Complacency is the One Virus
Mediocrity is seriously beginning to piss me off. Dude, seriously.
It occurred to me some weeks ago that I and my friends (and, by extension, very possibly everybody I know) have been settling for mediocrity and sub-standard work throughout our daily lives for some time now. I’m tired of it, and I want it to end. This point was nailed home with me last Wednesday night, when I went out to Nanci Raygun to watch the punk rock show and found myself disappointed to the point of disgust at what I found there.
I’m not going to turn this otherwise unsullied rant into a proper show review for such a shitball show, but it does deserve a little explanation in order to get my point across. Five bands. No Way Out, Clockwork Bully, Social Dropouts and SSKaliert were all fucking GENERIC and essentially indistinguishable. No Way Out? What made them unique? The singer puked on the stage. Social Dropouts? What made them unique? They USED to be good and different and blew me away the first time I saw them…when Katie was still singing. Now they sound just like everything else. Clockwork Bully? What made them unique? They were the Oi! Band of the night. They sounded different from everything else I heard that night, but utterly indistinguishable from every Oi! Band I’ve ever heard before or since. SSKaliert? What made them unique? Nothing but the singer speaking to the audience between songs. “Ve did not brrring ze zet liszt. Ve ist zo zorry. Ve hope you are likingk zis next zong. Ve call it...” Dude sounded like Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes, I shit you not. Musically, they were all the same.
But there was a fifth band. The triumphant return of Dynamite Club (see 3/1/2005 article). An ADD drummer who switches between about five different beats per song and rotates between them once every…ten seconds. A bassist who thinks he’s Les Claypool…and probably could be if he wanted to be. And Kentaro (sometimes miscredited as Guitaro), the Japanese guitarist who gets down to his tighty-whiteys, drops the back, shows off his ass and plays himself into a kung fu frenzy. There is chaos. There is screaming. There is noise. There is a tenacious athletic supporter clinging precariously to a dude’s junk. There is wrasslin on the floor of the Nanci Raygun after three other bands have played and there’s all this gnarly shit sticking to Kentaro’s back smeared with dirt and spilled beer and punker sweat and it was fucking WONDERFUL! You’d think the naked asian gimmick would wear off after like three songs…but it DOESN’T! They still play unique music. This is an unique act! This is an act you will not hear anything like. This is an act you will not see anything like. This is an act which is truly ‘different’ and ‘punk’. So what happened? 80 of the 100 kids in attendance walked right out the door and hung out on the sidewalk, waiting for SSKaliert to play. Of the 20 or so people left inside, exactly seven were really into it.
Because this wonderful, unique, fresh and amazing band didn’t fit the narrow, narrow and narrow-minded view of what constitutes ‘punk’, they get disrespected right to their fucking faces by the gaggle of screaming lemming meatheads pressed against the stage and each other for the other four bands. It was a fucking disgrace.
Mediocrity, sameness and conformity breed respect and admiration whereas uniqueness, originality and newness earns travesty and disregard. And I say Fuck to that. I say that’s nothing more than settling. That’s a sickness and we need a cure. We need more cowbell, god dammit! We need something amazing again, rather than another lengthy wander through the morass of half-assery we allow people to put over on us!
We need to set some new fucking records. We need too start things over and make them new again. We need to take things out of the hands of the people who allow them to stagnate and put them in the hands of the new blood where they can be reinvented and reinvigorated.
Are your friends doing one of the same two things every night of the week, but you keep going over there to hang out because they’re your friends and you don’t want to hurt their feelings? TELL THEM. Inform them that they’re in a rut, and fight your way out of it. I suggest road trips. Get about three or four of your tightest buds and budettes, jump in a car and make a pilgrimage to El Taco (see 3/1/2005 article). Drive to Virginia Beach JUST to see the sun rise over the water (worth it!) Your road trip doesn’t have to be FAR, necessarily, and it doesn’t have to have much of a purpose. Worried about the cost of gas? That’s why you take three other people. Eight fifty each between four people turns into 34 dollars of gas. That SHOULD get you to Baltimore and back for the price of everyone going to see a movie. Bring some totally different music. Talk about other ways to spice up your lives.
Because this sitting still crap is like a malaise. But it’s not just any normal disease, it’s like the King-Hell mother of all maledictions. The progenitor of sickness. The malady to draw all others together and bind them.
Complacency is the One Virus.
It occurred to me some weeks ago that I and my friends (and, by extension, very possibly everybody I know) have been settling for mediocrity and sub-standard work throughout our daily lives for some time now. I’m tired of it, and I want it to end. This point was nailed home with me last Wednesday night, when I went out to Nanci Raygun to watch the punk rock show and found myself disappointed to the point of disgust at what I found there.
I’m not going to turn this otherwise unsullied rant into a proper show review for such a shitball show, but it does deserve a little explanation in order to get my point across. Five bands. No Way Out, Clockwork Bully, Social Dropouts and SSKaliert were all fucking GENERIC and essentially indistinguishable. No Way Out? What made them unique? The singer puked on the stage. Social Dropouts? What made them unique? They USED to be good and different and blew me away the first time I saw them…when Katie was still singing. Now they sound just like everything else. Clockwork Bully? What made them unique? They were the Oi! Band of the night. They sounded different from everything else I heard that night, but utterly indistinguishable from every Oi! Band I’ve ever heard before or since. SSKaliert? What made them unique? Nothing but the singer speaking to the audience between songs. “Ve did not brrring ze zet liszt. Ve ist zo zorry. Ve hope you are likingk zis next zong. Ve call it...” Dude sounded like Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes, I shit you not. Musically, they were all the same.
But there was a fifth band. The triumphant return of Dynamite Club (see 3/1/2005 article). An ADD drummer who switches between about five different beats per song and rotates between them once every…ten seconds. A bassist who thinks he’s Les Claypool…and probably could be if he wanted to be. And Kentaro (sometimes miscredited as Guitaro), the Japanese guitarist who gets down to his tighty-whiteys, drops the back, shows off his ass and plays himself into a kung fu frenzy. There is chaos. There is screaming. There is noise. There is a tenacious athletic supporter clinging precariously to a dude’s junk. There is wrasslin on the floor of the Nanci Raygun after three other bands have played and there’s all this gnarly shit sticking to Kentaro’s back smeared with dirt and spilled beer and punker sweat and it was fucking WONDERFUL! You’d think the naked asian gimmick would wear off after like three songs…but it DOESN’T! They still play unique music. This is an unique act! This is an act you will not hear anything like. This is an act you will not see anything like. This is an act which is truly ‘different’ and ‘punk’. So what happened? 80 of the 100 kids in attendance walked right out the door and hung out on the sidewalk, waiting for SSKaliert to play. Of the 20 or so people left inside, exactly seven were really into it.
Because this wonderful, unique, fresh and amazing band didn’t fit the narrow, narrow and narrow-minded view of what constitutes ‘punk’, they get disrespected right to their fucking faces by the gaggle of screaming lemming meatheads pressed against the stage and each other for the other four bands. It was a fucking disgrace.
Mediocrity, sameness and conformity breed respect and admiration whereas uniqueness, originality and newness earns travesty and disregard. And I say Fuck to that. I say that’s nothing more than settling. That’s a sickness and we need a cure. We need more cowbell, god dammit! We need something amazing again, rather than another lengthy wander through the morass of half-assery we allow people to put over on us!
We need to set some new fucking records. We need too start things over and make them new again. We need to take things out of the hands of the people who allow them to stagnate and put them in the hands of the new blood where they can be reinvented and reinvigorated.
Are your friends doing one of the same two things every night of the week, but you keep going over there to hang out because they’re your friends and you don’t want to hurt their feelings? TELL THEM. Inform them that they’re in a rut, and fight your way out of it. I suggest road trips. Get about three or four of your tightest buds and budettes, jump in a car and make a pilgrimage to El Taco (see 3/1/2005 article). Drive to Virginia Beach JUST to see the sun rise over the water (worth it!) Your road trip doesn’t have to be FAR, necessarily, and it doesn’t have to have much of a purpose. Worried about the cost of gas? That’s why you take three other people. Eight fifty each between four people turns into 34 dollars of gas. That SHOULD get you to Baltimore and back for the price of everyone going to see a movie. Bring some totally different music. Talk about other ways to spice up your lives.
Because this sitting still crap is like a malaise. But it’s not just any normal disease, it’s like the King-Hell mother of all maledictions. The progenitor of sickness. The malady to draw all others together and bind them.
Complacency is the One Virus.