One or two because I missed a day or three.Straight-edge punk pioneer Kevin Seconds (née Marvelli) designed the 7 Seconds logo in 1980. The cattier dyslexics among us may mistake "sXe" for "sex," but the straight-edge credo - a slightly grumpier Eagle Scout worldview - is concerned with anything but. 1980 was a good year for emblems: Devo's energy dome, The Anti-Nowhere League's spiked fist and mace, and the White Spirit eagle. "The logo first appeared on gig fliers in our hometown of Reno," Seconds remembers - which, having abstained from copious amounts of drink and drugs, is fairly easy to do after 27 years. Here the circle also suggests a mosh pit - which, in an odd way, with its convivial picking up of punks who have fallen to the ground, is comforting in itself. 7 Seconds, having much in common with common-sense Christianity in its core philosophy, cleverly offers a simple yet multi-faceted icon with straight edges that can be seen as either crooked crosses or an overwhelming paranoia from persecution by authority - something inherent in punk from day 12 (it took The Man a little while to catch on).
