I’ve moaned about this here before, but it disheartens me to see people blithely pick from the carcass of The Plasmatics when they were so roundly disrespected in their day.
Sure, you might think they looked cool —and they damn well did —but unless you were genuinely invested in them, you shouldn’t go around appropriating their aesthetic unless you’re prepared to back it up with comparable aplomb.
I’m talking, of course, about Miley Cyrus, whose new album and promotional initiative pay a lot of lip service to her alleged “punk” roots and fandom for the Plasmatics. Witness the cover art on the right...
Speaking as someone who was unduly fond of the Plasmatics while they were still a going concern —for better or worse —I still harbor a lot of fond associations with the band. That they’ve been reduced to a punchline —especially considering the 1998 suicide of Wendy O. Williams —or a fetching t-shirt to be worn either ironically or by revisionist millennial twits is a fucking travesty.
Waggling your tongue about, wearing skimpy clothes and talking a load of crap does not equate you with the Plasmatics. For their myriad faults, the Plasmatics traded in provocation flecked with the dangerous and the verboten (granted, maybe not as much as, say, GG Allin or Missing Foundation, but those are different stories). The Plasmatics were loud, gloriously obnoxious, indelicate and endearingly ludicrous. They did a lot of stupid shit to be sure, but what they DIDN’T do was write and play slick, schmaltzy radio-friendly, r&b-flecked pop tunes.
As such, let’s leave their fucking iconography alone, shall we?
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