Punk is supposed to shock and horrify, or at least it was back in the day. Racism, homophobia and sexism are shocking and horrifying. Ergo...
--- "B." <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Wendy,
>
> I agree, and have written about that elsewhere,
> actually.
>
> One of the biggest shameful moments of Bad Brains
> had
> to have been when a fight started because they
> played
> in Austin in the 80s and some dispute broke out
> between Bad Brains (actually, mostly HR from what I
> understand) and other bands they were playing with,
> MDC and the Big Boys, or The Dicks. All 3 Austin
> bands, all 3 fronted by gay men. HR is notorious for
> his statements about that stuff, even the song
> "Don't
> Blow Bubbles" off Quickness is about homophobic.
>
> It sucks that musical talent/innovation does not
> have
> to jibe with moral/ethical boundaries, a la Black
> Flag's "Guilty of Being White," and the homophobic
> stuff Fear (gay baiting audiences, Decline of
> Western
> Civ) and Meatmen, etc., would spew out. That was all
> in the 80s, too. So it wasn't just Bad Brains. Or
> SSD
> talking about "new wave faggots." The band Nig
> Heist's
> name itself, and the story behind it, is pretty
> racist. Or how about Agnostic Front's "Public
> Assistance" from the mid to late 80s: " How come
> it's
> minorities who cry / Things are too tough / On TV
> with
> their gold chains / Claim they don't have enough"
> etc.
>
>
> -B.
>
>
>
> Wendy Lyon wrote:
>
> "I haven't been involved in the punk scene for
> almost
> 20 years, so maybe things have changed, but back in
> those days it was quite the opposite - Bad Brains
> were
> able to get away with saying stuff that we would
> never
> have dreamed of tolerating from any other band. Not
> just homophobic comments, but things like explicitly
> justifying violence against women (I distinctly
> remember an interview with a DC fanzine around 1985
> in
> which one of their members explains how it's a man's
> responsibility to "administer justice" to a
> disobedient woman "in order to protect her from
> herself"). I don't know if people were hesitant to
> call them on it precisely because they were black,
> or
> if it was just that they had so much cachet for
> being
> Bad Brains. Maybe a bit of both."
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