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.