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You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board
You always have to watch out when people start talking about purity, ethnic or
otherwise. It usually means someone is going to get hurt. –Elena Glassberg
The MRR editrix suggested we write about DIY, the invasion of big corporations
into punk, the difficulty of remaining true to the vision, and of keeping punk pure.
Interesting topic, though not unusual in these pages of punknic cleansing.
There are a few issues here.
1. Does punk mean DIY, small label, independent?
2. Is DIY, small label, independent inherently better than big corporation? If so,
better for whom? For the individual/band/writer/zine? For the world? For rebellious
teenagers living off their parents’ allowance?
3. Is punk a style or a way of life?
The answers depend on your point of view. If A, then B. If you don’t believe A.
Then B is not true.
So let’s look at the questions above. The first is easy. GG Allin was the punkest
human being in history. Or at least in the 20th century. Would he be any less punk if Eat
My Fuck were released on Warner Brothers? Of course not. If GG Allin continued doing
what he was doing. Shitting where he was shitting. Getting arrested the way he got
arrested. Living a life of just not caring, of having no fear, of being able to piss on the
president of his record label, GG would be just as punk. No matter who put out his
records.
If GG were inhibited in some way, if he didn’t do something because he feared
being dropped by the label, or lack of promotion, then he’d be less punk. It’s not the label
that makes the punk. It’s the balls.
Question two is more difficult. I usually prefer independents over corporate
giants. I never go to Starbucks or McDonalds. I don’t buy Nike. A Sony-induced worm
does not infect my hard drive. But I make compromises.
Sometimes I feel forced into the corporate world. I use a Windows computer
because I grew up with it. All my bootlegged software is in Windows—or MS-DOS. Is
Apple better? The system sure is. But is the company? I don’t know. I only know it’s
smaller.
Sometimes, on a personal level, big corporate stuff is just better. I rent from Hertz
because when I call they don’t put me on hold. I can change my reservations at the last
minute. The guys at the rental garage know me, and will hold my favorite car even if I’m
late picking it up. They give me a free rental for every 6 paid ones. I can get a satellite
system that somewhat makes up for my lack of directional sense. And they never
complain when I bring the car back with a flat tire, or the back seat carpet missing.
Sometimes, a product is good, but the corporation is total shit. Pfizer and Coca
-Cola are horrible companies. Pfizer’s pricing and tight patent control kills people. Coca
-Cola has overthrown leaders to get its product into countries and cheap raw material out.
But Pfizer makes Viagra, for G-d’s sake. And Coca-Cola makes, well, Coca-Cola.
So waddaya do? You can’t be pure. Even vegans wear polyester (made from
animals—dinosaurs) and cotton (containing the helpless bodies of millions of ground-up
bol weevils). We’ve all got to draw lines—or die.
The question is not how to remain pure, but how to draw our lines.
Question three has as many answers as there are people who call themselves
punks.
[Aside: Like in the mid-eighties, when everyone was suddenly New Wave, these
days, there’s a taboo in calling yourself punk. A good taboo if you ask me. Punk is balls.
You’ve got to have balls to break taboos.]
For me, punk is an attitude. It can be music, literature, a drunk on the street
sleeping in his own vomit, a whore on the corner whispering Hey Mister, you wanna go
out?
It is not style. A $300 designer “torn look” dress is not punk. A $3 thrift shop plaid
business suit is. But other than the obvious, there’s no purity. No arbiter. No this is, or
isn’t punk. There’s no manual that lists the criteria for true punk or not.
It’s as dangerous as hell to keep punk— or anything else, except maybe air and
water— pure. Who’s gonna be your punk cops, policing against contamination from
lesser cultures? It used to be MRR—but Tim’s dead now.
What the Supreme Court said about pornography, I say about punk. I may not be
able to define it. But I sure as fuck know it when I see it. That’s enough.
In the US, 40% of those surveyed say they were shy. In Japan it was 57%. The
lowest percentage was in Israel with 31%. We speculate the reason was that in Japan, an
individual’s performance success is credited externally to parents, grandparents,
teachers, coaches, and others, while failure is entirely blamed on the person.
In Israel, the situation is entirely reversed. Failure is externally attributed to
parents, teachers, coaches, friends, anti-Semitism, while all performance success is
credited to the individual enterprise. Israelis are free to take risks, since there is nothing
to lose by trying and everything to gain.
--Thomas H. Benton
ENDNOTES:
The editorial staff of The New York Press walked out en masse after the publishers
refused to print the Danish cartoons that sparked international riots. Have the cartoons
been printed at all in the US? I guess they’re on the web, but are they in print? I haven’t
seen ‘em. [Last minute note: I hear a few papers printed them—none here in New York,
that’s for sure.]
A weird thing about this, is the universal non-Muslim reviling of the riots.
Strange, how Americans will allow internal spying, Wal-Mart music censorship, TV V-
chips, but when someone else complains—oh no! The other guys are anti-free speech.
Plus the news has been so distorted. Headlines like, 9 KILLED IN ANTI-
CARTOON RIOTING make it sound like the rioters killed people. It was the police and
NATO troops who killed the rioters. Not the other way around.
And, where were they rioting? In front of a US sponsored torture chamber, that’s
where. The cartoon was only the tip of the Goldberg.
Ah no, but Americans can be self-righteous and revel in our freedom of speech,
while the CIA reads our email.
Ah the government dept: Under the headline FDA THREATENS TO RAID CHERRY
ORCHARDS, Life Extension Magazine (March 2006) reports that the Food and Drug of
Administration sent warning letters to 29 companies that market cherry products. In
these letters, the FDA ordered the companies to stop publicizing scientific data about the
benefits of cherries. According to the FDA, When cherry companies disseminate this
information, the cherries become unapproved drugs subject to seizure.
Oh yeah, the FDA doesn’t say the information is false. It only says that
making the claim makes the item a drug and subject to penalties.
Are they gonna raid the breweries? dept: The Bottom Line Daily Health Report says
that an increasing body of serious research backs up beer's health benefits. One of them is
bone protection. According to a medical team at Tufts University in Boston, beer may
help prevent bone-thinning osteoporosis.
Other findings show that beer lowers the risk of heart disease and increases the
survival rate after a heart attack. Plus, it improves levels of “good” cholesterol and
preserves mental agility into old age.
Other studies at Harvard show healthier kidneys and stronger antioxidants in beer
drinkers than in non-drinkers. Let’s drink to that!
Twelve dollars and thirty-five cents for your thoughts dept: The Economist magazine
says that Oslo, Norway has just passed Tokyo as the world’s most expensive city. Third
is Reykjavik. New York where no-bedroom studios go for $3000 a month, is the highest
placed American city. But it ranks only 27th in the world. If you live in the 26 higher
ranked cities, you owe me a beer.
Don’t pray for me Argentina dept: I’m not an atheist, but I hate the religionists more
than I hate the atheists. That’s why it was such a joy that The NY Times reported on a
$2.4 million study on the power of prayer to heal sick people.
The results: Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of
people who were undergoing heart surgery. And patients who knew they were being
prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications.
Yeah! It’s not the time to be a Christian Scientist—that’s for sure.