Adorno’s discussion in Night Music concerning the loss of interpretability of works due to the transformative catalyst of history resonated with me in regards to a key controversy of the straight edge sub-counterculture movement. The founding principles of straight edge were unintentionally delineated in the song “Out of Step (With the World)” by Minor Threat; lead vocalist Ian Mackaye is credited with coining the term “straight edge” and is considered a legendary idol in the hardcore/straight edge community, despite repeated statements disassociating himself and his values with any cultural movement. Regardless, his lyrics in “Out of Step” serve as the basis for the straight edge philosophy, first interpreted and developed in the 1980s. Since that time, the biggest controversy has been the very nature of the “three rules” (don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t fuck) and the lesser known, but more rhetorically significant, implicit philosophy of “at least I can think,” insofar as their clarity is still somehow obscure: differing interpretations of these lyrics, then and now, have resulted in multiple, often exclusive, versions of straight edge (all of which, incidentally, are denounced by Mackaye).

Adorno claimed that “the impossibility of interpreting historical works adequately is becoming increasingly evident…the works themselves are starting to become uninterpretable. For the essences which interpretation seeks to access have been wholly transformed in reality, and thus also in the works, which are located in history and participate in living history.” Considering “Out of Step,” it seems very possible that the implicit philosophy of the song has suffered the fate of lost interpretability. “Out of Step” was written as a very personal account of a subjective moment in history, that of Mackaye’s own youth and beliefs; but as history continued, the song was transformed into an anthem of an underground movement, the doctrine of a radical counterculture, and a chorus of the masses. Who can adequately interpret the song now, 30 years later, when even its creator claims to be unable to do so after its appropriation by the “edge” masses? Adorno offers a possible option when he says “it would be conceivable for the history of the interpretations of works now receding into the past to find its continuation in the history of their derivatives,” which could mean modern music derivative of hardcore punk, foremost being the broad spectrum of music under the umbrella genre called simply “hardcore.” However, musicians of this category can only “wander aimlessly between fragments” of “Out of Step,” as history has “revealed the original essences” and caused the “disintegration of [the] morphological unity in the form of the work.” The implicit meaning of the song has been undeniably decided for many, in light of what may be considered its “original essence,” and its interpretability has been sacrificed to an absolute doctrine for the close-minded members of the movement.

Yet, the interpretability of “Out of Step” may still exist; for as Adorno said, “the ‘work-in-itself’, which can in reality never be separate from the work in its historical manifestation” will be dead only if “one day, nothing remained but this ‘work-in-itself’.” The historical manifestation of a work plays a critical role in its interpretability – the very component that disintegrates the “morphological unity” and reveals the “original essences” of a work also defines its objectivity. So long as “Out of Step” is considered not only in terms of its abstracted philosophy, but its relation to history and the culture of that time, we can engage in what Adorno called “playing off the past against the present.” The reconciliation and subsequent interactivity of the historical manifestation of “Out of Step” as Mackaye’s personal beliefs, formed as subjective principles in the midst of an apathetic and unaccomplished culture, with the modern manifestations of the song’s implicit philosophy, extolling the value in living with a kind of rhetorical virtue, allow for the interpretability of the song to endure and its musical materialism to be understood.