Back in High School, and for some time thereafter, off and on, I sported a sort of abbreviated version of Liberty Spikes, colored in a shade of purply-red called “Bodacious Burgundy.” The effect was somewhat subtle, alternating between preppy and mildly punk, just enough to get occasional looks of curiosity or disdain, but not enough to get kicked out of school like my cousin, when he showed up one day sporting blonde bifins. Many of my friends at the time rocked more impressive hairdos, spiked with gel and hairspray, or egg whites and glue. They constituted the small groups of hardcore punk outcasts and misfits, and I gravitated to them, while also keeping a foot in the cliques I’d grown up with: the preppy pop punks and stoner jocks. After High School, I drifted further away from the preps and for a time was all punk all the time, but I never really had the stones to rock a hawk.
Ed Templeton’s Hairdos of Defiance (Deadbeat Club, 2018) takes me back to that time: the leather jackets, replete with studs and spikes and patches for Subhumans, The Exploited and/or Crass; flannel shirts over ripped t-shirts; ripped and poorly patched jeans held up by studded belts; the tattoos, piercings, and makeup—for a time, I regularly wore eyeliner and mascara, a sort of cross between Alice Cooper and Gene Simmons, and wore a safety pin through my eyebrow for a brief period, but never got any tattoos. It gives me a sense of nostalgia and recognition, bringing back (melancholy) memories of times that were simultaneously far worse and way better than life now.
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