Are Hippie Punk Mod Rockers Still Relevant in Today's Subculture Landscape?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the relevance of various subcultures, particularly focusing on hippie, punk, and mod rock influences in today's society. Participants explore the evolution of these subcultures, their current manifestations, and the blurred lines between them in contemporary contexts.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants reflect on their personal experiences with subcultures, noting the lack of clear divides in today's landscape.
  • Others mention the existence of various modern subgroups, such as crusties, emo, hipsters, and cyberpunks, suggesting a diversification of punk identities.
  • A participant emphasizes the enduring appeal of punk music, citing its political roots and DIY ethics as factors for its continued relevance.
  • There are differing views on what constitutes "cool," with some arguing that it varies across subcultures, while others assert that there is no singular definition of cool.
  • Several participants share anecdotes about their past affiliations with subcultures, highlighting personal interpretations and the fluidity of identity within these groups.
  • One participant discusses the historical context of their involvement in the hippie movement and its distinctions from mainstream portrayals.
  • Another participant expresses a preference for valuing uniqueness over belonging to any specific subculture.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views on the relevance and characteristics of subcultures today, with no consensus on the definitions or significance of "cool" or the current state of subcultures. The discussion remains unresolved regarding the clarity and boundaries of these identities.

Contextual Notes

Some statements reflect personal experiences and subjective interpretations of subcultures, which may not align with broader societal trends or definitions. The discussion includes a variety of perspectives on the evolution and current state of subcultures, indicating a complex landscape.

wolram
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Were you ever one? what are people nowadays or are there no more sub cultures.
 
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I was expecting a picture of a new combined sub-group!
 
I'm all four. :biggrin:

or so I've been called at least.
 
I bought "Bollocks" in 1979. It changed my life permanently. For me, U2 was an "Old" band in 1983, when "New Years Day" was released.
 
What is Bollocks?
 
Ivan Seeking said:
What is Bollocks?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Mind_the_Bollocks%2C_Here's_the_Sex_Pistols
 
The Sex pistels! Never mind the Bollocks, lol I bought it too. I was a cross between a hippy and a rocker.
 
Ivan Seeking said:
What is Bollocks?

Well we know Ivan definitely isn't any of the above. :wink:
 
I don't know. I had long hair, played guitar and sang in rock/blues bands, and my idea of dressing up was putting on a T-shirt with no holes in it. 40 years later, my wardrobe hasn't changed much and my hair is getting longer again.
 
  • #10
hypatia said:
I was a cross between a hippy and a rocker.

Huh? I never met a hippy who wasn't a rocker.

As for the OP.

TheStatutoryApe said:
Punks are definitely different now a days and there are several types of them, crusties being a derogatory term for a gutter punk. Emo is short for "emotional" and is more or less a variation on Indie and Punk. There are Hipsters which are mostly into the Indie music scene. Ska, sorry to say Evo, is pretty much dead. At least real Ska music is the 3rd/4th wave more or less melded together with punk. There are also Ravers and Gravers(goth ravers) also known as Cybergoths. There are RivetHeads, or just plain Rivets, who are into Industrial music which is more or less gritty aggressive sounding electronic music. Metalheads and Deathrockers. Greasers and Rockabillies. There are also subgenres there called Psychobilly and Gothabilly. Psychobilly is a more punk rock/metal version of rockabilly which apearantly incorperates zombies :confused:. Swing kids. Cyberpunks. Skinheads have become somewhat of a scene too. NeoNazi Skins are into Hardcore (really thrashy punk). Traditional Skins aren't racist just sort of "conservative youth" I guess you could say. Original Skins are anti-racists as well as SHARPs(skin heads against racial prejudice). OG Skins are supposedly originally from Jamaica so they are into Ska (real ska which came out of Jamaica, rock/raggea fusion) and hardcore aswell. "Conservative youth" type punks are sometimes referred to as Skunks, a cross of skin and punk.
There is probably a whole lot more out there too. You can read a bit about various subcultures at that forum I linked and erased not that long ago, the sykoforums. That's it's actual purpose really not just the random spouting of things that wouldn't be appropriate here. :wink:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=79875&page=2
 
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  • #11
Blimey Ivan that made my head spin.
 
  • #12
My punk collection is huge. I never really dressed like a punk though. Been to a ton of punk shows.
 
  • #13
Mosher! :devil:

mosh_pitlo.jpe
 
  • #14
wolram said:
what are people nowadays or are there no more sub cultures.

There aren't as many clear divides these days, and you can be more than one.

Basically, nobody knows what's "cool" anymore.
 
  • #15
Thats not true. People know what 'cool' is. I know what cool is.
 
  • #16
There isn't one cool really, different sub cultures have different looks and therefor different looks for 'cool'
 
  • #17
There never was 'one cool'.
 
  • #18
I was considered a hippie, but we preferred to be called freaks. It was a separation of the fake hippies that wore trendy clothes and said things like "groovy" and the more intellectual freaks that were into underground music and great sci-fi books. Some of my friends went to Woodstock, some moved to communes.

Funny, recently my girls were here and they found a picture of me when I was 14 and both went "OMG! You really were a hippie!

I was on the official volunteer staff at Pacifica radio when our tower was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. My name was on all of our Newsletters. I dated the former Vice-President of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDA) after Tom Hayden. I'm on video in the National Library of Congress on the PBS documentary "The Great American Dream Machine" about the KKK bombing.

I was probably on an FBI watch list, by association, not by subversive actions.

And all this by the age of 15. I guess you could say that I was a free range child. I had already finished high school at age 14.
 
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  • #19
Truthfully, I don't know how others might have seen me, but I never have considered myself to be a this or a that or part of any subculture. For as long as I can remember I have valued uniqueness far more than belonging.

Over the years I have fit in with a number of subcultures ranging from nerds [geeks] to jocks to hippies, from born-again Christians to the crystal energy crowd, and from The Young Republicans to the most liberal of liberals, but I have never considered anyone to be an identity.
 
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  • #20
Ivan Seeking said:
Truthfully, I don't know how others might have seen me, but I never have considered myself to be a this or a that or part of any subculture. For as long as I can remember I have valued uniqueness far more than belonging.

Over the years I have fit in with a number of subcultures ranging from nerds [geeks] to jocks to hippies, from born-again Christians to the crystal energy crowd, and from The Young Republicans to the most liberal of liberals, but I have never considered anyone to be an identity.
We were considered "non-conformists". We didn't fit into any classification, freaks we were, at least by societal labels. My best friend back then is now an Oceanographer, one is a psychiatrist, one an MD, some took over their family businesses. Lost touch with a few others, not sure what they ended up doing, but in some field of science or math, my boyfriend at the time was a math major at Rice, and another was studying Nuclear Physics at Rice.
 
  • #21
I joined the hippie revolution to get what was supposed to be free, i felt a right prat wearing a kipper tie flower power shirt and bell bottoms, i never found any.
The rocker days were more my thing still is i guess, and the girls in tight leather jeans wayhay.
 
  • #22
I listened to a lot of punk growing up, and went to a lot of shows. What I like about punk is that growing up in the 80s, and for me the 90s, a clear majority of the popular youth cultures were "apolitical" except for punk rock. So I was always kind of drawn to the fact that they used music as a form of expression and concern about issues, which kept me interested.

Punk has certainly been around for a long time; unlike some of the other counter-cultures mentioned, it is still relevant. I think this is because punk has defined itself in a lot of ways: anarcho-punk, crust punk, hardcore punk, skate punk, celtic punk, skinhead punk, horror punk,, street punk, christian punk, christian hardcore, krishna-core, posicore, etc. etc. etc. Punk bands never really "get old" and younger punks still listen to bands like Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, MDC, etc.

Punks also seem to have worked harder at staying underground: opening their own stores, running their own record labels (of which there are many), managing their own bands, running their own zines, producing their own art and documentaries, and so on. These "DIY ethics" have helped punk outlast corporate sponsored trends like new wave, mods, etc., and even some other counter-cultures.

I also think it's cool many punks have gone onto other careers besides music, keeping some of their punk values. It reminds me of something some punk said on some documentary, that punk will still relevant as long as it's politically poignant and critical, but once it becomes merged with the system it will fade away. Of course, punk has managed to make its way into the system, but it stays relevant because the underground punk community is still there.

Punks also come from a variety of different backgrounds and hold a wide variety of radicial ideologies -- there are even some right-wing punks, but, of course, most punks are left-wing.
 
  • #23
Chi Meson said:
I bought "Bollocks" in 1979. It changed my life permanently. For me, U2 was an "Old" band in 1983, when "New Years Day" was released.


That's a good album. I think the Sex Pistols defined punk more so than the Ramones ever did, only because of their look and their more political attitude. They were accused by later punks of being "sell-outs" but many of those same punks tended to follow the lyrics (and musical styles) of the sex pistols rather than the ramones.

The Ramones were actually more traditional, "power pop" thank punk rock. Spin Magazine did an interesting interview with John Lydon in their october 2007 issue, called http://www.spin.com/features/magazine/2007/09/0710_spiritof77/ .

Anyway, these were some of my favorte bands:

Hardcore: Black Flag, MDC, Dead Kennedys, D.O.A., SS Decontrol, DRI, Reagan Youth, Youth Brigade.

Anarcho-punk: Crass, Antischism, Capitali$t casuatlies, aus-rotten.

Positive-hardcore/straight-edge: Turning point, Chains of Strength, Youth of Today, Stretch Arm Strong, Ten Yard Fight, Slapshot, Agnostic Front.

Mainstream punk: Pennywise, Bad Religion, Offspring, NOFX, Anti-Flag, and so on.
 
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  • #24
wolram said:
I joined the hippie revolution to get what was supposed to be free, i felt a right prat wearing a kipper tie flower power shirt and bell bottoms, i never found any.
The rocker days were more my thing still is i guess, and the girls in tight leather jeans wayhay.

Interesting.

I think the main difference between hippies and punk is that hippies wanted to change the system whereas punks wanted to destroy the system.

Punk shows were/are also more wild. However, there also was a large number of pacifist and democratic-socialist punks (the clash).

For those interested in punk history, which is just as interesting as the hippie movement imo, see documentaries and books like: The Filth and the Fury, Punk's not Dead, Get in the Van, American Hardcore (book and film), Hardcore Zen, Real conversations no. 1, many of which are available at your local library.
 
  • #25
OrbitalPower said:
Hardcore: Black Flag, MDC, Dead Kennedys, D.O.A., SS Decontrol, DRI, Reagan Youth, Youth Brigade.

Anarcho-punk: Crass, Antischism, Capitali$t casuatlies, aus-rotten.

Positive-hardcore/straight-edge: Turning point, Chains of Strength, Youth of Today, Stretch Arm Strong, Ten Yard Fight, Slapshot, Agnostic Front.

Mainstream punk: Pennywise, Bad Religion, Offspring, NOFX, Anti-Flag, and so on.
What, no Minor Threat?
 
  • #26
I am more or less all of the above. It's definitely still like that in our high school, I'll give a breakdown of the groups. We have the preppies (and cali girl types), the jocks, the skaters, the rockers (intermingles with skaters), emos, geeks/nerds, and the fairly regular people. But yeah, I'm not making that up, its pretty much exactly like that at my high school.
 
  • #27
binzing said:
I am more or less all of the above. It's definitely still like that in our high school, I'll give a breakdown of the groups. We have the preppies (and cali girl types), the jocks, the skaters, the rockers (intermingles with skaters), emos, geeks/nerds, and the fairly regular people. But yeah, I'm not making that up, its pretty much exactly like that at my high school.

Heck that sounds complicated do youyouuuuuuu
 
  • #28
I was waiting for someone actually in high school to post heh. That's what it was like in my school, too, actually, and I live in a conservative state. This was about 5 years ago.

And yah, skateboarding has always been connected with the "rockers" esp. punk (faction, nofx, etc.), as well as hip-hop.


And what about headbangers, aka metal fans? Do you have any of those in your school.

Never was a fan of metal but we had like one metal fan at our school that i remember.
 
  • #29
Cyrus said:
I know what cool is.

I'm sorry, that's the dorkiest thing you can possibly say.
 
  • #30
...what?
 

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