for those about to rock

sincerity/why i love punk rock

technically, my education in punk rock began sometime around when i was 8, 9 or 10, and i would routinely hear the awesome crunch and unbridled, unhinged swing (yes, there IS that, though you rarely, if ever, hear punk associated with that term, as perfectly apt as i feel it is) of songs like 'beat on the brat' and 'revolution' buzzing though justin's door in muffled bursts, joey ramone and john lennon's voices nonetheless cutting straight-shot through the mix in brash, nasally whines.

i used to sleep with my door slightly ajar, finding comfort in the hallway night light and the knowledge that i could call to my mom if i had a bad nightmare. after a time, though, i found myself drawn to a different reassurance on sleepless nights, a kind of solace, in fact, in the music that justin was perhaps finding peace in himself. i don't know whether it was the very routine in which i derived a sense that things were right in the world, or if perhaps, somewhat vicariously, i tasted some of that urgency that called out to justin and demanded that he listen night after night. regardless, it was a secret pleasure; an experience that i held close to my heart, quietly, as my own.

later, as a teen, i remember one afternoon after school where i was feeling this general malaise (girls; scumbag teachers; thinking that there was no one in the world that could ever understand how i felt) that i chanced upon the video for 'anarchy in the uk' on one of the music stations.

i know i had heard the song before. but it was actually seeing johnny rotten spit at the mic like a man posessed with reckless, wild-eyed abandon, and watching steve jones smirk disdainfully as he laid down power chords like static-singed depth charges, and marvelling at sid viscious sneer and sloppily pluck his bass like he had better things to do somewhere offstage, that made everything click into place for me.

what i sensed in the chaos, even in spite of the fact that it was live footage synched to the studio recording, and what i would later find in other bands' music, was this undeniable truth that held together its sometimes ragged constituent parts. i'm not talking about a literal lyrical truth, like the sex pistols' thoughts on abortion were somehow gospel testament, or that the adverts had a compelling reason to be paranoid about the transplantation of a killer's eyes. what was so much more THE TRUTH in punk for me was that cliched (for great reason) urgency; the undeniable innate sense that this primal verve seized performers and set them into trance; the feeling that this gut SOMETHING fought and clawed its way out of instruments speaking in tongues; the grandest and purest catharsis that struck me so immediately on a reddish, vicseral level with such great force that it left indelible imprints.

even later, i discovered this truth manifesting in other forms of music: in rock and roll's bruised swagger, in the frenzied harmonic stabs of coltrane and davis, in the jagged chunk of andy gill's guitar violence, even in the hypnotic pull of traditional african music make with rocks, sticks and the various wind instruments i learned about from archie shepp in classes at umass (an unabashedly proud accomplishment i hang my hat on, while i shamelessly name drop: being the sole guitar player in a shepp perfomance class with other talented ax-slingers to earn an A).

i became addicted to the bands that delivered such transcendental payoffs in soft and loud dynamics: rage against the machine, nirvana, alice in chains, pj harvey, the dicks, jesus lizard, showcase showdown, tool, operation ivy. the bands that delivered nuclear knock-out punches in the form of volcanic outros in which that ever-present angst and undefinied anomie that lurked in the undercurrent throughout chorus and verse finally simmered to the top explosively. the truth in one orgasmic moment (and here, i will indulge myelf in saying that, yes, i will always hold dear to my heart that a friend once insisted matter-of-factly that i 'have sex with my guitar' whenever she sees me play it).

much of my songwriting these days gravitates toward arranging parts in such a manner as to facilitate those big rock outros. when i mine for such a part, i try to tap into that feeling that i've found all throughout music, but i think that punk music has always articulated in a uniquely ironic clarity through the distortion and the disorder; a truth felt and understood outside of the cerebellum, even as it agitates this brain mass; a truth that acts as something buoyant to hold onto for dear life in times of chaos and uncertainty.

posted by jomilkman @ 4:49 PM