Pete's Log: Thoughts on Punk
Entry #536, (Music)(posted when I was 22 years old.)
"The first step that I needed to take was giving God control
That's a struggle for me everyday and I'm letting you all know
There's a willingness that comes alive
When you begin tearing down the wall
But the first step is so very hard if you take a first step at all"
-- "It's Undeniable" by MxPx
I've been throwing around some thoughts on punk rock in the back of my head for a while now. So I've decided to try to express some of it. These observations seem to reflect general life views of mine as well. We'll see where this goes. I've decided to break punk down into three general categories. So obviously everything that follows is generalization and should, of course, not be taken too seriously. My categorization is not a musical categorization. As far as musical style goes, punk is punk is punk, right? To quote from the movie "Up In Smoke": "Hey man we don't have to do rehearals, man, besides, it's just punk rock, man, you know you don't have to know how to play, all you just got to do is be a punk, we can do that" and of course I can always fall back to the common observation that punk isn't a style of music, but a way of thinking. So here we go.
Three categories. The first is easy, I won't talk about it much. There's a lot of punk songs out there that lack any kind of serious message. This is just fun silly music that I do enjoy listening to, but doesn't really make you think. Fair enough, fun is good.
The second two categories are the important ones. First we have political punk rock. This has, for a long time, been my favorite sort. Bands like Against All Authority, Operation Ivy, NOFX, Propaghandi, and such produce music heavy with political opinion and social commentaries. Music with a real strong message, music with real anger over stuff that matters. Some of it, like Propaghandi, has political opinions with which I can't agree hardly at all, but it doesn't matter, they're out they're spreading their message through punk rock. This stuff rocks. This is music.
Then we have music by bands like the Ataris or MxPx. This music also has a strong message. But it's much more localized message. The message applies much more to the individual than to society at large. I'm not entirely sure how to exactly express my point. But for a long time I didn't want to like this as much as I liked the real political stuff. There was almost a feeling of guilt involved in being able to associate with the lyrics of songs like "Angry Nerd Rock" and such. I shouldn't feel sorry for myself, I should be listening to music that'll make me feel sorry for people in Sudan or something, they're more deserving of my pity than I am. But I think I've gotten over that. The catch phrase "Think globally, act locally" comes to mind. We must change the world, but we must start with ourselves. And so I've realized that maybe both of these two categories matter. So maybe this is why I've been listening to so much MxPx of late. I can finally admit that I like them as much as I like AAA and Op Ivy.
I think that's about enough of this. Pointless observations that don't really mean anything. Make of them what you will.