Countercultural Irony

Countercultural irony is the predominant theme in Legs McNeil's and Gillian McCain's book "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk." In fact, the entire punk music movement was a countercultural thrust and one aimed at detesting and protesting rich elitists, conservatism, and mass social movements such as women's liberation and gay liberation.

The punk rock musicians, affiliates, and fans who participated in the countercultural movement took copious amounts of drugs, engaged in promiscuous sex - including sex with underage girls- and were oftentimes combative and violent. They took pleasure in living deviant and hedonistic lifestyles that were considered not normal, but over the course of time, they became everything they hated.

As their successes grew, punk rock musicians took on all the trappings of fame, from limousines to a sense of elitism to rejecting people not like them (seen in the rejection of the 1970s...