The Punk Scene

What's interesting about the world of punk is that the very thing that makes it good is the thing that makes it bad. It's very Shakespearean in that way. I'm fascinated by the fact that it's greatest strength and it's worst weakness are the exact same thing. And that is, that anyone can do it.

The fact that anyone can do it, and there are no prerequisites whatsoever to starting a punk band, not least of which ever included possessing any musical ability, was good, in a way, because it leveled the playing field. Now all you needed were some friends willing to give it a try.

Unfortunately, this bred far too much mediocrity and just plain awful music. This is only natural, because, strictly speaking in odds, if something is turned loose on the general public, it will become mediocre and watered-down. That's just what happens. Think back to anything in the past to see an example.

Thankfully, the punk movement produced The Ramones. The Ramones have always been an extraordinary band, and a very special one at that. If the punk movement had not produced this flagship band, I think a lot of people would be scratching their heads, thinking, "what was it all about?"

However, I submit to you that the Ramones are the first and LAST true punk band. They are the only real punk band to ever have existed. Everything else is just a bunch of lies. Importantly, the Ramones were unpretentious in the extreme, almost to the point of parody, and had no image to live up to, at least at first, and no standards to live up to. They just looked at all the popular musical trends that came before them in the sixties and attempted in their own inimitable way to do what they did. And thank goodness for everyone, they were wildly successful.

All the post-Ramones bands that call themselves punk are not so. Utter, unmitigated crap like The Casualties, Aus-Rotten, Crass and all the "spikey-haired" crew may be something, but in my view it's not PUNK. It's a distortion of the original meaning. What the spikey-haired crew is -- and here's a cold, hard fact for them -- are hippies wearing different clothes. But they are hippies 2.0, because they've added (faux) anger to their noxious stew.

I know of what I speak, because I was involved in the punk world for many years. I came to realize it is NOT a good or kind world. It is a selfish, dumb, spoiled, talentless, repetitive, redundant, boring, abject, gutter-level group that self-oppresses. They choose to stay in the basement when they could live in the penthouse. This is contrary to all logic. But most importantly, they are a CLOSED-MINDED group. This is important because they pride themselves on being open minded. They never, ever stop beating that drum of "open minded". I see now that is because they are severely insecure of their own closed-mindedness.

Here's a quick example. If you were to show up to a punk show wearing a Kiss T-shirt, you would be openly mocked and ridiculed, and probably even confronted by total strangers. And this is just a T-shirt. That is not the open-mindedness I've heard them talk so much about. Just the contrary, they only want you listening to punk rock. If you dare listen to all the myriad other types of music in this world, you're not "true" , you're not "punk", you're not "core" or whatever the terminology of the minute is. You're just a worthless traitor in their eyes. They WANT you to stay in the "basement" I spoke of earlier. They WANT you stuck on an endless hit parade of songs about how life sucks, beer, and "police brutality" (a popular punk subject that the "songwriters" have absolutely zero experience with.)They don't want anyone to excel in life. Probably because none of THEM has excelled in life. That's not just ignorant and lazy, it's actually unhealthy. That's one form of the self-oppression I spoke of earlier. (many punk songs are about how they are VICTIMS of oppression). They prefer to stay in the dark when there's a lightswitch right there. How could I continue to be involved in such a group?

The bottom line is, you mustn't break the orthodoxy. What's fascinating about punk rockers (and liberals, which is really what punks are), is that they have a hatred for religion (and this is exemplified in countless songs on punk albums and in any punk literature, if that isn't an oxymoron). (Side note, Oxymoron is the name of a punk band)....So despite their avowed hatred for religion, what they don't realize, because they're blinded by their own hypocrisy, is that liberalism/punk IS a religion, with its own dogmas, orthodoxies and rules. So once again, there is a set of rules for them, and a set of rules for everyone else.

Once that hypocrisy dawned on me, and saw that the punk rockers were not kind, they were self-absorbed, suddenly those repetitive same chords endlessly repeated on the guitar seemed boring and empty. Their philosophies, such as they were, were all lies and hypocrisy. And these are the ones that had no interest in just drinking beer and fighting. I'm talking about the pseudo-intellectual contingent of the scene. But you can be pretty dumb and still be an intellectual in the punk scene. Talk about a big fish in a small pond. And I've been selling my punk records ever since. If you are after any, feel free to contact me!