I love music. Mostly because it’s done by people, and I hate music when
I can’t feel people behind it just people in front of it. I hate music other
occasions as well but the worst is when you only feel like it’s a service
provided for a perfectly targeted and specific audience. Once I read a great
line in a review about a band’s show that said the problem with them was that
they wanted to seem like a band looking forward but rather they were just
looking around for others’ reactions, whoring themselves for their attention.
And for me this not only translates to shallow wannabe Dadaist no-wave bands
but for all immoral, mainstream music in general.
I love music when its players are looking inside themselves and
forgetting what’s right and what’s wrong and who will give what kind of shit.
Nothing to prove, nothing to lose. But then I also just love when they are
creating something unexpected, and this column will be mostly about awful
records which I do not love, but I guess they still hold some higher meaning
not only for punk but for life in general as well.
Because sometimes I really just love music and music itself, the whole
thing. Not just some bands but sometimes every band. I don’t feel like bands
have to have an agenda. They should be whatever they want to be and being
boring is one of these things. I never want progress from bands. Maybe I’m a
terrible music nerd ‘cause I never really can say who my favorite band is and
which is my favorite record. I only know what my favorite song is currently. I knew what was my favorite band but I’m not so sure
anymore. I just don’t see the point. I used to have a best friend but we have
gone cold and I haven’t even talked to the guy for more than two years. Since
then I have many people I love but could not put them in order cause I just
don’t feel the need. They are just people who are interesting, understanding or
just not fucking hard for me to stand. And music is the same to me if not
better cause I guess sometimes I like my turntable better than people.
Sure, often I get floored by one band’s unique awesomeness, but other
occasions I just listen to bands’ endless flow of rehearsal room demos recorded
before they broke up and vanished forever, and just staying in my constant
state of loving punk in general. I never desire “progress” from a band when I
feel like they have reached the point where they are playing whatever they want
to. I don’t want a punk band to end up sounding like Factory Records could have
released them cause then I would just rather listen to someone that was born to
play such music. I love when bands do progress and something cool comes out but
I never have any problem with the Ramones-esque approach of playing and
recording the same song over and over again for decades. All I want is bands to
be themselves. They should die to tell me their stories and this attitude
should trigger reviews like the legendary Sniffing
Glue’s Clash one.
Music is interesting because it’s done by people and people are strange
and fucked up and funny. I guess a bit it’s like love. Or relationships and
break ups, finally-fulfilled love and the always-burning feeling of being
afraid of ending up alone for the rest of our lives. When we find true love we
just want to anchor it and sometimes we forget in a relationship there are at
least two poles. So while being happy yourself, there might be someone on the
other end who wants something different from you. That is when just you find
true love and it doesn’t find you. But luckily while boyfriends/girlfriends
(and by the same token, bands as well) can come and go, records can stick with
us in their full glory. ‘Cause after all, records are memories that are better
than photographs. The confusion comes when we can’t tell the difference between
the past and present, we want to stick to bands we used to love, the partners
we used to love.
So because there is this connection for me, I really hate fucking
professionalism when it comes to making music, but also professionalism in the
fan-dom of music—because if real life is always in flux and forcing us to
adapt, so should our approach to loving music.
Maybe it comes from me being incapable of accepting culture as a
rule—like somehow there is fine art and it’s opposite. I just think there are
people who are expressing themselves and people who get it or not. I hate it
when people go beyond being critics and start to act like fucking producers,
managers or band members who know better and feel like they are in charge to
make decisions. All those lame people complaining: “That band should have
broken up after that record,” “They shouldn’t sound like this,” “Why do they
keep doing this?” Why do you keep doing this?
You know, while it might entertaining to treat bands like football teams
and want them to come home with good results, it’s also a schizoid thing to do.
I hate Bad Brains I Against I (and
everything after) but why would I be disappointed in them fully? It’s
definitely not good that they stopped making good music at one point and just
turned into a boring proto nu-metal shit, but I can live with that cold fact.
Maybe I won’t be the biggest fan of the upcoming Fucked Up records, but I can
let them go and I’ll stick to Generation
or even that song “Twice Born.” But sometimes bands just grow boring. And it’s
in a way obvious. People like to play music and write new music but some genres
have their own barriers in creativity. And some bands are fine with this. Or
their listeners have barriers to being open ‘cause after all listening to music
is not a duty—that’s why having limits to our attention is natural and to
except otherwise is an unnatural snobbish thing to demand.
The end of the ‘80s were a perfect example of bands making it
intentionally challenging to listen albums, while nowadays it’s more like bands
breaking up and reforming in other genres and having million side projects. Now
it’s the music that’s changing within punk and not the bands. Just take Johnny
Moped or Swell Maps from the past and Home Blitz, Merchandise, the Young, the
Men from the present. Bands who are rooted in punk but from the start trying to
do something different. Nowadays if Saccharine Trust wanted to do a horrible
jazz band, they’d do some spin-off project rather than keep playing with the
same name.
I also don’t think a label like Matador “kills” good punk music ‘cause
good punk music wouldn’t even be signed by a such label. No beef with them, but
it’s not a punk label. I doubt that SSD really believed that they could be such
big hard rock stars. I doubt that bands like Meat Puppets played such
beautifully chaotic music that so perfectly represents teenage confusion only
because that was all what they had at the time, and really deep down they
wanted to be a mellowed out pothead country band that they are right now. Why
would people wanna play terrible music if they got popular playing awesome
music?
I just chalk up these “changes in direction” to total craziness. Getting
into a bubble where you only care about yourself. When you allow yourself to be
embarrassing and crazy. When you think you are the best or could just do
anything, and not for money or for fame. It’s just that heart of darkness
megalomaniac obsessive craziness. Like being in love when you open up way too
much. Bad records are like other people’s love, or the things that make us feel
like depressed, so you could say that from these records we can learn about
them and ourselves as well—in general about human existence. Isn’t this the
point of Into the Unknown?
Most of the time good punk bands’ terrible records are cheap copy-cats
of a genre they wanna ape. And it doesn’t matter how good musicians they are
cause mostly it’s about stepping forward and discovering what they are capable
of. Into the Unknown. But these shit
records are the perfect testimonies of their true punk heart and nothing more.
Cause great music is rather played by enthusiasm than by hands. And a punk
can’t play shitty music with enthusiasm. Cause punks are not assholes. We can’t
betray our hearts!
So these bad albums are not just total failures for not succeeding in a
new territory but more because they are just boring as shit, but somehow with
that awkward style like when a charming kid who is smart in kindergarten tries
to talk to the adults. This is punk’s point, I think. We are who we are, and
doing what we want cause we want it. Not because we are not ready or equipped
enough.
While these records are born in the bubble of total confidence of their
makers, to us listeners it’s everything outside the bubble. It’s life and
living. In these records there is happiness and sorrow and joy and boredom. And
maybe punx are sometimes not too ready or equipped for these, cause “real life
never meant too much for us,” right? These records are like the opening
monologue of Annie Hall: the living proofs that sometimes temporary mentally
illness is not a too harmful thing—for some of us. The rest of the listeners
are dying out of disappointment, and their loyalty for eternal quality is
amazing, but as I said they are stupid as well. Cuz it’s beautiful isn’t it?
The whole thing: bands going crazy and either their fans following them into
falling down and losing all their glory or being heart broken by that familiar
betrayal of stopping to write awesome songs.
I mean, while the Wipers are one of the greatest bands ever, we all know
that Greg Sage sucks in soloing, but he sticks to it! On the other hand, straight edge bands
starting to do coke and playing U2 music? 7 Seconds turning into soft rock shit
and Dag Nasty being even worse? The math
rock, white jazz downfall of SST and the static, serious studio sound of
infinite other bands. I don’t think anyone who loved Die Kreuzen Cows and Beer would have wanted a record
like Century Days or Cement.
Maybe we should take more advice from Daniel Johnston when he is singing
“I love you more than myself.” And while it’s one of the most heartbreaking
sentences in the history of weird music, sometimes it’s also true. By accepting
the border lines between bands and us, we can accept that they are doing
something they want to. This doesn’t mean that we should support these acts
with full heart. Just let them leave with a gentle smile and a warm hug for the
amazing records they gave us while the only thing they were really doing was
playing the music they loved to play.
I always looked on records as capturing a moment that the band wanted to
capture—but only that moment. That’s why it’s hard to make a good record.
‘Cause sometimes the worst pictures taken are from the best parties. Or our
coolest memories are connected to friends who later turned to assholes. But
maybe bad records could make us love good records more. Love people more. To
remind us to want to be forever in that moment when everything was
fine.
