[kj] OT: "Punk's Not Dead" documentary

[B. Oliver Sheppard]

Yes, at the upper level of middle schools and into junior high (US 
school system thing, for the Brits; actually in Texas it goes: 
elementary school, middle school, then junior high, then senior high, a 
system that is different from many other parts of the US) it was very 
much a girly thing to be into new wave and I guess post-punk while the 
boys, what few there were, who could find the stuff, were into thrash, 
hardcore, etc. What was big at the time was crossover. Post-punk was 
punk rock for the girls. (Hey, I didn't make the rules.) This meant the 
5 or 6 gothy girls Leigh refers to,  I remember them as being into Front 
242, The Mission UK, Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie, 
mayybe Erasure, stuff that gets into almost dance club-y type stuff, 
like the horrible Brighter Than a Thousand Suns album, actually. Chances 
are those girls had boyfriends that liked Minor Threat and DRI. That's 
how it worked! Nut all said that was like 10% of the school population 
AT MOST.

And Alex is also right about stuff like Fall Out Boy, My Chemical 
Romance, etc., being shuttled into the "punk" umbrella now so that 
basically pretty much every kid on at least middle school likes a couple 
of bands that could be called punk, and also kids will buy Ramones and 
CBGB's shirt without really even knowing anything about them; they're 
like clothing labels like Abercrombie & Fith to them. That is the exact 
opposite of the way it used to be, though younger ids may think "punk 
was what everyone loved in the eighties," etc. No. Look at the Billboard 
charts for the 80s. They're horrible. No one liked it.

-Oliver



Leigh Newton wrote:

> I went through the same thing in high school, but for me it was metal instead of punk. 

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> In junior high, i was one of maybe 3 or 4 people in the whole 8th grade who was into metal. For everyone else it was either New Kids On The Block or Bobby Brown or Milli Vanilli and then maybe 5 or 6 gothy girls who loved the Cure. People thought I was nuts and asked me on a daily basis if I worshipped Satan. I was never an outcast though, more just like "the weird guy". 

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