May 2010 Editorial

Just remember that you can't return to the golden ages of the past, you must always look to the future.
- Youth Brigade in 1984 -

 

I was standing in line for the premier of We Were Feared, the new documentary on the Orange County Punk venue, Cuckoo's Nest, and I was surrounded by old Punks who were mostly either trying to pull off some kind of quasi Greaser look or who looked like they had just given up on themselves and finally assumed the role of the washed up, permastoned surfer Hippie. Names were being dropped from every direction "Oh yeah I remember hanging out with Jack Grisham at the Nest," "I saw Tony from the  Adolescents a few weeks ago. I used to see him around all the time back in the day." The funny thing was though not one of these people who were dropping names seemed to have a single story about anything that they had done themselves. It was all stories about hanging out with people that they construed as being rad.

This disease is contagious in Southern California. It seems like every time an old Punk is around they are talking about how easy the kids today have it or how dangerous and cool Fenders Ballroom was. "That was when Punk was Punk, man." The question though is not what you did or saw twenty five years ago, but what the Hell are you doing now. It would be funny to see how long a lot of these geezers would actually last if they tried to take an active role in the Punk scene today, and that doesn't include playing in a bar band that tries to sound like The Ramones, The Clash, or Stiff Little Fingers. The people who talk about how dangerous things were back in the day now spend their time hanging out at safe bar gigs where everyone sits around sucking back booze, trying to remember what they did in the 1980's. They give younger kids no credit for carrying the flame, when in reality it may be a lot harder to actually live the lifestyle now than they would ever imagine.

Today's Punk scene may be less violent and the kids might be a little less sick but some attention should be paid to the fact that kids are walking the walk in ways that people never seemed to "back in the day." It's easy to jump onto the Punk bandwagon when there are all ages shows with thousands of people in a huge venue regularly. It's a little harder to keep things happening when almost every all ages venue gets shut down, bans Punk shows altogether, or requires the opening bands to sell tickets to play. Meanwhile young Punks are doing their best to stay true to their ideals, keeping door prices low, trying to play all ages shows whenever possible, and living the  D.I.Y. ethic. In general being an active member of the scene takes a lot more commitment and integrity than ever before. While Punks of the past had a fuck all attitude, it's impossible to have that attitude now and stay involved in a scene that requires a lot of work to get done to maintain itself. Really how rad are you now if all you can do is talk shit on what kids are doing now and pretending that you were hot shit in the 1980's?

While most of us young guns are grateful to all of the Punks who came before and endured beatings from cops and rednecks just so that they could live their lives outside of the margins, it's important to keep looking forward and to avoid becoming complacent and riding on the legacy of the past. For Punk Rock to survive it had to evolve and perhaps if some of the messages that Punks in the 1970's and 1980's were trying to spread have become more accepted by society than that means that Punk has done its job as a catalyst. This is not something to be bitter about. . . If anything older Punks should be proud that in the long run not only did they survive but that they may have made things better for future generations of people thinking outside the box. However all of these things lose meaning when a sense of pride becomes a sense of entitlement and older Punks meet the new generation with a nose in the air. Just remember that if younger Punks were not carrying on with the scene then all of those glory days would just be pathetic, wasted memories of an older generation and absolutely nobody would care. A refusal to admit that there is a validity to the younger generations of Punks is in a way surrendering to every fucker who ever threw bottles at kids with mohawks and yelled "Punk's dead, faggot."

(Above photo is not a recreation, but from a Punk show of second generation Punk kids)

There would be no point to putting out a documentary like We Were Feared if there were nobody to pass the message onto. Why would anybody but the few people involved in the 1980's Punk scene want to watch a documentary on the Cuckoo's Nest if all interest in the early Hardcore scene had died away? We Were Feared is actually a pretty cool film, but if it is used as a tool for old people to pat themselves on the back rather than to pass a message down to younger generations than it becomes a lot less useful and a lot less interesting. Those who were there already know what happened so why even bother telling the story if its only going to be used to masturbatory purposes? Without new generations interpreting the movement in their own way, Punk will just become boring Classic Rock like Pink Floyd until the last of the old Punks dies while playing "Kiss Me Deadly" on an acoustic guitar.

-Ditch-
Asst. Editor