What is Punk Rock?

Greetings,

What is Punk Rock?  Is it freedom, religion, rebellion… Punk rock is about being able to do whatever you want regardless of whether or not it’s good as long as it has passion.  I learned that when I was 15, and I was told that by a 15 year old today.  Which means in context, everything that I learned about music in the 90′s still holds true.  The 90′s was a great time for music for a few reasons… the first obviously being Kurt Cobain.  Kurt single handedly turned the music industry upside down and taught us all that conformity is for posers and commercial rock sucks.  This left an opportunity for an entire generation of music to emerge and long story short has brought us to this point today.

As a guitar player I don’t want to make this a blog about punk rock… it’s not about grunge, metal, rap-hop or ska.  I really just wanted to address the things that happend in the 90′s that carries that inspirational stand point that drove us to the point to where the X generation can look back and say, “we did that right”.  The slacker generation, whatever you wanna call us.  It won’t have a starting point and I’m not sure where it’s going to end so I’ll just dive right in.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what music was in 1990…. I was 10.  I listened to the Beach Boys and the Fat Boys and my favorite song was “Wild Boys”… it’s cool, laugh.  I didn’t have a clue.  My dad used to listen to a lot of blues, so when Stevie Ray Vaughan died on August 27th I was affected quite a bit but I still didn’t really know what was goin’ on.  I remember watching his performances on Austin City Limits and being amazed at how he could play the guitar behind his back and head.  It wasn’t Hendrix playing, but it sounded almost exactly like what I had heard Hendrix play from songs like “Voodoo Childe (Slight Return)” and “Little Wing” among others.  His playing would later affect me as a musician, but like I said before…. I still knew jack about what was about to happen.

In 1991 Metallica released the Black Album.  “Enter Sandman” hit the charts and my first taste of real music had occured… It’s not that is was overplayed, but it was really the first song I remember getting sick of as well.  Don’t get me wrong, I still rock the solo to this day… but at the time that’s still all there was for me when it came to Metallica.  I imagine it had something to do with the emergence of CDs as a new way to listen to music rather than cassette and I was too young to buy my own music and had yet to own a CD player.  Led Zeppelin released a 4 album CD and I still had no clue who they were.  Lollapalooza or as we might more have recently called it the first NIN/JA tour was going on and I might very well have not even been born yet.  Looking back… this was a monumental festival.  Nine Inch Nails was still breaking and Jane’s Addiction was still contreversial.  They played that tour with Ministry and the Butthole Surfers who later would be a huge influence on my music.

In 1992, I remember things really started happening.  I got my 1st subscription to BMG music and also my first CD player… there was this thing where you could sign people up for the disc club and for each person you signed up you could get 3 CD’s.  I remember actually taping a penny on their little postcard and ordering like 8 albums or something like that.  1st 2 BMG albums I ordered were Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion I and II.  I had already went out and bought the Beastie Boys Liscence to Ill from one of those cardboard box things they used to put CDs in so people wouldn’t rip em off.  Nirvana’s Nevermind album came and I got one of the editions that had the extra secret song at the end that was 13 minutes into 7 minutes of dead air.  Grunge became the thing and I still wasn’t cool… I’ve never been cool, but anyone who knew anything about what was going on was about to buy a flannel t-shirt.  Pearl Jam released the album Ten and I knew it was supposed to be awesome but I never bought it, I didn’t like the Jeremy song either.  Soundgarden I was into… I wouldn’t have the Superunknown album until ’95, but I thought the album had a brilliant sound and I guess it wasn’t by chance, but I had no idea how awesome these guys were before I had heard this album.  This was right around the year when all the shit went down with the changes with the Big 5 dropping all their artists after gobbleing up all the record companies.  I remember there being tons of bands out there that I wanted to get into and they were really gone before I knew they existed.

In 1993 I remember all this stuff going on with Eric Clapton and thinking he had an amazing sound.  The Unplugged album was great and I really like the “Tears in Heaven” song.  Megadeth was doing well with Countdown to Extinction and I was still trying to figure out what the hell music was. This would be the last year that would occur.

1994.  Everything happend.  I got my first real job and spent my first paycheck on Metallica’s Live Shit Binge and Purge album.  9 hours of Metallica.  Amazing… By far the best introduction to music I could have possibly had.  It had everything from old Metallica to bootlegs, tons of swearing, boobs, the whole works.  I saw they had a song called “So What” that I really enjoyed, so when looking through CDs at the record store there was this band called Ministry that had a song called “So What” on an old live album called “In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up (Live).  I can’t really remember if I bought the VHS first or the other way around, but both rocked harder than anything I had ever heard before.  I also went out and bought the Pantera VHS Cowboys From Hell the Videos VHS… They had a song I really like called “Heresy” and while once again going through CDs at the record store I found a band called Nine Inch Nails that had a song called “Heresy” on a single called Closer to God.  That was it… it had like 7 different versions of the same song and none of them sounded the same and it was heavy!  I also had it before the Downward Spiral came out so by the time everyone had heard the song on the radio I knew they still had no idea what was up.  I became an eliteist at that point I guess…  liking bands that I thought I had discovered first and then hearing other people were into that same thing… (keep in mind I had no clue what music was when Lollapalooza came out).  I bought Danzig’s “Thralldemonsweatlive” and it really took me places in my mind that had never really thought about.  Not that I became a full blown satanist, but his music was just really dark and moody… something I could relate to and I was into that.  Vulger Display of Power came out that year and then THAT was the heaviest thing I had ever heard.  I remember thinking the vocals sucked and how can you ruin such great music by screaming over it, but I was too young to understand what the message was.  Woodstock ’94 was really a huge influence as well.  There were so many bands on that bill that it was hard not to be affected by it.  By that time I had gotten into both Primus and Green Day and it was awesome to see the Mudsliding going on and seeing how f’n muddy Trent was during the NIN set.  Watching them destroy all their gear was my first glipse of “dude, their destroying all those keyboards… that button isn’t gunna work anymore it just fell off!”  Kurt had died earlier that year and I just felt like it was too soon.  His music was the voice of our generation and whatever model he created still lives inside my soul today whenever I pick up the guitar.  Anthrax released the album Sound of White Noise and to me, this album was incredible.  From beginning to end it was straight up rockin’… ” I I i I I i I I i i i I , who, what, where, when, why ” I dunno man, that just says it all for me.  It was also the first year that I remember not really liking Bon Jovi or Aerosmith.  Get a Grip had all these hit songs and none of em sounded like “Dude Looks Like a Lady”  I was starting to get into Metal Edge magazine and Bon Jovi was on the back cover… so I think I had bought a Bon Jovi album that came out around that time, Livin’ on a Prayer maybe… I dunno, but it bored me and it wasn’t metal.  Nothin’ against Bon Jovi… still dig the talk box thing and it’s cool today seein’ ladies go nuts down @ Lahinas during the sunset in the summertime.  I just couldn’t see placing that dude with the guys that released “Fucking Hostile”.  Concrete Corner was being put out on constant basis.  For those of you who don’t know what Concrete Corner was, it was a sampler cassette that had like 10 songs from all these really heavy bands and I always did my best to get one before it got grabbed up.  Great year… Offsring Smash came out and that was when I really started to question the music industry and the whole idea of being trendy and liking things that other people were into.  Liking music became a club.

That being said, don’t call me on shit if I didn’t get the right year.  This is the year things really started to happen… 1995.  I picked up the guitar.  Now, before I go on you can almost see how this had developed.  But maybe not or we’d all be playing guitar right now, right?  I, to be honest…. didn’t really come up with the idea of playing 1st.  I saw a friend of mine jammin’ “Seek & Destroy” and remember that as being one of the coolest things.  It was there that I began my journey as a musician.  All those other things I’ve already mentioned… they were all about to start making real sense.  I started trying to learn notes on the guitar and remember I had no clue on how to get it to make a sound.  My dad had an Urban Blues book, and after thinking I had learned the notes I remember trying to play a song for on this beat up old Stella guitar and trying to show him that I knew notes and he was just like… “not quite, J”.  Turns out the book sucked for teachin’ me how to jam some blues.  But I knew I liked Metallica, so I went out and bought a Live Shit Binge and Purge tab book from the music store and turned it right to “Seek and Destroy”.  I by this time knew I needed an electric guitar so somehow I ended up with this beat up hunk of shit Regal and a crappy little Peavey amp…. but I thought it was awesome.  I learned how to read TAB right away and although I wasn’t getting the songs at full speed, and I knew for some reason the guitar wasn’t in tune that I was doing what was right to get things done.  Turns out the guitar was never in tune for more than 5 minutes… I remember trying a song like “Whiplash” and just watching the tuning key roll backwards.  But whatever ya know, I was rockin’ and that’s what mattered.  I bought my first Guitar World magazine this year.  I believe it was the September issue with “Creeping Death/It’s the End of the World/and the Man Who Sold the World”  That was also the same exact time Guitar One came out and had Kurt Cobain on the cover.  These two magazines taught me a lot of really important stuff right off the bat and without any formal training I was jamming songs… or rather pieces or riffs all on my own.  Music became my life… and that was right around the time I decided to buy my first real guitar, The KH2.  It had been about 9 months and I still didn’t have a clue what a chord was… but I knew how to play the intro to “Sad But True” and that opening A chord opened up the heavens the first time I heard it.

So here we go.  1996, the year Atomic Bob was born.  The year I went to go see White Zombie off the Astro Creep 2000 tour.  J. Yeunger hit my in the head with a guitar pick, and then I grabbed the next one that came out off this bikers shoulder of his leather jacket. The same year I saw Marilyn Manson off the Antichrist Superstar tour.  I was well into buying albums, studying music, playing songs, jamming with friends, starting bands, and discovering who was who in music.  SRV was gone, but his music lived through my guitar.  Hendrix started coming out of the new ESP andeverything got really dark.  All this rock and roll was happening and I got into bands like the Pumpkins and Bush and Filter.  I got into the obscure stuff as well…. if it was twisted, then it was for me.  My attitude was really very punk rock, very metal, and very ready to kick everyones ass with my guitar.

By 1997 I had bought my first real amp.  I got the first model Line 6 that had all the synthetic tones that were modeled after tube amps.  Kirk Hammet used one and so did a friend of mine so somehow it just made sense.  Things were starting to fall apart in the music industry.  It’s almost hard to tell you which albums were released cause it was still off the wake of Cobain’s death that no one really knew what was gunna happen.  Korn was getting bigger and bigger, and ya know… I loved “Blind” man, that song sent chills up my spine the first time I heard it but because they were still around somehow everyone started sounding like them.  And nothing against Orgy or Coal Chamber, but they really sounded like a mix between Korn and Manson.  Which is probably why I liked em both, but I don’t think it was coincidence.  The industry has always had a way of surviving.  Trends in this business last a minute… and somtimes they last 3 and a half minutes.  If there was anything I had been taught from the industry so far it was don’t do this because you want success quick.  I remember a lot of really shitty music coming out that was just transparent.  I’m not immune to it, I think I’m just like everyone else.  When sold the same product seven to fifteen times in a row things start to grow on ya.

In 1998 I started taking my first theory courses at a local college.  I was still jamming with others and playing out when at all possible.  My view on music was starting to become more solid and with everything I had just learned in the last 2 years I had little doubt in my mind that I would be doing this for a long time.  I started to grow distasteful though.  I started to hate things.  Not that I didn’t think things sucked before, but I really started to thrive off a bitter feeling.  Pain became inspiration.  Shredding became my outlet.  And with a well developed ear, I could hit almost any pitch I wanted in a matter of micro seconds.  I wasn’t just into metal, I was into the attitude that came with it.  I was still feeding off that Cobain mentallity, it’s stuck that heavy for years now that it became just who I was.  I was both an artist and anti-social… that’s just the way it worked.

In 1999 I graduated college with an art degree and an emphasis in music and business.  I knew what I was going to do even if I didn’t know how I was going to do it.  Most of that year was spent in a downward spiral and I wasn’t really regressing my CD collection, I was flooding the gates of everything that was coming out.  Jamming all the old stuff, all the new stuff, anything I could get my hands on I’d play.  I had it all… any new album, any old album.  If it didn’t suck tastefully, I’d have it.  Radiohead’s Ok Computer was one of my favorite albums that year.  This was my 90′s in retrospect.

So what makes it punk rock?  Say it… “Jason, you just told me your version of the 90′s.  That’s not punk rock.”  Well, here it is.  Punk rock is freedom, punk rock is religion, and punk rock is rebellion.  Punk rock is about being able to do whatever you want… even if it sucks, as long as it has passion.

Punk rock is what I do.