Punk: A(n) Essay / Story / Defense

[from www.automatoncity.com]

I was born 10 years after punk music was born. I was still in elementary school when punk became safe. And I’m not a historian. I say all of this, because if there’s anything I’ve learned since I started listening to punk music, it’s that some punks are touchy if they feel you’re even a little bit off about punk music. I wrote this because I love punk music (and I’m using “punk” instead of “punk rock” because I think it works better as an umbrella). This is just what I think on the matter of old punk music.

Also, no matter how much I write, it isn’t enough. Old punk music and what surrounded it is rad, and I could never do it justice.


A few nights ago, my friends and I were playing King’s Cup, and I ended up choosing Categories. I said, “Bands that you think are overrated.”

We all collectively argued and I listed classic overrated acts like Madonna and The Eagles.

But towards the end, my friend Rex said, “Every old punk band that you guys defend because they can barely play their instruments and it sounds like crap.”

And we all laughed.

And some debated.

And maybe Rex had a point.

See, I got into punk when everything in the mainstream was too polished and well overdone. I was in eighth grade when boy bands and lusty young female pop singers started controlling the airwaves. Everything was written by a roomful of paid songwriters there just to make money and the whole show was run by a producer who used gadgets to make sure these young men and women sounded flawless, like they could be angelic humanoids or something.

It was total, absolute artistic fraud, and they were living in huge mansions for it. The whole few-year episode of boy bands battling singular girl acts for world domination was discerning and it felt like mainstream music oppression. There was no sense of humor, no sense of humility and certainly no sense of reality. It was heartless and gutless, and worthless, really.

Well, it was to me anyway.

So, when I heard the charging guitars of punk, they sounded almost like guns, like a charging mass of freedom fighters shooting the clouds and spitting wherever. They were immature and beyond their years simultaneously. They had rebel cries and brotherhood. They had weapons of music destruction. They had this charming sense of pride, spirit, anger, disillusion and down-to-the-bones poetry. To me, they were like a combination of beatniks writers and a gang from 19th Century New York City.

They were almost heroes to me.

And for what? Barely knowing how to play guitar, bass and drums? For knowing three chords and running with it? For writing music when they couldn’t?

Yeah. Maybe.

But when punk supposedly actually started in the mid-70s, what was on the radio? Foreigner? Journey? Foghat? The Bee Gees? Donna fucking Summer?

Dear god, it was just long-winded rock bands and disco. Punk probably saved music forever, just by whipping out three minute blasts of energy.

That’s as far as I’m going to go into the roots of punk. At least for now. Here’s the fairy tale: Iggy Pop and Patti Smith had sex and gave birth to punk music. There you go.

This whole ordeal is more of what old punk music means to me. It’s not a history lesson in musical rebellion, but themes of change will always be a part of anything ever written about punk music.

My actual roots of interest in punk started accidentally when I was in second grade. I was looking through the tapes in my dad’s glove box and I found two that seemed interesting. One was The Cure’s Disintegration, which I was slightly uneasy about because that cover is unsettling when you’re 7 or 8, and The Replacements’ Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash.

I played the tape of The Replacements in my family’s old stereo and listened. And listened. And listened. And I don’t think I left that spot for the entire afternoon. I just sat there listening.

It was my first instance of choosing music. My parents had always played good music around the house, like Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Bob Marley & The Wailers, but the first band I ever really discovered on my own was The Replacements. Shortly after, they changed their sound and they weren’t nearly as dirty or musically unprofessional. But on Dear Ma, they were degenerate authorities on loud and fast. There were mistakes all over that record. The album almost seems unfinished. But I thought the songs were catchy, and years later, I would appreciate the dirty quality of the album.

I listened to that tape through elementary school, never knowing what it was. I didn’t know punk music. A kid even wore a Sex Pistols shirt in sixth grade and I made fun of him, because I thought it was goofy.

But my parents bought me Green Day’s Dookie for Christmas when I was in fourth grade. Then all my friends got The Offspring’s Smash. I didn’t know that either was a new form of a pop-enthused punk either. I was way off from all that. Instead, with the help of my siblings, I was putting on plays for my parents to the soundtrack of Dookie.

In fact, in sixth and seventh grade, I mostly listened to what the radio told me. I just bought into whatever music they were selling.

In eighth grade, I finally discovered punk music and the associated subculture. A kid who I thought was a nerd in seventh grade came around differently in eighth. He was then sporting a big mohawk and an attitude for the school staff. He started drawing anarchy symbols everywhere. One time, he went a little further. In the bathroom, on one wall, he anonymously suggested that we kill our vice-principal. On the adjacent wall, with the same black marker, he wrote, “Bruno was here.” Needless to say, he was suspended.

But names of bands that I didn’t recognize started showing up in pins and patches on his jacket. He clearly didn’t get his music from the radio or his parents, so I wondered.

“Who are the Subhumans?” I remember asking once. This of course sounded like a philosophical question, but I was really just reading his jacket.

He showed me.

And suddenly I had a sincere interest in all these bands all over Bruno’s jacket. It was noise…the beautiful sound of anarchy. It was a kick in the face, given that I was eating up everything the radio stations in Los Angeles fed me. But I didn’t feel as if it was hitting all the nerves I thought it should. It was a lot of buzz to the guitars and a lot of yelling to the singer’s voice, but the distortion didn’t seem to be enough.

Around that time, I read an article on Rancid and bought their new album Life Won’t Wait, also at the suggestion of Bruno and another friend, Matt. It was Matt actually who began showing me what punk had become. He was listening to current punk bands, the supposed end result of Bruno’s bands. I remember when he showed me an album that just came out and filled the void of good, good yelling. It was Black Sails In The Sunset by A.F.I. And I listened to it nonstop once I bought it.

Towards the end of eighth grade, I started hanging around Bruno and Matt more and more after school. And the more and more I got into punk.

But I worked backwards. I listened to new school punk bands, rooting through the catalogues of different indie punk record labels at the turn of the century: Epitaph, Fat, Nitro. From there, I followed bands that had roots in the ‘80s scene, but transformed: Bad Religion, NOFX, The Vandals.

And from there, I looked into the ‘80s bands’ influences and found the roots of the ‘70s. Finally, in ninth grade, I understood the spectrum of punk. What began as themes with Iggy Pop & The Stooges, Patti Smith, New York Dolls and The Velvet Underground and such evolved into what is unofficially deemed the beginning of “punk.”

And then I was a punk in ninth grade, alongside my two closest friends Jeff and Nick.

The three of us had pins and patches, and we played punk music in my garage, and we argued about what punk was. I wish I could remember who believed in what, but there were reoccurring themes and challenging ideas. We actually debated about what punk was, is and could be.

However, I wasn’t exactly well-versed in the politics of punk. The arguments paralleled creation vs. evolution in some artistic limbo of snotty vs. shotty music. Matt once said that the Sex Pistols weren’t really punk because theatrical fashion absurdist Malcolm McLaren formed them into a punk band, and there was no natural order. Matt called them the first boy band, maybe to just be shocking, and others agreed.

One afternoon, I told this to my father, who was actually the one who originally showed me Nevermind The Bullocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols. And he was rather unimpressed with my friends.

“A lot of my friends don’t like the Sex Pistols,” I said, as he arranged clothes in his closet.

“Why not? They’re the Sex Pistols,” my father said, clearly confused by what point I was trying to make about my band of comrades.

“They say they don’t like them because they were formed like a pop band by a greedy fashion manager.”

“Ok,” my father said, pausing, as if to rethink how he could have this conversation without hurting my feelings. “The Sex Pistols were punk,” he finally said, slowly. “I saw them at Wonderland, their last concert ever. Well, at the time it was. But I saw and heard Johnny Rotten say ‘You ever feel like you’ve been cheated?’ That was punk. I was punk. You’re a poser if you don’t like the Sex Pistols. All of your friends are posers. Geez, I’m more punk than your friends.”

“Don’t call his friends posers,” my mother said, stepping into the conversation.

“Why? That’s what they are. They’re all posers. How could you not like the Sex Pistols? They’re the freakin’ Sex Pistols!”

This was my first understanding of how sacred of a thing “punk” actually is to a person. Teenagers were writing off their parents as drones, though they had been punks in the decades earlier, and parents were laughing at their rebellious kids going to “punk” shows with corporate sponsors.

And that’s when I got into the scene. By the time I got into punk, it was safe. Warped Tour had started a few years before and Hot Topic was selling random fashion accessories with old punk band logos for a hefty price. There wasn’t the excitement of the 70s or the danger of the 80s.

I remember talking about old punk music and the current scene with my youngest uncle, who was an actual punk in the ’80s. And it remains the only time that I’ve ever heard somebody say, “I’ve seen things, man,” and mean it. I don’t know if he was talking about sex, drugs, violence or just the empty lifestyle of squatters, but I decided that I probably shouldn’t ask.

But what attracted me to the scene of the ‘70s and ‘80s was that the whole genre of music sounded like everything was recorded with all you could put into each song. I would listen to so many songs and it sounded like they were compromising feelings for musical notes, and I loved it. It was exciting to listen to someone be more into what they were saying than how they were sounding. The singers often didn’t have these grand voices that made them singers. They were just guys who wrote poetry about what they wanted to see happen in the world. And if it made them upset that social change wasn’t progressing as they saw fit, they wanted to convey that frustration rather than try to harmonize.

Sometimes, it was melodic. Sometimes, it wasn’t.

Even though I actually don‘t care for most “crust punk” or “discore” bands, I will say that it’s refreshing to know that there’s bands that want to share a message so bad that they almost lose their minds once they get hold of a microphone. In a living room, where you sit comfortably on a couch while watching musicians endorse soda, it’s almost a welcomed unnerving sensation to hear the frantic sounds of a poor but militant punk band shake out loud on record, while they may also be wild political activists. But I also think that the music is noise and it’s hard for me to listen to, which is maybe along the lines of what Rex suggested. But this is also why a talented and thoughtful punk band that balances good lyrics with good music is something to truly behold.

This is [just] one of the [many] reasons why The Clash was once referred to as “the only band that matters.” And because that’s what their record company put out in the press releases.

However, The Clash really did something more than challenge everything that punk may or may not be known for, and it set a more articulate tone for future punk. I mean, it’s not like punk bands were the first to be political. Jesus, the rock bands and the hippies of the 1960s wrote how many anti-war anthems and political tracks demanding change?

Also, let’s assume that there’s been political themes ever since the first song was written by someone who could hardly pay the rent.

But it’s always easier to sell punk as the new political movement here and there, but it’s laughable. My friend Bret was working at Guitar Center when Green Day’s American Idiot came out. They put up a poster of a magazine cover featuring Green Day with the headline “Punk Gets Political.” Underneath, one of Bret’s co-workers mockingly wrote “…FINALLY.”

And this was 30 years after The Sex Pistols and The Clash.

But, as for punk being a movement that opened up its listeners to a fighting forum rather than fighting boredom, The Clash wrote songs with actual observations and perceptions of the political realm. They didn’t just talk about anarchy and spit on the idea of government, which is what was initially associated with the British punk movement. It was intelligent topics. Their self-titled first album featured songs about racism, class war, the politics of the music industry, looking for work in a stifling economy, while commenting on how the United Kingdom was following more and more American trends and losing its own culture. And they did it while dipping their musical styling into reggae, jazz, dub, funk, rap, doo-wop, rockabilly, ska and pop.

But punk didn’t have to be political, as Johnny Ramone pointed out in the documentary End Of The Century. In fact, he said that The Ramones had no interests in writing anything political, since that was a thing that hippies did.

When The Ramones, often cited as the first “punk” band, first started playing, their songs were almost always under two minutes. Again, this was in an era where the radio was playing guitar solos three times that length.

Four nice guys showed up at the New York City club-venue CBGB, all wearing leather jackets and jeans. Their music was like the weirdos at school hijacked American Bandstand. It was like Bill Haley’s comet (*teehee*), a mixture of 1950s rock, sped up with buzzing guitars. One writer for an early punk mag called it a welcomed “wall of noise.”

However, their sound certainly wouldn’t be noise by today’s standards. The Ramones sound well-tamed (especially on record) for what followed them in decades to come. But at that time, it was a shocking barrage of sound.

And, no, they were not spectacular musicians and a lot of their songs sounded the same, but they never tried to be anything more than they were. Now, maybe that doesn’t seem like it’s a gargantuan or monumental revolution of music these days, but I mean, think about when they did all of this. Do you know what was on the radio at the time? “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille. Seriously.

These four “yokels” came from Queens in the wake of bitchy and shallow disco queens, the uneatable feast of hippie leftovers and pretentious musician-god hybrids that could talk about their 10-minute guitar solo for 10 hours.

How the hell could you not end up rooting for a couple of glue-sniffers to destroy mainstream music by writing two minute catchy blasts, only knowing three chords and writing about nothing?

It was like a modern-day fairy tale, almost as if the outcasts saved the high school while the cheerleaders and jocks were too busy talking about themselves, and the city rejoiced.

Good god, The Ramones probably saved music in a single year.

That’s probably why Spin called them the second greatest rock band of all-time.

Yes, there is a whole catalogue of arguments against that listing, but think about another band that seriously changed up the game as much as The Ramones. They didn’t influence particular genres so much as they did just influence music. Agreed, The Rolling Stones were incredible and amazing, but they were a combination of American blues and British Rock. Other great bands can be classified with forefathers in music. You can cite influences with The Ramones, but you can identify that sound before them.

The Ramones played louder and faster. And then came The Sex Pistols. And then The Clash. And then punk blew up, and then you had an entirely new genre and an entirely new subculture.

American punk scenes began popping up everywhere, and by the last year or two of the ‘70s, new variations and subgenres were coming out (post-punk, pop-punk hardcore, goth, new wave, etc).

By the ‘80s, punk was a thing. It wasn’t some new trend. It was an actual umbrella of music, cultivating the sounds of artists that didn’t have any interest or intention to be the next fallen guitar god.

These were kids in basements, maybe with a couple of problems and a guitar. Or they were bored. Or they had a message. Or they just wanted to see how far they could get in the world.

So the trends became movements and the movements became scenes and the scenes became communities. And, sure, there was danger to it all, in some realms. But it was also something spectacular regardless.

In the ‘80s, punk became a noisy eruption of spirit, fun, curiosity and/or anger. And from there, it evolved in every which way and is responsible for change in music across the board.

Yes, by the mid-90s, it was safe and more marketable than ever. It wasn’t even a fashionable trend at that point. It was just a staple in “over-the-counterculture.”

But in the ‘70s and ‘80s, punk was something…something it isn’t now. And I like these bands, and I defend these bands, and I adore what these bands did, because…what they did was punk. And that’s not by the standards of today, where punk is in everything. But it’s also not a cop-out of “it was new then, meaning it’s still good now.” I still love old punk music. I’m not limited to it, as I was in ninth grade, but it keeps a good fire burning in my heart.

And listening to a good mixtape of old punk bands hits the goddamn spot on afternoon drives some days.

Beyond logos becoming more recognizable than songs, like the Black Flag bars, there is something unrealistically pure in listening to punk. I don’t mean it’s without corporate substance or that it’s anti-establishment, if it is…what I mean is that it was mostly written by people who just wanted to fucking do it. There weren’t as many schemes to get noticed, not as much cat-and-mouse with the record labels and not a pretense of questioning or wondering.

Sometimes, you just have it as solid in your brain as you do in your heart.

So, to close out, I collected some old punk songs which I think deserve a listen and a spin in your stereo. These exactly my favorite songs by each band. Instead, I just remember putting on a mixtape as a teenager, and I’d like you to listen to it. I don’t know how to make a mix available for download online. For now, just find the songs online(either download or preview them) or borrow albums from friends, and listen to these songs, and consider what they were in the ‘70s and ‘80s and what they are against today.

JAKE KILROY’S PUNK MIXTAPE:
- “Johnny Was A Soldier” - The Addicts
- “Kids Of The Black Hole” - The Adolescents
- “Breakdown” - Agent Orange
- “I Want To Conquer The World” - Bad Religion
- “Rise Above” - Black Flag
- “All Wound Up” - The Circle Jerks
- “Career Opportunities” - The Clash
- “Oi! Oi! Oi!” - Cockney Rejects
- “Wait For The Blackout” - The Damned
- “California Über Alles” - Dead Kennedys
- “Bikeage” - Descendents
- “English Dream” - Generation X
- “Media Blitz” - The Germs
- “I Don’t Wanna Hear It” - Minor Threat
- “The Glory Of Man” - The Minutemen
- “Where Eagles Dare” - The Misfits
- “Missionary” - Operation Ivy
- “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” - The Ramones
- “Love You ‘Til Friday” - The Replacements
- “Anarchy In The U.K.” - The Sex Pistols
- “Mainliner” - Social Distortion
- “At The Edge” - Stiff Little Fingers
- “Abolish Government / Silent Majority” - T.S.O.L.
- “Anarchy Burger (Hold The Government)” - The Vandals
- “Los Angeles” - X
- “Sink With Kalifornia” - Youth Brigade