I Keep Faith.
We were seeing Billy Bragg at the worst venue in the city, one I normally avoid, but for some reason I got in free; Jo must have had tickets or something? Not important. Point is, we were there.
Billy talked about Youtube videos, comedic animal ones. I believe this was a segueway into broadcasting his principled stand against the MySpace terms-of-use or some such timely internet-related bother. It seems like ancient history to even type “MySpace terms-of-use,” but there you go. That’s why we will forever have trouble talking about the 2000s as we move on through history; we will be forced to reference these endless technological and cultural trifles with extreme annotation just to get through the most basic story.
Anyway, then he talked about his son, which I believe was just basically a segueway into more tales of hilarious animal hijinks, which may have at some point led to a song. Definitely there was a song eventually, though I may have it framed incorrectly. I do remember I felt a bit of a jolt when he actually strummed a chord, the feeling one might get watching someone hanging high up on a slowly fraying rope. The rope would fray and fray and you would fret and fret and then eventually the whole slow process would get pretty fucking boring. You’d look around at other stuff or, at the very least, the suspense would sort of evaporate, leaving probably even the person hanging from the rope with a creeping sense of security. Maybe it would even get sort of comfortable, everyone making jokes back and forth, ordering dinner, checking if their bangs had grown long enough to tuck behind their ears yet and then SNAP. Billy plays a song.
Anyway, there’s certainly more talking and kidding about, but I may as well get to my point: sometime in the throes of this, Billy points out a poster for Underoath that says “CHRISTIAN PUNK ROCK” on it and talks about how this is a contradiction in terms; he does this with that same smugness that anyone who trots out the old “military intelligence” saw does. And I have no love for either Christian Punk Rock or the Military-Industrial Complex, but usually these “contradiction in terms” gags are so lazy and non-conducive to an actual conversation that I instantly feel exhausted when someone throws them on the table. But, whatever. Lousy, boring joke, I can handle that; I’ve just listened to the guy talk about a squirrel eating a cookie for 20 minutes for crissakes.
But then he follows it up with “IN MY DAY…,” and I know things are going to completely fall apart and I’m going to have to toss all my Billy Bragg discs in the river in a weighted sack. And: of course. “IN MY DAY, A PUNK BAND WAS THE CLASH!” Well, shit, brother. You have officially lost me. Just like a few years earlier when I was reading an interview with Neil Young about his so-so Living With War disc, where he says, “I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer 18 to 22 years old to write these songs and stand up, I waited a long time. Then I decided that maybe the generation that has to do this is still the ’60s generation. We’re still here.” Or just like when I saw American Hardcore, a tiresome documentary about a bunch of 80s screamers who decided that punk ended at whatever point they became uninterested in it. Or like every damn day I worked at a CD shop, hearing people say how music has sucked since 1966 or 1981 or 1999 or whenever they stopped being 22, whenever their subculture matchstick burned down, whenever the first twist in the plot came that didn’t fully engage them.
We all grow older, we all change. Many of us lack for the time or energy it takes to hear all the amazing new music that’s being produced, especially now, when the venues for finding it are so increasingly self-directed. Or maybe all music is boring to you after your experiences in the trenches; perfectly valid, too. Interest splinters and dwindles and shifts and so on. But it’s important to remember that, a) the world goes on without you, b) young people and old people alike continue to create vibrant art, even if you don’t like or understand it, and c) to the larger culture, or even the smaller subculture, your lack of interest or participation is the last thing that anyone still involved gives a flying shit about.
Thing is, in spite of whether you think punk or whatever died and became irrelevant at some mythical cut-off point when you and your friends stopped going to house shows, it’s still happening. If Sony Recording Artists The Clash are the standard-bearers for your dreams and ideals, please at least recognise that someone who is 15 may have different points of reference, and they may want to engage with things that are not 30 years in the past. They may want to be in and support living, thriving communities of musicians and artists…people who need that support desperately. They may care more about current issues than the dangers of Thatcher and Reagan, as instructive as those histories are.
So, rather than insulting the inabilities of younger artists to respond to their times, perhaps your time would be better spent actually looking for the ones who do, and not just waiting for it to appear from your label rep or on commercial radio. Neil Young may not have detected a single voice responding to war, but I sure heard thousands upon thousands, many more eloquent and more stinging than anything he’s produced in his lifetime.
And, finally, rather than imagining yourself the centerpiece of every movement you’ve ever dabbled in, be aware that no matter how tired a mode of expression may seem to you, it’s still fresh as a daisy to someone else. That bubbling passion that started you on whatever road you’re on? That passion is being felt all over the world, in an 8 year-old kid who just heard their older sister’s band practicing in the basement, or a 15 year-old kid who just got a raging MP3 im’d to them, or a 35 year-old who just finished their 16th European tour. Because age isn’t the qualifying factor, nor is it the amount of time you’ve been involved. It’s simply belief and interest. You’re perfectly welcome to abandon all of that, but please don’t deny everybody else the opportunity.
Bill. Billy. Maybe check out the lyrics to this song; I believe this is a current artist you’re familiar with. “You have to make great sacrifice for such little gain…” Lots of young people continue to make those sacrifices, sir. Check ‘em out on the Youtube.
