(cause I can't fit a chair in my tiny tiny room)
Hello to you all, my beloved audience, of which I believe there to be 3-4 of you (readership is up 200% this fiscal year). I am here writing to you, my beer in hand, on this fine Saturday night. To answer any queries that may have arising in your minds just now, the answer is yes. I am drinking alone.
Don't feel bad for me.
I was out with friends earlier, the night simply ended early and I have beer left to drink. So I am merely enjoy a frosty cool one whilst I type. You need not worry about my potential alcoholism, it is non-existent (my Fallout 3 addiction however...). Also it's days away from St. Patrick's Day so give an Irish kid a break.
Enough with the introductions, let's move on to the main point and this time I swear to you, oh faithful readers, that I do have a point.
Or at least a topic.
A topic that has been brought on by a three-way inspiration of 1) beer 2) reading
Fargo Rock City by Chuck
Klosterman and 3) watching
Freaks and Geeks. These have all made me feel nostalgic and wanting to talk about music. So I've tossed away my previous blog idea (or
blogdea) a short story entitled Obama-San vs. the Monkey President and I'm going to discuss my musical past.
Now, I don't mean that I played music. To say that would simply be a flat out lie. I am of the musically challenged variety, my artistic skill relegated to the visual and textual realms. I will never woo a lady by playing "Your Body is a Wonderland" on my acoustic that I don't own. I do however enjoy listening to music and I am one of those people who can honestly say they enjoy music from all walks of life, yes, even rap and country.
It wasn't always this way.
There, we just got to the topic and only 3 paragraphs late. So like I was saying, it was not always this way, once upon a time I thought I was a punk. That is to say if asked back in the day, I would probably claim that I was a punk, and that me and my friend were the only punks in town, but that in reality I was full of shit. I couldn't care less about anarchy or any of the things that make up the punk ideology, but I liked fast music and wore my hair bright red and spiky.
Actually, fuck it, I take it back, I was a punk. I may not have fought a bunch and liked irony more than anarchy, but maybe all punks are just a little bit of a poseur inside. In fact I'd bet money on it. The important thing was the music. It was fun. That was the key, because it certainly wasn't technically brilliant or even technically kind-of-good. It was the same three chords, some bass, and some drums played real fast.
Hell, some bands didn't even want to be good, lest they become less punk.
NoFX frontman Fat Mike once said that "punk music is just an excuse for terrible musicians to get together and jam." In fact, that very same band recorded an entire album in one sitting on a cassette tape in their garage after they felt that they were become too good at playing there own songs.
I was years away from discovering Led
Zepplin and all the wonders of Rock and Roil in the 60s and 70s. My only exposure to Heavy Metal was rap rock bands like
Korn and Limp
Bizkit. It's no surprise that I looked down on the genre. Punk may not have been good but it also didn't take itself seriously. To kids like me, it was like being in on a big joke that was being played on the rest of the world.
Now here's the part where I take a 180 turn and defend the music I just said was terrible, because despite all its faults the reason i liked punk wasn't just that the bands were in on the punk rock joke. No. It was because they truly did rock. Not in the way that metal bands did, I never wanted to rock out and play drums and air guitar after listening to Anti-Flag. It wasn't that kind of rocking. It was the kind of rock that filled you up with energy. It entered your body through your feet and wrapped around your heart. Your muscles would shake and the only way to release it was to thrash about. This is known as moshing (I know, "no shit," you say but just go with it I'm trying for a style here,
jeeze). Whether there was a pit around or not whenever I listen to punk, even to this day, it makes me want to mosh. That was the beauty of punk. The energy. I mean, sure I thought
NoFX was funny and some of their songs really got to the heart of growing up middle class and white and Anti-Flag made a lot of political statements (I can't remember if they were any good), but the only thing that really mattered was the energy of the songs, or "how much they rocked out" in teen speak. Nothing else.
So I was a punk, because it gave me a place to get rid of all my teenage energy, and provided a few laughs along the way. The bright red spikes were a mistake (one I paid for with a buzz cut in my driver's licence photo), but the music was not.
Eventually of course, I got to university and, reluctantly at first, discovered music with more than three instruments. My punk days slowly left me behind and my well honed sense of irony an sarcasm found a new home in the indie world (but just on the edge because well lots of hipster are dicks), but every once and a while I get an itch. I clear some space and dig my
Fat Music for Fat People CDs out from the depths and let the thrashing take me away.
Surprisingly I have only broken one plate this way.
