People in Banana Costumes at Hardcore Punk Concerts

what is your take on this vital issue

https://stereogum.com/2501693/end-it-concertgoer-in-banana-costume-tears-hardcore-community-apart/news

C-Man no longer posts so the foremost authority on this topic can not weigh in.

personally i get why people at hardcore concerts would be annoyed at people being "wacky" but when fans get all territorial and aggro against people who aren't causing any real harm, it makes them look like cops. i wouldn't wear a banana costume to a hardcore concert but i also wouldn't listen to a band who got that upset by some jagoff wearing a banana costume at their show. it's not like he was fuckin' abbie hoffman or anything.

WWNWD?

baltimoreans can be pretty aggro

are we sure this guy isn't a character in a Tim Robinson sketch

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKKeLdxXkAABgvs?format=jpg&name=large

Egg punk vs chain punk turns violent

While, policing what people wear?

i want to say that i don't care, but ultimately i have to side with bananaman unless something surfaces where he was being confrontational etc

aggro punks espousing radical leftism but acting like cops though is a story as old as time tho

can you see the band over the top of the banana costume?

Everyone complaining about this is such a fuckin hall monitor.

You’re laughing. A man’s banana costume is destroyed and you’re laughing.

Gen Z is pretty hall monitor-ish in general compared to millens y/n

hardcore punks once again turning out to be conservatives

This is real "let them fight" territory

One side is bullying and threatening violence and the other side is wearing a banana costume.

Team banana obviously.

“Asking people to destroy a banana costume is violence, actually”

Come on, of course it’s violence

It’s just that in this instance, the violence is kind of funny

^ this

generally I am on team egg punk here tho, the band were being dicks and the venue is pissed as well since the dude was a regular

still a world away from the "beat up the longhairs for real" stuff happening in the early 80s

“Asking people to destroy a banana costume is violence, actually”

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, June 9, 2026 1:28 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Did you miss the "Now everyone here has to kill you"?

I’m in the morally suspect position of agreeing that this attack was wrong but also giggling every time I think about it

You guys sound like the MAGA dudes who claim BLM was “violent” because they burned a car a car or whatever. Destroying a banana costume is not violence.

Watch your fucking mouth

They still have Hardcore punk shows? Fucking losers.

Trashing a banana costume isn’t violence. Getting a load of amped up punks to trash a banana costume while the guy is wearing it looks a lot like violence to me.

pretty much, yeah

The guy standing near the stage at a hardcore show must have been quite surprised when things got a little rowdy!

Post through it, it’s the only thing you know

Fucking loser

People have been trying to dim my sparkle my entire life. It sucks, but I'm used to it.

lol c'mon there's some difference between going to a hardcore show and being part of the camaraderie of smashing into people vs. being the target of the band and the entire audience. For the record I also think it was funny.

i just don't understand how being the guy in the banana costume doesn't lose its novelty after the first 10 minutes, especially if you're going to see music that involves a lot of movement.

if you insist on being the main character, well sometimes bad things happen to the main character

That shit-ass band incited violence against a fan in order to police his clothing before *checks notes* yelling without irony "fuck the police."

And yes, it was violence. Tearing clothing off someone is assault.

Wtf is with all this conformist "main character energy" bullshit being used to justify violence? If someone is being a bit of a dick but not actively bothering anyone, just ignore them.

Guy in a banana suit tripping balls somewhere on the lawn at Dead show: sure, why not.

Guy in a banana suit at a hardcore punk show in a tiny club: gtfoh, dude.

what's punk all about if it's not sticking to a rigidly defined uniform and encouraging violence to any weirdo who breaks ranks?

gtfoh with “violence”

0 people got hurt

Judd Apatow says Will Smith ‘could have killed’ Chris Rock in #Oscars slap. pic.twitter.com/C5Ai06TqrF

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) March 29, 2022

“Asking people to destroy a banana costume is violence, actually”

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, June 9, 2026 10:28 AM

they're just paying tribute to those who came before them

peel slowly and see

thank y'all for bringing the snark to this thread. my friends were all "god how could those people be such dicks" but also i think a lot of my friends think these guys are hardcore punk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-HKqN3WM54

like i feel like it would be unusual if _nobody_ wore a banana costume to a sex machineguns concert

anyway seriously thank you because my brain is hopelessly nuance-pilled and i can't think of a controversy _less_ deserving of nuanced takes than this one.

everyone== he’s a dork but he didn’t deserve that
whiney==dorks get swirlies
kate== ????

Punk is truly dead if you can’t dress up as a Velvet Underground album at a show.

loooooook

honestly i'm on team djp

i'm probably _supposed_ to be on the side of "egg punk", which apparently did _not_ get its name from the way that people who play in egg punk bands tend to look like every fucking egg i have ever seen, but c'mon dude. dude. why the fuck are you gonna dress up like a banana at a hardcore punk show. were you hoping they would invite you up on stage to rap about pizza? i'm in favor of tolerance and diversity and even cringe but look. ian mackaye wouldn't have done anything like the people in this boring band did, but also i can well imagine ian mackaye saying something _completely_ eviscerating about this dude and i'd fucking applaud him for it.

Punk is truly dead if you can’t dress up as a Velvet Underground album at a show.

― The Quaker Gurvitz Army (President Keyes), Tuesday, June 9, 2026 5:45 PM (four minutes ago)

no see this is my point

if this dude was a REAL punk he'd be wearing a penis costume _under_ his banana peel costume

ok it was literally a pink banana but c'mon. it's 2026. wear the fuckin' penis costume.

^^^ the best answer

bananaman obviously a dork who wanted to bait people but the End It guy is 100x dorkier for taking the bait, people used to whip glass bottles & batteries at hardcore singers and this drip is triggered by a polyester banana, absolutely corny af

whether or not its violence its just lame letting a banana run you like that, turn in your hardcore card

The banana that defined a generation

Wait til they start having hen FAPs at shows

https://scontent-lhr11-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/720227290_10238633704318679_2244219543020615494_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_tt6&cstp=mx720x523&ctp=s720x523&_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=lrgjxRkI74YQ7kNvwEWllOR&_nc_oc=AdrSGpGqyDIK9hryyfYj_Ac2Q87bQ9CuHCLR7xKNC1g-4zZClTc5tNtgWP6m_PyvAG_ycqv7N7z8ADnrlH9grJ6q&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr11-1.xx&_nc_gid=idNy_Vm6UCvlaE6UsvGQyQ&_nc_ss=7b2a8&oh=00_Af9KC1osmdWAnXTNh0r-T0o9puOBccn2bQzkGUmB0AQjVA&oe=6A3095BC

Four banana, three banana, two banana, one
All bananas playing in the bright warm sun
Flipping like a pancake, popping like a cork
Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snork

Won’t somebody think about the sanctity of meme culture?!

An incredible coincidence I don't see anyone mentioning in the media is that my user name comes from a woman who dressed as a pickle

halfway bravely risking getting crowdkilled by whiney

the imago posts in this thread are absolutely incredible. restoring old ilx feeling

my friend is a guitar tech for bands and was on a tour that sebastian bach was on

he was walking backstage and sebastian's dressing room door was open and he was shirtless, looking at how his ass looked in leather pants and screaming along to hatebreed at top volume

just felt like that anecdote belongs on this thread

Fwiw Hatebreed is actually a good example of the the scene's short memory and the ability to move on from controversy. The Chris Bickel incident in the 90s, where he wrote an article criticizing Victory Records and the entire band surrounded him in public, threatening him amd tossing every homophobic slurs known to man at him, then after Chris called them homophobes, Jasta left a death threat where he stated proudly he was a homophobe. It's why for years I refused to even sample their music or go to a show that had them on it.

From what I've heard, including from Bickel himself, Jasta's changed completely since those old days and he uses his platform and calls out transphobia and homophobia regularly, and that incident was far worse than Bananarama 2026, which will probably be forgotten as soon as a brawl breaks out at a beatdown show when someone shows up wearing suspenders and a dickie.

Someone on FB today posted a July 1994 schedule from the club I used to hang out at, and I realize that I probably did attend a LOA show back then.

Whitfield Crane if Ugly Kid Joe was briefly the singer but didn't appear on any albums

okay that's a fun fact

Still some live footage from the era he replaced Crane. He actually acquitted himself pretty well

*replaced CAPUTO

well i just discovered this thread, somehow. wonders never cease.

what's the best costume you saw during your DJ gig time?

(or the most annoying)

There’s a joke somewhere here about the debate that would break out if olivia rodrigo wears a banana suit in her next video

i can well imagine ian mackaye saying something _completely_ eviscerating about this dude and i'd fucking applaud him for it.

I saw you eating a banana split, pal. Don't deny it! Banana split-eating motherfucker that's what you are!

Unforgettable

the thing in all this that is interesting to me, that's sort of more general, is that the banana guy is bringing a note of levity & silliness to a scene that collectively doesn't really want that. it's fair to say of that scene that it's very self-serious and uniform and intolerant of deviation, but that's also something the scene has long known about itself and doesn't seek to change. a hardcore show is a place to be Like This, it's a group exercise in being Like This. when Mr Funny Guy insists that we're also being funny tonight, it's an imposition: it harshes the vibe, takes the wind out of the sails, and you can't really just tune out Mr Funny Guy, he has worn a big suit specifically so that he can be part of your night. now, you can say "if your vibe is so rigid then it needs to be fucked with some," and fair enough, but it's maybe a useful exercise to ask: does a communal space (which a hardcore show is; yes, anyone can buy a ticket, but usually, it's people who are into hardcore who buy those tickets) have a legit grievance if people decide unilaterally to reject its norms? how can they air that grievance? not by ripping off somebody's clothes, imo, but really this becomes a problem of scale. if banana guy does this at a Rites of Spring show during revolution summer he would never forget the half hour lecture he got from some rando after about how it felt like he was making fun of something beautiful, and next time he thinks "the fun of the suit was really not worth having to tough out the lecture."

I've been reading hardcore fans fight each other on this and came across this take, which generated a 300 post argument between old and new guard:

"Hardcore was built on violence.

If you have a problem with that, maybe this just ain’t for you?

All you kids that got here through Turnsitle, Knocked Loose, and Drug Church…. We are happy to have yall, but to act like things should change to make you feel more welcome and safe is honestly a laughable take.

You use to get jumped for dancing funny, you’d get jumped for looking like ya didn’t fit in, you’d get jumped for wearing trip pants.

We’ve come a long way.

But the line has to be drawn somewhere.

And apparently that line is Bananas 🤷‍♂️"

and in a separate post, he lamented how what he deemed genre tourists were disrespecting the scene he helped create, etc.

But this wasn't some hardcore OG who saw Bad Brains shows at the height of their chaos or threw elbows at Government Issue shows, this was a guy in his 30s who was a kid when like 90s hardcore was taking off.

There were several on his side (including one Groyper, which is what made me leave the discussion), but almost all of them were talking about hardcore as the beatdown/toughguy core was the 'default version', the Genesis.

Much of the OG crew or the people between his age and the OG crew pushed back, though there were some OGs who concurred, but the OP and his cronies weren't really interested in talking about the late 70s/80s origins of the genre despite multiple attempts to take that conversation there.

Then I went on Reddit and found that r/punk and r/hardcore really do not linked each other and frequently take potshots at each other.

Which made me wonder, is there a version of the hardcore scene that considers what hardcore is now to be completely decoupled from what was called hardcore in the 80s, i.e. that they're not the same and that any throughlines are coincidental?

From my perusing of r/hardcore and r/punk, i found a lot more homophobia, ableist slurs and apolitical and/or right-wing political content in r/hardcore than I did r/punk...and a lot of snickering that r/punk was too woke/boomery.

I'm also aware we tend to Golden Age the origins of hardcore punk and pretend that homophobia (or hell, Nazi infiltration) didn't exist at all in the scene when of course it wasn't all a singular, unified scene, scenes in different cities were all different.

It just seemed weird like there's this faction of the hardcore scene that more or less considers 80s hardcore to not be where the scene started, that they're called the same thing but aren't the same thing (i.e. "hardcore punk" vs "pure hardcore")

I own a lot of punk and hardcore albums but I've never been part of the scene and don't profess to have a deep knowledge of these things (metal is my gatekeeping arena)

*do not LIKE each other

It’s true but it’s also not that uncommon in scenes, see also “dubstep”

xxp Neanderthal that was kind of what I was getting at with my post upthread about this - this is a "hardcore" band not a "hardcore punk" band. there are people on r/hardcore who try to remind people that hardcore is short for hardcore punk but yes that subreddit is mostly full of people who only like beatdown hardcore and metalcore (original definition) - I do like some of that stuff but not so much some of the attitudes that come with it. those guys usually think hardcore started with Agnostic Front.

I don't really get on with r/hardcore or r/punk, I got fed up with the latter because it's so repetitive, endless posts about how the Sex Pistols were a boy band, and they mostly only talk about the bigger bands from the 70s or Fat Wreck Chords type shit. r/hardcorepunk is much more my kind of thing but it's quiet.

He might find more acceptance on Paul Weller's next tour

Thanks Colonel, that was helpful

TSOL was sort of a precursor to this mindset. In John Doe's oral history of the LA scene, Jack Grishmam says something like "asking me about songs is like asking me about which brick I threw through a window", he was very adamant that the punk scene was an outlet for his own violence and sociopathic behavior and the music was just what you had to do to be a part of it.

So in some senses, I think the hardcore was founded on violence guy isn't totally wrong.

hardcore was not founded on violence

like idk there’s a reason most of the major architects of the scene changed their music so the scene would shift away from violence. i don’t think violence is part of its soul. it’s a response some people have

it’s ironic the ice cream eating motherfucker monologue got brought up because that was about a guy who was being too violent to the people around him

“hardcore was founded on violence” also sounds like some boys club shit. i know some women can be ruthless in the pit, but still

I imagine it doesn't matter what people who were into hardcore in the 80s/early 90s think about the HC scene today. I doubt a large number of the folks who were at Fugazi shows with me in 1990 are still jumping into mosh pits weekly.

ok yeah that’s true but “hardcore was founded on violence” is still wrong to me

i can only scan this thread at this point and my only thought is that everyone should show up to the parts and labor shows this summer in banana suits

“hardcore was founded on violence” “hardcore was founded on breakdowns” “hardcore was founded on really stupid looking dance moves”

who looks more ridiculous at hardcore shows, a guy in a banana suit or slamdancers

Has anyone considered the dangers of banana peels in the moshpit?

“hardcore was founded on violence” also sounds like some boys club shit. i know some women can be ruthless in the pit, but still

― ivy., Friday, June 12, 2026 9:49 AM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hey ivy i should have provided more context, so really a major theme of that John Doe book (made up of individual chapters written by people who were in the scene: Doe, Jane Weiland, Chris D., Watt, El Vez etc), and really the main theme was the original Hollywood scene of punk was far more arty, more female, more multi-racial that was sort of ended by the hardcore scene and bands like TSOL (who really did seem to move as a youth gang)....the real "hinge" bands were Black Flag and Germs who were friends with and admired by the Hollywood bands but started it moving to a much more violent, more macho, more white male thing.

So when I made that comment I was trying to tie back to what Neanderthal was saying, that there was a strong element in hardcore even as early as then where being a venue for young males to act out violence or a least a kabuki of violence was really inherent to the whole thing, as much in a lot of cases as the music.

I remember going to a place called the Bomb Shelter on Lake Street when I first started going to see bands in Minneapolis and the guys were out on the outside of the pit just punching people and throwing them back in the pit if they tried to get out. I did not like it at all and never went back.

to be clear, this is not my idea of punk or hardcore and I don't really like anything that's descended from NYHC or the whole Cro Mags, Harley Flanagan tough guy shit. But in terms of End It or Hatebreed or whoever, I do think it might be smart and Neando said to realize it has very little to do with whatever I think of as punk.

it’s ironic the ice cream eating motherfucker monologue got brought up because that was about a guy who was being too violent to the people around him

― ivy., Friday, June 12, 2026 9:46 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is also a great point I was going to talk about and forgot but Fugazi was really active in trying to protect people at their show from this type of shit.

re schism between hardcore and punk - Sam McPheeters (Born Against) talks about this in his book Mutations - he went to see Youth Of Today support GBH in about 1987, and Ray Cappo launched into an on stage rant denouncing punk rock, and sees this as the point where hardcore began to see itself as something separate to punk. he says this also brought in a load of conservative attitudes to the scene

Also Hare Krishna attitudes

well yeah. I do like 108 but that's despite of that

oh yeah i totally agree with that ums!!!

and i’d also think i’d characterize my experience at good, recent modern hardcore shows as one of “positive aggression.” “take care of your people in the pit” etc.

I still remember this asshole going to an Obituary show in 2015 and trying to crowdkill the front row for a solid half hour, including a woman who had screamed to knock it off. my friend grabbed him with one hand and threw him to the ground.

No punches, no fight afterwards, nothing other just showing the aggressor enough humiliation that he got the fuck out of dodge and left everyone alone.

I also recall an Incantation show where people were launching full, 20 pound steel reinforced bar stools at each other in the pit. Amazed nobody was hit in the head

I got headbutted once at a Cannibal Corpse show and a big muscular guy pulled me to safety. In my youthful naivety I went to go back into the pit and I felt his hand on my shoulder pulling me back, wagging his finger at me acting as my protector

Then Whitney Houston "I Will Always Love You" came on

aren't Incantation a panpipes band?

Ray Cappo launched into an on stage rant denouncing punk rock

ha I remember thinking all the bullet belt/liberty spike bands were total poseur has-beens back then... and then Rancid brought all that shit back

I think its interesting that at least according to banana guy's post, his motivation for wearing the suit isn't to fuck with the vibe or tweak the over-serious sensibilities of uptight hc guys, but as a kind of safety signal to first-time or non-veteran showgoers that he's not a toughguy, the idea that someone can spot him and quickly discern that he's probably not going to suckerpunch you or kick your knees out. Now, he might be spinning to make himself look good and/or he might not be entirely self-aware about his own motivations, but still an interesting detail imo.

I know folks that have suffered life-changing injuries at hc shows, not from tragic-accident type stuff but from intentional acts that in any other context would earn the perpetrator an easy 7-10 years, and the amount of "condolences but what do you expect at hardcore show, stay home if you cant handle it" type responses from the community eventually made me pretty much never want to be in a hc crowd again. The inevitable debates about what this or that band, behavior, or type of fan have to do with the nature of punk or the ideals of hardcore always end up in academic "no true Scotsman" territory for me