“I guess it was just the kids that were too cool for school. They were geeky and they found their niche and then all the sudden, they became the assholes.” – George Rebelo on Hot Water Music’s first experience at 924 Gilman Street
Something I’ve wondered about ever since I started going to punk and hardcore shows is where a sense of elitism comes from. Yes, I know humans are humans, but one of the main draws of punk and hardcore is the sense of finding a crowd when you don’t think you fully belong anywhere else.
Thinking about George’s quote, it’s always struck me as odd when people who don’t fit in with the regular crowd find their own crowd, but then start acting like the people they hate from the regular crowd. Think of it as the bullied becoming the bullies. What’s up with that?
There was a time in 1998 when I thought I was straight edge. (Key words: “thought I was.”) I had no interest in smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, or screwing around. Yet when I encountered ardent straight edge followers, I distanced myself from the label. Extremist followers can turn anybody off from whatever they believe in, and this was definitely the case here. I didn’t want to dress up like members of Earth Crisis, rip people apart for eating meat, or start fights at shows with people who drank and smoke. Years later, I met much more grounded people who were straight edge but weren’t extremist. Still, I can’t forget the extremists that put up roadblocks rather than present an open door.
Read more after the jump.
The same went for being a fan of bands like NOFX and Screeching Weasel. There were the few that tried to act like Fat Mike or Ben Weasel and came across as complete jerks in the process. Based on what I saw, the vocal minority ruined things for the majority. At the time though, I thought this minority group was the majority.
Maybe this has to do with youth, and a certain stage of it. I was nineteen in 1998, as were many of the people at the shows I went to. I was about to go off to an out-of-town college and thought about the world at large. The cruelties and unfairness of the world at large made me think about what I could do to either avoid them or combat them. That’s what drew me to straight edge, as it did for many then and still does for people today.
So the puzzlement continues, or am I just having a hard time understanding the difference in wanting to belong and belonging.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:36 am
I could not agree more. I want to know when that point in time was when I started becoming the minority? I was a straight edge girl for 5+ years, which was hard enough, and one day I woke up and decided that I did not feel the same way about drugs and alcohol. And no, it wasn’t that I wanted to start binge drinking and smoking weed, but simply that there was no difference between me and the person who has a beer with dinner. I respect straight edge more than anything, some of my favorite people have been their whole entire lives, but those people that I associate with are the ones who are not going to take extreme offense and see that my straight edge attitude is still there. And this attitude that I speak of is one of non-addiction, or an attitude that understands that some decisions are more important. The whole entire point of this music scene is to unite, and not to divide, and all I see with some of my friends is this great division between us all.
January 24th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Straight Edge is a personal choice, we all know that; but for some reason we all try to relate it to a brotherhood and unity of some underground society when in reality there is no brotherhood outside asshole crews that go to shows to crowd bash on people who aren’t even dancing then want to start fights over it cause the people dancing can’t hit the people in the pit so they go for the crowd cause they’re pussies.
Then its crew against divided crowd.
Its human nature to try to belong. Two people might suffer from depression but they are worlds apart; I distance myself from saying I’m edge to anyone cause there’s no commonness amongst me and anyone else I see out there who is edge.
I made the claim because it was something strong I saw in a friend and I wanted to be like that; not to become some faggoty underground dick head army of bullshit cargo and mesh shorts New York and L.A hat scene.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
In 1998 the straight edge lifestyle was about 15 years old, and it was no longer what it originally was no matter who you are, or what you were doing it for. While people were doing it beforehand, Edge started with Ian MacKaye and kids in DC who were responding to the idiots they’d see around them who were hopped up on drugs or getting wasted all the time. Edge was a response to that, a way to separate themselves from a lifestyle that was obviously destructive, wasteful and really stupid.
But like any ideology, it can be taken to the extreme. Like Christianity, I may myself be a Christian, but I do not in the least say that God doesn’t love homosexuals, that only “born again” Christians will be in heaven, or that abortion is a black and white decision.
Militant edgers are not representative of both the whole or the ideology itself, though it’s glaringly apparent why anyone would be turned off to the whole thing haven’t met any one of the extremists themselves (which I also did the first time I met someone who was straight edge.)
It’s interesting to me how not hardcore the scene is everywhere I go. No matter what city I’m in, I’ve yet to meet a scene (with the exception of one night in Evansville, IN in 2003) that was open, inviting, and seemed to have a good time at the shows rather then being there to strike a pose or smash kids and hate on bands who aren’t apart of their crew (Eureka, MO hardcore crew.) I mostly hate playing shows because of the douchebags that come to them.
October 5th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Contact me asap please!