Tuesday, October 12th 2010
Blogs: AM Taxi
Postcards To Dead Rock Stars
Dear Roy Orbison,
Greetings from summer camp! I write to you this time regarding “The Spirit of Rock & Roll.” Some say it’s lost. It ain’t lost, it’s just not always where it used to be:
Sometimes loud-mouthed, sometimes furious, occasionally rude and always on fire. Intractable are the youth who wave their fists and bark along. The kids are pissed and they mean it, man. Wait, no, they’re not pissed – they want to dance. No, no, now they want to screw or scream or tweet or something. At any rate, they’ve all shown up here to escape life for a tic while sweating it out in God-knows-what Fahrenheit. This parking lot is the combat zone as well as the playground. Summer’s here and the time is right for growling in the streets. Expensive jeans, neon rage, exuberant and coated with slogans like “balls deep.”
Yeah, I don’t like it either. But would we really want it any other way? I mean, it’s the youth, the rebellion. It’s the brand new dance, and American Bandstand it ain’t. Like it or not, at least for the time being, this is what we’re dealing with. I say let ‘em have it… for now. Welcome to the Vans seven-ring circus you call Warped Tour.
Previously bound exclusively to its punk rock reputation, the Vans Warped Tour has been broadening its horizons over the years to include everything from bluesy folk singers to screaming teenagers who play disco metal. Although not all of us are thrilled about the latter, we have to accept that the times they are a changing and new trends are gonna come along. We don’t always like or understand these new sounds and fashions that turn up, but we have to respect the fact that this, for the time being, is fueling the fire for a large percent of the young music lovers out there. Underneath it all, the principles are somehow still the same. Whether it’s in disguise or in your face, the spirit of rock & roll is still in attendance and it’s foaming at the mouth.
Don’t get me wrong Roy, I’m having the time of my life out here, and there are plenty of great bands to watch every day on this tour. I just wish more people were checking them out. It’s interesting, some of the older folks are finding their fix. They too need the therapy – some more than others. Aimless and as derailed as any teenage freight train, the old timers know that when the smoke clears (and the smoke always clears) the tried and true will still be standing.
Here’s to seeing that happen sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we’ll be alright. Turn up The Gamblers, The Souls and The Big Damn Band. It’s Warped tour and it’s a hell of a way to spend the summer.
Tell Eddie I said happy birthday, and say “hi” to Dee Dee and the boys for me.
Warmest Regards,
Adam Krier
P.S. send beer.
Adam Krier is the frontman for the band AM Taxi. Hear their music at MySpace and check out their official site for more, including info on their new album We Don’t Stand a Chance.
If you’re in a band and have some thoughts to share from inside the business, get at us.
Whitechapel kicks ass.
It can be tough to find credibility at the Warped Tour now. Usually there are a handful of good bands that make it worth the money…but you have to sit through A LOT of shit as well.
I liked this piece though…right on.
Dear Joe Strummer,
I was just reading this eloquent bit about the Warped Tour and it made me think of you. I think about you an awful lot acutally for someone that I’ve never come close to meeting. Usually its once a week or so when I put on London Calling or Global-a-go-go or something. And I wonder. . . what do YOU think of the Warped Tour recently?? I know its only been a few years since you were a part of that very scene but I can’t help but think that every now and then you must still scratch your head and wonder how punk rock got to where it is today. I certainly don’t mean to disparage any of the great bands doing their thing under the banner of punk these days, but simply to wonder about what the threads are that tie them back to the pioneers of punk. Back in the garages that spawned The Stooges, the clubs that first heard The New York Dolls, and the squats where you started rehearsing with the 101′ers, the ideas about what punk meant must have been very different from those that now live in suburban basements where teenagers have to mute their curse words to keep from upsetting their parents. I don’t disvalue the latter whatsoever but simply wonder: how can the same genre of music encompass bands from Elvis Costello and the Attractions to GG Allin? The Damned and Minor Threat? The Queers and The Misfits to Good Charlotte? Johhny Cash to Black Flag? The Pogues to Cocksparrer to NOFX to Blink 182?? X and the Replacements and to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and to Bowling for Soup??? Rudimentary Peni and DRI to MxPx??? I don’t dispute that there is something that unites all of these diverse artists, I just think that I lose touch with what that something is a lot of the time. When one artist is singing about drugs and suicide, another about wars in the middle east, and another about how his girlfriend broke up with him, its easy to lose sight of the commonalities. I’ve found myself in the discussion of “what is punk” many times with many different people and I’ve never heard a satisfactory explanation that accounts for the diversity within the genre. The closest thing I can come up with is that there is a clump of qualities which impart “punkness” to a band and that once a the band possesses a sufficient number of those attributes, we call them punk. These could be things like a certain liberal ideology, a feeling of social, political, and musical revolution, a certain attitude and pattern of behavior, a particular sound to the music or the production, a rejection of the industry of music, a distinctive style of dress, and on and on and on. But somehow, as illusive as punk is to define, most of us know it when we hear it. And people are STILL doing it and listening to it all over the world. So I wonder Joe, back when you and Mick and Malcom were crafting the sound and image of the Clash, what was it that punk meant to you? And how do today’s artists live up to that? In any case, I hope that you are pleased with what it has become and that the tradition that came to life in the hands of men like yourself continues to expand and evolve for years to come. Take care of yourself.
Love, GregE.
To me punk rock is an idealism…it is original, fearless, honest, and in your face. Punk music to me can represent all of the bands you mentioned. But only half of them are punk rock…I think you know the ones.
To be punk rock, you have to meet that criteria.
To me the following person(s) were/are punk rock:
Dead Kennedy’s
Bad Religion
GG Allen
Guns N Roses circa 1986
Kurt Cobain
Josh Homme
The Descendants
The Stooges
David Bowie
The Germs
Jim Morrisson
The Pixies
Neil Young
John Lennon
Fear
Fucked Up
Gogol Bordello
The following were/are not punk rock:
Blink 182
Bowling For Soup
Good Charlotte
Paramore
Avril Lavinge
All American Rejects
Fall Out Boy
Green Day (post Insomniac)
Taking Back Sunday
Brand New
My Chemical Romance
New Found Glory
Weezer (post Pinkerton)
I guess what I’m trying to say is you don’t have to play punk music to be punk rock…in my eyes. And that most of the bands that dominate the charts playing punk/pop-punk music today are not punk rock at all. None of this is really original thought though…just rambling I suppose.
Ahh semantics…
i have no idea who am taxi are, but that pic is of the lead singer of the gallows, not am taxi. gallows are nuts.
It’s the facepalm we were going for, not an AM Taxi pic.