn't. Still is that way. Darby's role model for the Big Make-Over-in-London was clearly Adam Ant and his Antpeople entourage of post-punk fashion casualties.

3AM: What was the music scene like in the UK by the time Darby got there?

BM: It was not a good time from Darby's perspective to be seen as a "punk rocker" in trendy London in 1980. We can speculate he was probably pretty embarrassed to present himself as some quaint anachronistic punk at that point. Britain's "Punk and Disorderly" wave of Crass-inspired anarcho-hippie-punks and "Punk's Not Dead" GBH/Discharge/Exploited of "ethnic" punks with bristles, leather, and studs hadn't quite kicked in yet.

3AM: The UK version of hardcore …

BM: Right. That scene made an overlooked, undocumented impression on the development of SoCal hardcore in the '80s, the partial influence of these sped-up post Sham 69 Oi! soccer chant-type punk bands -- more of an influence than some of us cheerleaders of pioneering SoCal skatecore would care to admit. Many of these bands headlined a series of amazing shows promoted by Gary Tovar, founder of Goldenvoice Productions, at the Olympic Auditorium on bills made up of all the best hardcore bands, from Southern California's South Bay to Oxnard.

3AM: Did Darby distance himself from punk when he was in England?

BM: According to Amber, he was a subdued fish out of water. He was not used to being a nobody. Not a soul in London even knew of The Germs, much less cared about them. Even worse, the British rock media had written off '77-style punk as long-gone stone dead.

3AM: Why do you think the British music media wouldn't cover any of the L.A. bands?

BM: I guess they didn't think they had to. There was no hype. Nobody credible to champion it. Those who actually got to make records in L.A. were on tiny labels, many with no budget for professional recording or distribution outside of the L.A. Basin. I saw a mention in Melody Maker or NME in '78 or '79 where the L.A. punk band scene was dismissed as irrelevant, absolutely not to be taken seriously. It wasn't until 1981 that one of those rags finally acknowledged with a snicker that something was going on in L.A. with punk rock. I think it was rock journalist Mick Farren, freshly arrived in L.A., who finally blundered into the twin phenoms of "slamming in the pit" and stage-diving! Understand that by 1980 Britpunk had already broken off and dispersed into different regional factions and sub-genres.

3AM: Can you give us some examples?

BM: Ah, it was all about Manchester style post-punk proto-Goth rock like The Fall, Joy Division, et al according to the arbiters of all things groovy in the UK. Or it was about Adam and the Ants in London, or it was all about a Mod revival with a bunch of inter-racial ska bands in the Midlands. But rather than coming back a Brummie Rude Boy or a Mancy Goth created by the Factory-Hacienda scene, Darby returned to L.A. with the new Boy of London look accessorized with Antpeople-style feathers and Indian warrior make-up. He was ridiculed locally for being a "fashion casualty" and for being a lame follower rather than the leader he once was.

3AM: A question about Darby's sexuality: did it influence the band's aesthetic? Did it play an important part in Darby's confusion and chaotic lifestyle?

BM: Of course it did. It obviously totally affected his personal lifestyle, but I don't think it was a part of the musical aesthetic of the band at all, although perhaps there was the odd hint in a line or two of his lyrics if you look close enough, like perhaps "Sex Boy" or "The Other Newest One" are examples of ambiguous meanings. As for lifestyle, how many people can live a double life without confusion and chaos, especially if they're out of their tree on drugs and alcohol the whole time?

3AM: Why do you think he hid his homosexuality?

BM: One of the many myths about the early Hollywood punk scene, which pre-dated the suburban hardcore explosion in the South Bay and Orange County, was that it was despicably anti-gay, that we were a colony of punk homophobes. Personally I believe that it was nowhere near as bad as has been made out, although perhaps others who were there will disagree. I think the source of the homophobia in the old Hollywood scene actually came more from gays themselves than it did from straights! Some of the most disgusting anti-gay things I've ever heard in my life actually came from the mouths of closeted gay punks around the early scene -- pure, staggeringly hateful vitriol that freaked ME out, and I'm not even gay!

3AM: Lexicon Devil cites numerous examples of Darby spouting off…

BM: I clearly remember Darby saying incredibly mean, spiteful things about "fags" and there were others. Frankly, most of the straight punks I knew didn't care a rat's bum if Darby or The Screamers or Black Randy or any one else in the scene was gay. There were as many key women on the scene as there were guys -- gay, straight, and bi -- and homophobia is rarely as big an item with women outside of extreme-right Christian and Islamic fundamentalist circles.

3AM: So why did Darby feel so threatened?

BM: Once again, I don't want to seem like I'm blaming all the suburban punks from the beaches and Orange County for everything, 'cos that definitely distorts the whole Big Picture of what most of the beach kids and the bands they followed were really like -- especially since hardcore did come into its own, later on, as a positive social force, but sadly there was a definite correlation between the rise of suburban hardcore at the very beginning and open hostility to the gay lifestyle. What can I say? The origins of hardcore aren't as PC as some people would like to believe.

3AM: A question about Darby's death through overdose: did it contribute to turning him into a punk icon?

BM: Absolutely. Fetishized Western Death Obsessive Bloodlust Culture. Creepy Islamic Extremist Warrior Culture isn't the only culture that canonizes martyrs, you know. We're just as whacked-out in the West with our insistence on the preservation of youth and projecting immortality through our celebrities or icons. I agree it's kind of sad and pathetic to have to admit there may not have been this book if The Darb hadn't offed himself, but then you or I wouldn't be talking right now, would we? So does that implicate us as guilty ghouls, too? Of course it does!

3AM: So why did you do it?

BM: I was hoping that something could be learned. I was hoping I could learn personally, and boy did I ever. I was also hopeful that the reader might come away from the book having learned something from this tragedy.

3AM: Such as…

BM: That Darby was a role model, a new archetype for socially alienated kids -- a role model of how NOT to be!

3AM: What role did Rodney play in Darby's celebrity?

BM: The word-of-mouth street buzz on the Germs created by the 'zines became unstoppable, but Rodney gave Darby and The Germs widespread radio exposure in SoCal. Rodney had a better time slot than now, and at the time KROQ was blasting out on FM and AM simultaneously, the only station in SoCal to broadcast on the twin bands. This gave Rodney's Sunday night show massive influence, especially far out in the 'burbs, at least as far south of Los Angeles as the beaches of the South Bay and Orange County. Darby was a regular live-in-the studio guest who frequently phoned in on Sunday nights and Rodney always gave him huge chunks of airtime, more than anybody else on the entire scene, I'd say. Darby was smart enough to be polite and not alienate Rodney. Rodney basically introduced DC and The Germs to a new generation of teens out in the 'burbs who were just getting their first driver's licenses.

3AM: How did the LA punk scene differ from the NY or London scenes?

BM: On the surface it looks like all three played out the same way in many respects. Small tight circle of decadent rock 'n' rollers too young and too late for glam (but still wanting to emulate it), junkies, record collectors, drifters, grifters, graphic artists, hookers, rock crits, runaways, angry hippies, rag trade designers, male hustlers, 'zine publishers and art school groovers -- all come together to resuscitate raw '60s garage rock and bring it back from open fields to small clubs, pubs, and art galleries, originally with wide-eyed egalitarian ideology.

3AM: Did you say "hippies"?

BM: The Psychedelic Stooges (as they were originally called for their first few gigs) were originally a failed bad acid hippie rock band from suburban Michigan in the late '60s who were sort of the segue into this mid-to-late '70s movement which gradually made it okay for beginner garage bands to play in clubs and charge money for it. The MC5 were another band of hippies, garage musicians and drug addicts who were not-quite-up-to-it as rock musicians or songwriters but substituted a paucity of skills with political rhetoric and, according to a bunch of rock critics, got to "re-invent" rock 'n' roll. But it was obviously only a matter of time before opportunistic skilled non-garage musicians playing beneath their chops moved in on it -- the dreaded New Wave which we won't talk about.

3AM: How would you define California punk?

BM: Somebody pointed out in Neutron Bomb that while Jimbo Morrison never put a needle in his arm onstage a la Uncle Lou ("Heroin") but he did say he wanted to fuck his mom and kill his dad ("The End")! Anybody who shot up junk in the New York version of punk gets to be a red-hot punk. So the difference between punk L.A. and NYC as defined in Please Kill Me is that New York was basically all about derelict heterosexuals who shoot up heroin and fall about the set; while the L.A. version, according to Neutron Bomb, is about killing your parents. Which is more anti-social, which is more dangerous? Which strikes more fear into the status quo than killing and fucking your parents? Awaking at dawn with a machete for your Dad and a boner for your Mom or Waiting for the Man on some stench-ridden street in uptown Manhattan? Which is more "punk"? Which will provoke and upset more people?

The fact remains, the California punk pre-dated the East Coast version. If you go back to the garage band era, and if you take L.A. proto-punk as far back as Arthur Lee, Sky Saxon, Jack Nitzsche, Spector, Kim Fowley, and Jimbo Morrison -- even Zappa and Beefheart -- all weirdo iconoclasts with varying degrees of musical talent and influence, all of whom had varying degrees of psychopathic tendencies, all of whom were openly contemptuous if not downright hostile to Flower Power and the hippie scene on Sunset Strip. Some even put Charlie Manson in this category. It hardly took Lou Reed or the V.U. to show L.A. the way with rejecting Flower Power in favor of creepy teeth-gnashing methedrine ghoul music served up with a scowl. This is the thin ice on which the case is made for V.U. being the first "punk" band. Even Arthur Lee himself, the O.G. king of hippie-punk eventually concluded that the music scene in L.A. was for the birds with the tune "Bummer in the Summer" (from Forever Changes), a song written prior to the Velvet Underground's smacked-out abhorrence of West Coast get-back-to-the-garden LSD culture as depicted in Please Kill Me. Does Reed's psychopathic surliness apparently brought on by electro-shock treatment in his teens make him the first "punk rock archetype"? Dream on, New York! As for use of the word punk, everybody knows the term was used well before that silly comic book came out of the same name in late 1975 ...

3AM: Here's a cool line a line from Bibbe Hansen in one of your other books about punk rock, We Got the Neutron Bomb: "There was always more garage rock in California because there were always more garages out here."

BM: Dead on, mate. I think the West Coast pre-dated the East culturally during the pre-rock critic era brought upon by Meltzer, Bangs, Tosches, Greg Shaw and so on, but rather than declaring it's on to some silly East-West punk beef I'll settle for equal billing, mother fuckers! I'll settle for Meltzer's declaration in late '79 of the simultaneous East-West "twin heart of darkness". Richard thought the harsh-vibing Velvets and the Doors were the joint template for American proto-punk with Iggy being the next generation mating of Lou 'n' Jimbo as anti-hippie prototypes. Interestingly, in this same piece -- his review of the Germs' G.I. album -- Meltzer cast Darby Crash as the bastard grandson who could write better than any of them. And that even went for Iggy, too. Meltzer wrote in the L.A. Times in 1979 that Darby made all of 'em look like "coffee table poets."

3AM: Is there any explanation for the power and beauty of Darby's lyrics? They are as astonishing now as they were then.

BM: Not really. We tried our darndest to present a few possible explanations in the book, but we'll never really know.

3AM: So let's get it on with the reparation…

BM: It was always more about the kids in London and L.A. In New York -- all the way back to the early '60s, even the Greenwich Village coffee shop folknik rebels -- it was always much more about intellectuals and other weirdo cerebrals. L.A. was about kids who may not have been as sophisticated in self-conscious "bohemian" culture or cool pop art movements, but knew what they wanted to do intuitively.

3AM: Elitism versus populism?

BM: In a way, I suppose. Punk in all three places was basically a '60s garage-rock revival by '70s kids dressed in different threads with help from slightly older disillusioned media-savvy hippies who created the 'zines and mass-marketed the home-made customized clothing the kids created back to them. Except that the "kids" in New York tended to be older people, like hippies and rock critics. There was a culture of Bowie club kids out here which basically set up the culture for punk rock to follow, which is another thing New York takes credit for. They dismiss the size of Bowie's musical talent, and because he wore a dress when he first came out West they claim he must've ripped off the old drag queens who hung around Max's! That's what the old guard goes around saying to this day! Yet none of these minimally talented queens could hold a candle to Bowie musically and they know it, but still they try to say he ripped them off! For what? A dress, a flippity-floppity hat? So fuckin' what? We're trying to talk Big Picture 20th Century historical shit here. Bowie (himself washed-up in England after going too much against the hippie grain with seven consecutive flopped singles) championed Lou (washed-up commercially after his post-VU solo career died at the gate) and Iggy (at the time a failed acid rocker from the Mid-West who openly wanted to be Jim Morrison) both as a producer and a fan in interviews he gave at the time. Sure, Bowie used them for social access to the New York club and nightlife scene, but being a ruthless social manipulator-careerist and an artistic appropriationist doesn't diminish his basic talents as a pop songwriter and a musician light years ahead of anyone in New York circa '70-'71. The glitter rock thing came from Bolan-Visconti, it originally had nothing to do with New York or even Bowie, but according to all the revisionist New York scribes, Bowie's career in the 70's depended on him hearing the Velvet Underground just 'cos he did a cover of "White Light/White Heat" in his live show and wrote a song about Andy Warhol. In other words, according to New York: no VU, no Bowie, and that's too preposterous. He may have been inspired by them to write songs about them, but Bowie was going to happen with or without the New York scene at Max's and all the other shooting galleries. In addition to himself, Bowie even tried to make Lou and Iggy over as "Britglam" (Transformer and Raw Power respectively) but all of it failed commercially. And there's the true story, stripped down to its basics: three desperate washed-up rock star "beneath-the-radar" neverweres -- one Brit, one Long Islander, and one Mid-Westerner -- all three of whom have failed commercially in everything they've done so far, try to get up on Bolan's tip in New York, but New York cries foul and cuts Bolan out of the credit completely and then slags Bowie's talents because he wore a dress in a desperate bid to get noticed. I'm sorry, but I just don't hear much Velvet/Lou influence in Bowie's 70's music at all, although the Warhol influence is obviously all over it, but that's something different. I'm talking pure music here, not image or marketing. That's Andy, that's NYC, but remember this, the last word on Warhol: Andy's first ever one-man gallery show was in Los Angeles, 'cos originally he couldn't get arrested in NYC! Suck on that!

3AM: How does New York fit into the punk rock equation?

BM: The fabulously feted Dolls were another 60's garage band, an attempted knock-off of T. Rex, the early Stones and their good buds the early Pretty Things -- in drag. But they came after Bolan and Bowie with that one. All the Dolls' influences were British, including the image! The Dolls even had to come out West 'cos Anglophile Hollywood/L.A. was the glam rock capital of the world, not New York, and there were better gigs in L.A. than in New York where they were limited to playing toilets and art galleries. Television were an amped-up West Coastin' hippie guitar jam band gone VU with a legendarily inept bass player in a torn shirt who were quickly blown off the stage by the Damned the first time they left the safety of CBGB's. The Ramones were absolutely great in every way, a band that I love, but basically they began as a non-ironic Britpop band with a SoCal surf beat. Patti so badly wanted to be Rimbaud via Jimbo Morrison of the Doors rather than via the original source -- she even said so in print. Iggy wanted to be Morrison also at the beginning -- read Ron Asheton's testimony in We Got the Neutron Bomb. So there's just a wee dram of shakiness in New York's version of the origin of all things punk. Some whacko even wrote a whole book canonizing Patti as the punk connection to the beats and the French symbolists!

3AM: Well you know what they say about history -- it's all about whoever gets the book deals…

BM: How true.

3AM: Was L.A. radically different from the other scenes?

BM: Not really. The same thing was happening in L.A. that was happening in other places. These art people in their mid-to-late 20s helped to editorialize punk for the smarter, cooler teens who were behind the energy and the social scenes of punk in the commercial rock mags and even the hand-stapled Xerox zines of the day. The zines, especially the ones out here in L.A., tended to be put out by real teens who were attempting to wrest rock 'n' roll away not only from the record industry, but also from the rock critics and the old hippies who created the New York scene all for themselves. And now the rock critics were crying foul that L.A. dared to have their own band scene without first checking with the arbiters of all things groovy in New York!

For a while it seemed that nearly every band that managed to crawl onstage at CB's in the mid-70's got a major record deal! Seymour Stein, head of Sire Records was the New York scene's sugar daddy who signed up everybody with Warner Bros money, so the New York "punk scene" was co-opted as straight-ahead business-as-usual corporate rock and roll before it was even out of the gate! L.A., of course, had no sugar daddies, although A&M tried with The Dickies, and when it didn't happen, the record industry looked at Sire and all the "new wave" and "punk" acts who were stiffing commercially (Ramones, Talking Heads, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, the Dead Boys) and wrote punk off as stone dead by early 1978! But for our purposes, the smart thinking in L.A. is that the major labels left us alone in total isolation from business it gave the L.A. music scene time to develop unsupervised, something New York business was never gonna let happen.

In all three places -- L.A., London and New York -- these loose movements wrench rock 'n' roll away from elitist classically-trained rock musicians, from English public schools who'd infiltrated rock 'n' roll with prog-rock in Europe during the '70s, while over here, their US counterpart would be the dreaded jazz-rock fusion thing -- where instrumental chops got played endlessly and mindlessly by dullard technique geeks with little or no musical imagination who were simply enthralled by the math side of music theory and composition. In each case the original Big City core collective of misfits, music fans, and malcontents create the template for a re-birth of rock as the somewhat egalitarian force it originally was if you go back to the Rockabilly Rebel days of '50s blue collar Memphis, or the surf rebels of the early 60's, and succeeding it in the same decade, the psyched-out garage punk movement documented in the Nuggets re-issue series. In each case the original fresh-faced punk ideologists of the '70s feel their movement is either betrayed or ignored by the record industry before it becomes hijacked and dumbed down by suburban yobs and skinheads who subsequently destroy it. Much backstabbing, open jealousies, and scrambling attempts at revisionism plague all three. Many die from the combined effects of despair and addiction, and there is much psychic wreckage left by the roadside in all three cases.

3AM: So where's the pay-off?

BM: Some amazing, amazing music got created, some of my all-time favorite rock songs came out of punk rock -- some of the best I heard throughout my whole life of listening to rock 'n' roll. I've been listening as a keen fanatic for more than 40 years now, and I'm sorry, but I still think of punk as nothing but kick-ass rock 'n' roll. I just happen to like a lot of the songs that came out during the epoch-period of L.A. punk' s first round. I can't buy into the theory that punk was something completely new and original that supplanted all rock 'n roll before it, although I'm very aware there's many hardcore thrashheads out there who'd vehemently disagree. There's the thinking that thoroughly PC straight edge veganist hardcore was the only true clean break with punk's rock 'n' roll ancestry.

3AM: That sounds retarded.

BM: It's an incredibly boring argument. Hardcore is another important sub-genre, a split-off gene of rock 'n' roll, and I still love nearly all the seminal HC bands because most of 'em rock the fuck out with good tunes, especially SoCal HC -- the best in the world. Many of these OG HC bands are still rockin.' But I don't want to drone on about HC anymore 'cos to tell you the truth that petty narrow-focused Maximum Rock 'n' Roll mentality always bored me. Too restricting. Hardline fundamentalist groups with strict rules and codes of fashion and behavior scare the shit out of me. By nature I'm a person with a psychic allergy against authoritarianism. I'm an anywhere, anytime, any place I choose type of hippie way too slack and undisciplined for the demands of HC contemporaneousness, but I still love a lot of the music. I feel cursed to have witnessed and loved the development of the SoCal hardcore scene. I loved it and hated it.

3AM: You seemed to be lobbying quite hard in your other book We Got the Neutron Bomb for Morrison to be canonized as some sort of L.A. punk archetype who was as far away from hippies as Lou Reed. Was Jimbo Morrison a punk or a rock god?

BM: I'd say both, but I'm sure Morrison was the kind of guy who would have insisted a punk was somebody who got butt-fucked in jail -- a person coerced into receptive sodomy for protection of life and limb by a physically stronger specimen trapped for life inside an iron barred cage. I mean what's your archetype? Casting a punk as a sniveling Sid-style brat with a loutish attitude? A wormish petty criminal straight out of Dirty Harry? Or, according to Webster's, someone regarded as "inexperienced or insignificant"? Is a punk also a bit of an anarcho-intellectual leftist type with an unresolved Oedipal Complex, or is it someone who gets forearm-fucked in jail?

3AM: Was Darby ever a hustler? Did he ever peddle his body for drugs?

BM: Not that I know of, although Amber claims to have had sex with him. And according to people who were closer to him than I was, she picked up for most of his living expenses, including drugs. She freely admitted she knew every heroin dealer in town, and that she accompanied him to score on many occasions. She was not a heroin user herself; she said she only helped him to cop drugs to keep him off the street.

3AM: Is The Germs' story the story of punk rock?

BM: The Germs were well beyond punk rock -- as some sort of paradigm of cartoon psychopathy and criminally antisocial behavior. I wouldn't say they were the definitive story, but obviously their saga is one of the best punk yarns ever, and an achingly sick tragedy at the same time.

3AM: How would you characterize it?

BM: At the risk of seeming puke-up pretentious, I'd rate it a classic turn-of-the century mini-epic, a sick, street-level fin de siecle re-run whose mythology has lived on to become an indelible hieroglyphic in late '70s L.A. folklore. "Richie Dagger's Crime" was so much more overtly criminal, more outlaw than any other version of punk. The Germs, as one of the L.A. punk scene's original events, became so much more threatening to the status quo, much more, I'd say, than all those relatively benign hetero-megalo rock 'n' roll heroin addicts falling downstairs at Max's and CB's at the height of mid-'70's NYC decadence. I think Saint Genet would've been tickled to orgasm by Darby & Co. That's my fantasy -- that Daddy G would be piqued by the tale of Lexicon Devil.

3AM: What happened to the rest of The Germs?

BM: Pat Smear chills in Atwater after seasons with Nirvana and the Foo Fighters and is producing a girl band called Harlot, or Harlow, or something, I don't know anything about them, or what label the record is for. Lorna Doom said she couldn't participate in the book because she was "afraid of tape recorders". She lived in NYC for many years with Gary Moss, a high school bud of Donnie Rose. Gary was Joan Jett's bass player in the Blackhearts for years. We begged for Lorna's co-operation in the book, but she refused for no clear reasons. She'd moved back to Cali and was living with her parents in Thousand Oaks for a few years, but now I'm hearing she may have gone back to NYC. She's very, very mysterious. Won't respond to phone calls or e-mails. Don Bolles is still whoopin' it up every night like the old days. He once swore to me that he would never do anything he didn't wanna do, even if it meant he wound up pushing a shopping cart! Pray for Bolles. He's a very talented guy. Fuck, pray for all of us.

Release Date: July 7th, 2006 (Cinema Village) by Palm Pictures.
Directed by S. A. Crary.

BASIC PREMISE: A documentary about the alternative punk rock movement since the No Wave began in the late 1970’s.

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: Those who are fans of alternative punk rock music will be mildly entertained by Kill Your Idols, but everyone else will be bored out of their minds. Director S.A. Crary logically structures the film chronologically from the 1970’s to modern punk. A member of the punk rock group called Suicide discuss the birth of alternative punk rock and admits that it is meant to be different, bizarre, as well as chaotic—basically, it was a form of rebellion against the music of that time. Even a guitarist who has very little musical talent could seemingly perform punk rock; it’s more about the style rather than the content itself. Other brief interviews with the early musical groups include, namely, DNA, the Theoretical Girls, Swans, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and Sonic Youth. Modern punk rock groups which try to somewhat mimic the music artists of the No Wave movement include the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Black Dice. It would have been much more intriguing to focus on a few groups and delve into their past experiences with longer interviews rather than include brief, dull interviews with many rock groups. Old concert footage doesn’t help to add anything other than to show what punk rock during the No Wave movement sounds like. However, unless you’re a devoted fan of punk rock music, you won’t be in awe by the music or care that it the movement has essentially died since the 1970’s and 80’s. On a positive note, the editing and cinematography in this documentary are quite stylish.

SPIRITUAL VALUE: Unfortunately, none.

INSULT TO YOUR INTELLIGENCE: Too much concert footage; not enough interesting interviews.

NUMBER OF TIMES I CHECKED MY WATCH: 6

IN A NUTSHELL: Stylish and mildly entertaining, but not enough insight and intrigue.

RECOMMENDED WAY TO WATCH: Fans of punk rock- VHS/DVD
Everyone else- Never

By Akiva Gottlieb

Tom Gabel, the 26-year-old voice of the leftist punk band Against Me!, is trying to punctuate a spirited debate on art and commerce--one we've been conducting in the back room of his band's deluxe tour bus--with the perfect quotation. "I think it was Paul Stanley from KISS who said, 'Integrity is just someone else's idea of what I should be doing with my life.'" But the aphorism doesn't sound quite right, and we both know it. Gabel reaches into his back pocket to consult his BlackBerry. "Here it is. 'Credibility is someone else's idea of what I should be doing, not mine.'"
A lot of people have a lot of ideas of what Against Me! should be doing right now, ever since the July 10 release of New Wave, the four-piece band's blistering new record--and their first release on a major label--propelled them to dizzying new heights of mainstream recognition. On their August cover, Spin magazine asked: "Have Against Me! made the year's best album?" Rolling Stone declared that "they haven't lost their edge." But the band, who made their name (exclamation point and all) not so long ago by playing raucous shows in church basements and laundromats, has burned its share of bridges on its way to the top, especially among the idealistic young fans whose idea of integrity can't be found on a BlackBerry.

Identifying what's pissing these fans off isn't quite rocket science. While independent punk bands going corporate is nothing new, Against Me! is a vehemently anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, anti-war musical project. Their three previous independent LPs adhered to a staunch Do-It-Yourself aesthetic. The last time this band wrote a song about a girl, the girl was Condoleezza Rice, and the sentiments weren't pretty. An earlier anthem, "Baby, I'm an Anarchist," recounts a breakup catalyzed by a young woman's refusal to throw a brick through a Starbucks window. (The song dubs her "a spineless liberal.") But Gabel's most frequent target is the record industry itself, which in one song he crudely equates to "Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners."

By 2005, Against Me! was so firmly entrenched as a paragon of DIY, punk righteousness that ex-fans slashed the tires on their tour van as punishment for the seemingly minor crime of signing to Fat Wreck Chords, an indie label with decent distribution and the cash to pay for...a tour van. Around the same time, DIY magazine Maximum Rocknroll issued a de facto fatwa against the band, publishing a how-to guide for kids interested in disrupting Against Me! shows.

Maybe the band's subsequent jump to a major label, Sire Records, doesn't pack the same epochal punch as Bob Dylan going electric, but the results again seem to justify the decision. After years of recording and mixing their albums in a matter of days, Against Me! went into the studio with Butch Vig, legendary producer of Nirvana's Nevermind, and emerged with their most potent (and radio-ready) call to arms yet. As an added inconvenience for fans looking to write the band off, the lyrics on New Wave are more anxious and paranoid than they've ever been. Going pop hasn't dulled the agitprop.

Gabel shouts the record's opening lines with battle-cry conviction, as if trying extra hard to keep ambivalence at bay and will his wishes into being. "We can control the medium. We can control the context of presentation...We can be the bands we want to hear. We can define our own generation." The next song, "Up the Cuts," begins as a vitriolic rant against the artifice and homogeneity of the day's MTV icons, but in the last verse, Gabel shifts his focus to the retrograde sanctimony of the punk movement and finds himself equally frustrated. "All the punks still singing the same song. Is there anybody thinking what I am? Is there any other alternative? Are you restless like me?" This restlessness pervades New Wave to an almost absurd degree. In the cheekily titled first single "White People for Peace," Gabel writes a protest song about protest songs, whose chorus turns the awkward "Protest songs in response to military aggression!" into an ironic rebel yell. The Village Voice's Tom Breihan calls New Wave an album about "the frenzied struggle to stay moral in a system designed to make morality obsolete." If you can't stop a war, you might as well make money, right?

"Really, what scared me more was the idea of not doing it," Gabel tells me, claiming that the band's decision was not agonized. "It was the logical next step. It's experience. We're addicted to experience." He assures me that the inevitability of fan backlash was not a deterrent. "I try not to pay attention to it, really. I feel like what happens is that the interview questions perpetuate the myth that we're this sellout band. It's also just something I don't even really care to talk about that much."

For legal reasons, there's something else Gabel can't talk about. Last month, he was arrested in a Tallahassee coffee shop for allegedly smashing a man's head against a counter. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Gabel went into the bathroom and saw an article about Against Me! posted on the wall with "obscene words scribbled on it." He tore it down, and upon emerging from the bathroom, attacked a 22-year-old customer who asked for an explanation. Those actions don't exactly bespeak the mentality of a man comfortable with his choices, but Gabel is able to place his anger in a wider context.

"The day of the Tallahassee thing, we were playing at this place The Beta Bar, and this coffee shop next door was having a protest show against ours. I mean... go protest the fucking war!" A songwriter who succeeds at getting kids agitated about the evils of capitalism has suddenly turned those same kids against himself. But can he really be surprised? Giving voice to the oppressed in an editorial for The L Magazine, Mike Conklin writes that "when you say the same things over and over again, as loudly as [Gabel] did, into a microphone no less, to countless impressionable teenagers, you've effectively lost your right to just decide one day that you didn't mean any of it."

Fortunately, if there's one thing besides talent that sets Against Me! apart from the hordes of anarchist punk bands who wear their dissent on their sleeves, it's the ability to recognize their own bullshit. "We're four white kids from semi-privileged backgrounds," says Gabel, "and we have the convenience to turn the war on and off at will, and here we are traveling around the world in a rock n' roll band, singing protest songs." He says that he sees punk rock as just another monolithic system that needs to be challenged. "We do things just because other people in the subculture say to do things. The natural progression, to me, is to rebel against that." There's an album's worth of evidence that the record deal has made Against Me! a better band, but Gabel is convinced that it's also made them more subversive.

For drummer Warren Oakes, the movement against Against Me! is just a manifestation of small-mindedness. "When it really comes down to it, for a white male in America, playing music is one of the least harmful, least destructive things you can do with your time and energy. To be treated like a supervillain for not playing music the right way is totally mind-blowing. I don't mind the scrutiny, but a lot of times it's impossible for people to walk away with the world a big enough place that we're just four genuine, sincere people that are making the right decisions, as we see it, every step of the way."

In the end, Gabel feels most comfortable justifying his band's big move as a utilitarian quid pro quo. "We don't owe anyone anything other than music. If you buy a CD, you get the music that's on there. If you come to a show, we owe you music." And with that, the comfortably established antiestablishment punk band takes the stage to give the consumers the protest songs they paid for. Because that's how capitalism works.

By Jose Palafox, ColorLines. Posted August 22, 2000


For years, punk rock has been perceived as fast, in-your-face music played by weird-looking white youth. However, since the late 1970s, Chicano and Latino punks have been playing music and getting their own bands together, putting out zines, setting up benefit shows for groups in their communities, releasing records, and changing the face of punk.

If you were to see the much-hyped new documentary movie about the legendary punk band the Sex Pistols, The Filth and the Fury, you'd think punk was a lily-white counterculture. Other punk rock documentaries, such as The Decline of Western Civilization and Another State of Mind, similarly ignore Latino punk bands like The Brat, Los Illegals, The Plugz, and The Zeros.

The punk scene is finally "colorized" by Martin Sorrondeguy's new documentary, Beyond the Screams: A U.S. Latino/Chicano Hardcore/Punk Documentary. Sorrondeguy, lead singer for the now defunct punk band Los Crudos, documents the rise of the early Chicano and Latino punk bands in the 1970s, and follows their proliferation in the 1990s. His aim was to bring together previously "scattered bits and pieces of histories" to challenge the view that punk rock is a homogeneous white subculture and to chronicle what he calls "a subculture within a subculture."

"When we see who is portrayed as punk in books and movies, they are mostly white people," Sorrondeguy says. "What kind of message does that send to young Chicano or Latino punks?" Sorrondeguy considers his 15-year involvement in punk as "more than just playing music." To him, punk music is also a weapon for social change and Beyond the Screams is his latest salvo.

Latino Punk in the 1990s

For years, punk rock has been perceived as fast, in-your-face music played by weird-looking white youth. However, since the late 1970s, Chicano and Latino punks have been playing music and getting their own bands together, putting out zines, setting up benefit shows for groups in their communities, releasing records, and changing the face of punk.

The Latino punk scene grew dramatically in the early 1990s. The notorious racist attacks of that decade -- such as California Propositions 187, 209, 227, and 21 inspired the Chicano and Latino communities, including punks, to rise up to fight, by organizing and by song. These struggles helped to shape a distinct Chicano and Latino punk scene.

"The Latino punk scene in the early 1990s really exploded because all of a sudden we had a hell of a lot to sing about," Sorrondeguy says in his documentary. "What started happening politically in the United States pissed us off so much, and we were feeling so targeted and cornered as a community, that we began to write songs about it."

In the United States, bands like Los Crudos connected the institutionalized racism, such as California Governor Pete Wilson's promotion of anti-immigrant hysteria, to the more subtle racism that was occurring within the punk movement itself. On the international front, the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Mexico inspired Spanish-speaking punk bands -- both in the United States and Latin America -- to see their identity as more than just punk, but also as rooted in their language and culture.

Screaming Thoughts

Lina, a vocalist for the Los Angeles-based punk band Subsistencia, stresses the importance of the "indigenous roots" of their music and lyrics. Formed a few years ago, Subsistencia's lyrics are about what the group sees and lives every day in their communities: repression by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, gang violence, and life in the inner city.

"Why use punk rock as our medium of expression?" asks Lina. "Because through our music, we can express--we can scream--our thoughts and emotions of all the things that are happening in our communities."

For many Chicano and Latino punk bands, being up-front about their politics also differentiates them from more established Rock en español bands such as Maldita Vecindad and Mana. For Sorrondeguy, Rock en español means crass commercialism: marketing, money, and business. "Rock en español is stripped of its danger. The way I interpret it, music has an element of danger and risk-it's a way of taking some type of action. Rock en español is neutralized and safe and I'm just not attracted to that."

Many of the lyrics that Sorrondeguy wrote for Los Crudos were first sung in Spanish at shows in Pilsen, the Latino barrio in Chicago where the band lived. "For us, singing in Spanish was to really be direct with who we were talking to, and if it meant communicating with young people or people in our communities, well, what better language than the one we were all originally raised with," he says.

Besides making music, Sorrondeguy keeps himself busy by running his own record label, Lengua Armada, setting up benefit shows for traveling bands, and documenting the role of Chicanos and Latinos in punk rock through photography and video.

Do-It-Yourself

A central theme in punk -- now often called hardcore -- has been individualism, anti-authoritarianism, and a Do-It-Yourself philosophy that encourages action instead of apathy. In his insightful overview of punk rock and hardcore, The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise!, Craig O'Hara gives three possible definitions of what punk might be: "Punk is a youth trend, punk is gut rebellion and change, and punk is a formidable voice of opposition."

Although O'Hara's groundbreaking work attempts to cover the many different scenes within punk, he fails to investigate the role of Chicano, Latino, or other punks of color. In his only comment about race and punk, O'Hara comments, "As punk is now comprised of a clear majority of middle-and service-class whites instead of inner-city working-class whites or minorities, an important action has been to reject their own privileged places in society."

Furthermore, O'Hara does not question whether racism within the punk scene might have discouraged Chicano and Latino bands from getting more involved in punk. By contrast, many Latino punk bands have used their shows to critique white liberal notions of a "colorblind" punk subculture. The Los Crudos song, "That's right motherfuckers, we're that spic band," was written specifically for a person who had called the group a "spic band" at one of their shows.

Safe Spaces in the Punk Scene

Sometimes the need to discuss racism within the punk scene has made white punk rockers defensive. When punks of color demanded a room (a "safe space") to discuss racism within the scene at last year's "More Than Music Festival" in Columbus, Ohio, many white punks criticized them for "self-segregation" and accused them of undermining "unity within the scene." In response, Josh Sanchez, a participant in the people of color discussion group at the festival, told a group of people: "The safe spaces aren't there to keep you out. They're there so we punks of color can be together and learn from one another. We don't get that opportunity that often. What happens with my Mexican family is something you can't understand. Yesterday I went to the minority discussion, and for the first time ever since I've been involved in punk, I sat in a room full of people who did."

The fact that some punks at the festival found the "safe space" troubling is representative of where punk rock has been and where it must go -- even if punks of color have to force these issues into the punk/hardcore movement.

Many Chicano punks, such as Mike Amezcua of the East L.A.-based El Grito Records, have begun to address issues of race and nationality within the punk scene. They've taken the Do-It-Yourself ethic that is central to punk and hardcore and repackaged it to address their concerns. In a 7-inch record compilation that Amezcua put out as a benefit for immigrant rights groups in the Los Angeles area, Amezcua and Danny Echeveria write: "We feel immigration affects all of us in one way or another, but more directly the Latino communities that we grew up and live in. From Los Angeles to New York, Tijuana to Juarez, from the beat downs and harassing of our relatives at the borderlines, to the INS raids at our homes and workplaces. What does this have to do with you? Well, you as an individual can do a big part in this just by educating yourself and looking into the issue."

In addition to dealing with white liberal racism within the punk scene, Chicano and Latino punks must also deal with Latino communities which do not understand punk rock. To address this, Amezcua and others have staged many benefit shows in Pico Union and other Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and given money to local grassroots organizations. Amezcua stresses the need for Chicanos, Latinos, and punks in general to see punk not as "art for art's sake," but as part of a larger movement where art and culture can be at the forefront of progressive social movements.

At the premiere screening of Beyond the Screams at the famous Gilman Street Club in Berkeley, California, Sorrondeguy told the punk kids in the audience to try to find ways to do "political things that might not be narrowly perceived as punk....There are so many things that punk kids could be doing if they really want to make punk a threat again," says Sorrondeguy. "Realizing the diversity within punk can only help punk and hardcore as more than just music, but as a political movement."

I'm a person just like you
But I've got better things to do
Than sit around and fuck my head
Or hang out with the living dead
Snort white shit up my nose
Or passing out in all the shows
Cause I got straight edge

I laugh at the thoughts of dropping loose
I laugh at the thoughts of sniffing glue
Cause I got straight edge
I got straight edge

NOFX - Straight Edge Lyrics


Introduction to Straight Edge

A lifestyle. A personal choice. A philosophy. These definitions truly encompass what the term "straight edge" means. In truth, straight edge can be considered a subculture of its own, branching off punk rock music because the core ideals of the punk movement were adopted by the straight-edgers.

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History

The term became popular within the punk scene when Minor Threat addressed the lifestyle in their song, "Straight Edge."

Frontman and lyricist Ian MacKaye for Minor Threat wrote the following lyrics as a way to let the public know he doesn't need to use drugs just because he's part of the punk scene:

"I'm a person just like you

But I've got better things to do

Pass out at the shows

I don't even think about speed

That's something I just don't need

I've got the straight edge"


The 1981 ode to the clean life professed disgust at psychoactive drug use and other habits that became closely associated with hardcore music because it was so prevalent among the musicians of the times.

"Straight Edge" was meant to portray that by abstaining from all drugs and alcohol, the band had the "edge" up on other musicians who let those influences get the better of them.

In short, adopting the straight edge lifestyle put individuals in control of their own lives; it held them accountable for personal responsibility.

While the term cannot be put into a box and definitively labled, there are a number of characteristics most straight edge people have in common.
Common Characteristics of Straight Edge People

For one, straight edge people usually do not drink or do drugs. Some may be vegetarians or vegans and might even abstain from casual sex with others. A lot of straight edge people will even avoid caffeine and other stimulants because it does not fit with the lifestyle they've chosen for themselves.

Straight edge is a way of life, and those who live by this philosophy have chosen the path for themselves. It's not something people are born into or can arbitrarily become.

When someone makes the personal choice to commit to the straight edge lifestyle, they are saying they don't need drugs, alcohol or other outside influences to run their lives.
Straight Edge or Square?

Bear in mind that just because someone abstains from drug use does not necessarily mean they are straight edge. You can be drug-free, but not adopt the other lifestyle choices common to a straight-edger.

Similarly, you can be a vegetarian but not associated with the straight-edge movement because you haven't made a conscious decision to follow that life-path. People may share certain characteristics with straight-edgers, but unless they have chosen to adapt to that lifestyle they are not straight edge.

Dave Peters from Throwdown puts it nicely (from an interview on Truepunk.com):

"For me personally I've been straight edge for about 12 years and it's kind of ingrained in who I am. [It's] a personal choice... by definition, it's an individual choice."

Straight edge became closely identified with the punk scene as a subculture because straight-edgers shared common characteristics with members of the punk community.

For example, the punk culture was known for its disdain for authority figures, its individualism and care-free attitudes. Straight-edgers adopted these attitudes, but adapted the culture to fit their own beliefs that weren't so readily apparent in the punk movement (i.e., abstaining from illicit substances).
Confusion about the term

Some people may confuse straight edge with religion, but it's not a religion - it is a philosophy. The confusion is understandable though, because in the early days when straight edge first appeared, those who subscribed to this lifestyle believed a clear head would help them focus on their spirituality.

But straight-edgers do not all conform to one religion. There are atheists, agnostics and Christian people who consider themselves straight edge. In the beginning, bands like Shelter and 108 even helped spread a Hare Krishna movement that many straight-edgers adopted for themselves.

You don't have to affiliate with any one particular religion to be straight edge. You just have to consciously follow a path that allows you to take care of yourself and your personal responsibilities without letting outside influences interefere.

While this article cannot hope to cover all the complexities of the straight edge philosophy, it should be known that straight edge people have chosen to embrace this lifestyle for their own reasons.

In short, it's a lifestyle that promotes a positive way of living.

The copyright of the article The Definition of Straight Edge in Punk/Ska Music is owned by Denise Shively. Permission to republish The Definition of Straight Edge in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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In the late summer of 1981, Janelle Brooks started throwing shows in the basement of her parents’ house in Potomac, Maryland. Usually these parties would feature five or six bands, who were usually happy to share their gear with each other. Most of their songs were only a minute long, and therefore the sets tended to be really brief. There was a pole in the middle of the carpeted rec-room that everyone danced around, and between bands people hung out all over the house and in the yards. Nobody knew where Janelle’s parents were during these throwdowns, but apparently they were ok with it. In September, one of these shows featured the end of three bands: Assault and Battery, Minor Threat, and Red C. Things moved quickly in the punk scene at that point and bands would come and go, so it wasn’t a surprise that a new band formed by Pete from Red C along with Mike, Rob and Steve of Assault and Battery played Janelle’s next party just three weeks later. Mike’s bass drum head had an upside down peace-sign painted on it and the name of the band was Artificial Peace. They were solid and fast and they quickly managed to build one of the largest followings of all of the early bands. They were one of the first DC area bands to play out of town, always making it a point to announce that they were from Bethesda, a city just across the DC line in Maryland. Ian MacKaye recorded a 19-song demo with them at Inner Ear, and three of those songs appear on the ‘Flex Your Head’ Sampler. They also released a split 7” with The Exiled on the Fountain of Youth label which was released in 1982.

An audio message purportedly by al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has been released on an Islamist website.

The message, entitled "a statement to the American people", was about 10 minutes long and was accompanied by a still image of Bin Laden but no video.



In the message, a voice tells the US president that he is "powerless" to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The message comes just two days after the US marked the eighth anniversary of the 11 September attacks on America.

'No real change'

In the recording, the voice discusses what motivated the al-Qaeda network to launch the 11 September attacks. He explaining that they were, in part, fuelled by US support for Israel.

"The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby," the voice in the tape says.

"The reason for our dispute with you is your support for your ally Israel, occupying our land in Palestine."

The voice believed to be Bin Laden also speaks of how the conflict between al-Qaeda and the US may end.

"If you stop the war, then fine. Otherwise we will have no choice but to continue our war of attrition on every front [...] If you choose safety and stopping wars, as opinion polls show you do, then we are ready to respond to this," it says.

In the message, the al-Qaeda leader accuses the new president of failing to fundamentally change foreign policy because of his decision to retain key figures from the previous administration, including Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

"If you think about your situation well, you will know that the White House is occupied by pressure groups," he says.

Bin Laden is thought to be hiding in mountainous terrain on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In his last known message, in June, Bin Laden had said that US President Barack Obama had planted the seeds of "revenge and hatred" towards the US in the Muslim world.

On Sunday 6 September the World Trade Organization will open its doors to the public for the first time. Throughout the day, there will be a variety of activities on offer, including guided tours of the building, insights into the work of the WTO and special activities for children.


The Open Day will offer visitors the chance to find out more about what the WTO does, to meet with WTO staff and to engage with representatives of the membership of the WTO.

The WTO Director‑General, Pascal Lamy, summed up the aim of the day: “This Open Day will be a chance to discover the WTO in all its facets — historical, cultural and international — as well as to understand the importance of international trade to the prosperity of all the world's citizens”.

The Open Day will begin at 10 a.m. with a brief opening ceremony and welcome address. This will be followed by a short film about the WTO, which will be shown at regular intervals throughout the day. Food stands will provide an international buffet offering specialities from the WTO's Member countries. All proceeds from the day will go to a local charity “Païdos”, a centre which helps children and adolescents in difficult situations or with behavioural problems.

“We are also organizing this event”, said Pascal Lamy, “in order to send a strong signal that we are part of the Geneva community, a community to which we have been inextricably linked for 60 years.”

For further information, including the detailed programme, please consult the Open Day website at: http://jpo.wto.org/.

There are many subcultures across society, which are often identified most easily by the related music and fashion, and these include punks, goths and emos. Because these subcultures often evolved from similar beginnings there are bound to be some crossovers, and that's why you can get smaller groups within each one, such as emo punks. To put the word punk to anything means literally to be louder, brasher and more aggressive about everything, so emo punk represents the more rebellious, hardcore side to the emo culture.

The emo culture originally sprang from punk roots, and in the beginning the term was used to describe a more emotionally charged subgenre of hardcore punk in 1980s, usually referred to as 'emocore' with bands like Rites of Spring, Embrace and Moss Icon. In the mid 1990s the term emo become more associated with Indie rock, with bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, which was more melodic and less frenzied than punk rock and emocore. As emo moved into the late 1990's it become more and more accessible to the mainstream, with bands like Weezer producing globally successful albums, and also Deep Elm Records releasing the first instalment in what was to be the defining emo compilation series in the world, the Emo Diaries. In the new millennium emo began to become more and more popular, and artists like Chris Carrabba led the new move towards emo punk pop, a mix of melodic, thought provoking pop and catchy, jangling modern rock tunes. Many people who supported the more independent and less mainstream emo music of the 1980's and 90's resented this new move towards popularity, resulting in a serious rift in the genre and it is generally thought by these purveyors of authentic emo that the new emo punk pop sounds are a commercial sell out, with copy cat bands generated purely to make money. Fall Out Boy and Blink 182 hover on the edge of this debate, with their roots firmly in their emocore, underground backgrounds, but with new worldwide commercial success no doubt putting pressure on their creative direction. Fall Out Boy's recent releases have followed the emo punk pop vibe firmly with thoughtful and catchy rock/pop tunes, but the wider variety of influences in their most recent work (such as collaborations with R&B stars like Kanye West) has led some to question the direction the band are heading in, which wasn't helped but a recent cover of the king of commercial music Michael Jackson's 'Beat It', that had many serious emo types frowning deeply under their stylish fringes.

So emo punk is in part a revival of the emocore vibe of the 1980s, and in general describes the more energetic and rebellious section of the youthful emo scene. Basically those emo punks are those who are not content just to sit and home and listen to records and talk about music, but who want to get out there and be an active part of culture and society.


Emocore has been subject of much debate since it first appeared. So...emo is a genre of rock music. At first, the term was used to describe a subgenre of hardcore punk in the '80s. Later, 'emocore' was used to describe the DC scene and regional scenes related.


› What is emo music
Emocore has been subject of much debate since it first appeared. So...emo is a genre of rock music. At first, the term was used to describe a subgenre of hardcore punk in the '80s. Later, 'emocore' was used to describe the DC scene and regional scenes related.



The biggest names of the period are Fire Party, Rites of Spring, One Last Wish, Embrace, Beefeater, Gray Matter, and Moss Icon.

The first wave of emo began to fade after the breakups of most of the involved bands in the early 1990s. In the mid '90s, 'emo' began to reflect the indie scene that followed the influences of Fugazi. Bands like 'Texas is the reason' and 'Sunny Day Real Estate' introduced a more indie rock style of emo, less violent than it's predecessor. "Indie emo" survived until the late '90s. As the remaining indie emo bands entered the mainstream, newer bands began to emulate the more mainstream style, creating a style of music that has now earned the moniker emo within popular culture.

Whereas, even in the past, the term emo was used to identify a wide variety of bands, the breadth of bands listed under today's

emo is even more vast, leaving the term "emo" as more of a loose identifier than as a specific genre of music.

By Julia Mayes

Though often overlooked or seen as contradictions to the norm, members of the Afro Punk community could soon be headed the direction they never expected -- mainstream.

Growing numbers of African American youth are following the leads of pop artists and celebrities and adopting Afro Punk fashions. Meanwhile, long-time practitioners in the Afro Punk movement are growing into the stability of life in their late 30s and early 40s and, as they settle down and have families, are cultivating interests in missions to respond to the angst in the music from their youth, with sustainable food programs, plans to encourage others to buy locally grown or crafted products and projects to combat stereotypes.

Perhaps for the first time, and with observable maturity, the movement is getting organized. Elements of the culture permeate popular music and fashion and the list of areas in which Afro Punk can be seen is only growing.

Soon, the mainstream will have to find a way to answer the question: What is Afro Punk?

© Denise Shively


The punk subculture isn't merely a fashion statement, but rather an attitude and a way of life for many people.

When punk music became a little more mainstream, many people decided to adopt the punk "style" for themselves. Some would argue that people forgot the original meaning behind the punk movement to begin with. Others might consider the punk subculture merely a way to express themselves with clothing and hairstyles that command attention.
How It Began

Originally, the punk movement came about as a way for people to express their views towards political and social issues. The outrageous clothing and hairstyles were indicative of the youthful rebellion at the time, and stood as a way for punks to differentiate themselves from the masses.

Punk bands carried with them a message of anti-authority, and as the movement progressed, people increasingly began to flock to the punk ideology as never before. Before Hot Topic opened in malls everywhere, punk was about attitude. It wasn't about garnering attention from your peers. At least, that's how one argument goes.
The Other Side

Still others care to argue that punk shouldn't be about labels to begin with. The "punk clothing" so prevalent in today's youth, rather than be an indicator of rebellion or anti-establishment, should merely be looked upon as a fashion statement.

This nonchalant way of thinking seems to anger many "true punks" who adopted the culture as a way of life, not simply to look cool in front of their friends. However, that begs the question: how do you define a "true" punk from a mere poser?

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The Labels Associated with the Punk Movement

When did the meaning of punk become so skewed between the 1970's and today? As the culture has blended into the mainstream, many people have seemed to lose sight of what the original movement truly meant to begin with.

What makes a person punk, anyway? Tattoos? Drug use? Does a true punk need to be offensive, mean and degrading - just for the sake of doing so? Wait, what about mohawks, liberty spikes and outrageous hair colors? Does sporting purple locks make someone punk?

Then of course, there are the so-called "fashionistas" who seem to dress up in punk clothing because of the cool factor. Do fishnet stockings, fingerless gloves and a snarl make you punk?
Staying True

As punk music and the culture becomes increasingly embraced into the mainstream, the line between true originality and copy cat clones will blur. Punk was never intended to be strictly about the fashion; rather, it was an ideology, and truthfully, a way of life.

There are no rules to follow to be "punk." Think for yourself, don't attempt to follow the latest trends just because they're there, and wear what you want. Why? Because true punks don't care about looking good or fitting in with everyone else.

Punk isn't just a fashion statement.

The copyright of the article The Punk Way of Life in Punk/Ska Music is owned by Denise Shively. Permission to republish The Punk Way of Life in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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