Column by Humphrey Lee.

So, apparently I’m here to talk about music. Me, lowly Humphrey Lee of the AICN @$$holes fame (okay, not really “fame” per se, but it’s a fun little gig for someone who obsesses over the Comic Books like I do) is here to talk about MUSIC. I’m here to talk about music and I honestly couldn’t tell you the first thing about the industry of it today. I don’t know a single one of these peeps on the Top 40 list, or at least, I assume I wouldn’t if I actually bothered to look at such triviality. I don’t know who these Jonas Bros are, all I know is whenever I happen to glimpse them on whatever program they’re doing that causes every thirteen year old girl in the area to scream like they just saw their first dead body, I get Hanson Brothers flashbacks… and now I’ve got “Mmm Bop!” stuck in my head and am starting to think this may all have been a horrible idea, but I’m still game. I don’t like Justin Timberlake’s music, but still giggle way more than I should when I hear “Dick in a Box” so we’re cool. I occasionally hear the “club music” because I work a day job in an industry where I have to be exposed to such nonsense, and I’m not quite sure how I haven’t suffered a brain aneurysm from it yet (The good kind, with blood oozing out of your ears and everything). And I don’t even know if The Used are still popular, but I pray to god they aren’t… and that they have syphilis. Horrible, itchy syphilis. All I know is what I like, and what I like is the punk rock and lots of it, so I guess that’s what I’m going to babble on about for about as long as I can somehow maintain some level of entertainment and coherency. And here, we, go…

I probably got into the punk rock, like all the rebellious kids do, somewhere midway through my high school days in the mid-ish 90’s, right about the second or third time it was declared “dead” by the sort-of masses (y’know, that group of people who don’t quite really listen to the main-mainstream, but still tune into all the popular rock stations and think they know what they’re talking about, but they still don’t cringe over the Korn albums they used to own so who really cares what they think, y’know?). It happens so much, who can really keep track. I’ll admit, it all started with the more mainstream punkish acts that were coming into their own at the time – Green Day was getting heavy rotation thanks to “Dookie” and so were the Offspring after “Smash” and I was definitely paying attention – but within probably a year my ears were tuned in more to the more melodic and Anthem-like sounds that are still my favorites today – Bad Religion (always the best in mine eyes, with their best stuff coming from the “Against the Grain” and “Generator” area IMHO), Pennywise, Strung Out, The Suicide Machines, Rancid (who I guess had their time in the sun too) and so on. Don’t get me wrong, I love aggressive music as much as the next guy, and obviously it’s not like we’re talking guys that can’t get a crowd going and thrash a guitar, but I’ve always been more focused on the guys that could make use their words as well as their power chords. But that’s the first of a couple points I hope I can actually cobble together here: Punk isn’t a sound, it’s an idea.

I didn’t get into punk because I wanted a reason to wear spiked leather jackets and ripped jeans, put my hair up in a Mohawk, get pierced, and find a reason to get some tattoos and aimlessly hit people in a mosh pit – hell, I didn’t even bother getting my first tattoo until a couple years ago in my mid-20’s. I don’t like easy things. I couldn’t and can’t stand mindless pop, but nor do I feel the need to go all the way to the other side and listen to nothing but 90 seconds of fury and screaming into a microphone. I wanted energy, but I wanted thought and intelligence too. I’m not saying that all those classic acts in the 80’s that kicked off movement (here in the states at least) were like that, far from it really obviously since they gave us the Ramones and Screeching Weasel and on and on, but the 90’s ushered in a version of the music that was more palatable to me, and of course since it didn’t sound like it mostly did the decade before, since it wasn’t as much “sound and fury”, it was “officially” labeled “dead”. But that, as one band who I can’t goddamn stand because they were more style than substance in every way shape in form and did nothing to avoid perpetuating the stereotype of the punk would say, is bollocks.

Punk will always be around as far as I’m concerned. Like I said, it’s an idea, not a sound. Just because the kind that became prominent in the 90’s didn’t necessarily sound like the 80’s, even from some carry-over acts, didn’t mean it was dead. And just because it’s not as prominent on the airwaves, in the venues, on the streets, whatever, doesn’t mean it’s dying, it just means that maybe it’s not as necessary as before, it’s taking a little rest before the next big fight. The music came about because of the way things were going in the world; songs aimed at the establishment or the society it governed or both. Turmoil in the 60’s and 70’s and a complete 180 way of protesting than that of those times is what gave us punk in the 80’s as we knew it here. Just like an invasion of a little beach getaway (sans the water) in the form of Iraq carried us over into the 90’s punk that I “grew up” on. And, not to make this a political diatribe, but it’s not like we haven’t had our fair share of unrest the past eight years or so, and the music reflected it. Some may not have noticed it, but the scene made a little comeback at the time, after having taken a backseat to the pop-punk (a term I hate but a scene I also enjoy when done right) sounds of the late 90’s, another of the handful of times that I was told “punk was dead.” Besides the mainstays of the time, the Bad Religions and the Suicide Machines I mentioned earlier, there were some good acts that started or came to prominence at the time. Sure, most of them are been and gone now, and we lost a few of the middle-aged groups as well – the Suicide Machines have since left and we lost BoySetsFire in the process – but we have seen some of the new “carry over” acts rise up a bit and become the new stalwarts of the scene and look to be the sound that will carry it forward.

Rise Against has predominantly become my favorite band of the time this past decade. One of my favorites ever really, though not up in the realm of my first love, Bad Religion, but they’re obviously as heavily influenced in their music by the Cross-Busting Ones as I am in my life from having listened to them for nearly half of it. They’re obviously influenced by, but not completely following in the footsteps of. While BR has almost always had one foot in the era of 80’s punk where it was mostly fast and in your face, but also put that foot forward in the 90’s to push the drive to become more Anthem-like and Melodic, Rise Against has taken all that and added almost a “folkish” twang to the mix, and along with bands like, say, Against Me!, they’ve already sort of started pushing forth the new face of punk. It’s still loud, and rocks as good as anything else out there, but it’s also not afraid to show its softer side. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the message of the movement stays loud and clear, far as I’m concerned. Sure, sometimes I still long for the good old “Shorter, Faster, Louder” but you can’t deny the ability of these bands to carry a tune rife with emotion and social commentary. Maybe sometime in the future the status quo will become so out of control that we’ll need to get more “in your face”, but as long as we have talents like this leading the way, and some of the Old Guard still at it – your Bad Religion’s and NOFX’s and Strung Out’s – even though they might not be presence they used to be, it’s still a sign that punk is anything but “dead”.

Now, where things will lead the music to in the future, is anyone’s guess. Again, after eight years of clusterfuck after clusterfuck, I think maybe the sound has just drowned itself out with redundancy. And, let’s be honest with ourselves, the current establishment, on paper, is something that seems pretty agreeable to any of your more rational punks, which I consider myself to be of those ranks. It’s a body that looks to be “by the people, for the people” but who knows if that’s going to pan out or not. At the very least, it looks like we might be steering to a class war on a level that we’ve never seen before that could reinvigorate the movement, but that’s a whole ‘nother article to ramble on and on in. All I know is, there’s always going to be unrest, there’s always going to be some strife, and there’s always going to a counter-culture out there to try and upstage and try in rile up all those that adhere to the safety of the norm and piss on the shoes of the conformists. It may not be “punk” as we’ve known it, but it’ll be punk all the same, and that’s why it’ll never, ever, truly die.