Gavin McInnes writes:
Whirr didn’t smash any bottles on G.L.O.S.S.’s van. They didn’t say, “May you burn in hell,” as the Rastafarian hardcore band Bad Brains did to gay hardcore band Big Boys. Skinheads didn’t show up at their show and kick the shit out of the audience the way they did when my band Anal Chinook opened for Millions of Damn Christians. The fans didn’t storm the beaches of Brighton and almost murder each other the way the mods did to the rockers in 1964.
Whirr were canned because their friend got on their Twitter account and accused G.L.O.S.S. of being “just a bunch of boys running around in panties making shitty music.”
(…) These are not major labels like EMI and they’re not distancing themselves from the first people to swear on television as EMI did with the Sex Pistols. These are indie labels that are supposed to be leading the bands mainstream society can’t handle.
That is the face of rebellion today: a skull that tells you how unhateful it is unprompted. It’s a band of guys in drag who call themselves girls and claim they live on the outskirts of society yet cannot be criticized. If your band doesn’t have the same opinion as Vanity Fair or whoever gave Caitlyn Jenner that bravery award, they’re done. Today’s rebels have to monitor their tweets and make sure they’re always politically correct. This matters because artists are supposed to be the outliers. The rebels, the anarchists, the misfits, and the outcasts are supposed to be the ones pushing the boundaries of censorship. Us old-timers are too tired to tear down the walls, but it often seems like we’re the only ones with any bravery left. The biggest rebel I know of isn’t in a punk band. He’s a geriatric Brit they call Derb who wears suspenders from Home Depot that make him look like a contractor for a children’s show. Today’s punk vocalists should cower at his feet.
