If Punk’s Dead, Neoliberalism Killed It

Oct 18, 2024

“We're not the first, I hope we're not the last
'Cause I know we're all heading for that adult crash
The time is so little, the time belongs to us
Why is everybody in such a fucking rush?
Make do with what you have
Take what you can get
Pay no mind to us
We're just a minor threat”
-Minor Threat, ‘Minor Threat’

Maybe it was inevitable; every dog has its day.

I found it peculiar and unsettling when, in 2004, NOFX frontman Fat Mike launched voter recruitment drives at shows to try to get John Kerry elected. But I overlooked it because I loved the band’s music. I still do.

Anyway, posterity proved my skepticism at the time of John Kerry correct; if Fat Mike had succeeded, we now know without any doubt that Kerry would have continued all the worst excesses of the Bush regime and possibly worse.

Then came Green Day’s 2005 vapid dumpster fire of a pop-punk single, American Idiot — the epitome of lazy pseudo-rebellious corporate trash mocking flyover people — which got nonstop airplay for what seemed like years.

But whatever; Green Day in my eyes was never a real punk band anyway. If anything, it was the poster-child for what becomes of worthy grassroots projects when dollar signs start flashing and marketers take over.

The truest epiphany for me came in 2016 at a Casualties show in Albuquerque in the buildup to the election.

The lead singer — with the epic three-foot mohawk that probably takes multiple hours and a chemical truck to construct — tossed a severed Trump head into the crowd.

The pit went wild. Kids kicked and thrashed like wild hogs to meat until it was a pulp.

It occurred to me then that these kids had no idea what they thought they were protesting against, and neither apparently did the much-older band, who should have known better were they as politically enlightened as they feign.

Forever-wars, banker blowjobs for campaign cash, the national security state — all the evils of government and corporate America that these kids believe themselves opposed were in fact the vocations of Hillary Clinton and the Democrat/Deep State machine, not Donald Trump.

Something broke inside of me in that moment, and I realized I was in the political wilderness.

COVID further shattered whatever might have remained of any delusions of belonging. Bad Religion, Propagandhi, et al. without exception toed The Science™ line and attacked anyone who stepped outside of the plantation as a fascist or whatever, with no irony.

Via NBC News, August 2021 (emphasis added):

“Pete Parada, the drummer for the Offspring, has found out the hard way that some businesses — and even bands — are drawing a hard line on requiring vaccinations to come back to work… he’s been ousted from the group because he won’t agree to get the Covid vaccine.
Beyond being replaced on an upcoming tour, Parada says he’s been told not to show up at the studio, either, even though he claims to have a legitimate medical reason for not getting the vaccine.”

All good things fall apart.

The last time I visited, I discovered that the Wunderbar — a bar in Trang, Thailand where I spent an inordinate amount of time many years ago and which I grew an unparalleled fondness for and for the people who frequented it, like Cheers but in real life — had closed. The proprietor, a German expat who ran it with his Thai wife, still remained in the area.

I told him it was a shame it had gone; he shrugged in typical Buddhist fashion, having becoming more fully Thai in thirty years of residency than perhaps any expat I’ve met, and said things come and go.

Jelly Biafra said once “in some ways, punk should die.”

Here’s to something better rising from the ashes.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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