![]() It's not the music, it's not the band, it's not 30 years of DIY counterculture – it's just someone, somewhere wearing the shirt of a band you love, which might prompt someone, somewhere to check them out. We can get all Guy Debord about it and talk about “the hollowing-out of any gesture of resistance”, but, if I may be so bold, it's just a bloody T-shirt (and possibly a really, really badly done tattoo). Look, unless you want some dude whining on a blog that you're a poser and have ruined his life, you're going to have let me burn you with a bloody cigarette!” And you'll just need to turn your wrist this way so I can burn you with a cigarette. “OK, so you've got the MTV Video Awards tonight, and I've bought this cool Germs shirt for you that will really set tongues wagging. If that is indeed a tattoo of the bars Stewart is sporting – and I have my doubts – then is there perhaps a teeny-tiny chance that she might have a made a deeper connection to the band than just throwing on a shirt handed to her by her PA? If not, then that's one deeply committed stylist she's got working for her. Shouldn't you be listening to Rihanna or something? (Which reminds me - of course Chris Brown looked like a prize bell-end in that studded punk jacket, but getting all sniffy about him wearing something with The Exploited written on it? Please! Taking into account all the stupid, ignorant, violent arseholes I've had the misfortune of rubbing shoulders with who align themselves with Edinburgh's favourite sons, I'd say Brown was a prime candidate for joining the Barmy Army.) ![]() James Franco's character listens to 'Rise Above' in an episode of Freaks And Geeks: Hooray! My two favourite things together at last!Īnd when some girl from a girlie film for girls tries to pass herself off as HC 4 LIFE? Sorry powderpuff. Lady Gaga appears in a video with GISM and Doom logos painted on her jacket: Oh, it's the director's? OK, that makes sense. Ryan Gosling sports a Flag shirt: He plays a violent psychopath in Drive! How cool is that? So was this really about the mainstream appropriating underground culture? Or was this really about who is doing the appropriating – and whether or not they've got a penis? Speak to any woman who has spent time in the punk or hardcore scene, and they'll undoubtedly be able to relay at least one tale of being challenged about their reasons for going to shows, or wearing a particular shirt or … 'So you're into Eviscerated Colon, are you? Yeah, well … what's printed on the run-out groove of the third pressing of the first seven-inch then?' Foul harlot! Do you not see that you should only be wearing a potato sack with a sprayed-on Black Flag stencil? (I'll admit that I've often espoused the theory that hardcore died the day XL stopped being the default size for all T-shirts, but that was a lot less to do with gender than being made to look like a beer-stained shambles when stood next to skinny little fellas with their just-so Moss Icon shirts.) No, this sounded like something a bit more pernicious – it was the age-old 'what does a GURL know about my favourite band?' whine. You see, not only has she worn a Black Flag shirt, she's had the cheek to glam it up ever so slightly, by tying a wee knot at one side. So Kristen Stewart's new-found love of Black Flag is not something that has troubled me unduly, but the howls of outrage surrounding it are a little bit concerning. Not only do I not prostrate myself before the totem of 'Side B of My War', but when that actually became a thing, I had to actually pull out my copy of 'My War' and listen to it again to see what the hell people were crapping on about (and, sad to say, it seemed no less boring to me then as it did when I first listened to it.) In the lingua franca of 80s hardcore, I guess you could call me a poser. In fact (deep breath), my initial exposure to them was an A-list celebrity singing a couple of lines from one of their songs in a mainstream Hollywood movie. ![]() I've never owned a Flag T-shirt, I never got the bars tattooed on me, and my copy of Nervous Breakdown is only a second press. I'm probably not as big a Black Flag fan as you.
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