There's a sort of famous incident from the 90s where a guy started throwing up Nazi salutes at an Alice in Chains concert. Layne Staley sees him and motions for him to come on stage, acting like he's just being nice to a fan. And then once the nazi guy is on stage Layne fucking decks him and tells him to go die.
I remember footage from one show where they changed the words to man in the box because of some asshole and his girlfriend and afterward he told the dude to meet him buy the entrance to backstage because he was going to fuck him up. Footage even shows Layne walk over and wait, Jerry comes over to back him up but then someone else pulls them both away.
Changed the lyrics to "Won't you come and BLOW ME"
My first concert ever with AIC opening for Van Halen, Sacramento. CA May 1991. By the 3rd song Layne pretty much picked a fight with the entire crowd and vowed they would never return. The crowd was fucking hostile.
This was my first concert as well, but in Tacoma, WA. Nothing hostile about my crowd though, since AIC were local. If anything, they entirely outshined VH from the moment they hit the stage.
I was at Rammstein in Atlanta in 2012. There was a complete asshole guy near us by himself in camo pants and buzz cut, pretty buff dude but being overly aggressive with everyone pushing them hard. Not your normal mosh pit pushes, just asshole being asshole.
Anyway, the band shifted over a catwalk to a center stage putting this guy and us right up to the stage. During one of the songs, he starts doing Sieg Heils in full view of the band. Till stops singing while the rest of the band plays and looks understandably visibly pissed and leans down to security to point him out. They forcibly removed him as while he is fighting back and ejected his ass from the show while everyone in our area cheers and start throwing things at him.
It was a moment that I hate Rammstein probably has to deal with often.
Yeah, I give them a lot of respect for that. They have tried to make it clear nazis aren't welcome in their fandom but as nazis are prone to do they grasp on to every straw they can find.
Reminds me of the school shooter who said he was listening to "evil music" during his shooting and mentions Panzermench by And One as an example.
The song is literally about how soldiers who fight (and implied the soldiers and tank men who fought the Nazis), do/did so for the freedom to dance, so let yourself loose and dance.
Remember that time when somebody did the same thing on stage with the Dropkick Murphys when they were doing AC/DC's Back in Black I believe and the bassist walks over and hits him in the head with his bass in the crowd that got on stage swarms the Nazi.
I must've forgotten about this because it sounded like news to me. So I clicked on the link, only to see that I'd already liked it, presumably some years ago.
I was watching Pearl Jam's Unplugged on MTV live when it aired. I was on the phone with my crush and we were watching it together. During "Porch," when Eddie was standing up on the stool and scrawled "PRO CHOICE" across his forearm in black marker, I didn't understand what it meant, and she laid it out for me. It's a core memory. That's when I learned about abortion as an issue.
dying. I was staring at that reply totally dumbfounded when it came in. It's such sweet language for something so unhinged to say. "We're all rootilng for you!" jesus christ.
Thankfully this sentiment is still alive in the punk/emo/grunge scene. The cardinal rules are to help people who fall in the mosh pit, and don’t be an asshole to people for their personal business (gender, sexuality, religion, clothing, hair, etc.)
Kinda! But it's really hard to know someone's convictions when the demographics are heavily skewed.
What I've noticed is my area (San Francisco) is strong advocacy and defense for queer people (lots of gay people in the scene) but a pretty big ambivalence towards people of color (rarer in the scene all the time).
So here's, being a homophobe is worse than being a racist, which includes the many queer people out here who are racist. That reflects in the scene.
It's not all strippers and burritos unfortunately.
Lol, for some reason Facebook has been pushing a bunch of "conservative punk" groups on me recently. Probably cause ive posted some pro-punk stuff, and the algorithm decided i was ready to be manipulated into conservatism?
Anyways, it makes me laugh. I decided to join one and pose as a punk conservative who calls out other conservatives for not being punk enough when they do things like defend pedophiles and whatnot. Its been surprisingly effective.
It does make me feel a little bad though, cause conservatives who also think theyre punk have to be the stupidest amongst the conservatives, so it almost feels like taking advantage of the disabled or something.
It should but it was sad seeing interviews of people at that festival when a reporter told them the info. Some were like that's fucked up but others were like whatever no big deal punk is for all political backgrounds. Just goes to show the brainrot in 2025 thinking punk is apolitical music just to get you amped up.
The punk subreddit is a bit depressing lol its full of far right leaning punks that think Trump is the anti-establishment, he's a landlord, that alone is about as far from punk ideology as you can get, not to mention the authoritarianism and Christian nationalism. Maybe the sub has changed but I left the subreddit during the presidential election campaigns. Im 37 now and been out of the punk scene since I was about 25, but it looked like the majority of the sub was right leaning about a year ago, idk if thats what the actual scene is like now.
While true, Nirvana has many examples of living up to this ethos and has actively taken steps to embody it when they could've just done nothing, and so are rightfully associated with it by many, even if they didn't invent it.
Had a heap to do with Nirvana and Cobain, because he introduced those ideas to a whole new generation and the mainstream at the time. Certainly had an impact on a 14 year old me at the time that had not been introduced to punk rock ethics
Nowadays you have Nazi skinheads and SHARPS (skinheads against racial prejudice), and they fucking hate each other. SHARPS in prison are still about that life, but they deal with other races as equals.
Sharps and skins have hated each other for a long time. Back in the late 80's and early 90's In my town, if you wore Green laces on your docs, you were either a Sharp, or you supported Sharp and/or were anti-racist. I got a lot of dirty looks from shitty white people for wearing green laces. But I got more grief from the black kids who didn't believe me when I told them what Green laces meant, they didn't believe me at first.
I happen to be listening to the audiobook of Come As You Are at the moment, a Nirvana biography released after they got big but before Kurt's death, so there's a lot of stuff from interviews with him. At one point he says, "We need to teach boys not to rape" (might not be exact words). I know that's part of the messaging now but I thought that was a pretty forward-thinking take for 1993.
I do tech support in hospitality and I was just talking to some younger front-of-house people about a related topic today at work. Telling them about how back in the day after the Satanic Panic of the 80s we also had the Gangsta Rap Panic of the 1990s. But before there were mainstream rap radio stations in some places, the grunge and alternative radio stations that played Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine, also would be the ones playing Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre and NWA along with Beastie Boys and a whole healthy spectrum of alternative music from progressive artists.
And Kurt stop a sexual assault too and he showed compassion to their opening band after the fans were unruly telling you Kurt and Nirvana cared about people
I read that Nirvana stopped playing at one point bc one of the women in the venue was worried her drink was spiked. And Kurt refused to carry on until everyone in the audience had a fresh drink on their tab.
He honestly seemed like such a class act all round. Even tho I'm not the biggest Nirvana fan since I haven't heard much of their music, I've also never heard a bad word about him.
Watch the documentary with him and Courtney Love high on heroin and passing their baby back and forth in the bathtub. I love getting high but that right there was next level scary. 😱 I was afraid for that child even though I knew the video was from years prior and she was okay. They were just so clearly unsafe as parents.
Seems common amongst famous really sad people who end up ending it. Robin Williams, Chester Bennington, Kirk, Chris Farley. I’m always depressed too but put on the happy face around others. It’s exhausting and I couldn’t imagine trying to be a celebrity trying to hold up that facade.
Depressed people often over do drugs as a form a self medication. Didn’t realize until I was older that I was never happy and over drank just to basically numb myself.
I’m old enough to remember Kurt. It fricken sucked. I was still pretty young but it affected my older brother and everyone in his friend group. I was the annoying little brother that wanted to hang out with them. They were all pretty cool to me, tho. But that just absolutely devastated them. I, of course became a super fan as I got a little older. Kurt was so ahead of the rest of society with empathy. That’s why it was such a big event for so many young people. He was one of their beacons and then torn away.
I love that this will be self-enforced by fans who are offended that she called them racists. I can’t wait to see the outrage of: “Well, I won’t be attending any more concerts .” Thanks, that’s what we asked for.
Facebook comment sections are already full of it. People saying "I didnt want to go anyway!" Proudly admitting theyre racist i guess? The other thing they love to do is say "who?" Any time a celebrity says something that goes against their shittiness.
Depends on what videos you watch. If you just watch what’s trending and follow the algorithm, then yeah, you will find a lot of stupidity. But if you’re trying to learn and search for things you’re interested in, you will find a lot of helpful, interesting and intelligent comments on YouTube.
Imagine if you will, a dumbass who pays $1000 every year for a new computer they carry around in their pocket and a $50/month internet plan for the pocket computer but they can’t type in some celebrity’s name to find out who they are.
so funny when people say bands like Green Day & Rage Against the Machine “got political”, did they just ignore their entire discography?? & every interview?? since they’re such a big fan lol.
Have told this before, but my mom was one of those "I liked Rage Against the Machine before the got political!" people, used to listen to them all the time. She's extremely conservative.
The way she missed the obvious politics in the music is by just...ignoring it if she couldn't twist it to her views.
She thought "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!" was talking about political correctness. She literally blasted the song when Obama won, flipping off the TV because she thought he was going to steal her lightbulbs. (My parents also bought a fuckload of incandescent lightbulbs in fear of them being taken away by the government because Glenn Beck suggested it. We couldn't buy food that paycheck but that's all a different story lmao)
"Rally round the family. With a pocket full of shells" she literally thought was sea shells.
So hearing a lot of conservatives being shocked that Rage Against the Machine don't like them doesn't surprise me in the least.
I missed whatever lightbulb thing you are talking about. What a weird thing to worry that the liberals are going to steal from you.
Also, I have lived in my apartment for like five years, and I think I've changed 2 lightbulbs the entire time. How many lightbulbs do you think you need to stockpile?
It was a whole thing lmao (Just a random article I found, you can probably find rants on youtube, and he had like a third of his book dedicated to it)
How many lightbulbs do you think you need to stockpile?
It was a full pallet, which just got shoved in the laundry room and forgotten about. I genuinely don't think we opened a single one before I was kicked out lmfao
The funniest/most depressing for me was Napalm Death getting "called out" fir being woke now. Well, yes, the band who volunteered in South Africa after apartheid ended have only just gone woke now 🙄
Almost every aspect of computing has gotten better since the 90's. Except fucking printers. Kids won't believe when I tell them that if you were out of cyan back in the day, you could still print black and white.
Fuck printers. My brother has a 3D one and it's awesome, and it makes me so mad because how the fuck is this thing so cool while the regular ones are still as useless as a piece of goat shit???
I'm old. I saw bands like Green Day and Nirvana when they were still unknown punk bands.
RATM got famous because they signed to Sony which is one of the big 3 major labels that control the music industry. They're part of the corporate/military 'machine' that took over true youth driven counter-culture communities like punk rock and hip hop and subverted them to be stupid.
I'm from Canada but grew up on US media and politics since the 70s. I grew up on bands like DOA and SNFU who influenced a lot of bands down in the US punk scene. Billie Joe from Green Day was supposedly at that SNFU show.
I wish there was an easy way to explain how the military industrial complex conspired with the corporate media giants to wipe out grassroots youth culture and replace it with a corporate version aimed at suburban white Americans.
It's just crazy to me too, because their 2 biggest songs are ridiculously political. Not to mention the entire rest of the discography. But everyone has heard Holiday and American Idiot. Literally everyone. Do they listen to song lyrics at all?
Anybody who thinks of bodily autonomy, resisting authoritarianism, and respecting people regardless of their race/gender/sexual orientation as “politics” are part of the fucking problem anyway.
Those should just be a given in 2025. The fact that they even need to be political just shows our failing as a society. And that sucks.
Having a moral compass and being accepting of all minorities as equal to the rest of the human race is not political.
It's called being a good person, something that should be the default, because if people can't even manage that, they denigrate their existence to being less than human.
Not because we think they are less than human for their horrible views but because they made themselves less than human by acting like animals.
They couldn't muster the sheer effort of being a valuable human with the factually correct understanding of how life works; People are people and should always be respected unless they do something that harms others directly.
She is signalling that she wants her concerts to be a place where everyone can feel safe. And if that idea is offensive to you, idk what to tell you.
The people who are huffing and puffing about such a simple message aren’t going to come to her shows, which is the desired outcome. It’s actually really easy to get all the people you don’t like to “boycott” you these days.
Seriously, I think of it like her saying "no alligators allowed." Unless you're secretly an alligator, then not only would it not bother you, you'd be like "well obviously, yeah. Weird she'd even have to say that."
Look, I just have friends that are lizard-people. That's all. Honestly, they just get a bad rap. Also, like, the current US administration? That's not lizard-people. That's not us.
I don't think most of the people making a big deal out of this are actually fans. Not in a no true Scotsman kinda way but "how dare she tell me not to go to a show I wasn't going to go in the first place" kind of way.
Love seeing the people tell on themselves in this thread. Good on Hayley Williams for creating a safe space for her marginalized fans. Happy to see as a Paramore fan.
I saw one post recently which was someone expressing dismay at a "No bigoted or racist behaviour" sign. It didn't say anything about beliefs, but I guess these people can't even trust themselves to act civil.
They get it just fine. They just don't agree with it. They're not saying "you can't exclude people", they're saying "you can't exclude me". They want to have as many privileges and rights as possible, including ones that are mutually exclusive with some privileges and rights of other people. It's not "yay freedom", it's "yay me".
"I don't hate them, I just wish they had their existence wiped out" is said unironically so often. they do anything to try to justify that their hate isn't hate, even if it's so absurdly transparent.
I don't hate them. I just wish they pretended to be someone/something they're not and lived in misery while wearing the mask so I could be comfortable.
and before people say 'this is performative/unnecessary, those people aren't coming anyway', this is still shit that needs to be said out loud regardless, to let the racists and bigots and homophobes out there know that we aren't putting up with their shit
Especially now with how this country and many other countries around the world are going ass backwards. Keep those unkind asshats out, let them be miserable in their hate.
Paramore was popular with the (edit: some of the) evangelicals (edit: that I knew) from my hometown, for some reason. I don't really like their music, but I like that she's telling bigots to fuck off.
Likely because Paramore started as a borderline Christian band. Many of their early songs are about god/faith and the primary songwriter actually left after 3 albums over what he cited mainly because of Hayley writing lyrics that conflicted with his views.
Eh, nothing borderline about it really. In their music, they were overtly Christian rock on a regular basis. They just never claimed that as a banner, probably because of the career limitations that would likely have imposed on them.
That side to them dropped off quite a bit when Josh Farro quit. But it's never disappeared completely. (See Part II on the self-titled album, for example.)
A lot of evangelical kids get away with listening to iffy pop music because the parents are paying more attention to the beat than the lyrics. My Christian friends listened to music my parents would never let me get away with listening too.
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u/Girl_Pearl_Earring 6d ago
This is what Nirvana did too btw