We as a band are a collection of the most "normal" jerks you can assemble. We have mortgagees, children, wives, college degrees, car payments, pets, the complete domestic spread. We are school teachers, finical auditors, warehouse clerks. We work 9-5 monday thru friday for established corporate entities and come home and share dinner with our loved ones then rinse and repeat.
Often, and this may be the case for all members of downtuned hardcore bands, we aren't sure, our extra curricular music entities are discovered by co-workers. This is more often then not awkward, as most often they ask what kind of music you play and for a 30 + year old to say punk rock you get a giggle and smirk. They picture adolescent kids with mo hawks and ask "...so like blink-182?"
We don't expect them to understand, because they never have and never will. But it brings up an interesting dichotomy. Playing punk rock is to the masses scene as a juvenile thing, and in a large way punk is a juvenile tool of expressing anger and frustration, something teen agers are full of. But its also much more then that to many people. It shaped our lives, thru the outlet, thru the ideas, thru the community and thru the exposure to much more then we would have received by listening to a Collective Soul record.
We feel there is something predisposed in a person to be initially drawn to the misfit and deviant culture of punk rock, of skateboarding, of heavy metal, of hip hop of the "sub genres" of our youth (and today). There wasn't much glamorous about being called a dirt head, a loser, an outcast. But there was that draw, that spark that drew us to it. It various upon personal experience, be it the angst of broken homes, the anger of feeling left out, the hunger to want to create and encourage a community of like minded losers and outcasts brought us all together.
Then you grow up. You go to college or you get a job, or you do both, you date and you meet new friends, you change the way you dress, you act "older" and alot of the ideals you had when you were younger don't seem as important. Or you feel you need to make them less important because you don't want to be wearing a crass shirt in a sea of sport coats. Thats fine. Crass shirts and drinking malt liquor in parking lots is all auxiliary to the original spark (unless wearing crass shirts and drinking was what excited you about "counter culture" then in that case your probally a poseur. Not shame, just sayin')
Having a career, having a family, dressing like everyone else, isn't a resignation of the anger and frustration that brought you to this music. You are still that person who questioned authority, who didn't fit in, who felt like screaming at the top of there lungs about anything and everything. Only now your a more potent weapon of change. Your a real cog in a wheel, and you can help shift the tides. You have more of a vote if your a person with a career, you vote with your money, you decide whats fucked up and whats not with your monetary support. Instead of screaming anarchy, you can actually choose to no longer support slave labor by shopping else where. You can vote, you say hey, your policy's suck and fuck you your not getting my vote. You can choose to not support companies that support candidate that you feel suck. You can choose stand up unfairness in your work place, hell if your a boss you can choose to treat your employees fair, you can change the way you look, change the way you approach your day you can do whatever you want, and you can do it all with the same convictions that brought you to this place to begin with.
Doesn't matter how old, how happy, how well adjusted you are, you can always stay pissed. Because nothing is ever ok, no one where is ever perfect, things are always fucked, and its your duties as a conscious living breathing person to fight for that in any way you can, for as long as you can.
Your never to old, stay pissed.
