Music and Clothing Style
In the vein of punk rock, most bands followed the traditional singer/guitar/bass/drum format. The songwriting had more emphasis on rhythm rather than melody. Hardcore vocalists screamed, chanted and used spoken word poetry. Drummers would play fast D beat one moment and then drop tempo into elaborate musical breakdowns the next. Guitarists were not afraid to play solos, octave leads, and grooves as well as tapping into the various feedback and harmonic noises available to them. The guitar sound was almost always distorted and amplified.
In critic Steven Blush's description, "The Sex Pistols were still rock'n'roll...like the craziest version of Chuck Berry. Hardcore was a radical departure from that. It wasn't verse-chorus rock. It dispelled any notion of what songwriting is supposed to be. It's its own form."
This distillation of punk was further emphasized through dress. Hardcore punk fans adopted a dressed-down style of T-shirts, jeans, and crewcut-style haircuts. The style of the 1980s hardcore scene contrasted with the more provocative fashion styles of late 1970s punk rockers(elaborate hairdos, torn clothes, patches, safety pins, studs, spikes, etc.). Keith Morris, "the...punk scene was basically based on English fashion. But we had nothing to do with that. Black Flag and the Circle Jerks were so far from that. We looked like the kid who worked at the gas station or submarine shop."
Read more about this topic: Hardcore Punk
Famous quotes containing the words clothing style, music, clothing and/or style:
“No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1994)
“How little it takes to make us happy! The sound of a bagpipe.—Without music life would be a mistake. The German even imagines God as singing songs.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 3:4.
“The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
—John Fiske (b. 1939)