Thursday, September 21, 2006

Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Self-Help, and "American Hardcore"

There's a nice long article in the New York Times about the movie American Hardcore, which is about Minor Threat and "like-minded bands." The writer pulls of a difficult feat: writing seriously about hardcore without sounding foolish. Here's my favorite part...

"The film also hints at an underlying anxiety about race. As one former hardcore kid puts it, the genre was one of the few that 'felt like it wasn’t totally ripping off black culture,' which might be another way of saying it felt white. One big exception: Bad Brains, an all-black band viewed with a mixture of awe (they were clearly better than everyone else) and fear and puzzlement. While other bands were busily organizing and debating the scene, these guys were reading the self-help book 'Think and Grow Rich' and exploring Rastafarianism."

And yet the question remains: Why can't I walk down a street free of suggestion?

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