The Nez Perces North American Indians were so called because some wore dentalium shells in their noses. This did nothing to prevent their eventual destruction by the white Americans, whom they first befriended in 1805, in spite of the fact that for seventy years no Nez Perce had ever killed a white man.
In more recent times the practice of self mutilation by inserting alien objects into human bodies has been adopted with no less favourable consequences.
Almost exactly 100 years after the destruction of the Nez Perces punk was the thing, punk was King. Apart from the anarchic sound and the wildness of the pogo dance it was the use of the safety pin as an appendage decoration that lingers in the memory.
For a boy brought up on emerging traditional Jazz in the late fifties, where the sloppy Joe sweater, skin tight jeans, desert boots, (mine were the genuine article with Afrika Korps blood on them) Peter Stuyvesent cigarettes and warm beer set the scene and the music in 100 Oxford Street and the Ken Colyer Jazz Club improvised all night with never a fear of violence, mugging or rape, punk was hell.
It was the bloody ugliness of the thing that rankled. The music of the 60s and early 70's is great, but punk was a raving tuneless descent into a moronic madhouse. Driven as always by sharp operators with an eye for a fast buck.
Now we have progressed through Ska, Reggae and Ragga we now live with Jungle ( Oh how I hate Jungle) Rap and Hip Hop.
None of these tuneless excrescences specify impalement as a requirement for them to be enjoyed to the full.
But something does. The streets of London are filled with people filled with metal. Not since WW2 have so many carried so much shrapnel about their persons. But the strange thing is that this is all voluntary. The Blitz is long gone and even the IRA have stopped bombing momentarily.
It's not just the nose, it's the mouth, tongue, eyebrows and navel. I accept that the ear lobe was made to carry precious stones but these other bodily parts are meant to be left alone. How can you eat with metal rings through your lips and tongue, let alone blow your nose with three rings in each nostril? And horrors be! If you go down to the woods today you will find that metal is to be found in the erogenous zones that tend to be blacked out in family newspapers.
Some of these joys are visible on the net, put there as an advertisement by those who put them in places Nanny didn't want to talk about. I mean, who wants a clicking dick or a flashing fanny? It is extraordinary to think that young lovers are getting together for their regular 89 seconds of passion and making a noise like emptying cutlery from a dishwasher as their impaled parts come into contact. Perhaps this brings a new meaning to the phrase magnetic attraction.
Coupled with the bizarre concept that a shaven head is beautiful, an insult to all of us gone bald before our time, and that a German Shepherd or Pit Bull Terrier is an essential fashion accessory, the wearing of metal stuck through the body, whether rings, bars or studs is the ultimate in self degradation.
Is the world so bad that all they can do is make it worse for themselves?
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