February 13, 2007

Unspeakable shit

"Who can tell what's going to rile you up," said a friend recently, and it's true that in the midst of Darfur, peak oil, and the end of American democracy, the kind of thing that really gets me is this: the way people compare everything to punk rock, as if that's the highest possible compliment. "If you think about it, bebop was the punk rock of its time." Yeah, except for the little detail about bebop being created by a confluence of brain-warping geniuses and punk being the work of stupid drunken amateurs.
      If you have a second, I can totally give you the lowdown on punk rock. Feel free to take notes. The Sex Pistols were a great band, and the Clash, too, and the Fall. Because they all had that witty British thing. British punk rock was funny. But when it came over here and became hardcore? Uggh. That shit is terrible. Terrible! It's all this whiney, self-righteous, adolescent rage, unmitigated by the slightest hint of humor. Minor Threat, Black Flag, all that kinda shit. Throw it in a big bottomless pit, the world will be better off. Husker Du was probably the worst band that ever made a record. (Even Nirvana at the end was terrible, by the way, and they would have definitely gotten worse. "I wish that I could eat your cancer." Oh, give me a fucking break.) The only decent American "punk" rock bands didn't sound punk at all. Like the Minutemen, the Meat Puppets, and Sonic Youth. Anyway, less than five bands that aren't total and complete shit. There's a scene in the recent Minutemen documentary where the band is getting spit on by the audience for not conforming to what the audience thought punks should sound like (that apparently happened to them all the time). And that's the real legacy of punk rock—narrow mindedness and musical illiteracy.
      Got all that? Okay, good. Let's never speak of this again.