This week's rant comes from Trey Garcia. He's got something to say.
Times are not what they used to be. We used to be at the mercy of what rock
magazines your parents would buy for you, as well as what rock magazines
convenience stores and grocery stores would even carry.
Metal Edge, Circus, Hit Parader, those were the big
ones. There were always other magazines
that would come and go, and the always famous band centric magazines that would
come out to cash in on a band’s sudden success.
We were also at the mercy of radio and music
television. Which basically means we
were at the mercy of fucking Riki Rachtman.
The good old days.
Defining punk rock is an almost absurd thing to do, so I’m
not even going to start there. For me,
Morrissey is as punk rock as [sic]. That’s
right, the godfather of all things emo is a true and true punk rocker who was
at the Sex Pistols infamous first show at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall
that put a spark into all that were in attendance. Morrissey was also the President of the
United Kingdom New York Dolls fan club.
I digress…
There were record stores then, and I had five dollars and
some change in my pocket. Passing
through racks of albums four men looking at me with the name of the band
‘Metallica’ caught my attention, as well as the $5.98 price tag. My father reluctantly let me purchase the
album and I could not wait to get home and play it.
Most of the album is solid enough, but it was the last two
song medley on Garage Days that caught my attention and changed the course of
my musical direction which up until then was revolved around poppy and new wave
acts like Wang Chung and Culture Club.
Note: Wang Chung’s album Points
on the Curve is a very underrated new wave album.
The last song on Garage Days is Last Caress/Green Hell, a
cover of the Misfits, and the song that got me interested into what the pundits
have labeled punk rock but I will always claim, much like Billy Joel, that is
still rock and roll to me.
Reading up on album reviews after playing the album’s last
song over and over on my record player I found out more about the Misfits and
their enigmatic singer, Glenn Danzig.
Less than a year after purchasing Garage Days, I purchased
Danzig’s self-titled debut on cassette.
This was shortly after I went to my first rock show, Iron Maiden on
their 7th Son Tour.
It was Danzig’s voice that carried me through many lonely
nights, and though I still had not purchased any Misfits albums it was Danzig
by way of Metallica that really got me to appreciate the punk ethos.
Looking back now, and just to further my point earlier of
how difficult is really is to define punk rock, is that each punk rock band has
their own special niche. While The
Misfits were more horror/comic book inspired gothic punk, bands like The
Minutemen and Black Flag and Dead Kennedy’s carried political statements. The Pistols of course were just in your face
anti-establishment, and the Dead Milkmen just cracked me up.
It was the Milkmen that I was introduced to next after the
Misfits. We had went to Corpus to visit
my cousin and when he, my brother, and I were together we’d trade tapes, I
still have the Bucky Fellini tape that I traded my cousin for, I think I gave
him my Anthrax I’m the Man EP for it.
Of course, Punk Rock Girl had gotten much play on MTV, and
in the 80’s actually may have been the first time those of my age had heard the
phrase ‘punk rock’. My cousin also had
Never Mind the Bollocks on cassette, I was interested in that as the first
version of Anarchy in the U.K. that I had heard was off of Megadeth’s album So
Far, So Good, So What.
This is why I believe in no delineation between punk and
metal, honestly – and why when I speak of my appreciation for punk it is
because of my initial early love of all things metal, specifically some good
old fashioned thrash.
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