Vans Warped Tour ’01
Subtonix, Pink & Brown
Or was every song cut from an archetype they all knew by heart? The Vans Warped Tour ’01 seemed entirely of a piece, or rather five or ten pieces–a single idea, “punk,” jigsawed into a puzzle. Pop punk, skate punk, ska punk, ska-core, hardcore, New York hardcore, emotional hardcore, horrorcore, pop-hop, rap metal, punk metal, and so on. Lots of semimemorable variations on a few timeworn themes, a simulacrum of diversity to be sure, but a fascinating one.
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Punk? Not quite, but then what is? This nostalgic saw: the spirit of ’77, DIY, don’t you dare sell out, three chords and a snarl, resistance to something (bullies, parents, cops, the new world order, humanity), circle A for anarchy? Preserved for posterity in portentous Joey Ramone obits, dressed up in safety-pinned Sunday best for Spin (“25 Years of Punk,” with your choice of collectible covers)? The dictionary definition has hit 30 (“rock music marked by extreme and often deliberately offensive expressions of alienation and social discontent,” first usage circa 1971), and you know what they say about trusting the middle-aged: don’t. Why the urge to pickle punk into lifeless respectability? Does punk have to become anything in the future, or uphold anything from the past? Can’t it just be here, now?
Fugazi is punk, it is generally agreed; so are Shellac and the Ex. But why, how? They hit plenty of the standard signifiers: Independent of corporate America? More or less, but that’s a red herring. Politically admirable? Check, but another crimson carp. Aesthetically adventurous? Momentarily world-defining? Now we’re getting somewhere.
And then September came around, my friend came home, I bought some other records, and my magical punk rock summer was over. But I bet that most of the Warped kids–average age of, say, 18–had had a punk rock summer too, except maybe they bought a good NOFX album instead of the crappy one I picked up, and maybe they made some punk rock friends. And I bet that most kids have a something summer, where that something fits just right and is able to masquerade as or even be a way of life–a Britney Spears summer, a hip-hop summer, a Dischord summer, a no-wave summer. No sense calling any part of it except the actual epiphany “punk”–after that, it’s all pop, where pop means telling you what you want to hear, what you need to hear, now that “you” have been altered for good.
The punkest show I’ve lived recently: at a greenhouse-humid Fireside Bowl, Pink & Brown, a guitar-drums duo in pink and brown bodysuits, set up on the floor. Pink duct-taped a phone mike into his mouth, and choked out, “If anyone wants to fight us or make out with us, feel free, because we hate the lot of ya.” The music was one long seizure, the act of falling down and spazzing on the floor rendered into clatter and feedback nasty enough to kill a dog at 30 yards. (But fun! Fido’s just playing dead!) Pink stuck his head through the suspended ceiling, tumbled through the fans, and handed his guitar off to one of them.
