80s Punks / 00s Fedorans

[Senator Jack]

Okay, I know there are more than a few of us that are from this era and scene. The trailer brought me back to my youth. Who's going to see it?


http://www.sonyclassics.com/americanhardcore/

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Samsa]

Looks interesting....I was never much into punk as a teen (my loyalties were with heavy metal), but I've been intrigued by the philosophy behind punk music for quite some time.

 

[herringbonekid]

Senator, do you think it's ironic that a once angry young punk (such as i presume you might have been) could grow up to be a defender of certain styles and lifestyle choices that could be considered conservative... e.g the wearing of hats, suits and being civilised in public ?

i've wondered about this myself often. an example from a not too disimilar musical genre might be Nick Cave. once a screaming gothic junkie, posterboy of the disaffected and freakish, now a devoted father who writes almost classic piano ballads (and lives just along the road from me in a charming seafront apartment).



p.s. that hardcore music was never for me. too much aggression/testosterone.

 

[Senator Jack]

I moved within the intersecting circles of punk/mod/ska/garage/rockabilly back then, and I think what they all had in common was that they there were collectively thumbing their nose at the status quo. I'll admit to having always been a contrarian, and while I've been wearing vintage clothing for more than half my life now, it's only in the last ten years - since EVERYONE's become a sloppy pseudo-rebel (ex. the hipster grups) - that I've been rather enjoying annoying the general public simply by being well-dressed.

Back in the mid-80s, when I started working at corp jobs, I never wore my suits to work, preferring to annoy the boss with black leather jacket and black jeans, and after work I would then annoy my fellow black leather bandmates by showing up to gigs in a suit. How more contrarian can you get than that?

Okay, big can of worms, but here goes. I fell in with the hardcore crowd because of the politics - anti-business, anti-greed, anti-Reagan, anti-everything-the-80s-stood-for. And while I'm not out there in the mosh pit any more, I have kept the ethics, and my conservativeness is limited to dress and manners only. (Which, again, isn't conservative any more)

Interesting topic. Maybe i'll have more to say later.


Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[nightandthecity]

nice one Jack! That took me back. Black Flag....yay!!

 

[Rick Blaine]

very interesting...

...

Okay, big can of worms, but here goes. I fell in with the hardcore crowd because of the politics - anti-business, anti-greed, anti-Reagan, anti-everything-the-80s-stood-for. And while I'm not out there in the mosh pit any more, I have kept the ethics, and my conservativeness is limited to dress and manners only. (Which, again, isn't conservative any more)

Interesting topic. Maybe i'll have more to say later.


Regards,

Senator Jack

and sort of tangential to this subject, I can't help but infer that more than a few loungers may have come to an appreciation of vintage, be it films, clothes, or design, through...um, how do I put this delicately... a rather reactionary political orientation.
Am I the only one who has picked up on this ?
... and yo! Sen. Jack... at the time in question I was attending St. John's and working at the Pathmark at the corner of Union turnpike there in yr. neck of the woods
... I saw The Ramones at CBGBs, the Minutemen at some Irving Place area club, Television...The Residents...REM at Radio City, whew, NYC in the '80's was a blast, what I can recall, I mean...

 

[Salv]

I never got into '80s US punk - by the early '80s I was listening to UK post-punk by the likes of Durruti Column, Joy Division, Scritti Politti, The Fall, The Pop Group, The Teardrop Explodes, The Distractions (brilliant Manchester pop-punk band!), Orange Juice etc. But I was a big fan of '70s UK punk though - I saw some of the major bands between '76 and '78, including the Pistols during their secret tour in August '77, the Clash at Victoria Park (the outside gig shown in their film Rude Boy), Buzzcocks (I saw them at least three times and they were always my favourite punk band), The Jam, Alternative TV, The Slits - I still regret missing seeing The Damned, The Cortinas (Fascist Dictator still sounds great), Subway Sect and X-Ray Spex, and I also regret actually seeing The Police - they were still a four-piece at the time and were rubbish.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

I was already living in the past by the 1980s, I was listening to The Doors a lot, and my Beatles obsession from the late '70s was still there.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

I'll never be a soccer mom

I was there. I'm gonna see it, wearing a black silk dress and pearls, just like I wore back then.

 

[Senator Jack]

Beguine, if you were here in the city, we'd make quite the pair at the theatre. Certainly, I'll be there in a suit.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

dang it, my best friend doesn't live on Crescent St anymore!

 

[Senator Jack]

I live 10 blocks from Crescent - in Astoria!

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Cool! Yes, Crescent St in Astoria. And I've been to Socrates Park.

 

[Feraud]

Cool! Yes, Crescent St in Astoria. And I've been to Socrates Park.

fftopic:
Now you are talking my turf too. Socrates Park currently has an awesome lifesize Bigfoot scupture! The best Greek food outside of Greece is found around here!

This looks like a great documentary! Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Black Flag, etc.. Ah the good old days, pre "punk rock inspired" radio friendly bands like Green Day. Sunday afternoon Hardcore shows at CBGB's with my skateboard and friends. Ah to be young and angry again....

 

[jake_fink]

I'll be seeing this, though my interests were more the UK punk and post punk bands, some which Salv has already mentioned. The Buzzcocks were the ne plus ultra for my money even before I knew what ne plus ultra meant. The Clash, the Jam, magazine... they could have been the last bands to ever record and I'd have been a happy guy. None of the American hardcore bands got me that excited.

I always compared Black Flag (and Henry Rollins) to the Doors (and Jim Morrison) because they were mediochre bands led by terrible psueds. Poets!?!? HA!

BTW the Nick Cave arc is a good observation. I like him as much now as I did when I was young and he was in The Birthday Party. You can grow up and your situation can change, but you don't have to give up being who and what you are. I think Tom Waits has made a similar journey.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Yeah, Hamlet pow pow pow. Many a pleasant minute spent listening to that song. I'm very excited aboout this documentary. But, this movie is not scheduled to be shown at my local theatre. :rage: Well, I'll see if the library will order it when it comes out on video.

 

[Senator Jack]

Jake_Fink must now have the distinction of being the first to post anything about Magazine at the Lounge.lol

Devoto got it exactly right in 'Shot From Both Sides'. I've always felt I was right in the middle of fire.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

I arrived here more via goth then via punk, although listening wise, listened to both.

Since Goth has to some extent always been about dressing 'better then the occaision' I sometimes just thing that while a particular aesthetic might change, the mentality does not have to.

It's about the inside and not the outside. The outsidt reflects the inside.

 

[jake_fink]

Jake_Fink must now have the distinction of being the first to post anything about Magazine at the Lounge.lol

Devoto got it exactly right in 'Shot From Both Sides'. I've always felt I was right in the middle of fire.

That distinction and pair of blues will get me a cocktail. lol

My favourite song ever (my favourite linked sounds!) is A Song From Under the Floorboards - Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground distilled into three minutes of pop-punk perfection.

I am angry I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin
my irritability keeps me alive and kicking

I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it

This is a song from under the floorboards
this is a song from where the wall is cracked
my force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess I'm proud as hell of that fact


Oh joy!

 

[nightandthecity]

and sort of tangential to this subject, I can't help but infer that more than a few loungers may have come to an appreciation of vintage, be it films, clothes, or design, through...um, how do I put this delicately... a rather reactionary political orientation.
Am I the only one who has picked up on this ?
... ..

OK, agreed, its tangenital. So I'll confine myself to this one post on the subject!

There are certainly some strong conservatives here. But there’s a lot of liberals and leftists too. I wouldn’t like to guess the true proportions. Hemingway has a sticky poll at the moment (one person one vote) which last time I looked showed around 1/3 liberal to 2/3 conservative, but another current OB thread (The Political Compass, which aims to measure where you really are rather than where you think you are) shows a slight liberal majority so far.

To me the most significant aspect of both surveys is actually the very small number who have participated. It seems to me that the majority of loungers are voting with their feet and sending a clear message about the presence of so much contemporary political debate in this forum! That doesn‘t mean they are non-political. I know of at least three Trotskyists in this forum, and I’ve noticed they almost never enter political debates (and have not done the political compass test either). It’s simply not what most people come here for. In fact its probably the sort of thing they come to escape from.

Personally I could do without it. Most of the time I avoid the OB or else read the stuff and bite my lip. Then my lip starts to hurt and bingo, in the ring again…..

The situation does intrigue me though. When I first came here I was really surprised by the number of right-wingers. In the UK and Europe most people into vintage clothes, 1930s film and music etc tend to be fairly left-wing (I can speak with some authority here having been a vintage dealer for almost 25 years and professionally involved in various revivalist music scenes since the 1960s)

I think it reflects three things. Firstly, the Lounge didn’t grow out of the mainstream vintage scene but out of the Indiana Jones fan scene. The traditional vintage scene, which grew out of the 60s counter-culture and was massively reinforced by a series of cult music scenes in the 70s/80s/90s, seems to have had a more liberal orientation than the Indy crowd: in the lounge the two have met. Or should I say collided.

Secondly, the 1930s and 40s seems to be seen by many US conservatives as a kind of Golden Age (bizarre really, given its domination by New Deal Democrats). In the UK conservatives are more likely to see this era as a nightmare world of insurgent communists, mass socialist parties, powerful labour unions etc. When they look back they tend to idealize the Victorian era or - again, rather oddly - the 1950s, the high point of British Parliamentary Socialism! (Not to mention the birth of Rock and Roll.....)

Thirdly, this is not actually a vintage clothing forum. It covers a much wider range of interests, that’s why it is so good. There are plenty people here who are solely interested in hats. Others whose interest is in classic/traditional rather than vintage. Others into film, or music, or history. There’s a whole sub group primarily interested in historical re-enactment. It’s a big building and its bound to house a wide range of opinions.