by Comrade Black
In his March 6 article entitled, “Punk Rock Is Bullshit: How a toxic social movement poisoned our culture” blogger John Roderick attempts to analyze the political beliefs and practices of the punk scene, a group he characterizes as a disease of the soul.
Put simply, the guy has no clue what the actual punk scene is. This is apparent by a number of factors; such as he actually mentions Cortney Love, Sex Pistols and Ramones as ‘punk bands’ where as no one active in the underground scene gives a shit about any of those bands and most would laugh at the very idea of Courtney Love being thought of as punk. The only actually punk band mentioned in the article I could see was Fugazi, and even they are pretty mainstream compared to the bands who most diy kids wear patches of (Aus-Rotten, Amebix, Zounds, Discharge, Nausea, MDC, etc). One must wonder if he would even know the difference between Crust and OI!, or would have even heard of genres like D-Beat and Powerviolence. Yet he thinks presents himself as an expert in position to publish extreme condemnations.
There is a ton of other issues here, his repeated use of the term ‘primitive’ as a derogatory, which i find utterly racist. Or how he misreprestens DIY, as if hand making your demo tapes with hand drawn art, and black and white photocopied liner notes so they can be sold cheap enough that street kids and other poor folks can afford them, is the equivalent of selling tupperware. In the punk underground, DIY is about empowering people to realize we artists, we are all musicians, we all can do it. Or as Crass put it, There Is No Authority But Yourself! You don’t need to wait some big promoter; rent the hall yourself and borrow or rent a PA, make a poster and grab the tape. Kids creating art and recording their own bands or setting up $5 All Ages shows for free clearly not at all the same as vacuum salesmen or Mary Kay. I speak from experience here as someone who set up these types of shows for years working with bands from all over the world like Sweedish hardcore band Regulations, or Imperial Leather,legendary bands like Resist and Exist, Conlict, and a whole host of amazing Canadian bands like Leper, Mechanichal Separation and Mass Grave, Iskra, Self Rule, Eleutheros. All of which highly doubt John Roderick has ever even heard of.
Ian McKaye was once asked about selling out as a way to get his message out so more people could hear their music. He replied by stating he didn’t care about making it so everyone could hear their music. It was about making it so the kids who wanted to hear their music could. Well John Rodernick, maybe you should listen – by which I mean don’t… That’s the point really, if you don’t want to hear it, fuck off. We don’t want or need your opinion. We’re too busy building the world we want to see in the ashes of this one. And as Mike XvX said, this town isn’t going to burn itself down!
If you want to read informed opinions on punk, I would suggest following the old slogan, buy books buy us, not about us. Penny Rimbaud’s book Shibboleth: My Revolting Life is a great start. Can’t get much better. The Philosophy Of Punk by Craig O’ Hara, The Day The Country Died, and Sober Living For The Revolution are also great. But of course the best way to learn the reality of what punk has to offer is to take part; go to a show, not some Bad Religion or Warp Tour kinda crap, but an actual show, in some kids basement, with bands who actually have something to say. Bands who play for nothing more than gas money so that the kids who have nothing, who could never afford a Death Cab For Cutie, or Long Winters show.
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of “culture.”
— John Cage
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Profane Existence 
By giving “punk rock” a title and putting any one specific genre of punk rock on a pedestal you have also effectively misrepresented the lifestyle.
Exactly, thank you.
Well said brother. People like this aren’t trying to convince us, though. They’re going after kids who have only just heard of punk, and would assume that people like Courtney Love, the Ramones (who I honestly still love) and the Sex Pistols are somehow still relevant.
In the end, what some entitled POS says about who I am and what I do doesn’t matter to me. But when he goes after kids who don’t know any better, I’m going to get just a little miffed. Fuck this guy, and fuck what he says.
Well said indeed!
Lonny Bristle
Fuck yes, that was amazing! Thanks for that
While I agree that the dude is full of shit, you lost me when you said nobody in the punk scene gives a shit about the Ramones. The Ramones invented punk rock, you dolt, and punks still care about them. Thanks for trying to speak for everyone, though.
I’ll admit, I am not a diehard punk. I didn’t think I needed to be. The clothes, the scene, how unknown your favorite band is… isn’t that just a pissing contest? What matters is the message… who has the power and who doesn’t. But someone doesn’t get to be in your club because (since you called out Bad Religion specifically) songs about Citizens United and the Scopes Monkey Trial speak to them instead of the bands you prefer (apparently you can’t like both)? Instead of railing against the system, which would exist with or without any of the bands listed above, you’re railing against the bands who got caught up in it.
The funny thing is you’re actually proving the author of that stupid article right, on some points.
Great follow up Conrad. I posted a response to the original article last night as well and pointed out the Tupperware/vacuum cleaner salesman thing being analogous to DIY as preposterous too.
This guy obviously was never interested in the heart of the punk rock scene or his analogies would be more apt.
Two things I’d like to clear up:
1. The Ramones are amazing. Tons of people in the scene love them and care about them.
(but I get what you are saying)
2. Though I was a member of AK47 I never personally identified as Communist. I don’t consider myself any kind of “ist” or part of any “ism”. No one ideology fits me perfectly so I refrain from allegiance to any.
I don’t think Stalin is cool.
Through the band I have met many punks who would align with a M/L/M set of ideal/goals and I find it odd that you have not. There are HUGE pockets of Communist punks all over the world.
I just wanted to share those things and say how well written I think your response is.
see you at Doom?
~R
hey Rob. You should totally post the link to your reply here so others can read it, twanna say thhe more the merrier!
And just wanted to say that while I may strongly disagree with the politics of Communism, I do rather like your band and have seen almost every show you played in Vic these last number of years. Also have almost all the albums. I may not agree with all the politics (although I do agree with most the lyrics), but I know that you did a lot for the Victoria punk scene over the years and that you are all really decent human beings.
Idk, it kinda seems like you just wrote this blog to show everyone how much more you know about punk than that guy. All people do not have access to the DIY punk scene, especially those that live in more rural areas, and therefore every individual is going to have their own idea of what punk is. So the fuck what? You kinda seem like the guy at shows who’d have a snobby prick-ish attitude towards someone that didn’t know as many crust bands/lyrics as you. Sure I love Amebix and Nausea and Conflict and so on as much as the next kid who grew up poor and pissed off in the 80s/90s but i’m not gonna shit all over someone for not knowing or understanding the music. My personal opinion is that it should be our jobs as members of our respective scenes to make punk accessible to anyone and everyone who wants to get into it, as long as it’s for the right reasons, and to be excited about getting other people into the same shit we’re into without being a condescending asshole about it.
Yes, the guy that wrote the article you refer to is obviously a bitter conservative idiot (makes me think of the whole “if you used to be punk you never were” thing) who’s got completely the wrong idea, but fuck people like that, i don’t know why you would feel the need to blog about it unless ya just needed a chance to stroke your own ego…This is enforced by the fact that as far as i know, you didn’t write a direct response to the guy himself trying to change his mind or telling him to go fuck himself or whatever, you just wanted to blog about it so everyone could see how much punk-er than him you are. Missing the point, buddy.
I grew up in a town of 700, the nearest city was 2000. So if ya wanna talk about rural with no punk scene, I get it all too well.
A friend asked me to give my thoughts on the article, I read it, wrote my thoughts to my friend, then decided I basically have enough for a whole other article! so here is what ya end up with.
At first I wanted to agree with fackoff in his view that you wrote this to show off how many punk rock things you knew, but I realized that really, all the examples you used were valid, real-life instances of people who probably label themselves as punk-rockers affecting change in the real world. This seems to be your most vehement rebuttal to the John Roderick article, and the examples you have provided give full credence to your position.
However, your idea of punk rock and John Roderick’s idea of punk rock are two completely different things. It would seem that to him, punk rock is defined not as a niche subculture, but as a relevant cog in the mainstream media. He would be correct in that definition. Despite the current status of Courtney Love’s boobs/drug habit, there was a time in her young life when she was involved in the very same type of underground subculture that you identify with and the mainstream eschews.
Herein is the issue: the mainstream idea of punk rock and the niche value of punk are both valid and they are both real and accurate. To say the opposite is to intentionally ignore the reality that both ideas are currently happening. These ideas, however, are diametrically opposed and there is little to no middle ground. This is ironic because, essentially the core of punk is individualism and self-exploration, and yet in both camps you find those who have taken it upon themselves to judge harshly and ostracize those who do not fit into their vision of what a punk rocker should be.
Furthermore, the punk rock label itself has become a vapid, meaningless monicker on both fronts; the mainstream thinks that Green Day is still punk and My Chemical Romance is Emo, while the subculture has dissected it and redistributed the parts and re-classified them as Powerviolence, Emo, Hardcore, etc ad nauseam.
I am not saying that this is wrong. I would never tell anyone that their idea of music is wrong. I might not enjoy some kinds of music, but I would never tell anyone they were wrong for enjoying it. Unless it was Justin Beiber. What I am saying is that the punk rock that Roderick is talking about is an old, worn out husk of something that wanted to be meaningful and ended up disgusted with itself. Comerade Black’s punk is the John Beers of idealism, keeping alive individualism and self empowerment. So don’t criticize the guy for voicing his opinion. That shit is so un-punk. You might as well smear mustard stains into your dirty wife-beater and smack your kid around for being a faggot.
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I’ll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and, uh… and, uh… heartless manipulators, about music… that takes up the energies, and the bodies, and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds, of young men, who give what they have to it, and give everything they have to it. And it’s a… it’s a term that’s based on contempt; it’s a term that’s based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that’s rotten about rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t know Johnny Rotten.. but I’m sure, I’m sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise… is in fact… the brilliant music of a genius… myself. And that music is so powerful, that it’s quite beyond my control. And, ah… when I’m in the grips of it, I don’t feel pleasure and I don’t feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Have you ever, have you ever felt like that? When you just, when you just, you couldn’t feel anything, and you didn’t want to either.
Iggy
I remember. The first time I heard 7 Seconds. The first time I saw Sick of it All take the stage. The first time I played shitty punk rock in front of real people (and oh yes, it was shitty). The first time I saw a “positive” hardcore band play (Avail) and really started to understand that it wasn’t about hating everything. It was about being something new. Something better, better than what corporations and conformity and the government tell me to be. And I feel it every time my son tells me to “turn it up louder.” F yeah.
I love it. I’ll never be as punk as some of you – I grew up in a small southern town where the county tried to bank punk rock, metal and rap from being sold in the early 1980s….so when we got our hands on records by the Ramones, X, and the Clash it seemed plenty punk rock to us. Authority was actually scared. Later it was Black Flag and Minor Threat, and then all of a sudden there were tons of us as the Richmond VA punk/hardcore scene blew up in the early 1990s. Punk ethics are a powerful thing and have everything to do with making good, critical decisions as an adult and not buying into corporate, government, or ANYONE’s hype. Do it yourself. Thanks brothers and sisters!!
Who?
Well said.
Although I think it would be cool if the links to the books you mention at the end went somewhere OTHER than Amazon. You even dropped an AK Press link earlier in the piece….
anyway….that’s my only nitpick.
Thanks! And actually I agree with you 100%. I was having computer trouble near the end of writing this and my comp kept freezing so I had thought about changing it but I kinda just wanted to get it finished. Also I think Shibboleth is out of print, but you can still get used copies through amazon. And the publisher for The Day The Country Died is in the UK and quite expensive. But alas, No excuses needed, you are right. In the future I will take this into mind when writing.
Again, thanks for your comment, and criticism