Co-Opting the Punk Parade

Blubs of Verbs, Commentary Comments (1)

This might seem like I’m waxing sentimental. It could also be viewed with a certain amount of derision from readers of a particular age category (namely those twice my years). However, here’s what I think about the habit of writing about music artists from the “underground” as it were: it’s a slew of bullshit. Whatever impetus it is that drives journalists to write about something like a punk artist in flowery terms, I have to say it’s not overly flattering. There’s the statement, now we’ll get to the substance of what I mean.

I wasn’t there for the punk movement that happened in the 80’s. That is, to say, I wasn’t conscious of what was going on. It’s hard to pay attention to musical happenings in 1985 when you’re 3 for instance. However, that doesn’t mean that by the time I discovered the music that the whole event has been lost to me. It was fascinating and invigorating for a teenaged suburban brat to discover Agent Orange’s “Bloodstains” or the Dead Kennedy’s “Holiday in Cambodia” for the first time. However sophomoric both of those songs might be, they still hinted at a world that was drastically cynical of a media environment. I took it to heart, because as a teenager that’s what you do. You’re looking to explain the world around you in some manner. Ten years later, and I still love the bands for the same reasons, and I haven’t forgotten how I felt. It puzzles me that others take a position of, shall we say, superiority. I am bleeding into criticism of such things as the Indie culture, but there is a defined snobbery that comes with the territory. Perhaps those individuals that were lobbying accusations of “poseurdom” in the 80’s have now grown up and believe that because they are no longer attached to their youth in any meaningful way that they are authorities simply because they were there. Even those that were intrical to the punk scene, like Henry Rollins, have a distinctive attitude of superiority.

Yes, it is true that people need to move on. It might be possible to live your life on the road, touring indefinitely, but it would most likely drag a person down. I don’t deny that. You need to eventually find something productive to do that allows you to think about maybe having a family or a home; something that you can find some amount of comfort in. This is a human instinct. However, this does not mean that you should profit off of the feelings that came with a younger sense of alienation. It does not give you license to demean and effectively shit on anyone that feels the same today. If you’re a journalist, it doesn’t really give you license to write about punk like it were a classical art form either, confining it to the annals of history. I think it does a disservice to the youthful sense of curiosity and great swelling emotion. When I see an article on such a subject, I feel like there is a robbery going on. The truth of the matter is that something like punk music belongs to more than just the journalists writing about it, or the people that participated in it early on. It belongs to the starry-eyed suburban kids too that are looking to make sense of the world they live in. It belongs to anyone that wants to claim it.

I am inherently suspicious of anyone that wants to claim an art format as their own, commenting on something as an authority and robbing someone of their right to experience and commentary. Reviewers of any sort in that sense display an aura of knowledge that really can’t be applied to individual human observance. When we apply attributes of “good” and “bad” to something it ends up establishing a meaningless arbitrary system of value.  In the end, I wonder if a person wrote something because they were paid, or because they felt like it actually contributed.

Skavian @ June 24, 2008