Straight edge lifestyle rules

Straight edge person
Straight edge symbol
Straight edge bands

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Jonathan Anastas

With Al from SSD and Choke as his hatchet man, the brand of Boston straight edge solidified and the myth built on itself.

Mike Gitter

If Al Barile was Grand Moff Tarkin, then Choke was Darth Vader.

Jaime Sciarappa

Boston started to get this reputation of being this super-militant straight edge city, and I think that was blown out of proportion a little bit. We would play a show in some town, and then hear afterward about things that went on, and everything was blown out of proportion.

Jack “Choke” Kelly

I remember a show in Ohio that SSD drove out to play. During the show, Al and I had flashlights. We were aiming them at people who were drinking, and shaking our heads in disapproval. We were just trolling people, to be honest. After the fact, people were saying the Boston Crew slapped beer bottles out of people’s hands. No, we didn’t. We never did anything like that! But we heard about that kind of stuff and saw the reaction, we would say, “Of course we did!” To me, it’s not my job to correct the legend. It’s my job to further it.

Jonathan Anastas

Do you

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Straight edge

Subculture of hardcore punk

This article is about the punk subculture. For the tool used for drawing straight lines, see Straightedge. For the song from which the subculture takes its name, see Straight Edge (song).

Straight edge (sometimes abbreviated as sXe or signified by XXX or simply X) is a subculture of hardcore punk whose adherents refrain from using alcohol, tobacco, and recreational drugs in reaction to the punk subculture's excesses.^[1]^[2]^[3] Some adherents refrain from engaging in promiscuous or casual sex, follow a vegetarian or vegan diet and do not consume caffeine or prescription drugs.^[4] The term "straight edge" was adopted from the 1981 song "Straight Edge" by the hardcore punk band Minor Threat.^[5]

The straight-edge subculture emerged amid the early-1980s hardcore punk scene. Since then, a wide variety of various beliefs and ideas have been associated with the movement, including vegetarianism and animal rights.^[6]^[7] While the commonly expressed aspects of the s

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Brian Baker: I grew up in Washington, but I left after seventh grade because my dad got a job in Detroit. I came back to DC at the second part of ninth grade in February of 1980. While I was absent, a lot of my friends had discovered punk rock. So I got into punk to fit in, as strange as that sounds. My first punk show was seeing The Teen Idles opening for The Cramps in the summer of 1980. After that, it all happened so fast. I joined Minor Threat and we started to become a real band by the end of 1980. It was definitely a ‘right place at the right time’ sort of thing for me.

Jeff Nelson: We formed Minor Threat after The Teen Idles broke up, and right away Ian wrote the song “Straight Edge”. Ian’s whole reason for writing the song was his disgust with the drinking, drugs, and sex focus of high school and American life at the time. He was turned off by what he saw, and the song struck a chord with people who were equally repelled by the focus on those things in music cultu