Aisle 34 and 3/4

Aisle 34 and 3/4 : The Bargin Music Bin

I'm pretending to pack right now. Actually I've already wrote that. I had a pretty good entry lined up but clicked the wrong spot and lost the whole entry. So let me start all over. Yay.

Basically I was explaining how I was sitting in the dark, sipping a guiness and listening to random songs from my computer. One of the songs happened to be X's "The Unheard Music." I really enjoy X. I'm sure when I was a wee laddie my sister had them playing on her record player, I vaguely remember the songs from way back then. Though sadly I didn't get into X till very recently. I recieved a nice mix cd that had "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" and fell in love with that song (also helped that the mix was given to me by a lovely woman from Atlanta who I adore to no end).

A little bit later I caught Penelope Spheeris' film Decline of the Western Civilization Part I. Decline Part I was the first instalment of three films (followed by Declines Part II and III). Part II delt with the metal scene of the mid eighties, following bands like Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper and Moterhead's Lemmy (yay!). Part I delt with the kids in the L.A. punk movement of 1981, while the third film was more of a follow up on the punk scene in the 1998 and was devistatingly depressing. Supposedly the second film is hillarious, however the first (and possibly the third) are not funny at all, well ok maybe a bit.

For a reference point Spheeris also directed the Roger Corman produced film Suburbia (not to be confused with the great play/ok film SubUrbia of the mid nineties), and the ever loved Wayne's World. However the Declines were straight forward documentaries.

Decline I delt with the punk explosion on the early eighties in L.A. with bands like the Circle Jerks, The Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Fear, the Germs and X. But the film wasn't just about the bands, actually it delt more with the social aspects of the punk movement. Giving the kids who were cast aside by modern society a voice. We see the shitty apartments and abandoned warehouses the bands and the kids who followed them lived in. Live performances are shown, interviews are given but there is no real feeling of the bands being any better off than their fans. The members of the Germs live in this crappy apartment and the interview is conducted while they make a really small and simple diner. We hear more about things that have shaped their lives than what their music is about. There's a great annecdote given by the sister of the lead singer of the Germs about how she and another person (her brother or possibly his girlfriend) found a dead house painter in their parents back yard that possibly was sitting there for several days.

Out of all the bands interviewed it seemed that X was the best put together and the one that was most concerned with music above anything else. The guitarist (Billy Zoom, who in the concert scenes looks like a throw back to the rockabilly 50s) was very, very short in his answers and came off like a bastard because he didn't seem like he even wanted to be on film, he just wanted to play music. While the lead and bassist John Doe was focusing all his attention on how the band practices and doesn't give a crap about what other punks thought about them. X, when you hear them don't sound like the heavy ear splitting band we've come to expect from punk. Their music is put together very purposely and sounds pretty clean (raw but clean). It's their lyrics that give away their punk attitude. With songs like "Johnny Hit and Run Paulene" which sang of a serial rapist ("l.a. bus doors open kicking both doors open when it rested on 6th street that's when he drug a girl inside he was spreading her legs and didn't understand dying she was still awake") or "Nausea" which sang about, well, having one craptastic hang over ("today you're gonna be so sick so sick you'll prop your forehead on the sink say oh christ oh jesus christ my head's gonna crack like a bank tonight you'll fall asleep in clothes-so late like a candy bar wrapped up for lunch that's all you get to taste poverty and spit poverty").

Their songs delt with the ugly side of life at the time. Most of the bands back then sang about the ugly side of life. Compare that to the nineties and the curent punk and you get a "what the fuck" whip lash. Let's compare shall we?

Dawn of punk:

Sex Pistols- Pretty Vacant: " There's no point in asking you'll get no reply
Oh just remember a don't decide
I got no reason it's too all much
You'll always find me out to lunch
We're out on lunch"

General feeling of apathy and nhilism. There's no future so who give a fuck what happens.

80's punk:

Dead Kennedys- Terminal Preppy: " I want a wife with tits
Who just smiles all the time
In my centerfold world
Filled with Springsteen and wine

Some day I'll have power
Some day I'll have boats
A tract in some suburb
With Thanksgivings to host

[Chorus]
I'm a terminal terminal terminal preppie
terminal terminal terminal preppie
terminal terminal terminal preppie"

The eighties were the age of gimme gimme, and the music here reflected the pretention of the age as well as the fact that uglyness still happened (see Johnny Hit and Run Paulene).

90's punk:

The Offspring- Self Esteem: " We make plans to go out at night
I wait till 2 then I turn out the light
All this rejection's got me so low
If she keeps it up I just might tell her so"

Here we see punk moving from looking at the uglieness of the rest of the world and mainly looking at the uglieness within. Lot's of songs about low self esteem, and love loss.

2000's punk:

Flashlight Brown-Ready to Roll: " We may not know any girls
But we got graph paper guiding our way
We got confusion, delusion
And all of Friday night to kill.

That was by far the best time that we ever had.
That was by far the best time that we ever had.

Get to the tavern have a few beers
dressed up and ready to roll
Pick up an Elvin bar whore
dressed up and ready to roll"

Ok well this isn't all that accurate but I couldn't bring myself to put an emo song up here. So here we have the self esteem issue pressed further. Now we see songs about being a loser and not fitting in. There's no fight left, they just sit and take it. So in the 00's you get songs that either showcase being an uber nerd OR having your heart ripped out by a girl (see every Saves the Day song EVER same with Dashboard and half of the bands out there).

Yes punk has delt with complaining, but we've gone from complaining about society to complaining about ourselves. Why? What caused this shift? It was a gradual switch and in no way is all encompassing as you can still find social minded punk bands out there but the ones who do sing about the ugly side of life look mainly towards the government. Anti-Flag put out a fairly decent album (Terror State) which was filled with political songs, at the turn of the decade Bad Religion put out "New America" and Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys fame is constantly putting out politically oriented rants, as does Henry Rollins. But it's all clean. Clean and well produced. And like I said it mainly concerns itself with the government and not the people of this nation. Yes that's right the people. Ok well Henry Rollins does give a great rant on everything and everyone that pisses him off (parents who can't control their children is a great topic he's ranted on).

What is up with out society now? We have relenquished control to our technology. Just about everyone has a cell phone, about a quarter of our conversations are conducted online (via instant messanger, email and message boards). Our nation has a large sense of apathy towards what's going on. I mean we are in the midst of a war, right? We are in a war and the most common complaint I've seen has been about how annoying those support the troops magnets are on cars. What. The. Fuck. We don't want this war, every one says this. But WHY don't YOU want this war? Do you have an answer? Is it a real one or one you heard John Stewart say? (And let me just say I love John Stewart, he and Colbert are two of the best social satarists of our day) Do I want this war? No, not really, I don't want any war really. I was against our involvement in the middle east way back when I was in elementary school. I saw horrible things happening in the streets of our own country, all the poverty and (at the time) hate crimes that went down. Why help another country when our nation was hurting from the inside? And in helping other countires we ended up fucking things up and setting our own land up for a giant fall (i.e. right now 'n' days).

The political world is something that should constantly be questioned, yeah I agree with that, and kudos to the bands and artists that stand up to the government, in their own ways. However, where is the social commentary? The current view of the human condition. The closest thing the punk world has to dealing with the human condition is in emo music and really great, but obscure bands. Emo comments on how our society is fucking hopeless at connecting with one another. I mean why all this heart ache and despair over a relationship ending that possibly was no longer than three months old? The closest thing in music we have to social commentary can be found in rap. Yeah there's the crappy "Look at me I'm so rich now I'm going to sing about my benz" rap songs but there are also songs from the Dirty South and the East and West sides that deal with relevant issues that effect us imediately. I don't want to make the whole affairs of the world seem like they don't effect us, just what happens in our country effects us much more than the affairs else where. There's still alot of racisim, alot of class strife, and just basic ignorance and intolerance all around.

I'm surprise there isn't a larger presence of gay and lesbian musicians out there telling the world to fuck off and let them screw whoever the hell they want. I mean ok looking at the basic rights of all Americans one of those rights is the right to happieness, and if having sex with some one of the same gender as you makes you happy who's to argue? Oh it's against the bible? Well excuse me, I didn't realize the constitution was part of the bible, I thought it was a sepreate and unrelated document. Silly me.

So to wrap this up. Punk has gone from biting social comentary to self depreciation of the individual in thirty years. Way to go.

The next phase is to just sing songs about nothing at all. Which in a way will fit perfectly into our society.

So apologies to those I inadvertantly offended as my rant kind of veered off the beaten path of where I originally ended. But that happens when you accidentally deleate a post. You get annoyed and complain about everything under the sun.