Journalistic Integrity gets thrown aside as Rolling Stone aims at the Tiger Beat scene with their latest issue. I was contacted about two weeks ago about having pictures of myself used in a magazine article. The request came from a guy, (I won't mention his name) that claimed to be Straight Edge, to print photos I had in my flickr.com account. The photos were of me getting tattooed by "Old School" Alex and one of me posing with an X on my hand. This guy claimed that the article was to be about Straight Edge and Hardcore. Well after sending him and his editor (I won't mention her name either) high-res versions of the photos I was pretty excited. This was to be the second time I was to be in Rolling Stone, I was involved with the IVAW as their first web master when they first started as an anti-war group, but that article never got published as Rolling Stone didn't want to deal with the anti-war movement at the time; So I didn't put a blog posting here about it at the time I was contacted as I just assumed this article wouldn't get published either knowing my luck.
I received two free copies of the magazine via courier on Friday, the cover looked like a sad attempt to target fifteen year old girls, and I flipped through to find my photo. The article centralized on FSU and gang violence, and a fight involving Alex that ended in the death of guy at a show that both attended. I was pretty upset to say the least that I was lied to by Rolling Stone just so that they could get a picture of Alex putting an X on someone; So that they could say that many FSU members get X tattoos. First of all I'm not part of FSU and I don't condone violence, Straight Edge to me is about keeping my self poison free. Second the article made it seem that the photo came from bmeink.com which as I mentioned is not the case. Third, I am very annoyed that they would go through all that trouble just for a photo that really had nothing to do with the article. I contacted the editor about the article and all she had to say was that the article was "fair and balanced."
Alex is a friend of mine and I'm very happy to have gotten my tattoo from him especially at a tattoo shop in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. No one beyond those at the fight knows what happened, and Alex has not even been charged with a crime yet. So I hope everything works out well for Alex, I am saddened that a death occurred at a hardcore show, and I hope Rolling Stone learns how to act more like a rock mag and less like Fox News for tweens.
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3 comments:
I think anyone that used to go to shows knows that Alex didn't kill the kid. i used to go to shows in AP all the time around 98-2000, or something like that, and he was one of the few guys in TEK, whoops i mean FSU, that i never seen get into a fight. The only reason that he got caught up in this is because he easily identifiable. I mean how many other people have you seen that look like Mr. Migagi that have tats on their face? Hopefully, if he didn't do it, he gets cleared.
As some one who was around for the birth of Dischord, and HarDCore, and Straight Edge, I can say that your heart seems in the right place towards your attitude about Straight Edge.
Surely, you guys can step back from your scene a bit, and ask yourself, if someone dies at a show, no matter who did it, is that okay? That is so not the original spirit of what we as a collective group of people made happen in DC.
I know how it is when the press misreps, being a VT alum, and knowing kids from our local high school who died last Spring, including the shooter, things get skewed. But they only get skewed so much.
All I know is, Ian stopped this shit cold in DC. You didn't fucking mosh, it got to the point where in DC, you didn't fucking move or touch the person next to you without getting a full out blue rant from the man or Guy. Maybe they had a point.
This is just a bad situation all over. I'm torn on this because one) the guy who died was a vet and I am in the military. So that kills me inside. Two)Nobody should ever die at a hardcore show. Holy crap hardcore isn't about that. Now don't get me wrong I have gotten in a fair share of fights I am not the most posi person in the world but This is so out of hand. It should never ever come to this.
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