Musings Often in Stereo

First off, apologies again about this blog completely dying. Life happens that way. I’ll make my usual, “Hey I can has posts for youuuuuz” comment that will invariably mean little to no content coming in.

This is a repost of a Facebook note entitled “On punk rock, anarchism, and life in general” written in November of 2007. I’m reposting it because of an intriguing idea of a Punk Rock Anthropology brought up by a comment at this post on Jams: http://musicasdiscourse1.blogspot.com/2010/09/assignment-1-listening-to-and-being.html One thing you may notice is the author of the post. Yes, for Music as Discourse I will be from time to time writing blog posts. I’ll alert you, faithful reader, if I say or see anything of note that requires added commentary. Anyway, consider this my step IV:

The Against Me! show I saw last night was a fitting end to my punk show-going career.

“What?!?” many of you exclaim. “Colin not going to a punk show ever again?!?”

Yes, it’s the end of the line for my mosh days. I’ve realized a lot about the punk scene in the past year or so and have come to a few conclusions.

1. Punk, in and of itself, is the best example of why an anarchistic society doesn’t work. Punk rock, which bases itself on anarchistic principles of removing all sense of structure in order to make a perfect society, still will like the anarchistic society inherently run on the archetypes that run social order. Killing people is, unless you’re a complete psychopath, a bad idea that people will persecute you for. People generally resist any change to their system, even ones to solidify chaos. The thoughts in my head are not meant to be yours, but I can express them with the same sort of passion and/or vitriol that you do. The best way to live is by holding to your ethos. The problem is that archetypes create an unworkable stricture. If someone challenges the sanctity of the systemless system, they become an apologist. That’s echoed in the punk scene. A band like AM! gets vilified by the punk community because they decided to change their ethos and add elements of dance-rock. When they were challenged, they consciously decided to rail against the stricture of the scene. By challenging and innovating punk rock, they’ve become pariahs. Anarchism, like punk rock, devours its promising young too often to progress.

2. Punk rock is a means for inspiring thought. When I was in 6th grade, my mom bought me Green Day’s International Superhits. That summer, I bought the Punk-o-Rama Volume 7 sampler and went to the Warped Tour the next day. All of those were revelatory experiences for me because it was the sound of what I had begun to think. It was the sound of anger, of frustration, and of an awareness of the world surrounding me, personal or global. When I looked out at the Against Me! show last night, I would guess that half of the people in there were under the age of 16. They all had not gotten that message yet, that it’s time to open your eyes and notice that within your life and world things are screwed up. It’s not healthy for a country to foster a generation of kids expecting to have the world, many of whom went to the show. Punk music is what helped me, what was the catalyst, to become socially alert, aware, and involved, and I truly believe that a band like Against Me! is still the sort of band to do that.

3. Once you’ve been converted, you can’t get as high as you got on that first night. Punk shows, after you’ve seen what they can do to your life, continue to have an undeniable power for a long time as a testament to that first feeling that the world had been revealed. You look around and see that there’s 200 people just like you that understand the trials of the world. They came to that show for a feeling of rebirth. Over time, however, it’s difficult to continue feeling that same way ever again. You can’t continually be 14 all over again. You start realizing that when you slam into someone in the pit, it sort of hurts for both you and them. You begin to think and question yourself, “Why am I looking to feel something again when there’s other experiences out there?” You can’t regain the feeling of revelation totally, and as you realize that you begin to look elsewhere.

4. I’m too old for this. I’ve seen my life totally changed by punk rock, yeah, but I’ve become detached from the politics, the emotion, and the want to hit someone. If a punk band is saying something, I can listen, but the sound is usually better on vinyl than it is with the microphone gain cranked to Hell. I can love the message still and believe in it, but I can live without destroying my vocal cords.

Against Me! was a fitting end to my punk show going career, particularly since their encore was three of their oldest songs, a throwback to when I was still young and more naive than I am now, all played with Tom Gabel on acoustic instead of electric. The final song, “Walking is Still Honest,” sums up my life in the scene:

“Dear shithead/This isn’t happening/The sky is really falling/The paint’s all made of lead/There’s asbestos in the walls/Hell’s coming to rip off the doors/To your privileged heaven/Do you want to love and feel it?/You can look but you can’t taste it/You can reach but you’ll never have it/We are untouchable/Untouchable is something to be…You can be almost anything/When you’re on your fucking knees/Not today/Not my son/Not my family/Not while walking is still honest/
And you haven’t given up on me.”

Yeah, there is still a load of problems in the world. One of the greatest continues to be that theory never become anything but that. Punk rock stands as a testament to the idea that changing minds is the first step. I’d like to start taking the second one.