All Your Artists Are Just Servants of the Status Quo

I was recently thinking about a particular moment in punk music, as a result of the album exchange with Duff. in late 00s, it seemed to me like the identity of "used to be (or be in) a hardcore" carried a huge amount of cultural cache, and was a primary talking point album reviews and music news. This came up because we were talking about Crime in Stereo, specifically the album The Troubled Stateside, and how they seemed to benefit from moving from playing melodic hardcore, or popcore as Duff erroneously labelled them, to a more experimental and moodier emo sound.*

*I remember people saying that Crime in Stereo is Dead was their Deja Entendu at the time, as I guess that album became shorthand for a band making a leap in "seriousness" in their music and the two records aren't far off sonically. TBH, I always liked ...Is Dead more than that record to begin with and that opinion sure has aged well now.

Beyond Crime in Stereo, and bands like Cold Cave, this cultural capital extended to other types of music too. When Frank Turner was exploding in the Fest scene, it felt like no one could go one second discussing him without mentioning the fact that he used to play in Million Dead. Thousand Dead? I'm not going to waste time looking up libertarian-ass Frank Turner's old band that probably sucked. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I did this very thing here on IMU. I guess it's sort of a way to claim cred? To make it sound like you know about their entire musical backstory and how it contributes to the current narrative around their music.

Duff thought it represented a reversal of opinion on selling out, and I guess that's true as well. It's no longer wack to stop playing hardcore (cool) and start playing butt rock (lame), like No Warning did, but is instead a sign that the butt rock you're playing is even better because you used to play in a hardcore band (always cool). 

And when you think of the biggest punk bands of the 00s, this opinion actually makes a lot of sense. Against Me! went from being about as anarcho as you can get to playing major label rock music (I like New Wave and White Crosses a lot) and this transition was the fulcrum of mainstream criticism of the record. I remember the review of New Wave in Vice saying "Against Me! went all Bruce Springsteen on us." Ditto for Rise Against, who similarly benefitted from their past in Chicago area hardcore and skatepunk bands in making their political message seem more legit.

For the record: Against Me! kicks ass and Rise Against has never been for me. At their best they are a way, way worse version of Strike Anywhere and at their worst they are punk Nickelback. Everyone loved them so much when I was in high school, but I never understood the appeal.

I think this is all a result of punk music working its way into mainstream culture in a major way between the mid 90s and mid 00s. On one hand it was great because seeing blink-182 on MuchMusic was exactly how I found out about punk, but it also meant that most people coming to bigger punk shows were not punks at all. They liked to mosh and thought the music was cool, but I don't think would have cared about selling out in a million years. 

It seems crazy to think about it now, but there were legitimate high school, popped American Eagle polo collar bros at screamo shows in Southern Ontario. I guess there were parts of the subculture that appealed to them, meaning they wanted to hook up with the girls, but there's no way they were really into any of the bigger political and social ideas informing the music. But you could say to them that X bass player was in a heavy band before this and they would think that was... something?

I remember talking to a kid at my high school about how bands make a living. He had gone to see the Dropkick Murphys the past weekend and couldn't believe how cheap the tickets were. I thought that $35 for a punk show was too expensive, but he thought the bands should be charging even more so that they could make more money. The next year, he went to Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario and I never saw him at a punk show ever again.