Anavrin224

Anyone who has the most remote clue as to who I am will probably agree that the one thing in life that I give a rat's ass about is my music. I absolutely love music. Music is the most beautiful thing in existence, in fact, music is so beautiful that were it an inmate in prison it would be the bitch of everyone to the degree of Andy Dufresne from "The Shawshank Redemption". (A special thanks to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw for making that reference for me to "borrow"). 

To those few special people that I let closer into my life will know that it is hard for me to define what style of music I choose to play and then to an extent, emulate my life by. Since picking up my first guitar (a Squier Strat) on May 25th, 2002 I've had trouble picking up a genre to focus on. I remember when I got my guitar, the first song I tried to learn was "(Welcome Home) Sanitarium" by Metallica. Back in Januray of 2002, Metallica and metal became the first genre of music that I chose to listen to without direct outside influence (I don't count the stuff I listened to when I was a kid and my disastrous rap phase because one was influenced by my mum and the other by my friend). I was at Recycled Records in Reno when "Metallica" or "The Black Album" caught my eye. Now upon reflection of this I did have one friend who was into metal and I vaguely recall him mentioning Metallica, but he wasn't try to push a new genre of music on me, upon further reflection he was a very good friend for that reason. Anyhow, the point I am laboriously trying to get to is that metal was my first genre.

Since then many have followed, a brief list includes... ska, pop, acoustic, grunge, alternative, nu metal, punk, and indie. Now before anybody mentions anything, yes I am aware that I'm two paragraphs into my essay and haven't gotten to the genre of punk yet, so I'll do one more sentence and before I get into the very meat and 'taters of this essay. I tried all those genres I listed and none of them really worked out for me until I tried punk, which seemed to really click, but alas I am doomed to the exclusion from the punk rock scene.

I am doomed from the start of the punk scene because I truly only care for the music, and not the ideals that follow suit. Now I do care for some of the ideals, i.e. working class, non-judgmental people, anti class system, and so on and so forth. However as the ideals of punk shift from idealism to consumerism and bands like "Social Distortion" and "Bad Brains" are replaced with "Hedley" and "Cute Is What We Aim For" it seems that you have to evolve with the system to be a part of the scene. The extremes between the "true" punks and the "poser" punks continues to grow to opposite ends of the spectrum it seems that you have to join one side or you won't be welcome into the scene in general.

It seems that in the new scene for punk in the "true"punk scene you have to dress in a strict fashion, which always been rule for punk. While I'll never be a punk rocker is that I refuse to dress a certain way to have to fit in somewhere, I don't care what it is, I refuse to have to dress a certain way to get accepted, however this is such a hypocritical statement as I dress a certain way when I go out to a pub or a club or some social occasion, however usually I wear what I would normally wear. Another attribute to be a "true" punk is to know the most obscure bands that are available, who most of them suck. I don't listen to bad music for the sake of gaining a reputation. In many ways I am very disassociated with the scene because they do not accept me for who I am, which is ironic as they are seen and a scene who accept the people who are rejected.

The "posers" which have seemed to have taken over the scene are a particular nuisance because they accumulate for most of the crappy bands that are on the radio and the Warped Tour. Most people refer to them as "posers" however after my experience at the Warped Tour I like to think of them as "Hollow Punks" because in all actuality that's what they are. They are hollow in the sense that all what they do is look the part. They wear their hair spiky, dress all in black with some band name printed on a T-shirt and hang out in groups of 5 to 20, all of whom are very loud and all of whom have been dropped off by mummy and daddy in a fucking SUV. All what these kids do is look the moment, they have no real thought towards the past, and no reflection on if they follow this suit where it will take them in five years, if they will even be punks, or if they will just follow the latest fad. I'd like to say I hate these people most, but it's honestly not their fault, they're just stupid, it's like blaming a dog for dragging it's ass on the carpet or licking it's balls, it's just what they do.

There's a lot of pointing fingers going around with who's responsible for the state that punk rock is in. I'd like to know who's fault it is for ruining one of my favourite genres of music. I mean, it use to be back in the '70's it didn't matter if you were signed to a major label, the Stooges were signed to Elektra before getting dropped after Funhouse then signed onto Columbia... before getting dropped again. The Ramones were signed by Sire Records which is owned by Time Warner, but back then it wasn't all about independent record companies, it was about exploiting the record company you were currently signed to get high and drunk off their dollar. Now-a-days it seems like there's this general consensus that big record labels are set to bend you over and fuck you raw and the smaller independent ones are sent by God almighty to lead us to the Promise Land. Independent labels are run by people, same as Major labels, people in general are tempted towards greed and Independent labels are out to fuck as many people over as major labels. The Clash put it best when they said in the song "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais" "Ha! you think it's funny, turning rebellion into money". Punk, like communism, is good in theory, but put into practice in real life and all you've got is a pile of shit.

A friend of mine put it best when he said that "Punk is alot like the ying and yang, the posers and the true punks being the opposites of each other, yet they still occupy the same circle...