Youth subcultures

It took decades for punks and hippies to become mainstream. But because of technology, recent subcultures like grunge and emo lived and died in record time.

How to distinguish between today's youth subcultures…

Siren kings battle their way through several carefully judged rounds to establish who has the loudest, clearest sound

sonic youth

How did you spend your childhood? Were you constantly trying to get into the Hippodrome? Were you cyber-gothed up to the nines at Camden Market? Or were you the

Ask Germans who lived under the German Democratic Republic what they feared most in those days, and they'll likely say the agents of the Ministry for State Security, best known as the Stasi. Ask those same Germans what they laughed at most in those days, and they may well give the same answer.

Alexis Petridis: Mods, punks, soulboys, metallers, goths, hippies: there was a time when young people made it clear what tribe and music they were into by the way they dressed. Not any more

Sonic Youth

When a chubby Marlon Brando roared into town on a motorbike in The Wild One he popularized the black leather jacket as a fashionable symbol of rebellion. Leather jackets may have been worn by bikers for protection, but they were quickly adopted by rock musicians (from Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, The Beatles to Elvis) as an endorsement of their outsider status. While fashions changed in the 1960s to soft denim and psychedelic colors, the black leather jacket never lost its iconic status as…