Music!

Good evening to all. I for one am rather happy that here in the Midwest, its pretty fuckin cold! I love the cold, really, nothing feels better than walking outside and flipping the color up on your coat to stay warm. Its such a clean, crisp feeling. I love it!

So instead of bitching about how President Elect Barack Obama is nothing more than a Bill Clinton Part 2(he is though, way to go on being 2/2 on the clinton cabinet!!), I would rather talking about something that is exciting. The one thing that is guaranteed to excite me no matter what; music!

Music is pretty important. Without music, I have no idea what I would be doing with my spare time. I wouldnt know any of the people I know right now if it werent for music, and thats a fact. Today Im going to talk about "punk rock" and what it means to me.

I can hear the groans, what a lame topic, but fuck it, lets talk about it. When the average joe hears the words "punk rock" they think of morons in studded wrist bands beating the shit out of each other to a really bad off time band of lowlifes. This is still true to some extent... To me however, punk has always been about positivity. Im 26 years old, which means in 94 I was in the 6th grade. Who in the 6th grade knows anything about the underground? No one, unless you are a crack baby. So OF COURSE when Green Day, Offspring and Rancid were on the radio, I was completely in awe of how different it was from Nirvana, Metalica, Soundgarden, NIN and all the other 90s things that kids were listening to at the time. I still remember to this day the first time I bought Dookie, it was at a Biggs Hypermarket, on cassette. I bought it with Christmas money, and I also bought Boyz2Men II that day as well(because I have class). I took that tape home and listened to it a million times. I stretched the tape out in about a week. Sure, I was still into all of the MTV stuff that kids were into at the time, and IM pretty sure I had one of those Kurt Cobain, 1967-1994 tshirts that everyone had after he painted the room above his garage with his last tripped out thought. But no, this Green Day band was different! It was just unapologetic, catchy, but bold at the same time, and you just didnt know what to expect. Their lyrics and videos were somewhat vulgar, and yet they had this massive appeal. I FUCKING LOVED IT!! My 7th grade year Im pretty sure I owned like, 4 Green Day shirts. I wasnt special, there are literally 100s of thousands of kids my age that were the exact same. I was pretty into the grunge thing still in 7th grade though, I had some long hair and actually listened to Bush... Yeah, I know...

Cut to about a year later. That means 8th grade, if you werent paying attention. I had been plucking around on my first electric guitar that my parents got for me for 35 bucks at an yardsale type deal. I had no idea how to play, and I had this little battery powered amp. It was sad. So, a friend of mine, he was going to play bass, and we were going to start a band. He didnt have a bass, and I couldnt play a chord, but fuck it, we were a band. He said he knew some kid down the street that had some drums, and he was going to drum for us, and it was going to be freakin great. So like I said, Im still into shit like Stone Temple Pilots at the time, but I still really love Green Day! I cant put my finger on it, and by now everyone is telling me how "gay" I am for liking Green Day(not the most tolerant area, the Midwest). So, we get to this soon to be drummers house, and he has THE BIGGEST FUCKING STEREO I HAVE EVER SEEN. And hes fucking CRANKING some shit Ive never heard before. I hear some loud music behind a guy singing "Go to hell with Superman and die like a champion, yahea!!!!" It was the most AWESOME THING EVER. So, I ask this guy, "what the fuck is this, this rules!!" He told me that was nothing, and took the cd out of the player(i was still on cassettes, so color me fucking impressed). What he tossed me was what would send me on my journey to no health insurance and a rock hard liver; Epitaph records compilation, Punk-o-Rama.

Punk o Rama. I had never heard of any of these bands. Who the fuck are Bad Religion?? AWESOME, thats WHAT!! OH! And Rancid and Offspring are on here as well, cool! I know them! This music is so different, its so, I dunno, it reminds me of something, its... Holy shit, wait, is Green Day a punk band, I asked my friend. He tells me that he thinks so, and that they are pretty good. I certainly agree, as I have everything up to Insomniac at that point, and its all awesome.

So my new friend made me a tape copy of Punkorama. I listened to it an unhealthy amount, and I wanted more and more. I got to know this guy pretty well, and every day we had band practice. Granted, band practice meant I would bring my guitar over, throw itin the corner and we would use his new indoor skate ramp while eating pretzels and listening to Pennywise. Man, I fuckin loved Pennywise! THEY WERE SO FAST, HOW DOES A BAND GET SO FAST?? Our mutal friend Brandon was from the Charleston SC area, and he met us in school. He was kinda new, but he loved alot of punk bands I had never heard of. One day, my mom takes my drummer friend and I, along with Brandon, to the record store. Of course our drummer friend was the only one whose parents gave him money, so it was him doing the buying. So, we go into Cd World, the old location for all you Cincinnatians, and he asks the lady behind the counter if she likes a band he had heard on a few comps called NOFX. Her pink hair and nose ring were a dead give away, and she walked us over to all of the NOFX cds. Being that they had a lot of shit out(I think Heavy Petting Zoo was the most recent) we didnt have a CLUE what to pick up, so we asked her, what should we get if this is our first NOFX record? Ill never forget her response. She said, dont get Liberal Animation. It doesnt suck, but it kinda does. Ok.. well, how about this one? THAT ONE RULES! Ok, awesome. So we get back in my Moms minivan, all crowding around one dude with a discman(as I said, dudes parents gave him everything!) and listened to White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean. When 11th grade rolled around and I finally got the joke, I LOVED IT MORE! So anyhow, we were floored. This band was the best fucking band we had ever heard, and I dont think I listened to Nirvana again for 12 years.

So, over the years, working shitty jobs, we would spend our entire paychecks buying whatever cds we could find by bands on all of these awesome comps. We had Epitaph pretty much locked down, hahaha. Then one day we learned that one of the dudes from NOFX had his own label, and it was supposed to be good. They had EVEN MORE BANDS that we had never heard of, and holy fuck, they are awesome! This No Use For a Name band is good!! Of course we were skateboarding, getting into trouble, watching skate videos, and the next thing we know its 9th grade and were a part of a pretty tight knit circle. We parted ways with the drummer boy, but Brandon and I remained close friends. We had it all, studded belts, orange hair, our own discmans, we didnt care what the "jocks" or the "thugs" thought and by the end of the year we were on our way to our first show ever, Ska Against Racism.

Now, as much as Ive grown to hate Ska, alot of bands were doing it then that I liked; Rancid did it a tad, I loved Op Ivy, NOFX threw upstrokes in there.. So we felt we should go. Plus, Brandon was really into this band called Less than Jake, who I had never heard of. So, we watch the show, and its the greatest thing we had ever seen. ALl these cool people, the loud music, the bands being hilarious, Mike Park dancing like an idiot, it was just amazing! I even met someone from 5 Iron Frenzy, which was cool at the time. Less than Jake were awesome! I bought Losing Streak and loved every second of it.

By 10th grade we would go to any show that was coming to Bogarts(our local 1200 capacity venue that we "cool enough" to know about)even if we had only heard one song. I saw so many bands back then , and then the opening bands would be awesome, and then they would come back, and then THEY would bring a rad band, etc. Shit just spiraled into this huge self suffienct scene. You would see the same people at all the shows, and have conversations, and find out about local music, and it was such a networking. This was way pre Myspace, so you couldnt get on a computer and judge a band by their shitty recording, you had to go and see them and find out for yourself! I even learned to actually play my guitar, and the next thing I knew, I was in school during the day, working at night and practicing with my little band on the weekends. It was rad. And in highschool, if youre in a band, no matter how bad, PEOPLE WILL COME WATCH YOU.

So yeah, it was awesome, I felt on top of the world. I was into pretty much anything "punk" post 94 and we were renting out this tiny little hall in a local park to put on our own shows. It was incredible. I played in several little bands at the time, and then in my senior year I started really appreciating the forefathers of punk; the misfits, ramones, dead kennedys, stuff like that. I was realizing that punk rock wasnt so much a sound but a way of life. When I saw Propagandhi in 00, 01, they brought an entire bookstore with them!! They had all kinds of radical books, and books on veganism, and all kinds of shit that I wasnt learning in school. I would read shit I had bought from there at home, and then bring it up in American Government class, much to the delight of my leftist teacher! He loved the discussions I would bring up. When I explained to the young republicans that Prescott Bush had traded War Bonds with Nazi Germany AFTER the US entered the war, they didnt believe me. THey looked into it, and were astounded. I learned so much from going out on my own and buyinjg books, because I had genuinely been enlightened by some bands I had seen on tour, it was a huge influence on me.

After highschool, I mellowed out a bit. I started realizing that you can like different styles of music. Now Ill take John Mellencamp over Bad Religion any day, but i still love some old Bad Religion records. Hell, the band I play in sounds like something from a Fat comp anyway, Im not too proud to admit it!

What punk rock means to me is friendship, inspiring others, learning, a quest for knowledge, making changes and fighting for whats right. I got caught up in the fashion of it when I was in middle school, but once I started listening to bands that had things to say I realized that punk rock was simply a microphone to get something off of your chest. Woody Guthrie, to me, is a total punker. Anti establishment folk groups of the 60s and 70s, its all the same. Standing up.

I miss hanging out at shows with my high school friends. It was such a community. Last time I saw Brandon, my band was doing a show with The Queers. He told me how floored he was that out of our little group of nobodies, one of us was able to get out and do something like we always dreamed, at least to some extent. I still consider myself a nobody, but I thought it was great that he felt that proud of our dreams and ideas, and the time we spent talking about life while listening to Screeching Weasel records. Im rambling now, but its kinda cool. Not that Im in any way saying im more than a nobody, because Im not. However, that one night, it was a special thing.

Unfortunately, I feel that today the spirit of "punk rock" is a ghost in the wind. People get parts of it, but not all of it. In Cincinnati, the "punk rock" bands are either so "punk rock" that they cant even play their instrunments, or they are too worried about who thinks they are cool because of what bands they are friends with, and what bars they are seen in. Its a shame, but its nice to go down memory lane from time to time and remember being an idealistic kid. I think I still am that a bit, and the day that I dont feel that way will be a very sad one, for sure.

When I write songs, I dont write them so people will agree with everything I say. My only hope is that in the years and years that I have been playing music, that some people may have liked what I was a part of and took it upon themselves to learn more, and better themselves on their own terms. I hope that this is also something that can happen in the future. With all these shitty mainstream bands telling kids how cool the Army is, I want to be a small grain of sand in the tiny beach that offers a true alternative for the mind and soul.

But again, Im an idealistic little kid.

I cant decide on what to listen to on the way home, Propagandhi or John Denver......