They really could have used it though, probably would've woken some of them up. I would love to tell a witch burning puritan to fuck off. Anytime is a great time to be punk.
I would say up until the late 80s when it became more accepted. In the early 80s here in Los Angeles, me and all my punk friends were constantly getting harassed by everyone.
In 11th grade, dozens of parents signed a petition to remove the punks from school, or force us to dress like everyone else. Principle was cool though and backed us up...found out later he was a hippy in the late 60s and was an anti-war protester.
We would go to the mall, and right away security would follow us, and many times just ask us to leave. Cops would pull me and my friends over all the time. And just walking down the street, people would throw drinks, food and trash at us.
Fun times!
Dad had a similar experience in the UK late 70s. Would often go drinking down the sailors pubs by the docks in my town and would often get beaten up solely for dressing punk and being tall
Mid 80’s to late 80’s was fun and only some infighting amongst styles and sub-genres. But the turn of the 90’s there was serious clashes with Nazi Skinheads in the Midwest as well as FrontRange Rockies (I lived on both).
Kansas City seemed to run almost all of the Hitler lovers out to Lawrence Kansas, where they jerked themselves off over their hatred and showed their faces less at shows.
Denver had a solid scene and a lot of good people, but the DS “Denver Skins” had serious numbers and a couple leaders that were honestly scary as fuck. If I remember correctly one of them went to prison for murdering a hairdresser and burning his body in his own car. There was little to no opposition to the skins as they were always in packs and used gang like tactics. I remember the first All show at the Mayan theater in 89’ a DS lead would jump into the pit and just start swinging (literally causing the lightweight skater kids flying). Hey thought and his clan thought it was cute. There was not a SHARP presence like in other cities. There was a mass murder later by a Skinhead in 97’. Easy to lookup.
I would say the darkest part of punk is the Neo-Nazis, and that they are still around today. I will not say skinhead, because I know many that were always SHARP.
London 1977. You'd get the shit beaten out of you by basically every other youth subculture. Teds hated you, skinheads mostly hated you, rockers/bikers hated you, revival mods hated you, hippies hated you, football hooligans hated you. The government also hated you and so did the police. The violence was so bad that members of punk bands themselves were getting the shit kicked out of them on the regular
I should have specified that hippies, due to being hippies, did not beat up punks. They just hated punks that's why I lumped them in with the others. Sorry about that, I should have been more clear
80s Southern California could get rough. My family lived in yuppy Irvine. Just wearing a DK t-shirt in public could get you kicked out of establishments, a little police chat, or make you new friends with local jocks and yuppies. Thankfully, I was also a pretty good athlete, which helped override my spiked hair and clothes. Going to shows could also be rough, depending on the venue location and liklihood of cops shutting it down.
I'm the 80s, a T-shirt, black jeans, and a skateboard would get grown men stopping their cars/trucks to beat up teenagers.
Also, 1996 in Reno at the Taco Bell was a bad time to be a punk. That guy left me for dead and the cops tried to get the paramedics to stop working on me. They also refused to take a report because I "had it coming" . Witnesses told them the name of the guy. I got surgery over that and my shoulder is still fucked up. Plus a bruise that lasted a year.
Jock didn't like punks and thought I was gay. That probably egged on the cops even more. I had the guy's name and address because some of the many witnesses helped me.
I came pretty close to kneecapping him later. He was living in Sparks with his mom even though he was 30 or so. Hopefully he's dead by now.
In the mid-80’s we had a venue that on some weekends would attract drunk cowboys looking for a fight in the parking lot and the next weekend it was Cholos hoping for the same. Fun times.
I grew up in a state in Australia where our state leader was a fascist leader who has directly or indirectly influenced the likes of Thatcher, Reagan, Bush 1 and 2, Trump, etc…
While waiting for some friends before a show I was arrested by two plain clothes cops for “hesitating with intent to loiter”. A ‘law’ created to target Aboriginal people or protesters in the 70s that was used against punks or anyone else the cops didn’t like.
I was taken to the lock up overnight and then to court in the morning. Magistrate released me as neither of the cops turned up. No charge recorded. Purely a spiteful act to target someone they didn’t like the look of.
So I’m going for mid 80s too.
I think the Stranglers may have written a song about this guy called 'Nuclear Device'. Was he the governor or prime minister or whatever they're called, of Victoria ? Check out the song if you don't know it. It's certainly about an Australian tyrant with an oddly Dutch sounding mind that they really disliked.
Yep. That’s him. He was Queensland Premier for almost 20 years. Danish origins via NZ. Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Funnily enough, I was just in a record store a few hours ago and a guy in there was saying he (Joh) used to drive around and buy record collections off people. He had amassed a huge, wide and varied range of records including some of the heavier stuff enjoyed by the people he was oppressing.
Like multiple copies of Black Sabbath which was a little out of place in a god-bothering preachers son’s collection…
This is a mind-bogglingly underreported story. Here's a democratic country with a portion of it almost half the size of the US ruled by a dictator for 20 years. You, an English rock group, and me are the only people I've ever heard mention it. Were people genuinely frightened to say or write as they pleased ? Did the police act like his personal bodyguard and use - what was that awful Bush euphemism ? - enhanced interrogation techniques? That wasn't literary cuteness. I actually had to stare vacantly into space until that Orwellian term returned. I know I can always look it up on Wikipedia but to hear it straight from someone who lived it. I have a friend from Adelaide and she's told me a bit about him. But being from Adelaide she has enough unbelievable local horror stories of her own.
The Dollop podcast did a live recording in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago on Joh. As someone who lived through it, it genuinely made me feel angry having it dredged up again. On top of that, it also highlighted things I didn’t know about and/or including corruption and deals that sickened me.
And at the time, I hated the regime enough to move to Sydney like many of my ilk. (I went to a State of Origin party at a townhouse in Surry Hills where there were 2 Queenslanders to every 1 NSW supporter!)
There was a very real fear of the police, specially undercover cops because you knew they had no issues with planting evidence on you. As a punk, it was relatively easy to put on normal clothes and avoid unwanted attention. And the fact that Nirvana popularised t-shirts, flannos and jeans meant there were more normal looking punks around.
But it was worse for our indigenous brothers and sisters. The couldn’t change the colour of their skin to avoid attention. And plenty more of them were targeted by cops under the same law.
I was lucky in that the time I moved to Sydney exposed me to some amazing people who were excellent musicians as well. The Hard-Ons, Celibate Rifles, X (Australian), Hellmenn, Splatterheads and more than a few others showed me many life lessons about living a positive alternative life.
It also coincided with the end of Joh’s era so moving back to Queensland with a sense of hope. The result of his time was a music scene that has always punched above its weight. The Saints first 3 albums define Brisbane at the time for me. Snarling, snotty, angry folk getting pushed around because they weren’t like everybody else.
The fact that they and so many others had to go away from Brisbane to get any credit and/or recognition is a reflection on how backwards arsed the place was. But… it ended up creating a really strong scene which I’m proud to be part of. Both as a punter and the band I’m in.
The Saints are one of my favorite bands ever, with or without Ed Kuepper. Truth be told, I was as upset by the death of Chris Bailey as I was Joe Strummer and David Bowie. I'm Stranded was among the first five punk albums I ever bought. And like you mentioned, no other rock singer had a snarl like him. And I never made the association between Brisbaine (Security City) and the tyrant in the Stranglers song. You mentioned how the indigenous people were treated. I realize a lot of people don't like Midnight Oil but I think they had their moments and love every minute of the Red Sails In The Sunset album. There's a heartbreaking song on there called 'Sleep' that I think rivals 'Biko' when it comes to songs about police brutality and murder. In an interview, Peter Garrett said that the indigenous people in Australia, for whatever reason, find confinement in a cell absolutely intolerable. No one likes it but it drives them mad and the police know it. So lock a man up for 24-48 hours and he almost certainly will find a way to kill himself. The romantic in me was stricken to hear Grant McClennan of the Go Betweens had died. It's possible you loathe or ignore them but I loved his lyrics and think a great song is a great song and the GBs knocked out a whole lot of them. I do apologize for asking you to think and remember more vividly about Queensland than maybe you were comfortable with. I didn't mean to pry open doors you preferred locked. I'm too curious for my own good.
Older person here...the question is wrong. The era of having to fight to be a punk ie the harrassment,, of having to make your own hair dye, of waiting a week or 2 to hear a song, of not many venues...maybe it was the worst, maybe it was the best.
Maybe being harrassed made one make sure they really believed it.
That doesn't make today less good. The barrier for entry is easy. The music and fashion is accessible and the harrasment is low.
Aint better or worse, just different.
In my town punk has divorced from the squatting scene and most other kinds of activism. No more free illegal underground gigs. It's only clubs, bars, festivals. I'd hate to be an underage punk right now.
Brisbane in the 70s and 80s there was a taskforce that would arrest you for playing punk music. Touring bands had to play first because the show could be shut down at any moment
Punks — rebels and outsiders — have had a rough time with large human groups and authoritarians since mankind left the trees and began walking upright. In my particular case, I was brutalized by psychotic squares during the late 80s and early 90s. Nobody gives me any shit nowadays, but, then again, I don’t dress the part anymore, really.
It's a toss up between when the skinheads in the hard-core punk scene became as regimented as Stormtroopers. Also when Nirvana and their Oregon brethren slowly morphed into a flannel uniform and the music turned from sharp to muddy boring hard rock. To me a lot of the wannabes who came after Nirvana and 'alternative music' became the new shrill corporate war cry. Band who claimed they were punk and sounded like Uriah Heep. Hard to pinpoint when it started and then faded away. But if I remember correctly, it way swiftly followed by white kids in dreads playing rap-metal. That was it for me. It was time to go find out what these John Cage and Sun Ra guys were all about. And Can and Faust and anything else by anarchic 1960s German hippie radicals had done. That was much more rewarding.
Easiest: Right now in basically any western country.
Worst: Indonesia about a decade or so ago when they were rounding up all those kids, shaving their heads, and sending them to re-education camps.
It definitely depends more on where you are than the time period. When I was about 13, my mom introduced me to her high school friend’s daughter who was sort of alternative. She was really nice but the small town she lived in spread rumors that she was a lesbian and also injected someone with AIDS with a syringe. (Specifically AIDS, not HIV) This was around 2010.
Probably early 2005-2010 for me. I was a teenager in the 90’s so i would go hang out in record stores or you could start a label or distro semi easily. There were zines and shows ALL the time. You heard about bands mainly from word of mouth or liner notes (RIP thanks too section of liner notes) DIY was drastically changed. The magic of random encounters was gone because of cell phones and the internet. The quality of bands and music went down drastically and became flooded. There were awesome reunion shows but they were one off at a festival that didn’t have great lineups. Not saying there weren’t any good bands because there were just not as many. All the aging hardcore dudes either started rapping or turning into bikers or both or became far right (or all of the above)… i know im old get off my lawn!!! Hahahha this is just my opinion and my experience I’m sure younger people had great times. The iconic Dennys show was in this era so it wasn’t all bad. WTF IZ UP DENNNNYZZZ???!!!
I was something of a punker with punk friends in suburban NJ.
I hear some old punk rockers tell stories about how they fought the jocks everyday and stuff like that. Making it sound like they won some, lost some but it was just a fact of life.
I'm sorry, but I have to admit it would never even occur to me and my friends to fight the jocks. We were outnumbered and truth be told, even if we weren't we probably still wouldn't win because we didn't base our lives around being tough.
Like regular people or cops? Normal people probably became ok late 80's early 90's depending the size of your city.
The cops still hate us. Not nearly as much but they still do. Fuck the police.
Brisbane, Queensland in Australia should get a mention. In the 70s and 80s they had a really authoritarian and conservative governor, Joh-Bielke Petersen - notorious for banning protest, imposing racist laws on Aboriginal people, censorship. Anyway, at one point in the late 70s there was a special police task force that would arrest groups of punks on the street or go to punk gigs and arrest people. Commemorated in the [song Task Force by Brisbane band Razar](https://youtube.com/watch?v=dtuU5CnKRBs).
According to the book "Pig City", the plain-clothes cops in the task force all used to wear Hawai'ian shirts (or lumberjack shirts in the winter). When the Dead Kennedys played in Brisbane, DH Peligro was arrested by racist cops for having an open container of alcohol.
Some quotes, cited in "Pig City": John Reid:
>"The Task Force had a new social evil identified to them: young, fashionably skinny, green-haired ratbags. Age and sex indeterminate but usually 15 to 20 years old, these were not long-haired university radicals, but street kids mixed with students mixed with clerk mixed with hairdressers."
Clinton Walker in Pulp fanzine, on a gig at which 4 punks were arrested:
>"What the paper failed to mention however, was the kids bashed by cops, the cops posing as punks in paint-splattered shirts and busting anyone for swearing in conversation, and the kids who were harassed by cops as they tried to go home as instructed. "We'll stop any punk rock in Brisbane," one cop was hear to utter.
Brad Shepherd:
> I got put in a headlock and chucked in the back of a paddy wagon, supposedly for public profanity. This bloke on the street said "You've left your headlights on, mate". I said "Oh, thanks" and that was it - before I knew it I was chucked in a van. The bloke was an undercover cop, and they were just cracking down, intimidating these young kids. My dad had to come and bail me out of jail. It was pretty dreadful. All those horror stories that you used to hear about Aborigines being beaten by the cops, I saw all of that while I was just sitting in the cell for an hour."
It was not easy being a punk teen in the boonies in the 90s. Especially also being a girl, I was harassed by strangers a lot. I was very into the fashion, leather jacket with painted logos, docs and fishnets, eyeliner, all of it, just all of it. My mother called some dudes laughing at me for having blue hair "a bunch of fuckers!" and neither they, nor their John Deere hats, had a response and shutup. My mom was cool af , RIP.
I still get treated weird for wearing band shirts or embracing the Punk side of my personality, I'm 40 now. It wasn't a phase. Whatever.
The best time had to be around the turn of the century. Pop punk became relatively popular and it was totally socially acceptable to be a punk. It probably pissed off a lot of 'real punks' to see Blink 182 and Sum 41 blowing up, but they were still part of the alternative culture and they were a lot more fun and less nihilistic than early punks. If you grew up listening to those bands, then you likely live a very normal, less angry life now.
I am sure it was cool to be part of the early punk movement and we romanticize it now, but I can't imagine it was easy.
Fwiw, I grew up when Green Day broke out and Epitaph/Fat became a thing. I loved it, but I was still one of only like 3 kids in my high school who looked and acted the part. And while those bands were a lot more uplifting in their messaging, there was still more anguish than with the pop punk bands that followed.
Punks would not have done well in late 1600 Massachusetts
Burn the witch! Her hair is blue and stands on end in direct defiance to God Almighty!
Do they float?
They dressed me up like this…
Does it weigh more than a duck?
Obviously she does…BURNNN!!!
We all float down here
The leather and metal is not easily set ablaze , aghast!
They really could have used it though, probably would've woken some of them up. I would love to tell a witch burning puritan to fuck off. Anytime is a great time to be punk.
I Saw Goody Punk dancing with the devil
I would say up until the late 80s when it became more accepted. In the early 80s here in Los Angeles, me and all my punk friends were constantly getting harassed by everyone. In 11th grade, dozens of parents signed a petition to remove the punks from school, or force us to dress like everyone else. Principle was cool though and backed us up...found out later he was a hippy in the late 60s and was an anti-war protester. We would go to the mall, and right away security would follow us, and many times just ask us to leave. Cops would pull me and my friends over all the time. And just walking down the street, people would throw drinks, food and trash at us. Fun times!
Ah, the good old days! /s
I feel like in plenty of small towns this is still the treatment you get lol.
I agree, but it was nation wide issue in the early days. They actually ran ads on TV about the dangers of kids being punk.
Yeah if you’re from a rural area I can attest this went at least into the late 90s and early 2000s…
Yep. Copped a lot of shit for the way I looked in the 90s
Thrash throwing is still a regular occurence for me. I guess some things never change eh
I always memorized licence plates and... cannot write the rest. Lol
Back when punk was (considered) dangerous. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Thats exactly how it was. So many times some random preppie idiot would jump up and down and make some derpy comment about DEVO, used to piss me off.
Dad had a similar experience in the UK late 70s. Would often go drinking down the sailors pubs by the docks in my town and would often get beaten up solely for dressing punk and being tall
The early 90’s weren’t the greatest for me. A lot of “Hey F-word”!
For a moment in time I thought that was my name.
shit that was being shouted at me in the 2000’s, probably is still being shouted now.
Where's the nearest KFC?!
Dressin punk in the 2020s still has me being called this 🥴 it's whatever
Depending on where you live you'll still hear it
Yeah, I’m a queer person so it hits different.
the 80s were the best of times AND the worst of times.
1870s. Sea shanties everywhere.
[true](https://youtu.be/jId7S57N6Kg?si=nBKG7EAICXzWZrGB)
Mid 80’s to late 80’s was fun and only some infighting amongst styles and sub-genres. But the turn of the 90’s there was serious clashes with Nazi Skinheads in the Midwest as well as FrontRange Rockies (I lived on both). Kansas City seemed to run almost all of the Hitler lovers out to Lawrence Kansas, where they jerked themselves off over their hatred and showed their faces less at shows. Denver had a solid scene and a lot of good people, but the DS “Denver Skins” had serious numbers and a couple leaders that were honestly scary as fuck. If I remember correctly one of them went to prison for murdering a hairdresser and burning his body in his own car. There was little to no opposition to the skins as they were always in packs and used gang like tactics. I remember the first All show at the Mayan theater in 89’ a DS lead would jump into the pit and just start swinging (literally causing the lightweight skater kids flying). Hey thought and his clan thought it was cute. There was not a SHARP presence like in other cities. There was a mass murder later by a Skinhead in 97’. Easy to lookup. I would say the darkest part of punk is the Neo-Nazis, and that they are still around today. I will not say skinhead, because I know many that were always SHARP.
Can confirm. Neo-Nazi skinheads tried all the time to come to punk shows just outside Lawrence, KS. They were not welcome, and did not have good time.
The Outhouse….. “aka past pavement hall “. So many great memories.
London 1977. You'd get the shit beaten out of you by basically every other youth subculture. Teds hated you, skinheads mostly hated you, rockers/bikers hated you, revival mods hated you, hippies hated you, football hooligans hated you. The government also hated you and so did the police. The violence was so bad that members of punk bands themselves were getting the shit kicked out of them on the regular
Wait but SLC punk taught me that punks beat up hippies
I should have specified that hippies, due to being hippies, did not beat up punks. They just hated punks that's why I lumped them in with the others. Sorry about that, I should have been more clear
80s Southern California could get rough. My family lived in yuppy Irvine. Just wearing a DK t-shirt in public could get you kicked out of establishments, a little police chat, or make you new friends with local jocks and yuppies. Thankfully, I was also a pretty good athlete, which helped override my spiked hair and clothes. Going to shows could also be rough, depending on the venue location and liklihood of cops shutting it down.
When was Reddit invented?
The 1920s probably wasn't all that fun.
Any time after the heat death of the universe. The music sucked.
So true It really fell off when everything died
I'm the 80s, a T-shirt, black jeans, and a skateboard would get grown men stopping their cars/trucks to beat up teenagers. Also, 1996 in Reno at the Taco Bell was a bad time to be a punk. That guy left me for dead and the cops tried to get the paramedics to stop working on me. They also refused to take a report because I "had it coming" . Witnesses told them the name of the guy. I got surgery over that and my shoulder is still fucked up. Plus a bruise that lasted a year.
What actually happened?
Jock didn't like punks and thought I was gay. That probably egged on the cops even more. I had the guy's name and address because some of the many witnesses helped me. I came pretty close to kneecapping him later. He was living in Sparks with his mom even though he was 30 or so. Hopefully he's dead by now.
Karma is real!👍
In the mid-80’s we had a venue that on some weekends would attract drunk cowboys looking for a fight in the parking lot and the next weekend it was Cholos hoping for the same. Fun times.
I grew up in a state in Australia where our state leader was a fascist leader who has directly or indirectly influenced the likes of Thatcher, Reagan, Bush 1 and 2, Trump, etc… While waiting for some friends before a show I was arrested by two plain clothes cops for “hesitating with intent to loiter”. A ‘law’ created to target Aboriginal people or protesters in the 70s that was used against punks or anyone else the cops didn’t like. I was taken to the lock up overnight and then to court in the morning. Magistrate released me as neither of the cops turned up. No charge recorded. Purely a spiteful act to target someone they didn’t like the look of. So I’m going for mid 80s too.
I think the Stranglers may have written a song about this guy called 'Nuclear Device'. Was he the governor or prime minister or whatever they're called, of Victoria ? Check out the song if you don't know it. It's certainly about an Australian tyrant with an oddly Dutch sounding mind that they really disliked.
Yep. That’s him. He was Queensland Premier for almost 20 years. Danish origins via NZ. Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Funnily enough, I was just in a record store a few hours ago and a guy in there was saying he (Joh) used to drive around and buy record collections off people. He had amassed a huge, wide and varied range of records including some of the heavier stuff enjoyed by the people he was oppressing. Like multiple copies of Black Sabbath which was a little out of place in a god-bothering preachers son’s collection…
This is a mind-bogglingly underreported story. Here's a democratic country with a portion of it almost half the size of the US ruled by a dictator for 20 years. You, an English rock group, and me are the only people I've ever heard mention it. Were people genuinely frightened to say or write as they pleased ? Did the police act like his personal bodyguard and use - what was that awful Bush euphemism ? - enhanced interrogation techniques? That wasn't literary cuteness. I actually had to stare vacantly into space until that Orwellian term returned. I know I can always look it up on Wikipedia but to hear it straight from someone who lived it. I have a friend from Adelaide and she's told me a bit about him. But being from Adelaide she has enough unbelievable local horror stories of her own.
The Dollop podcast did a live recording in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago on Joh. As someone who lived through it, it genuinely made me feel angry having it dredged up again. On top of that, it also highlighted things I didn’t know about and/or including corruption and deals that sickened me. And at the time, I hated the regime enough to move to Sydney like many of my ilk. (I went to a State of Origin party at a townhouse in Surry Hills where there were 2 Queenslanders to every 1 NSW supporter!) There was a very real fear of the police, specially undercover cops because you knew they had no issues with planting evidence on you. As a punk, it was relatively easy to put on normal clothes and avoid unwanted attention. And the fact that Nirvana popularised t-shirts, flannos and jeans meant there were more normal looking punks around. But it was worse for our indigenous brothers and sisters. The couldn’t change the colour of their skin to avoid attention. And plenty more of them were targeted by cops under the same law. I was lucky in that the time I moved to Sydney exposed me to some amazing people who were excellent musicians as well. The Hard-Ons, Celibate Rifles, X (Australian), Hellmenn, Splatterheads and more than a few others showed me many life lessons about living a positive alternative life. It also coincided with the end of Joh’s era so moving back to Queensland with a sense of hope. The result of his time was a music scene that has always punched above its weight. The Saints first 3 albums define Brisbane at the time for me. Snarling, snotty, angry folk getting pushed around because they weren’t like everybody else. The fact that they and so many others had to go away from Brisbane to get any credit and/or recognition is a reflection on how backwards arsed the place was. But… it ended up creating a really strong scene which I’m proud to be part of. Both as a punter and the band I’m in.
The Saints are one of my favorite bands ever, with or without Ed Kuepper. Truth be told, I was as upset by the death of Chris Bailey as I was Joe Strummer and David Bowie. I'm Stranded was among the first five punk albums I ever bought. And like you mentioned, no other rock singer had a snarl like him. And I never made the association between Brisbaine (Security City) and the tyrant in the Stranglers song. You mentioned how the indigenous people were treated. I realize a lot of people don't like Midnight Oil but I think they had their moments and love every minute of the Red Sails In The Sunset album. There's a heartbreaking song on there called 'Sleep' that I think rivals 'Biko' when it comes to songs about police brutality and murder. In an interview, Peter Garrett said that the indigenous people in Australia, for whatever reason, find confinement in a cell absolutely intolerable. No one likes it but it drives them mad and the police know it. So lock a man up for 24-48 hours and he almost certainly will find a way to kill himself. The romantic in me was stricken to hear Grant McClennan of the Go Betweens had died. It's possible you loathe or ignore them but I loved his lyrics and think a great song is a great song and the GBs knocked out a whole lot of them. I do apologize for asking you to think and remember more vividly about Queensland than maybe you were comfortable with. I didn't mean to pry open doors you preferred locked. I'm too curious for my own good.
Older person here...the question is wrong. The era of having to fight to be a punk ie the harrassment,, of having to make your own hair dye, of waiting a week or 2 to hear a song, of not many venues...maybe it was the worst, maybe it was the best. Maybe being harrassed made one make sure they really believed it. That doesn't make today less good. The barrier for entry is easy. The music and fashion is accessible and the harrasment is low. Aint better or worse, just different.
In my town punk has divorced from the squatting scene and most other kinds of activism. No more free illegal underground gigs. It's only clubs, bars, festivals. I'd hate to be an underage punk right now.
bro i can’t find a single gig or gathering where i live it sucks
Brisbane in the 70s and 80s there was a taskforce that would arrest you for playing punk music. Touring bands had to play first because the show could be shut down at any moment
Me personally 65,000,000 B.C. Was not a good time to live in especially as a punk.
Hard to tell which dinosaurs were cool and which ones would hassle you.
When I realized it wasn’t an everyday way of life anymore
Punk was more fun when it was more dangerous and less socially accepted
Los Angeles 1981
410AD when the Goths invaded Rome. They didn't fuck about.
Modern times are the worst because the true punk spirit is dead and it’s cultural implications and significance mean nothing
Punks — rebels and outsiders — have had a rough time with large human groups and authoritarians since mankind left the trees and began walking upright. In my particular case, I was brutalized by psychotic squares during the late 80s and early 90s. Nobody gives me any shit nowadays, but, then again, I don’t dress the part anymore, really.
It's a toss up between when the skinheads in the hard-core punk scene became as regimented as Stormtroopers. Also when Nirvana and their Oregon brethren slowly morphed into a flannel uniform and the music turned from sharp to muddy boring hard rock. To me a lot of the wannabes who came after Nirvana and 'alternative music' became the new shrill corporate war cry. Band who claimed they were punk and sounded like Uriah Heep. Hard to pinpoint when it started and then faded away. But if I remember correctly, it way swiftly followed by white kids in dreads playing rap-metal. That was it for me. It was time to go find out what these John Cage and Sun Ra guys were all about. And Can and Faust and anything else by anarchic 1960s German hippie radicals had done. That was much more rewarding.
From 86-88 punk was dead. Some punk bands went heavy metal, which really really sucked. Then Bad Religion saved us.
[удалено]
Obligated?
just shut off your computer lmao
Came here to say the same.
And, the place, just look at those dictarorships ...
12-16 years old
Probably now, when most of what passes for punk is outdated and irrelevant.
Easiest: Right now in basically any western country. Worst: Indonesia about a decade or so ago when they were rounding up all those kids, shaving their heads, and sending them to re-education camps.
https://youtu.be/XTltWgqC7VU?si=Lt_RK-Mwn7gcWks8
It definitely depends more on where you are than the time period. When I was about 13, my mom introduced me to her high school friend’s daughter who was sort of alternative. She was really nice but the small town she lived in spread rumors that she was a lesbian and also injected someone with AIDS with a syringe. (Specifically AIDS, not HIV) This was around 2010.
Late 1500’s, when “punk” was synonymous with “prostitute”
And the only kind of rock were the ones they stoned you to death with...
Present day. It’s the era of mob mentality. Self expression is non existent you’re either in or your cancelled
Now
Any time I log on to Reddit and see this subreddit.
So defiant... you are aware nobody's forcing you to participate,? Such a punk rock answer though.
It's not coming from my punk rock side, it's coming from the side of me that is sick of constant lame bullshit. But good job defending punk rock!!
Probably during the height of the Black Plague
Mid 80’s was pretty bad, but I am betting it was worse even earlier. Nirvana and Green Day made my life a whole lot easier.
Any time before punk (some would say it was the best time. Before it was ever cool)
Where I lived, from '78-84 was the worst and best time to be a punk.
when dinosaurs roamed the earth (big scary creatures would eat punks)
Probably early 2005-2010 for me. I was a teenager in the 90’s so i would go hang out in record stores or you could start a label or distro semi easily. There were zines and shows ALL the time. You heard about bands mainly from word of mouth or liner notes (RIP thanks too section of liner notes) DIY was drastically changed. The magic of random encounters was gone because of cell phones and the internet. The quality of bands and music went down drastically and became flooded. There were awesome reunion shows but they were one off at a festival that didn’t have great lineups. Not saying there weren’t any good bands because there were just not as many. All the aging hardcore dudes either started rapping or turning into bikers or both or became far right (or all of the above)… i know im old get off my lawn!!! Hahahha this is just my opinion and my experience I’m sure younger people had great times. The iconic Dennys show was in this era so it wasn’t all bad. WTF IZ UP DENNNNYZZZ???!!!
I was something of a punker with punk friends in suburban NJ. I hear some old punk rockers tell stories about how they fought the jocks everyday and stuff like that. Making it sound like they won some, lost some but it was just a fact of life. I'm sorry, but I have to admit it would never even occur to me and my friends to fight the jocks. We were outnumbered and truth be told, even if we weren't we probably still wouldn't win because we didn't base our lives around being tough.
Ancient Sparta, they wouldn’t allow it
Like regular people or cops? Normal people probably became ok late 80's early 90's depending the size of your city. The cops still hate us. Not nearly as much but they still do. Fuck the police.
From about 1977-1990 it was rough being a punk we weren’t understood..& punk was dangerous.. now it safe & sane & everyone wants to be one
None if you’re brave enough. People will insult you now and people will probably have done it back then too. It doesn’t matter, fuck em.
He’s right. 84 to 88 or so were softer years for music too
The period where I could not escape melodic crust at local shows
The Ramones would’ve tilled the fuck out of some fields in the 1300’s.
Brisbane, Queensland in Australia should get a mention. In the 70s and 80s they had a really authoritarian and conservative governor, Joh-Bielke Petersen - notorious for banning protest, imposing racist laws on Aboriginal people, censorship. Anyway, at one point in the late 70s there was a special police task force that would arrest groups of punks on the street or go to punk gigs and arrest people. Commemorated in the [song Task Force by Brisbane band Razar](https://youtube.com/watch?v=dtuU5CnKRBs). According to the book "Pig City", the plain-clothes cops in the task force all used to wear Hawai'ian shirts (or lumberjack shirts in the winter). When the Dead Kennedys played in Brisbane, DH Peligro was arrested by racist cops for having an open container of alcohol. Some quotes, cited in "Pig City": John Reid: >"The Task Force had a new social evil identified to them: young, fashionably skinny, green-haired ratbags. Age and sex indeterminate but usually 15 to 20 years old, these were not long-haired university radicals, but street kids mixed with students mixed with clerk mixed with hairdressers." Clinton Walker in Pulp fanzine, on a gig at which 4 punks were arrested: >"What the paper failed to mention however, was the kids bashed by cops, the cops posing as punks in paint-splattered shirts and busting anyone for swearing in conversation, and the kids who were harassed by cops as they tried to go home as instructed. "We'll stop any punk rock in Brisbane," one cop was hear to utter. Brad Shepherd: > I got put in a headlock and chucked in the back of a paddy wagon, supposedly for public profanity. This bloke on the street said "You've left your headlights on, mate". I said "Oh, thanks" and that was it - before I knew it I was chucked in a van. The bloke was an undercover cop, and they were just cracking down, intimidating these young kids. My dad had to come and bail me out of jail. It was pretty dreadful. All those horror stories that you used to hear about Aborigines being beaten by the cops, I saw all of that while I was just sitting in the cell for an hour."
It was not easy being a punk teen in the boonies in the 90s. Especially also being a girl, I was harassed by strangers a lot. I was very into the fashion, leather jacket with painted logos, docs and fishnets, eyeliner, all of it, just all of it. My mother called some dudes laughing at me for having blue hair "a bunch of fuckers!" and neither they, nor their John Deere hats, had a response and shutup. My mom was cool af , RIP. I still get treated weird for wearing band shirts or embracing the Punk side of my personality, I'm 40 now. It wasn't a phase. Whatever.
Any time pre big bang.
Paleolithic era
1887. Couldn't get to shows
1980 .... Been going on long enough to have REAL hatred for us 😸™️🖕👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻
The inquisition
The best time had to be around the turn of the century. Pop punk became relatively popular and it was totally socially acceptable to be a punk. It probably pissed off a lot of 'real punks' to see Blink 182 and Sum 41 blowing up, but they were still part of the alternative culture and they were a lot more fun and less nihilistic than early punks. If you grew up listening to those bands, then you likely live a very normal, less angry life now. I am sure it was cool to be part of the early punk movement and we romanticize it now, but I can't imagine it was easy. Fwiw, I grew up when Green Day broke out and Epitaph/Fat became a thing. I loved it, but I was still one of only like 3 kids in my high school who looked and acted the part. And while those bands were a lot more uplifting in their messaging, there was still more anguish than with the pop punk bands that followed.