New Wave Outpost Forum

Posted: **Sat Apr 22, 2006 12:01 pm**

Were You Ever Messed with for being New Wave/Punk?

I was. But, I was also friendds with ALL types of people (black, redneck, weirdos, potheads...etc), so there was always someone there to calm things down. I was approached MANY, MANY times. It just wasn't easy to be a punk in Alabama!!!!!

I hope you weren't bothered.

B
A

-~Obscene dreams in rusty beds.~-

Posted: **Sat Apr 22, 2006 12:35 pm**

Punk and New Wave hit when I was in college.

College is more forgiving.

Posted: **Sat Apr 22, 2006 1:28 pm**

spit on by rednecks...had a trash can thrown at us...good times!

Although, now that I think of it, we may have just been really bad dancers...
[;)]

Posted: **Sat Apr 22, 2006 2:34 pm**

[quote][i]Originally posted by WolverineSyr[/i]
 spit on by rednecks
[/quote]

I told you to quit calling me a redneck.

No, I was never messed with for being new wavy. While in high school, music tastes were so diverse that the only outcasts were those who didn't identify with any musical styles. However, in junior high, Def Leppard and Quiet Riot (et al.) were the absolute RAGE. Therefore, anyone who listened to anything with class and style were the outcasts. But we were a happy little bunch of outcasts.

Posted: **Sun Apr 23, 2006 2:06 am**

As MAS said, we were mostly a happy little band of outcasts (the exile was almost entirely self-imposed). My look was suburban-European, or so I thought--I made my own clothes or they came from thrift stores. As I was telling a much-younger friend the other day, this is when kids had to look completely normal in order to get a job--a Mohawk doomed you to a career in fast food where at least the little hat would cover the 'do. And tattoos . . . I digress.

But, my longest-term high school BF (pic is posted somewhere in one of the 80s threads) had the full-on Nick Rhodes/David Sylvian look. He had puffy dyed blond hair and a full face of that Clinique foundation that was mostly clay and that you had to shake up. We thought it was really cute that we wore the same shade. When we'd walk down the streets of Seattle, old men would say "good morning, ladies" and young men would yell "fag." We thought it was funny, not threatening. He lived in a farther suburb of Seattle, one that's quite wealthy now but back then was an uncomfortable combination of Boeing engineers and mountain men. He said he was tormented a lot, more really for being a skinny, sensitive kid than for the way he dressed.

I think there was only one time when I really felt the consequences of my choice to be "different." I've related this story here before in heartbreaking detail--so I dated this guy from another school, total jock/popular kid but also a incredibly cool, nice guy. I have NO IDEA why he wanted to date me. Anyway, after a while he dumped me for being "too weird." One of the posters here described it as the movie "Valley Girl" in reverse! [:D] . . .[:(]

Posted: **Sun Apr 23, 2006 6:17 am**

Once,and it was a good one.On a summer night of 1980 two friends and myself were walking on the main drag of my home town.Coming towards
us was a cop walking the beat.After he passed by us I heard"Hey, lets
see that shirt".It was a copy of one of those anarchy shirts that
Johnny Rotten wore with the swastika and upsidedown crucifix.Long story short all three of us were hearded in to a cop car taken to the station and put in seperate cells for I think hours.The kicker here was when the cell door opened the cops said you can go but the shirt stays.Well it was now night fall and I had to hitchhike about
twelve miles shirtless.Luckily a guy I went to highschool was passing
by and gave me a lift.In the end the two people I was with never really forgave me for that incident and I rarely saw them after that.
The reason they were hassled is because they smelled like pot not for
being punkers.This was the begining of the end for my punker days.

Posted: **Sun Apr 23, 2006 7:05 am**

I didn't look new wave enough to get bothered. At least not for that. I was just bothered for being fat... for being Irish... for living in the whitest, most racist part of Boston and having to go to a largely African-American school thanks to forced busing...

Mind you, after puberty commenced with, I was so freaking big and (I've been told) mean-looking that no one would have bothered me even if I were sporting a mohawk and wearing a swastika T-shirt.

Posted: **Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:13 am**

Well, my classmates at High School thought that I would kill them all just cause I've listened to The Cure.
They are still alive btw...[:p]

<img src="http://home.comcast.net/~myirwin/JD_Montage2.jpg">

Posted: **Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:25 am**

I was lucky. My high school was pretty open minded about appearances. I dressed the part of jock, but a lot of my friends were "freaks" and dressed accordingly (dyed mohawks, piercings, trenchcoats covered in punk patches, etc) but everyone knew everyones else's family (most of our parents worked for one of three companies) so the alienation was pretty minimal. I feel bad for the kids today that grow up in larger cities, who don't have the same sense of community my friends and I did growing up.

<a href="http://electricdreams71.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">My Blog: ElectricDreams</a>

Posted: **Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:48 am**

One night my roomate and I were walking home from a party, as we were high and drunk,a car drove by us and then stopped. Four guys huge football player types get out of the car and scream "hey fags". I grab my roomie and we ran to are apt around the corner thank god.
This happened in big O New York City where everything goes, around 1985.
We were dressed in jeans rolled up,a smiths shirt,he had a new order tshirt with a million colours in his hair. Just the norm. That was the first and last time I was chased and it freaked me out......

Posted: **Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:36 pm**

Never messed with...as a matter of fact, my "look" kinda Numan, Sylvain combo, got me backstage many a time....everyone always thought I "belonged" to the band.

Hung out with the Producers, Numan, Joe Walsh?......

Max

The music you listen to is the soundtrack of your life.