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Punk Rock

Posted on May 3, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

You’re killing me with kindness
Yes really you are
And I’d rather live forever
Than be suffocated by love

The band raged on for what seemed like an eternity. I wondered how long I could take it. Would throwing a bottle of beer that it may draw blood be an affirmation of the band’s twisted lyrical mantras? Or was I destined for handcuffs and a jail cell because I couldn’t just ‘enjoy the good, clean fun’?

I mean seriously, who’s that angry? Who has the right to be that angry?

The Africans? Certainly.

The Katrina-affected that got no help? Sure!

A snot-nosed punk band that got fed up of mom and dad’s basement and decided that the ‘world needed to feel their pain’? Fuck no!

This isn’t even punk! It’s barely even punk lite! A lop-sided tattoo and early-signs-of-anorexia physique suggest the need for a sandwich, shower and spanking (skip it if they might enjoy it). All that angst, all that Avril Lavigne wannabe bullshit that only appeals to the twelve-year-olds who haven’t suffered real pain…I can do without that.

So what the hell am I doing here?

Apart from the self-loathing?

I’m here for a girl. Hell, everyone is here for the girl.

She makes the aforementioned pop-punk sourpuss look like a cheap barmaid with ill-fitting clothes. She is more radiant in her nihilism than a Victoria’s Secret model with sandpapered butt, eyebrows tweezed, curls teased and nipples iced. She was the one who made the whole enterprise worthwhile and I suspect she was the only one who actually believed in the pain they sang about.

And get this, she wasn’t even the lead.

Nah, that honour went to a whiny spaghetti-neck with an asymmetrical haircut and faux Franz Ferdinand style. With a voice higher than the BeeGees and more irritating that Billy Corgan, this was the dude who stared at the believers from magazine covers and downtown billboards. She was the vision who lurked in a corner and managed to take the focus away every single time.

I’d skin a puppy for her. Most guys would flay their mothers. And there she was, banished to a far corner of the stage, swaying along with her bass guitar and singing the requisite backing vocals.

It was so unfair.

She was the star. Everybody could see it and still somehow, this headless chicken with the voice to match was the one sucking up all the glory.

It’s really such a simple thing to smash a beer bottle in a crowd. All those heaving bodies, all that noise, the bass thump and the rejiggered heartbeats guided by an obnoxious drumbeat designed to cause mass booty heaving…nobody would hear the sharding of a beer bottle’s ass.

Hell nobody would even see the thing sail through the air.

Nobody did.

I smashed, I heaved, I shoved sideways through the crowd so that I was thirty feet left of where the bottle began its airborne cartwheeling journey towards the stage. The next time the little bitch at the lead microphone howled, it was in pain. He had taken a beer bottle to the forearm, his microphone arm, and was spinning around like a terrified dervish. I heard his blood got on the faces of the cows who always got to stand right in front of stage. I also heard two fainted.

I found out like a week later that the lead guitarist was handling vocals now. My goddess was still playing bass and hanging out in the shadows. The vocalist had left the band. Something about his only wanting to bring the pain, not feel it. Like I expected, a suburban douche bag with attitude to spare and nothing resembling a spine to hold himself upright.

It’s what’s wrong with music today.

No balls. Not even big old shiny disco ones.

I’m going to have to wait this one out now. Can’t do anything about getting my goddess out front and centre from inside this jail cell.

Only seven more weeks to go.

It’s only rock ‘n roll but I’ll save it.

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