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.

The Roller

My favourite Against Me! song is "Even At Our Worst We're Still Better Than Most (The Roller)" off of the album Searching for a Former Clarity. Like most of my favourite songs, I have a vivid memory tied to it, which kinds of cements it in my personal pantheon of songs.

While living in Kitchener, my friends and I used to drive to a quarry halfway between Guelph and Kitchener late at night. We could only go at night, because it was private property and you would the cops called on you otherwise. Once there, we sneak through a fence, trek through a bit of brush and then go and jump into the quarry and swim. It was always dark and hard to see, which made it incredibly scary to jump into the water, but also made it that much better once you did it.

The water was always cold, but getting out and walking back to the car felt amazing. Everyone's hair would look a little silly because we had just gone swimming and we would be a weird bathing suit/band t-shirt crew. It felt amazing because we were doing something that we weren't supposed to be doing. It felt like we were part of the counterculture and that being part of it was what binded us together.

I didn't know many people when I first moved to Kitchener and these quarry trips were a big part of me becoming friends with people who I now treasure dearly.

After the first quarry jump of my first summer in Kitchener, we got into The Decay's van (which later became Beat Noir's first van) and I sat in the back row. Erik was sitting shotgun. We listened to Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World, but that had finished on the trip there. Erik picked up the iPod plugged into the stereo and put on "Even At Our Worst We're Still Better Than Most (The Roller)", which caught me off-guard because it is the 11th track on the album. We rolled down the windows and played the song at full volume while driving extremely fast down an small, empty highway at 2 AM.

My reaction to the music was absolutely visceral and physical, so I tried to hide any reaction I was having to it. Fortunately, it was dark and I was in the back corner of the van.

This type of thing has only happened to me a few times and I think it occurs when I hear the perfect song for a moment that also happens to be intensely emotional for me. One was "Chicago" by Big D and the Kids Table while walking home in the rain and also listening to "Felt Just Like Vacation" during a snow storm while walking down Edwin Street in Guelph while extremely sad. I guess they're all moments when the feeling the song stirs in me is overwhelming. They can be good or bad, but they're all equally strong.

For me, the song's lyrics are a testament to believing in your band.

We'll give the money back, to the record label. Fire the agent, fire the manager.

Let someone else take our place, let them be your entertainment.

You know they're waiting to tear us apart.

You realize at a certain point in being in a band that you either do things your way and stay unsuccessful, or do them somebody else's way and be successful. I don't mean this in the typical "sign to a major label and sell out" way, but it's more that you find that you're sort of forced to make minor concessions to a lot of different people along the way. A lot of very small things that seem inconsequential at the time add up eventually.

But fuck that. Stick to who you are.

You can also read the lyrics as a typical punk manifesto of "Fuck them all. Fuck their rules. We'll do it our way. We don't care if we fail." and I think the tropiness of that message combined with the fucking ferocious and perfect delivery of the song by Laura Jane is what makes this song perfect.

Fuck them all.

Fuck their rules.

We'll do it our way.

We don't care if we fail.

And, most of all, you can't stop us.

Some people would maybe look at that message as juvenile, but those are exactly the fucks who never really understood what they were being told in the first place.

I couldn't find the actual version of the song, which is why I put the kid covering it at the top of the page. I was expecting it to be a sub-par cover, as most acoustic videos on the internet are, but it wound up being great and I think that a young kid screaming the lyrics while playing his guitar speaks profoundly to the message I was just talking about.

True Trans

This is the newest Against Me! release. It is two of the songs from the forthcoming Transgender Dysphoria Blues done acoustically. I really think that this is going to be a really amazing and sincere album and I can't wait for it.

Plus one is called FUCKMYLIFE666, so like COME ON!