My ten favorite punk songs and why they suck (Part 2)

Here is the second part of the series I began yesterday:

5. "Rolodex Propaganda" by At the Drive-in

The spiky, nonsensical phrases that protrude from the white-hot chassis of this song are what really do it for me. They sound like the death screams of some demented beast clawing desperately but futilely for relevance. And the music hurtling along underneath them manages to incorporate just enough nerdish, contorted guitar riffs and soaring synth to be musically interesting without lapsing into the autoeroticism of prog-rock or compromising its raw punk sound. This band is what punk is when played at its best: Challenging on all fronts, but also visceral.

Of course, At the Drive-In is no more. The band's chief masterminds, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, have forsaken their punk roots for the opulence and--hey--autoerotic prog-rock of a new project, the Mars Volta. That's how punks go, more often than not. Everyone eventually seems to say "Hell, I'm too old for this shit" and go on to something more mature. Even the genre's patron saints defect--Johnny Rotten, Ian MacKaye, Bad Brains, Henry Rollins, Glen Danzig and even Dee Dee Ramone. Me, I'm a grown man. Soon I'll be a college graduate looking for a real job, so am I not too old for this shit?

4. "California Uber Alles," by the Dead Kennedys

"California Uber Alles" is everything punk rock should be--sinister, powerful, biting, clever, offensive, theatrical, absurd and, for all of that, tuneful and catchy. Poor Jerry Brown. My dad was actually a big supporter of his, but he will definitely be best remembered as Jello Biafra's target in this tune. Here he is assailed in clever, vivid and snarky lyrics that are, like much of what Biafra wrote, extremely funny. When many people think "punk," they think of this song and, for the genre, that's a good thing.

Biafra is also a problem I have with this song. Most of my current musical heroes--Stephen Malkmus, E-40, David Byrne, 1970s Bob Dylan, Kevin Drew and early 1990s Stuart Murdoch--seem interesting and fun to hang out with. I feel like I have to relate to musicians these days and most punk rock musicians seem like either unpleasant companions (Biafra, Rollins, MacKaye, Rotten) or idiots (GG Allin, Ramone, Jerry Only, anyone from the Casualties), or of course both. I don't think I'd like to have a conversation with anyone as self-righteous, cynical, cocky or theatrical as Biafra's onstage persona. Maybe that's not a big deal for other people, but it is for me.

3. "This Is Not a Photograph" by Mission of Burma

Mission of Burma is a dorky band. Just look at the technical quality of their guitar playing, the chordal bassline and the slide guitar, keeping in mind that this is before they started to get real artsy (for punk). Just listen to those Dada-influenced lyrics. You can tell these guys went to college and read books. They are essentially an ivory tower garage band, three guys who just wanted to write the types of songs they'd like to listen to, except that they happened to be classically trained musicians. And hey, I guess I want to listen to those types of songs too.

Come on, though. Is Mission of Burma really punk? Yes, but it's easy to get confused, as were most people in Burma's time. They got an indifferent response at the gigs they played with other Boston hardcore bands like SS Decontrol for not being as hard, fast, or simple, or dressing like punks. That's because punk is not a genre that rewards a sense of adventure, it's a genre that rewards those who want to replicate the sounds everyone else is making. When a band tries to refine, expand, or explore its sound, it is greeted with a violent response from its core fans because what punks really want to hear (but not necessarily what musicians want to play) is three chords and, if not the truth, then at least something they can punch one another to.

2. "Corona" by the Minutemen

The Minutemen produced a clutch of great songs that sprawled across the landscape of musical genres, mostly rooted in punk and bassist Mike Watt's dexterous, funky chops. But what made them great was the unashamed sincerity of their lyrics, ham-fisted poet Watt's tenderhearted stream-of-consciousness and history book-reading guitarist D. Boon's itchy, frustrated sloganeering. This one is among their best and certainly their best-known, Boon's tender lament on the poverty he witnessed on a trip to Mexico. These lyrics are accentuated by a complex, appropriately spiced musical arrangement that accentuates the soul in Boon's haggard voice.

The music was also used as the soundtrack for the T.V. series "Jackass," maybe more recognizable on frazzled electric than soulful acoustic. One almost suspects that the dichotomy between the song's content and the show's was intended deliberately to incite knowing laughs. But "Corona's" use for "Jackass" illustrates that, despite its supposed anti-commercial ethos, punk has become yet another manifestation of commerce, just another interchangeable cultural symbol whose meaning is at the fingertips of anyone willing to pay for it. And it extends even to bands noted for their sincerity like the Minutemen.

1. "Blank Generation" by Richard Hell and the Voidoids

Patti Smith aside, Richard Hell is the greatest poet punk has ever known. He did pithy slogans ("Blank Generation," "Love Comes in Spurts"), he could go all over the emotional palette, and even when he was being preposterous ("The Plan") it wasn't his words that failed him. More than any other, this song set the tone for the punk aesthetic: nihilistic, snide, vaguely otherworldly. The second verse is particularly vivid, proof that lyricists like Hell can breathe life into their music. And Hell's caterwaul is also criss-crossed by some very impressive solos, both in this version and in the one he recorded with the Heartbreakers. There's a lot of talent here and the end result sounds very good.

Look at Richard Hell, though. At how he is dressed. Hell is the man credited with inventing punk fashion and I think he has a lot to answer for--not because it is necessarily a bad look but because the spirit of punk has been subsumed by fashion. For many people, there is nothing to punk beyond safety pins, studs, torn clothes and mohawks, except perhaps for violence. But that's not really what punk is supposed to be about. My interpretation, when I was into it, was that punk was about knowing what is important to you and telling everything else to fuck off. When I learned that, nowadays, what it is actually about is who has the tallest liberty spikes, I politely told punk to fuck off.

My ten favorite punk songs and why they suck (Part 1)

Punk rock sucks. I'm sorry if you think otherwise. I don't necessarily mean that the music is bad, but I do mean that as a movement and an idea, it has become quaint, tiresome and often antithetical to its original meaning. That and, even from the beginning, the music was mostly bad.

But I grew up listening to punk, trading enthusiastic stories behind mosh pit scars with my friends on Monday mornings. And as much as I would like to stop, I still like it. Guiltily, I still have my favorite songs. But even those remind me of why the genre is played out and lame. So here are the first five, alongside the reasons I like them and how they illustrate why punk sucks:

10. "World Peace" by Cro-Mags

The Cro-Mags aim their chunky, chugging bass intro straight at the gut, where it explodes on impact into a big, manly fireball of a song. The ideal soundtrack for mosh pits, especially when performed as energetically as the Cro-Mags do.

But like much punk, that's also its greatest weakness. It is composed strictly for live performance. Just look at the second video, at how the song gradually loses steam, only to reveal that it was all just an intro to "No Mercy." It's all just mosh fuel, just sweaty, gory dance music--kind of ironic coming from a genre with such intellectual pretensions. And I'm not convinced, at least not by John Joseph and Harley Flanagan's lyrics, that world peace can't be done.

9. "Kick Out the Jams" by MC5

There's a lot to like about this song. It's not in the video, but Wayne Kramer's exclamation of "motherfucker" at the start of the song legitimately challenged taste. The song also has a palpable, white-hot energy about it. But the best part is that the lyrics definitely sound like an ode to premature ejaculation--"You know how you want it child/hot, quick and tight/the girls can't stand it when you're/doin' it right!" Why would anyone write that? I don't know, but it's hilarious.

But that's also "Kick Out the Jams'" weakness. Judging by the existence of the MC5 track "Come Together," which very definitely is not referring to premature ejaculation, that quirk of the lyrics is unintended. Which means that, like so many punk bands, MC5 is one I laugh at, not with.

8. "Deep Six" by Big Black

Murky, menacing, visceral and undeniably unpleasant, this is music that puts hair on your chest. The bassline is muscular and slinky, a coiled snake that holds you down so the angular, metallic spurts of guitar noise can slice you to ribbons. And the lyrics are every bit as sinister as the arrangement, sanded into your ears by Steve Albini's jaded but menacing sneer. The effect is sonic violence, not the kind of ostentatious, cartoonish violence that fills movie screens with fire and smoke, but the kind of ugly, brutal, real-life violence that leaves children without a father.

Yet, what of the lyrics? Albini obviously didn't intend to take the form of the angry mob whose perspective they take--the band's trademark was lyrics that portrayed psychotic scumbags with the kind of disgust you'd feel if one of them started talking to you at a Greyhound Station. But people often missed that. Most punk rockers are, I'm sorry, too stupid not to take lyrics literally--witness "Kill the Poor," or even more ridiculously, "Anarchy in the U.K." Plus, do I really want to pull up to a stoplight blasting "I'm God's gift to women/They always want my dick?"

7. "Another Girl, Another Planet" by the Only Ones

This band's chops were incredible. You don't see many solos in punk--not just because the aesthetic opposes them but because they just don't go with the music. The one here not only takes skill, it works with the song. And a catchy song it is, and poignant. It's such an innovative concept that it seems obvious--a tortured but smitten love song to heroin.

Heroin is also the song's, and the band's problem. Just look at the toll it took on them in this painful later performance. Punk doesn't intrinsically promote heroin, but the nihilistic, rebellious aesthetic gives people who take it to heart license to do extremely stupid, irresponsible things. If punk means anarchy and independence, surely nothing is less punk than drug dependence. But let's be serious--Johnny Thunders, Bradley Nowell, Sid Vicious and a host of other punk rockers were pretty much too stupid to see that.

6. "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies

There's a great deal of art to "Institutionalized" beneath its meatheaded sound. Not many songs even bother to tell a story using first-person dialogue, but this one does and does it with the palpable frustration and rage conveyed by most of the best punk. There is also humor--the narrator's obsession with getting a Pepsi has a Pythonesque degree of absurdity.

This is definitely the most believably furious song in the genre, but that is a damning indictment of what punk supposedly stands for. Aren't punk songs supposed to be political, about how angry the system makes us, about how we want to change it? Why aren't any of those songs this enraged? Instead we get inane, painful songs like this. My guess? Nobody that enraged and knowledgeable about social ills wastes their time writing songs that (let's face it) nobody will ever listen to.

Five more on the way.

Let's admit it: We all love awful music, and that's okay.

"Drop Baby Drop," by The Mana'o Company, has lyrics so bad they have caused me physical pain. The line "drop all your love on me" conjures vivid fecal imagery for me, made all the more disturbing by the next line, "drop 'cause I'm hungry."

Then there is the puzzling couplet, "My heart does the tango/every little move you make/I love you like a mango/wish we could make it everyday." That really makes me wonder just what it is the songwriter does with mangoes. And why he decided to include two unnecessarily awkward words like "tango" and "mango" in the first place.

I love the song, though. It has a certain innocent charm to it, like much throwaway Hawaiian pop, unashamed of reading like a kindergartener's poem or being unabashedly sexual. I listen to a lot of tinny, ukulele-infused reggae for that reason and, though none of it is quite that cringe-inducing (aside from "Punani Patrol" by Sean Na'auao), none of it could be confused for Bob Dylan, or even Bob Marley (except "Guava Jelly," by Ka'au Crater Boyz, which was originally Marley's).

So how does so-called Jahwaiian music fit in with the weak-voiced, muzzy headed Indie and Alternative rock that makes up the majority of what I listen to? Maybe it comes from the hipster inside of all of us, who seriously wants to laugh at himself. My upbringing on Oahu played a part as well, but only in determining which specific lowbrow strain to pursue.

My friend recently wrote a blog in which he said he loved Hair Metal because it "is a hell of a lot of fun, especially when you place [it] next to the pretentious Indy and Emo bands who are producing music that always has to mean something." I understand his argument, but I think the most fun is to be had by balancing music that tries hard for significance and artistic credibility with music that just wants to party.

Most of us listen to both types, in my experience. I have a friend who has an entire library's worth of classical piano, but there are times, though he doesn't like to tell his Liberal Arts classmates, when he blasts the Jahwaiian. It probably also explains the enthusiasm of so many trendy college-age kids (myself among them) for Bay Area rap, which actively goes for the "so dumb it's actually just really dumb" effect.

Can you honestly look into your own library of songs without finding, somewhere, something embarrassing? That Blink-182 song you loved in junior high? The Ninja Turtles theme? MC Hammer? Journey? UB-40? "Baby Got Back"?

And I also have friends whose musical tastes are cribbed from the soundtracks of movies like "American Pie" and "Spider-Man" whose mix tapes will surprise you by separating an Avril Lavigne song from an 'N Sync tune with a ten-minute improvisation from Miles Davis or John Coltrane. People are more complicated than they are often given credit for, and their record collections reflect that. Everyone loves a few terrible songs, and even people with the worst taste can't get it wrong all the time.

This is a new blog and I am excited about it.

My friend Jake and I decided over a year ago that, as aspiring writers keyed into modern fads, we should start a blog that would, hopefully, become widely read and make us wildly successful without having to do stupid little things like getting jobs or leaving our dorm rooms.

Later, it became a half-hearted hobby, and then a neglected pursuit. But this fall, I became serious about writing and decided to give it another go, so I dusted off the old site and started leaving posts on it.

As a serious writer (all of a sudden), I felt obliged to write about serious things--Cuba, Barack Obama, things like that. But I also had an overriding interest in music and sports that started to creep into my postings. Good writing, I thought, was worthy of reading, so I shouldn't hesitate to post it.

But I also felt the need to keep it separate from my other work, so I have created two new blogs. This one, which deals with music, and A Sport for Pretentious Hipsters and Foreigners, where I will write about soccer, another thing I am passionate about. That way, I hope to keep myself better organized in my writing and delineate boundaries. Hopefully, the partition will also help those interested in the specific subjects on those blogs to find what they are looking for.