There have always been cliques that were exclusivist and unwelcoming and bullyish to those they considered outsiders or poseurs. And parents have for a long time believed that they must watch out for books, music, comics, tv-shows etc. that may corrupt their children, with some of them going as far as seeing specific examples as coming from Satan himself and/or demanding government intervention, and many of them imposing very repressive rules to protect thei kids from evil influences.
The one thing that I recall as “more dangerous” about following non-mainstream music in the 70s/early 80s was going to seedy clubs in seedy parts of town to catch a band. You may get beat up just because drunk local yobs beat up outsiders for the principle of it. Or be subject to a vulgar mugging. But not because you were into one band or another.
There were musical “cliques” growing up but nobody ever “rumbled”. In Middle School and Freshman year of High School, when people were sifting into those social circles required you to find a social as well as musical niche.
However, with the advent of napster and online music in general, the entire music scene changed and at least my generation in my area was allowed a wider access to music which actually loosened the “cliques” as absurd as it might seem now in retrospect. Buying CDs is expensive, especially for a 13 year old. Being able to (illegally) acquire thousands of songs and bypassing hundreds of dollars to gain a working knowledge of classic rock, metal, punk rock, rap, ska, and pop really tore down the barriers of social entry.
Kids these days have it even better. Youtube, spotify, pandora, soundcloud, etc make it legal to access an even larger repository of songs. And it’s all available instantaneously. They show what’s trending, similar songs, instrumental, and just about everything else you can hope to know about music all at your fingertips.
But no, as to the OP, I don’t think it’s dangerous. I can partially sympathize that back in the day if you didn’t know your shit and you tried to fit in with a group, you’d be called out for being a poser right quick. Nowadays, with all the information freely available, that doesn’t seem as common. Plus I’m rapidly approaching the age where my brain just can’t keep up with all the “new” music and just want to keep to what I already know.
Music snobbery will always have a place in society though.
Interesting. Maybe some communities in Canada were much affected by British-style class snobbery, I just never realized it that way. All I know is that one’s musical choice could be seen as putting on airs you haven’t “earned”.
Random moments:
in fourth grade, a big scary kid named Todd takes offense to another kid’s new Quiet Riot T-shirt because he isn’t “cool enough” to wear it - and orders him to run home at lunch and change out of it, or else get beat up after school.
at my friend’s house, his mother takes me aside and asks me if I knew how my friend obtained a certain rock album without approval. I admit that we bought it paying half-half so we could tape and share it (yeah, I’m a total rat.) She hisses “he’s in big trouble now” and I’m later told it was a huge fight in the house.
I could go on … but these aren’t universal experiences huh?
I don’t think I would call it “dangerous” and I don’t know it was based on music selection insomuch as it was based on what particular subculture you belonged to in high school.
In my school (class of 91):
“Jocks” listened to a mix of classic rock, Grateful Dead, hair metal like Van Halen, Jovi or Crue and some heavier metal like Ozzy, Metallica and AC/DC and Top 40. Sometimes hip hop as well. They dressed in sort of a cross between preppy polo and country hick
“Hoods” or “Bongs” was the catch-all term for the burnouts, metalheads, druggies and other delinquents. They listened to mostly Dead, Iron Maiden, Slayer, sometimes prog rock bands like Rush or Jethro Tull out in the smoking section behind the school.
“AV Kids” was another catch-all term for goths, theater kids, punks and anyone else who wore a Mohawk, Flock of Seagles haircut, rode a skateboard, dressed all in black or had weird piercings. They listened to punk and new wave like New Order, The Cure, The Misfits, etc.
“Guidos” were the meathead guys who wore Z Cavaricci pants and those 8-ball leather jackets. They listened to a lot of new jack swing music like Bel Biv Davoe, Kurtis Blow or Eric B. & Rakim in their I-Rocs with the trunk subwoofers.
But it’s not like these were rigid groups. There was a lot of overlap.
And to clarify, it was okay to listen to Bruce Springsteen and stuff like that. But anything explicitly antisocial (say, Ozzy Osbourne) was a whole other can of worms.
The only recollection I have of musical cliques from my youth is the goths who listened to nu-metal and industrial (Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Korn, etc.), the punks, and the rudeboys (ska was huge in San Diego in the '90s, for some reason, though I’ll be damned if I can remember any of the band names).
Nah, it sounds like my community might have had a weird vibe all its own. Or maybe it was a Canadian / British immigrant thing.
But I’ll ask again, if that was such an atypical attitude, why did the U.S. federal government consider it a problem big enough to convene hearings? They used to talk about being deluged with complaints from fed-up parents over music that seems pretty innocuous today. I recall that this attitude really was very prevalent.
Well, I haven’t looked down Main and seen skinheads curb-to-curb and several deep walking towards me in at least 20 years, so there’s that. Granted, the ass beating they were looking to hand out wasn’t rationalized on much of anything, much less based on musical taste. However, I was there to see bands. Similarly, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a cop with a nightstick going after kids slam dancing. Going to a club now is really a hell of a lot safer than it was in 1989.
For the most part, any time I’ve been in a group of people that were interested in a sub-genre of music, ignorant people may have been ridiculed if they showed a glaring lack of knowledge. However, as long as they had money for their own beer or weed, and were willing to listen to everyone talk while they played the canonical records of the style for hours, they seemed to be accepted just fine. (Hey, that’s how I learned about the English blues players!)
I think there’s two different things going on in your OP, and people are reacting more to one than the other.
Point 1: “Young people jealously guarded their scenes and would threaten or beat up other kids for trying to join their crowd without approval.” This is the point that most of the other posters in this thread have said, “nope, never saw anything like that”.
Point 2: “Parents would watch their kids’ musical preferences like hawks (etc.)”. Yes, Tipper Gore and her group got a lot of press in the 1980s, and managed to get some actions pushed through Congress, though that was almost undoubtedly due to the fact that the PMRC was led by several high-profile women, capable of getting a lot of press coverage. Effectively, the only thing that they managed to do was get the RIAA to put “explicit” labels on recordings.
But, it was really not much different from some parents’ reactions to Elvis’s music in the 1950s, the Beatles’ music in the 1960s, etc. Don’t mistake that high amount of visibility for the belief that it was a widespread movement – it may have been an “extreme concern” for some parents, but I pretty strongly suspect it was a minority view.
The best I can tell, there was/is a strain in the religious right that was/is fixated on a supposed statnic conspiracy in music. Several media outlets latched onto this from time to time, and eventually Tipper Gore decided to make some sort of political gain with it. She had some sense, so she broadened the net to include material that didn’t rely on you being a Christian to be offended. Her husband allowed her to use his office for this silly agenda. I still wouldn’t vote for him because of it. And the joke was on both of us, anyway. It resulted in a warning sticker which that would magically increase a record’s sales.
The closest thing I ever saw to the OP’s question in my school years was around 8th grade and not long after Metallica played a show (during the …And Justice For All years) at the Brown County Arena in Green Bay (Wisconsin) a kid who was the sort of guy who was the target of abuse from just about all the social stratas in the junior high for just being weird and late to puberty came to school in the tour t-shirt. Wearing a metal band t-shirt was not something he usually did so he got a lot of guff for it and insisted he went to the show in Green Bay, even though it was clear he did not when pressed on the matter. When it was clear he was lying and he refused to back off the lie, it did not end well for him. Very much a “stick with your own kind” sort of situation played out amongst the metal-loving subset (the “grits”, in local slang).
My parents couldn’t care less what I listened to. My friends parents couldn’t give a crap less what they listened to. I don’t know any parents who cared.
And the “explicit” lable was the best thing to ever happen to some bands careers.
As he is Canadian, I believe the OP greatly underestimates the level of influence a loud person can have in US politics if they happen to get a soapbox and press recognition. Tipper Gore has both, and so her pet bugbear became a national issue.
Back to the OP from a different angle that can improve teenage survival rates…
Grounding and electrical isolation standards are better, no more mike stand or guitar pickup electrocutions.
Hearing protection and in-ear monitors are more prevalent, saving millions from early deafness and tinitus (wish I’d listened…or rather not listened so much).
Stadium and venue logistics are more controlled, fewer general admission trampling deaths.
No one invites the Hells Angels to their shows anymore.
Janis and Jimi are notorious for the tragic wastes of their potential futures, so subjectively I think the alcohol-goofball binging musician is less in vogue.
I’m not sure it’s exactly what the OP is talking about, but when I was growing up in the 70s in Montreal, I kept my love of classical music strictly to myself. I was already considered a very weird kid, and if any of my classmates had got wind of that, my torment would have been all the worse.
In the period from about 1976 to 1978 here in Britain, Teddy Boys would take great delight in ambushing punks to beat them up.
At least in Britain, music fans were much more tribal in those days - you identified yourself very much by the music you listened to and tended to disparage anyone with different taste. Punks affected to hate hippies, hippies mocked punks, metal-heads thought mods were effeminate, mods condemned metal-heads as brainless cavemen and so on.
Most people had more sense than to let it spill over into violence, but your loyalty to a certain music did matter much more than it does now. The fact that that doesn’t apply any more is just one more aspect of the decline in youth music’s importance from the single most vital thing in many young people’s lives to just one more toothless entertainment option.
Even without music, though, any thuggish group of young men will find some way to label another group as “other” and use that as an excuse to visit some mayhem on them. British football fans - also in the 1970s - were a perfect example.
It’s also worth noting that the Tipper Gore era in America produced some quite ludicrous paranoia among the religious right, claiming fans of bands like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath were engaging in Satan-worhip or even necromantic murders. And if you don’t think that’s dangerous, then just ask the West Memphis Three.
