I was once pretty immersed in hardcore/punk.
I made an effort to see & support a lot of bands in small to medium venues. In the 90s and early 2000s, I went out to watch a lot of friends and co-workers perform. Bought tickets for shows in Virginia and Maryland.. Los Angeles, and went down to Orange County and San Diego a couple times. I've written reviews for DIY shows and albums. Contributed art to other zines, and bands over the years. I have no musical talent, but like to think my punk bona fides are established enough for (semi)constructive criticism. And as preface, no disrespect is meant to some of the great music produced.
Something that drew me to punk, and the hardcore scene, beyond just its sound, was its claim to be a refuge for free expression. Part of the punk ethos was that it was rejecting the closed-mindedness of mainstream society. A big component of 80s punk was its rejection of Reagan & the Religious Right's (perceived) bigoted conservatism.. fair enough. But I noticed over time, punk became equally rigid in its own ideology. Punk really wasn't a counter genre, of open-mindedness. It was just an opposing form of closed-mindedness. It wasn't truly rejecting cliquishness; just offered a different clique. You had to share and advance punk's left-wing viewpoints and punk's atheism.. or you could be ostracized. I experienced this a couple different ways while doing Natrrain.
This hypocrisy was apparent to me back in my club-going days, but is even clearer to me in hindsight. Also notice in retrospect, that a lot of the political positions of punk never materialized in to concrete political action on their part. A lot of aging punks remained in the role of social critics (nothing wrong with that). But when some are still railing about the Religious Right and/or the W. Bush years, they reveal a windmill-tilting, arrested development. And they're basically severed from political reality. A reality where conservatives have largely been purged from, or abdicated, a lot of cultural institutions like mainstream media & universities, etc.
Strange to me, when punks still imagine their dyed hair & ink to be counter-cultural. Aesthetics is a front where punk definitely gained ground and mainstreamed. It's common to see purple hair and neck tattoos at any PTA meeting or gathering of 21st century soccer moms. There's something tragic and grating to me, how punk became very much like a cliquish, inflexible way of thinking. It's a mindset they originally set out to destroy. Guess this is typical in a lot of cultural revolution though..
