"We were over in Europe all the time their posters were up. That's why I liked them. So now all of a sudden they're going to get a band hat on, and say people aren't acting the right way?"
About this Quote
Kim Deal’s complaint isn’t really about posters or “acting the right way.” It’s about the whiplash of legitimacy: the moment a scrappy scene gets upgraded into an institution, and the same people who once benefited from chaos start policing it.
The Europe detail matters because it’s proof of proximity. Deal frames herself as someone who was there when the band’s image was being built in real time, on walls and in public space, not in curated press cycles. Posters are the low-rent infrastructure of subculture: adhesive, temporary, slightly illegal, and designed to recruit anyone who walks by. When she says “That’s why I liked them,” she’s praising a kind of openness and disorder that feels earned, not managed.
“Band hat” is the killer phrase. It turns authority into costume, suggesting that moralizing is a role you can put on when it suits you. The line skewers how quickly artists and their teams can pivot from outlaw branding to respectability politics, demanding civility once the stakes are higher - tickets cost more, sponsors hover, reputations harden.
There’s also a quiet accusation of hypocrisy embedded in “all of a sudden.” If your rise depended on people being messy, loud, excessive - the very energy that makes a scene combustible - you don’t get to retroactively edit the behavior that built your myth. Deal’s voice is musician-to-musician, not fan-to-idol: a reminder that cool isn’t just an aesthetic; it’s a social contract.
The Europe detail matters because it’s proof of proximity. Deal frames herself as someone who was there when the band’s image was being built in real time, on walls and in public space, not in curated press cycles. Posters are the low-rent infrastructure of subculture: adhesive, temporary, slightly illegal, and designed to recruit anyone who walks by. When she says “That’s why I liked them,” she’s praising a kind of openness and disorder that feels earned, not managed.
“Band hat” is the killer phrase. It turns authority into costume, suggesting that moralizing is a role you can put on when it suits you. The line skewers how quickly artists and their teams can pivot from outlaw branding to respectability politics, demanding civility once the stakes are higher - tickets cost more, sponsors hover, reputations harden.
There’s also a quiet accusation of hypocrisy embedded in “all of a sudden.” If your rise depended on people being messy, loud, excessive - the very energy that makes a scene combustible - you don’t get to retroactively edit the behavior that built your myth. Deal’s voice is musician-to-musician, not fan-to-idol: a reminder that cool isn’t just an aesthetic; it’s a social contract.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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