The Teen Idles - Musical Style and Outlook

Musical Style and Outlook

According to journalist Michael Azerrad, The Teen Idles "played proto-hardcore tunes that skewered their social milieu". MacKaye later explained in the hardcore documentary Another State of Mind: "When I became a punk, my main fight was against the people who were around me — friends." When MacKaye was thirteen he moved to Palo Alto, California for nine months. On his return, his friends had begun taking drugs and drinking. He remarked, "I said, 'God, I don't want to be like these people, man. I don't fit in at all with them.' So it was an alternative."

The graphic emblem most associated with the Straight Edge movement is a black "X," typically drawn onto the wearers hands with a marker. According to MacKaye, "We were in San Francisco, and we played a place called Mabuhay Gardens. They figured out we were underage, and they wouldn't let us play. We worked out a deal with their management that we just wanted to play and we weren't going to drink, so they got a marker and put a big 'X' on our hand, So we came back to Washington D.C. and went to this nightclub, the 9:30, and said 'Hey look, we're not going to drink and we will put this 'X' on our hand. If you see us drinking you can throw us out forever. We are not going to drink, we just came to see the music.'" The band adopted the marking, and though it was initially meant to signify youth, it became a wider emblem for bands prepared to play to audiences under the legal age to be served alcohol. MacKaye noted that at the time the symbol "wasn't supposed to signify straight edge—it was supposed to signify kids. It was about being young punk rockers... it represents youth."

Most of the band's lyrics were written by MacKaye. Like the group's appearance, their lyrical subject matter reacted against the then dominant New Wave scene, and the perceived complacency that many first wave punk bands, including The Clash and The Damned seemed to have fallen into by the early 1980s. In "Fleeting Fury", Strejcek pleads, "The clothes you wear have lost their sting / So's the fury in the songs you sing". The Teen Idles were strongly influenced by punk bands in Washington and California, such as Bad Brains, Black Flag and The Germs. These band's influence is reflected in The Teen Idles' songs, which consisted mostly of Strejcek shouting over a one-two hardcore beat, with MacKaye and Grindle providing short and speedy riffs, interspersed with quick guitar solos from Grindle.