Dying Scene writers aren’t much different than you Dying Scene readers. Yeah, we have news writing superpowers, but ultimately we are just super fans of the punk genre like the rest of you. And like the rest of you we have our own individual thoughts and opinions and sometimes we just got to get stuff off our chest. Editorial style. So with that in mind, we’d like to remind all of our handsomely toned and intelligent readers that the views expressed in these articles are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the entire Dying Scene staff.
Working at a small town record store, I had the opportunity to meet throngs of people who shared little musical interests with me. Now usually this wouldn’t phase me, but goddamn it, I was working in a record store. Music was our common factor, bringing us together in the name of sonic discovery and commerce. But to my chagrin, the hipsters ruled my town with an iron, elitist fist. And when I wasn’t feigning affection for the latest Fleet Foxes record, I was inevitably tasked with defending my own preferences. It seemed that when I politely responded to queries regarding my musical interests (punk), the only encountered answer was “Oh, like The Catheters?”
No, not like The Catheters.
It’s funny, with all the talk of how punk is commercialized, not many people are really familiar with the genre. I readily admit my horizons aren’t very broad. When I say I listen to punk I mean for people to read between the lines and silently insert the word ‘exclusively.’ But for all my failings as a well versed music listener, I am at the very least aware of what’s happening in different scenes. I know the hipsters like Bon Iver. Metalheads hate metalcore. Casual listeners are into Adele. I’m not oblivious. But how many non-punk enthusiasts do you know that can name even some of the bands that populate our top tier of accessible music? I’m not talking about Green Day, Rise Against, or Blink-182 either; those bands are so big that they crossover into mainstream music without the help or hindrance of the punk label. No, I’m talking about the bands everyone knows in the scene. Bands like No Trigger, Hot Water Music, or Banner Pilot. Even the music we tend to condescendingly dismiss as entry level is fairly unheard of outside our own kind. Pennywise and Bad Religion elicit more blank stares than conversation. Instead, we get The Catheters.
So, needless to say, I had to turn to my fellow employees for musical discussion. I found that there was at least one guy who liked Leftover Crack, and while that wasn’t exactly what I wanted, I wondered if it was perhaps what I needed. On a warm and sunny summer afternoon I was hanging out after my shift for no real reason but to talk with someone who shared some of my interests. Idly, my fingers spidered up and down through alphabetized CD spines.
There’s a phrase, a combination of words every punk hears at some point or the other. So ubiquitous in punk rock that they almost define it. I was about to hear these words uttered with the casual conviction they are so often delivered.
My fingers perched on the G’s, my eyes rested on a familiar band name. Uncontrollably, perhaps inevitably, the conversation turned to Green Day. I knew the words before he said them, I could have spoken them in measured unison, perhaps even harmonizing them at this point.
“I liked them, before they sold out.”
It wasn’t until this moment that I truly considered those words, and that’s when I came to the conclusion that they were as meaningless as any cliche. This wasn’t communication, this wasn’t an exchange of ideas. This was a recycled opinion reappropriated as conversation. Like a virus, it spread and became the de facto critical analysis of an entire catalog of work. So pervasive now, that teenagers who have never listened to Green Day are adopting it as their own creed and code. I liked Dookie and their early stuff, but their later stuff just got too mainstream. This is where critical evaluation ceases to be critical, and becomes ritual.
With all its vagaries and sinister imagery, selling out is a cornerstone of punk culture. For a scene and genre so insistent on authenticity, ‘sell out’ and its derivatives are as much a declaration of righteous responsibility as it is petty finger pointing. There are definite, valid criticisms of a band like Green Day. But using a catch-all phrase like ‘selling out’, isn’t one.
The hardest part of earnestly applying the sell out label is that it’s a reaction to unknowable intentions. Bands like Against Me!, Anti-Flag, and Green Day all made the jump to the majors; news of which seems to never be taken well. But it also represents the core of the ‘sell out’ problem: Us vs. Them. Studded jackets, mohawks, inaccessible music; we like to romanticize it all with talk of self expression, all the while extracting the personal element that drives the rebellion. There’s a need to separate ourselves from the mainstream, reject its culture and build our own. The shining light of punk rock is built on the do-it-yourself principal. It’s art for the sake of art. You could say punk is about creating music for an audience of one. The fact that there’s a world of punk fans is almost incidental; the music is made for the sake of the artist. So, equating the move to a major label with artistic hackery is not exactly a leap of logic. But, it does lack perspective. Henry Rollins once said, “Selling out is when you make the record you’re told to make, instead of the one you want to make,” succinctly defining it in plain-spoken English. But it raises the question: can we ever know for certain that a band has sold out?
As much as we fight it, artists have to make money to be able to continue producing. They need walls to surround them, food to eat, and gas in their tanks to tour. But this is where the problem of intentions rears it’s ugly head. We don’t think about a band having to eat and make a living. For some reason, we find it hard to imagine our same day-to-day troubles being a shared experience with the musicians we hold in such high esteem. The very nature of the rock star, the target of much of the punk ethos, is still very much here to stay, albeit in a different form. Punk rockers are getting burned at the digital stake, for both real and perceived transgressions because we hold them up to ideals that they never get to choose. We decide their morality, we decide when they’ve done wrong.
Against Me!’s Tom Gabel may have been an anarchist at one point, but it was the scene that held him to the statements he made a decade ago. It was almost as if the punk scene forced him into the role of an archetype, and it became our perception of his identity. When Against Me! signed to Sire, there was inevitably outrage. And there was a permeable feeling that this isn’t what we wanted for him. When he broke from the mold, frustration mounted. As he redefined himself on his own terms, the audience felt betrayed. This is where our own sense of ethics become overbearing; more than ever, art is at the mercy of scene politics. As if a challenge to inherent punkness is the pinnacle of all dismissals.
Can we be better?
Can we judge music, and not equate it with labels or perceived punkness?
We have a chance to be more rational. We have a chance to be better music listeners. If we can let go of this archaic concept, we can move forward without self righteousness determining our tastes. “Before they sold out,” can be a laughably uninformed thing of the past.
I know we can be better.