Jamming on a Friday

I love being on the road during the heart of nightime, the one that pulsates with mystery, keeps you wondering where the evil in the world went, then, realizing it's right behind you.

Usually, I'm in the car when I see the cadavers piling up at the edge of sidewalks, but once in a while you'll find me on foot. I can walk down the main street of my neighborhood and find many thresholds of the stores occupied by the homeless, drunk, missing, and dead. If I thread through the bodycount lightly, I can come out with an extra fifty dollars, lifting it from the lifeless ones, but that was when money mattered. Now, when I die, just find a hole and toss me in.

What intrigued me the most were the screams. Where were the screams coming from? Men's and women's, sometimes children. I couldn't pinpoin the area because when the air grabs a hold of the noise, of all the voices held inside of its confines, it spins them around, cycles them through al the channels, and it sounds like you're being bombarded from all around; everyone's nightmare is attacking you all at once. All you can do is run, but I don't. I stand there, and I listen. I listen and savor the experience, hold it with me, keep it next to my heart, and once I return home, I bed and have nightmares of my own.

I wonder if people hear my screams?

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Shopping for groceries, I'm listening to Pennywise's first album, the self-titled one. It's a brutal, brilliant piece of work, and every single song is a warrior's anthem. I still attribute it to being their best album. It's punk at it's fastest and most honest, emanating in the early 90's, back when punk was going through an identity crisis, then a blender, and came out as something horrible and cheeky.

I stand by Pennywise and Bad Religion, but when you say punk, all anyone with a humble thought can seem to conjure up is The Ramones. I'll give them their respect, they earned it, but there is so much more out there. NOFX of course, Minor Threat (always underrated), and, yes, The Sex Pistols, but they hated everything, including punk, and including themselves, and while they too have earned my respect, don't be surprised if I leave them out of the MP3 player for a while.

I'm not the biggest fan of the punk genre, but I know what sucks, what's true, and what's trying too hard to be something different. Stop trying to be different, and just try to be good. People want the notoriety without honing their talent. Only in America can this work, but how much respect does a musician really want to gain in America when the album charts reads like a Teen Spleen magazine?

Give me Europe's sense of music any day. Although, this does leave the richness of the underground scene in America something to value.