Love & Passion Quote by Greg Ginn

Punk didn not just happen in clubs; it happened in cameras. Greg Ginn is clocking how quickly the English scene became a visual product, with fashion functioning like a press kit: safety pins as instant shorthand for danger, disruption, youth-as-threat. He is not dismissing it so much as diagnosing it. The subtext is that attention follows an image you can sell, and British punk, especially in the Pistols era, came pre-packaged for headlines: scandal, uniforms, symbols that read at a glance.

Coming from Ginn, the Black Flag architect who spent years building a brutal, DIY circuit in the U.S., the line also carries a quiet territoriality. American hardcore had less patience for spectacle because it had less access to megaphones. If you are hauling your own gear, booking your own shows, and getting policed out of VFW halls, fashion feels like a luxury and media attention looks like a trap. His phrasing draws a line between the work (bands, scenes, touring) and the storyline (the look, the outrage). Thats the tension: punk as lived practice versus punk as cultural headline.

Then he swerves, generously, into respect: "There were some really good bands... The Sex Pistols were great". Ginn refuses the easy anti-UK posture. He can recognize the Pistols musical force while still side-eyeing the media machine that elevated them. Its a grown-up punk take: admiration without mythmaking, skepticism without snobbery.