Untangling the Blood Clot
Filmmaker and musician Don Letts released a DVD in 2005 called “Punk: Attitude,” which serves as a nice chronology of punk rock and its impact on society. Among the footage is an interview with Henry Rollins, former Black Flag front man, who defines what “punk rock” means today. He was explaining how punk rock moved from being a musical classification to a definition of attitude. In his example, if one kid rolls a shopping cart into the side of a car, another kid would say “that is so punk rock!” It’s a rebellion thing.
It’s kind of tough to be punk rock today, especially from where I and many others sit in our towers of responsibility and social conformity. Most of our rebellion comes from devious activities such as calling in sick to work, or not shopping at Wal-Mart to boycott their labor practices, or giving other drivers the middle finger under the dashboard. Tame and lame. Fact is, we get comfortable in our lives and ignore the opportunities to embrace that punk rock attitude. You even forget what it feels like at all. Our youthful passion is filtered by the effect of being responsible for our children, paying taxes, and saving for retirement. Our blood becomes nonchalant.
To make matters even fuzzier, punk rock as music, fashion, and attitude has been methodically commercialized, sanitized, pasteurized, and bastardized for public consumption. MTV used to be an underground thing, boys and girls, and now it’s a toddler playground for the hair-gel crowd. Clash songs are used to sell Jaguars, Ramones songs sell Verizon. Punk is so air-brushed over that you cannot even recognize it anymore. Mohawks retreat into four-bedroom suburban homes and watch American Idol.
That is, you can’t recognize it until it punches you right in the face, as it happened to me on Tuesday, April 25th. The venue is Bentley Billiards, in Westfield, Massachusetts. A drizzly, cold evening, but the bar is well-lit, and every pool table has a game going on. This is the kind of place where the pool studs bring in their own cues in nifty over-the-shoulder bags. They aren’t even drinking that much. Serious business.
The band Crazy Pineapple is playing tonight. Now, Crazy Pineapple is a youthful quartet (all 18 and under), who play a brand of punk-infused music – harsh speed and angst-riddled lyrics. The crowd that faces them tonight are in the 35-55 age bracket, contently shooting pool and listening to the beloved Charlie Daniels over the house stereo. These are the people who are responsible for their children, paying taxes, and saving for retirement. And probably listening to any investment advice Charlie Daniels would offer.
My first thought is that they will get absolutely zero reception from this crowd (my deduction of Mensa-like proportions), and possibly have pool balls heaved at them from short distances. There is a man sitting directly in front of the band, at the first table, and he looks like Art Carney, only moments before he died. How can these kids get pumped for the potential disaster that will certainly befall them?
Besides, this is only Crazy Pineapple’s second show. They need encouragement and support from an adoring, supportive crowd, right? These are just innocent kids, whose egos and confidence are fragile and under development and…
…they walk in, survey the crowd, and smile. An evil, bloodthirsty smile. After they setup, still smiling, they decide to modify the set a little bit by opening with a very brief acoustic instrumental. This is done on purpose, mind you, to set an expectation that they wish to contradict. No, make that destroy.
This, I decide, is very punk rock.
After the faux intro, the distortion is tripped, and they ramble headlong into their first song. They are not dismayed by the challenge in front of them; no, they don’t see any chance of converting this crowd. Instead, they play in defiance. They know they will be despised. They know they will annoy the bejeezus out of them, disrupting their games, angering them with their indifference. And this motivates them. To legendary levels.
I am smiling as singer Alison screams “you are my favorite fucking liiiii-arrrrrrrrrrr!”
The place is bewildered. Games come to a complete halt. As the first song closes, Art Carney gets up and says “no more!” The retort he gets is the band launching into “Garbage Disposal,” a vicious 75-second rant pinning the speedometer. This is probably their least-accessible song for the masses, and they put it in the number two spot. How punk rock is that?
After the third song, the crowd now understands this is not going to go away, and begin to do their best to shuffle about their shuddering pool tables. Bassist Eggface announces to the crowd, “I hope you are enjoying us, as we have a lot more songs to play. If you don’t like us; well, sucks to be you.”
I am reminded of the Sex Pistols playing Randy’s Rodeo in San Antonio in 1978; British punk meets America’s cowboys. A mismatched forged in the furnace of Wal-Mart.
Not content to stand there and be punk rock shoe gazers, the band prances and minces and leaps about. Dsatt, the guitarist, is a study in contortion, making as many ridiculously goofy faces and mock-rock poses as possible. Eggface follows suit, his baseball cap shook violently by his decapitating head bobs. They lay on the ground. They spin on the ground. They jump, hop, bounce, twirl, mug, dip, kick. Sloppiness reigns. They don’t care. They’re laughing. They are baiting the entire bar.
They are pushing shopping carts into the sides of cars.
And they play hard. Not just fast-hard, but fast-we-need-to-break-spines-hard. Tim’s drum kit needs repair at the end of just about each song. Of course, he’s yelling “let’s rock, Westfield!” at every chance.
By the time they reach the point where they do a cover of a song learned in bible camp at age four – which starts with an a cappella “we are a family, a Christian family” - and ends with massive doses of unrestrained un-Christian-like screaming – many of the tables have evacuated. The survivors huddle at the table farthest from the band, like timid fish in one corner of the aquarium, avoiding the piranha at the other end.
Prior to the last song, Tim makes a plea to the remaining soles – “will the last table down at the end please leave? We want to be able to say we cleared the place out.”
I do not think I stopped smiling the whole time. I smiled in admiration for the attitude they had in the face of adversity, in the way they relished the situation. I smiled at their utter goofiness. Best of all, I smiled because I recognized punk rock again. Thank you, Crazy Pineapple, thank you. Thank you for never giving up. Thank you for playing for yourselves. I felt my blood again.
Now I have to go manage my retirement savings.
Crazy Pineapple can be found at -
It’s kind of tough to be punk rock today, especially from where I and many others sit in our towers of responsibility and social conformity. Most of our rebellion comes from devious activities such as calling in sick to work, or not shopping at Wal-Mart to boycott their labor practices, or giving other drivers the middle finger under the dashboard. Tame and lame. Fact is, we get comfortable in our lives and ignore the opportunities to embrace that punk rock attitude. You even forget what it feels like at all. Our youthful passion is filtered by the effect of being responsible for our children, paying taxes, and saving for retirement. Our blood becomes nonchalant.
To make matters even fuzzier, punk rock as music, fashion, and attitude has been methodically commercialized, sanitized, pasteurized, and bastardized for public consumption. MTV used to be an underground thing, boys and girls, and now it’s a toddler playground for the hair-gel crowd. Clash songs are used to sell Jaguars, Ramones songs sell Verizon. Punk is so air-brushed over that you cannot even recognize it anymore. Mohawks retreat into four-bedroom suburban homes and watch American Idol.
That is, you can’t recognize it until it punches you right in the face, as it happened to me on Tuesday, April 25th. The venue is Bentley Billiards, in Westfield, Massachusetts. A drizzly, cold evening, but the bar is well-lit, and every pool table has a game going on. This is the kind of place where the pool studs bring in their own cues in nifty over-the-shoulder bags. They aren’t even drinking that much. Serious business.
The band Crazy Pineapple is playing tonight. Now, Crazy Pineapple is a youthful quartet (all 18 and under), who play a brand of punk-infused music – harsh speed and angst-riddled lyrics. The crowd that faces them tonight are in the 35-55 age bracket, contently shooting pool and listening to the beloved Charlie Daniels over the house stereo. These are the people who are responsible for their children, paying taxes, and saving for retirement. And probably listening to any investment advice Charlie Daniels would offer.
My first thought is that they will get absolutely zero reception from this crowd (my deduction of Mensa-like proportions), and possibly have pool balls heaved at them from short distances. There is a man sitting directly in front of the band, at the first table, and he looks like Art Carney, only moments before he died. How can these kids get pumped for the potential disaster that will certainly befall them?
Besides, this is only Crazy Pineapple’s second show. They need encouragement and support from an adoring, supportive crowd, right? These are just innocent kids, whose egos and confidence are fragile and under development and…
…they walk in, survey the crowd, and smile. An evil, bloodthirsty smile. After they setup, still smiling, they decide to modify the set a little bit by opening with a very brief acoustic instrumental. This is done on purpose, mind you, to set an expectation that they wish to contradict. No, make that destroy.
This, I decide, is very punk rock.
After the faux intro, the distortion is tripped, and they ramble headlong into their first song. They are not dismayed by the challenge in front of them; no, they don’t see any chance of converting this crowd. Instead, they play in defiance. They know they will be despised. They know they will annoy the bejeezus out of them, disrupting their games, angering them with their indifference. And this motivates them. To legendary levels.
I am smiling as singer Alison screams “you are my favorite fucking liiiii-arrrrrrrrrrr!”
The place is bewildered. Games come to a complete halt. As the first song closes, Art Carney gets up and says “no more!” The retort he gets is the band launching into “Garbage Disposal,” a vicious 75-second rant pinning the speedometer. This is probably their least-accessible song for the masses, and they put it in the number two spot. How punk rock is that?
After the third song, the crowd now understands this is not going to go away, and begin to do their best to shuffle about their shuddering pool tables. Bassist Eggface announces to the crowd, “I hope you are enjoying us, as we have a lot more songs to play. If you don’t like us; well, sucks to be you.”
I am reminded of the Sex Pistols playing Randy’s Rodeo in San Antonio in 1978; British punk meets America’s cowboys. A mismatched forged in the furnace of Wal-Mart.
Not content to stand there and be punk rock shoe gazers, the band prances and minces and leaps about. Dsatt, the guitarist, is a study in contortion, making as many ridiculously goofy faces and mock-rock poses as possible. Eggface follows suit, his baseball cap shook violently by his decapitating head bobs. They lay on the ground. They spin on the ground. They jump, hop, bounce, twirl, mug, dip, kick. Sloppiness reigns. They don’t care. They’re laughing. They are baiting the entire bar.
They are pushing shopping carts into the sides of cars.
And they play hard. Not just fast-hard, but fast-we-need-to-break-spines-hard. Tim’s drum kit needs repair at the end of just about each song. Of course, he’s yelling “let’s rock, Westfield!” at every chance.
By the time they reach the point where they do a cover of a song learned in bible camp at age four – which starts with an a cappella “we are a family, a Christian family” - and ends with massive doses of unrestrained un-Christian-like screaming – many of the tables have evacuated. The survivors huddle at the table farthest from the band, like timid fish in one corner of the aquarium, avoiding the piranha at the other end.
Prior to the last song, Tim makes a plea to the remaining soles – “will the last table down at the end please leave? We want to be able to say we cleared the place out.”
I do not think I stopped smiling the whole time. I smiled in admiration for the attitude they had in the face of adversity, in the way they relished the situation. I smiled at their utter goofiness. Best of all, I smiled because I recognized punk rock again. Thank you, Crazy Pineapple, thank you. Thank you for never giving up. Thank you for playing for yourselves. I felt my blood again.
Now I have to go manage my retirement savings.
Crazy Pineapple can be found at -
posted by Bedlam1313 at
11:21 PM
1 Comments:
i am truly honored. thank you dadly.
By
Anonymous, at 4:40 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home