Monday 9 March 2009

This is where I belong

Sometimes I feel like I don't belong to anywhere. This happens since I was a teenager. I make too many questions, I have too many doubts about life and people. And being like that makes you different in most of the places you go. But when I started to go to punk/hardcore shows I found a place to feel better. After more than ten years living this life, living hardcore every single day, I can say it's not perfect and it's far from being a perfect “world”. I could write a lot of things (good and bad) but that's not the point here.

I'd like to write about one awesome thing I learnt going to hardcore shows: it was where I received all the first informations about veganism and animal rights and because of that I became vegan.

I started to go to hardcore shows not that young. I wasn't a teenager anymore. But I realized that there were (still) some things that I should change in my life. It was really easy to find bands and people talking about straight edge, veganism and also about social and politic issues. And I loved it. I stopped drinking and smoking and became vegan. After some time I started to write a fanzine (that I still write nowadays, a paper zine called Outspoken) and after some years I started a band (Out of Step) and then another one (Overstate).




In the late 80s, bands like Youth of Today started to associate straight edge with vegetarianism, also in their lyrics: "Meat-eating, flesh-eating, think about it. So callous this crime we commit". In the early 90s, most of the straight edge kids became vegan, with bands like Earth Crisis and Path of Resistance promoting the vegan edge.


Youth of Today

Earth Crisis

Now it is not that usual to find hardcore bands that also talk about or spread the vegetarianism/veganism in the hardcore scene, but there are some good examples around the world.

Even seeing a lot of people in hardcore giving up on veganism/vegetarianism, I can see new kids getting into it. And this is awesome. It means that, in some way, hardcore can still spread the word and make people think about their choices. I still believe in my choice. You can always see me at a hardcore show, there is where I belong.

“Just because you're not 21, that's not supposed to mean you can't have any fun. So, come out and raise your fists high, stage dive, and forget about what they say. Dance the night away.” (Kid Dynamite)

6 comments:

Gabriel Cadete said...

nossa, que bonito. e adorei essa frase no final :)

All about... (vegan) food said...

Senti sua falta aqui, Gabriel ;o)

E a frase é de uma das bandas que eu mais gosto!

Unknown said...

Essa música do Kid Dynamite é genial!!:)

Anonymous said...

Punk/Hardcore is awesome. YOT is awesome. Kid Dynamite is awesome. Animals are awesome. Glawnset is awesome.

=D

Zucchini Breath said...

I always thought punk and hardcore were about trying to change things, not just fight, fuck, drink and wake up in your own puke. That isn't punk, that's addiction.

These days I want to create, not destroy.

I identify myself as a punk rocker and a freak, lol, always have! Well, since 1982, anyway. Now I'm 41 and still punk as fuck and a complete freak of nature, but now I realize, it's not what you wear or what music you listen to, it's the way you live your life.

We aren't like everyone else: We feel weird and out of place where "normal people" congregate, but feel perfectly fine jumping in a bin to get something someone else threw away. We might dress different or "funny", worship the wrong gods and not drink soda or take aspirin or smear petroleum products on our bodies like "everyone else does" and we don't eat animals.
Freaks, yeah. Personally I'd rather be a freak than a blind fool.

\m/ :)

Lúbia Bustamante said...

Muito bonito mesmo esse post...e a música do Kid Dynamite eu não conhecia. Adorei.

=* Muaaack

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