Teenage Kicks, so hard to beat.
Of course, they grew up, and grew old, and grew complacent; but the music remains.
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One narrative theme that always stands out to me is that punk made a big deal about being honest, direct, anti-hypocrite, and that combined with the kind of moral clarity that seems to come easily to teenagers virtually guaranteed that it couldn’t survive aging. Growing and maturing into society requires compromise, and being uncompromising with the greater outside world seemed like a lynchpin of punk.
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can’t help myself. i love me some lobsterdust.
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Jello is still cool. Maybe a little more liberal and a little less anarcho-communist than he used to be but he’s still cool.
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A few years later, SLC Punk was a (fictional) movie that starts out as a slice of life film about being punk but is then more about growing up and getting tired of the punk lifestyle.
SLC Punk! - Wikipedia!
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And yet Ian MacKaye and the whole DC harDCore scene remains largely unchanged.
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What i dig about Crass /Penny Rimbaud is how they seem to be as hard core (less music, more politics) as ever…
i’m disgusted then disappointed every time i see one of my high school best friends express MAGAness. He was the guy responsible for awakening in me, an openness to outlier types and questioning the status quo.
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Was in East Village c 1991. Only true punks I knew were in squats and into heroin. Was a dangerous and violent place; poverty and illness.
I was down with the anarchy & anti-establishment ethos… was lucky to have a menial job and apt filled with roommates. Was drawn more to New Wave/Post Punk/Experimental music…
2021, the country is filled with q-sters & Magidiots of every stripe and background … including those who hate-on “aging punks” …
Money makes Conservatives of us all … Capitalism can be poisonous.
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Not really a contest if you ask me.
The first photo is a middle finger to the establishment, provided by someone bent on self destruction, quite a coherent and comprehensible statement, even if I wouldn’t advise it or necessarily sympathize with it.
The second photo … every aspect of it is just pathetic.
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John Lydon is even starting to look like Trump. Bloated Sunkist buffoon.
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He looks like Eric Pickles with a mohawk. His right wing rants sound like Eric Pickles.
Has anyone seen Eric Pickles recently?
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When I think aging punks my go-to is Henry Rollins. Nobody’s flawless, I don’t doubt there are better informed people than myself who have a legit ax to grind with him, but I like his transition to storyteller and traveler.
Also Dropkick Murphy’s seem to be having a pretty good time and while they weren’t foundational, their median age is pretty up there.
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Does anyone know what Eric Pickles looked like back in 1975? Maybe Lydon has been Eric Pickles all along?
John Lydon didn’t look like Eric Pickles when Eric Pickles “retired”. I’m just wondering if the current “John Lydon” really is John Lydon.
In this age of serious conspiracy theorists, I feel obligated to say that John Lydon is not Eric Pickles, and that both people have been saying shitty things for decades. John Lydon just got away with it for longer because he wasn’t obviously a Tory.
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Good call. I’ll add Nick Cave to your Henry Rollins. I like the way both of those guys have developed over the years.
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I’m a Rollins fan and the only time I remember being genuinely disappointed with him was his comments about suicide after Robin Williams died. He later apologized for that and possibly because I’m biased to want to like him, I think his apology came across as genuine. There have been other times when I’ve rolled my eyes at him a bit but not really been offended - when outrage is part of your schtick, you’re bound to say something dumb sometimes. Watching him stand on stage screaming about adults reading Harry Potter is kind of amusing but also… dude, who cares, at least they’re reading.
Otherwise, I’ve always enjoyed hearing him speak. It seems to me that a recurring theme in his speaking and writing is that individuals who enjoy a level of privilege and power (which definitely includes a lot of his white middle-class fans) have a responsibility to go out in the world and do the work to try and make it a better place for everyone. And I think that’s an important message to serve as a counterpoint to the “freedom means you don’t have to give a fuck about anyone but yourself” neo-con garbage that is so popular these days.
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How has anyone not posted this yet?
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