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!

A Partial List of Obama's Lies and Hypocrisy

-- It all started during the campaign when he vowed not to take public financing. He then went back on that promise.

-- He vowed in all earnestness that he would reject all earmarks. There are about 9000 earmarks in the current trillion-dollar projects going on right now.

-- He said there would be "transparency" in his administration. Anyone who dares to ask questions about the validity of some of the things he is doing, especially in reference to his "stimulus" bills, is shouted down in favor of the utter speed in which this must be passed NOW.

-- He said he would cut the deficit. He's doubled the deficit.

-- He promised "bipartisanship" - Most republicans are against his socialistic policies but he doesn't seem to care. He'd rather focus on demonizing Rush Limbaugh, who he must have just heard of even though he's been on the radio for 20+ years. How bipartisan.

-- He admonished America to "wear a sweater" when it gets cold to save on energy costs. According to reports, he cranks the heat in the oval office. When asked about it, a spokesman said "He's from Hawaii". Never mind he spent most of his adult life in New York and Chicago.

-- He claims to be "for the people". Meanwhile he's eating $100 a pound imported steak from Japan and Iranian caviar, and inviting Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind and Fire to play at the White House for his Wednesday parties. He also lives in a million-dollar house gotten in a crooked land deal with Tony Rezko.
Way to stay in touch with the "little people". The people he claims to be in favor of. I guess we see now where he really feels comfortable.

-- He vowed lobbyists "won't find a job in my white house"...well...at least some people in America have steady jobs now.

-- As far as gun control goes, he said he would "uphold the second amendment", but even in his first 50 days as president, with all the other problems at hand, he has made various gun bans a priority.

-- He chided John McCain when McCain said the economy might not be as bad as Obama is making it seem. Once the polling numbers came in, he then changed his tune to "the economy is not as bad as it seems".

-- He said now is "an end to childish things" - yet he and his snarky Clintonites are calling Republicans a bunch of "Limbaugh-lovers" like kids at differing lunchtables in elementary school.

-- He never stops talking about the value of public education and how teachers and schools need (of course) more money! Yet he sends his daughters to a private school.

-- His intended aim is to raise taxes to create some kind of utopia, but everyone in his cabinet is a tax cheat. But they are the almighty politicians, our great and wise leaders. They don't have to pay taxes. Only we do. But I guess now it seems we're picking up their slack. There's nothing so sublime as getting a lecture on how important it is to pay taxes by people who don't pay theirs. My question is, if these people weren't nominated to be in Obama's cabinet, how would we know about their tax problems? Perhaps every American, one after the other, could be "vetted" for his cabinet, thereby getting all the unpaid taxes, and that would stimulate the economy. But then again most Americans actually pay their taxes, something the Obama team finds confusing.

-- His big catchphrase was "hope and change". His version of this phrase apparently means hiring all the old Clintonite hacks. But more importantly, with the way the economy is right now, people are increasingly hopeless and all they're left with is a few cents in change.

His condescending, pedantic and unbelievably arrogant tone apparently doesn't bother most people. They just accept it because he is our messiah. His word is the law. Literally! He knows how to spend our money better than we do. Just HOW he knows this is not clear. Unmindful of the political cesspools in which he was politically reared, mainly due to a sympathetic media (whose "fair and balanced" approach venerated our golden god and savaged Sarah Palin at every possible chance), He was elected into office and now leads our country and our world.

Forget the fact that there literally isn't enough money in the world to support his pie-in-the-sky liberal dream projects. HE doesn't suffer through recessions. He only suffers when he can't get his liberal policies passed. The so-called "evil rich people"(i.e. Hollywood celebrities and others that helped get him elected) that create jobs and make 250,000 or more will now, out of fear of paying even MORE taxes under Obama, will try to spend 249,000 or less, thereby reducing productivity and jobs. This stunts the economy. But our almighty messiah is always right and he knows what will and what won't stimulate our economy. Spending money was the problem, so, frighteningly true to his diehard liberal beliefs, obviously throwing more money at it will solve the problem.

I know I'm leaving out a lot of contradictions, hypocrisies and outright lies, so feel free to write in if you think of any others. Also, even though liberals claim to be for free speech, they only like it when it supports their cause. They support the so-called "fairness" doctrine because they cannot compete in the marketplace of talk radio, so, naturally, they whine to their mommy, the government, "That's not fair!!!" (hence the name of their beloved doctrine). So even thought the people and the market has decided, they reject that view and think there should be government-mandated "fairness". So do write in if you have any other suggestions for the above list, before this blog magically disappears.