Punk is dead

I was at the bookstore today and stopped by the Starbucks inside to get a coffee. I don't go in for that caramel macchiato, venti frappuccino nonsense. My dad raised me to be a man not a 15 year old girl. I drink my coffee straight black... because I'm a man and because when I was 14 and put cream and sugar in my coffee my father called me a wuss, and now I do the same to any man drinking that watered down bull-crap.

Anyway, I'm at the Starbucks and on the CD sale rack I see the Ramones' Rocket to Russia. So I scan the overhead menu and exclaim, "I'll have a venti Iced mocha frappaccino with extra whipped cream!"

We've lost the war punk rockers. It wasn't all the Blink 182 wannabe's bubble gum bullshit, or Greenday's self-aggrandizing rock opera's/F-ing Broadway shows. It wasn't even the poor little emo kids clamoring their genesis began with solid introspective punk bands like Minor Threat, that discredited the genera I always saw as the conscience of rock and roll. It was freaking Starbucks.

So to all you kids out there listening to your cool uncles old Dead Kennedy's LPs or Bad Brain's tapes, to all you pissed off teens channeling your rage through a three chord progression in your garage or basement with your 2 or 3 best friends; to you 35 year old who still wears his CBGB's to work at least once a week; turn off the record player, hang up your axe, buy a suit.

We've lost the war, brothers and sisters. I'd recommend cutting ties as quickly as you possibly can: take a bunch of E and going to a Lady GaGa show.

 ...Screw that!

It doesn't matter if Joey Ramone and Sid Vicious come back from the dead just to open up an American Eagle franchise together, punk is bigger then the artists who play it. It's stronger than record executives bent on defining and packaging a product to angry kids, and it's more enduring than any label we could put on it.

Punk rock is the small reminder in back of our sonic consciousness that Rock and Roll is not about stadiums or sex or fame or even talent. Punk reminds us that Rock and Roll can be as simple as a scream of futility and frustration, that any kid with a resolve to be heard can make a racket with a 50 dollar guitar until somebody, anybody takes notice, and no mater how music changes and is distorted that will never change. We won't let it.