The Punk Aesthetic

To arbitraily return to a topic I'm sure I ought to have moved on from, I thought I'd blog about the Punk Aesthetic. If you'll remember back to the lecture, since it's inception the punk...movement? Genre? has had a reasonably large focus on fashions and ways of dressing and what not. It always struck me, especially during high school when I watched as various small groups of misfits slowly transformed into small groups of punks, that there was a measure of hipocrasy in the inclusion of an aesthetic or fashion side to what I saw as a musical genre and as a political movement. I mean, I wouldn't shy away from calling myself a punk based on my tastes and beliefs but I've never been compelled to get a mohawk and cover my clothes in safety pins. I find it one of the more ridiculous dichotomies, that a punk can reject the idea of conformity and of mainstream by conforming to what now is a large mainstream group. The groups of misifts I spoke of earlier eventually transformed into The Rabble, and its ridiculous how much they owe to Rancid. Mainly haircuts, but a great swathe of clothes and album covers and poster poses have been unabashedly stolen from rancid who I'm sure were just copying someone else. They (The Rabble) aren't doing anything new as far as I can tell, and thats what I thought punk was really about.

Which brings me in a somewhat round about way to what I set out trying to say which is that I find it difficult to reconcile fashion of any kind with a musical and political system like what I consider Punk to be.

Although, I probably just missed the point of Punk and the Punk lecture.