I bought "Unknown Road" on tape and was simply floored. I was in the 6th grade I think. Maybe 7th. Either way, from the first reverb-drenched notes played on piano, into the thrashing drums and fast guitars and for the whole entire tape, I just sat there.. I listened to Jim sing. I really listened to the words, and took them to heart. "City is Burning" made me FEEL the social riot happening around the world. "Vices" kept me straight edge for a really long time. But "Homesick"... Holy shit, I remember thinking "are these dudes from Brockton?"
The MOMENT that tape ended, I RIGHT AWAY flipped it over back to side A to listen again and my radio promptly ate it. Undeterred, I went to RECORD TOWN (That's right, mother fucker said RECORD TOWN) and bought "About Time". Same thing. It was like Pennywise was my new teacher. Fuck School. They taught lies and propaganda. Pennywise from shooting right from the fucking hip.. This shit was my energy drink. All I needed to go skate was a small dose of Pennywise.
Years past, and Pennywise was still a classic but I had expanded my horizons. I was hearing Operation Ivy and FEELING like I was right fucking there in East Bay! "Knowledge", "Bad Town", "Just Another Crowd", "Room Without A Window", "Unity", etc... It was Pennywise all over again. Just the black and white album cover. And the back cover. IT was too good.
Punk Rock was always right there. Teaching me right from wrong. Telling me the same shit my parents were, but in a different way (even if it took me many years to truly realize it). Punk Rock taught me you didn't need the flash, you didn't need nice clothes. You didn't need what everyone else needed, cuz they were a bunch of shallow twats. And so I was happy. Everyone at school seemed so fucking fake and hollow. I just knew these people were acting a certain way, and feeling something else.
They were as empty as the music they listened to. They were listening to music that denegrated women, glorified the pursuit of wealth. This music was telling them, MAKE MONEY! BUY THE DOPEST CAR AVAILABLE! FUCK ANYONE OVER TO GET IT! YOU WILL GET WOMEN!!
They were all but promised this...
Their lives held no true value. They studied what was needed in order to pass the exams, and graduate and get on with their paper chase. I was listening to Naked Agression. They were screaming at me, ever so urgently that "there's food rotting away in warehouses while people starve to death". I could SEE the warehouse, I could SMELL the rotting food and I just remember having the most VIVID image of emaciated humans, wrapped up in filthy blankets.
I'm sitting there, thinking "Dude, I don't have time to buy a car. There's fucking people dying!" I was thinking, "how do all these rich corporation's CEOs sleep at night?" How do the owners of all the GAPS, and ABERCROMBIE and FITCH, and NIKE, and REEBOK.. HOW CAN THEY SIMPLY TURN A BLIND EYE TO THIS SHIT?!! So I never wore that shit. I ended up wearing hand-me-downs, and I rocked the same plaid-green flannel for like 6 years. I wore my shoes down to the sock.
I was always ate odds on who to blame. Was it the president? The gov't? The corporations? The masses of sleeping zombies? I was ready to go to war for the poor. I had all this angst, this anger, ready to go off at the first appropriate target.
More time passed. Then... 9/11.
I was at school, in English class. They made the announcement over the intercom that one of the buildings of the WTC was hit by an airliner. We were allowed to go to the cafeteria and watch the news. I SAW the 2nd plane hit. I was THOUGHLY convinced it was a SLAYER related incident, as "GOD HATES US ALL" came out that day. I know this because no one was shutting up about it! I came to 2 immediate conclusions.
1. Metal Heads were hijacking planes
2. It had something to do with Saddam.
Anyways, it was the day everything changed, yadda yadda yadda. There was all this new found patriotism. All of a sudden, there were American flags outside of every house. There was the candle light vigil/controlled anarchy in the streets (my boy Buster made a torch out of newspaper, screaming some anti-islamic rhetoric). EVERYONE bought into that shit. I did to a point, too. I definatly considered it within the realm of possibility that Islamic extremists had planned a massive attack on the financial center of the United States.
So, after a few months of FOXNEWS keeping everyone indoors, scared, and eyes glued to the scrolling words on the bottom of the screen, President Bush was sending troops. I remember thinking "A bit fucking late for that, eh?" Everyone was talking about how we were gonna catch Osama Bin Laden. Everyone was ready for a fight. But our old pal TV kept everyone in check. There were videos of a few different Osama Bin Ladens threatening this and that. Each time I'm thinking "That's not the same dude from before". Furthermore, I knew that this went deeper than Al-Quada or the Taliban. Something didn't sit right.
So my punk rock intuition kicked in. I though "if this is what everyone believes to be fact, it can't be true. These people are fucking idiots! Distractable, greedy, weaselly idiots!" So in true punk rock fashion, I looked at the president as the first scapegoat. I wasn't so much interested in facts as I was just getting President Bush impeached, after hearing all this hype about "prior knowledge" and such.
By this time, I was going to school with a bright red patch on the arm of the previously mentioned plaid green flannel that said "FUCK WAR". The other arm had a swastika patch with a red strike through it. None of the Brockton High administration said anything, probably fearing some crazy freedom of speech controversy. I was pretty much quiet at school, so I think they just let it slide. I was listening to a lot of Anti-Flag and getting into the more informed political side of things.
"A New Kind Of Army" and "No Borders, No Nations" truly inspired me to find what it was I truly believed, as I had learned at this point the you couldn't put punk rock in a box. You couldn't just say "Oh, this is how punk rockers think" (though I'm a big fan of this joke: How many punks does it take to change a lightbulb? None, cuz punks can't change anything! BWAHAHAH) This is also around the time now that President Bush declared the "WAR ON TERROR", and even though I was still pretty ignorrant at the time, I remember thinking "How does he expect to declare war on an emotion" as well as musing to myself "The media is spreading more fear and terror than Al-Quada! Send troops into FOXNEWS! SEND THEM TO CNN!"
Then the NOFX album "War on Errorism" came out, and it was a wrap. The lyrics of that album put shit in perspective for me. It made me realize I was this one guy with my eyes open (blurry they may be) in a sea of fucking people with their eyes stapled shut, iPod headphones in their ears, wearing football jerseys with a fucking beer in one hand and syringe filled to the tip with morpine in the other, shooting themselves up with blind, distracted ignorrance.
It was around this time I was getting in to hip-hop like Gangstarr, Tribe Called Quest, Afrika Baambatta, EPMD, you know.. That ill shit. At the time I wasn't in a band anymore, and I had been making rap beats for the fun of it. It only made sense to put words to them. I wasn't the best, but knowing that I come from a circle of punk kids and such who may not be diggin the idea of me trying to rap, I was sooo fucking determined to be good. I didn't wanna be wack like the rappers at Brockton High who like punchlines with the joke implying they have a bigger gun than their theoretical opponent and how they would use it.
It was the same paper chasing, blind mother fuckers..
Not seeing the writing on the walls..
Not seeing the massive changes happening around them.
But they weren't the only ones.
Seemed like it was the new thing. Willingly giving up freedom in exchange for a false sense of security they would never have. This was like 2003, or something. It's almost 2010 and it's the same story. People are still afraid Bin Laden's gonna come into their houses and put anthrax in their mountain dew. Alot changed since then. My hip-hop tastes moved from Gangstarr towards Jedi Mind Tricks, Non Phixion, and that hard as nails street shit. Not the coke slinging street shit, the "I shot reagan" street shit. There was something so fucking punk about all that. That's what made me decide to find who's really responsible.
Whether or not I found who's to blame or if I ever will remains to be seen. But I'm on a constant search for answers. Not just politically.
SPIRITUALLY
See, what I learned was that the revolution is with YOU. It's not who we are against. It's what WE'RE FOR. It's about personal freedom, to decide what to think, free of media manipulation and opinionated journalists. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that 9/11 was an inside job. If you feel so inclined to question it, look into it. There's alot of information for either side. I'm not gonna tell you to believe the Illuminati and Luciferians control the world because I believe that. However, as it is my views I will speak on these subjects, and now that I have a beautiful baby girl to look after, I seek change more than ever. And not that bullshit Obama change. I mean spiritual, social, mental and personal change.
We cannot keep living the way we do without consequence.
We can't pretend like it's going away.
It's getting worse.
But I am not without hope.
More and more people are awakening to the concept of, not losing their freedom, but of having never felt freedom.
You don't have to believe in God, Allah, Yaweh, Krishna, Buddha, Santa Clause, Hans Glockenspiel or fucking Spiderman.
But it is imperitive that each person finds something in themselves worth believing in. Proof of the connection each of us feels with one another. That goes for you, me, the starving homeless wrapped up in the soiled blankets, Pennywise, DJ Premier and Guru, the mindless drones of indoctrinated social slaves.. We are all born into this world naked and defenseless. No exceptions. There is a spirit energy that connects us all. You will know it's there when you look at the sky. Look at any point of the sky. Think of what lies directly underneath. It's the sorrow, the joy, the numbness, the heat of emotion. It's that blunt being rolled, it's that wife being smacked around, it's that 15 year old girl pouting cuz her parents took their cell phone, it's the Graffiti writers, it's the police, the wealthy, it's the poor, it's the living, it's the dying. It's all of us.
Can you feel it?
-AlexOne!!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment