Johnny's Little Monster

Mediums are not any more inherently political than they are religious. One of the most tiresome arguments involving art this decade has centered on that claim. You've probably been hearing that your medium of choice is inherently *Insert political position here* constantly despite creators of said medium not being involved in said movement, not knowing anything about said movement, or actively believing the opposite of said movement.

This charge has been bandied about this entire decade without a semblance of irony by those who get their personalities from political pamphlets. What this actually is is an attempt at revisionism in order for modern day cultists to justify their media worship as if they are partaking in a revolution from the safety of their living rooms.

Take punk music, for instance. No one else will these days. No musical style embodies this ridiculous revisionist philosophy better. What it started at back in the '70s is not what it is today.

How often have you heard this genre is inherently political which means ham-fisted lyrics and bland angry sounds are excusable and should be genre standard? Popularity is also verboten, as hatred of major corporations is embedded in the genre's DNA. These are rules everyone knows.

You might even find a member of a major '90s band telling you that to play said music you cannot have certain political leanings. This from a member of a band who got big writing songs about Valium and losers named Bob, by the way. A Johnny-come-lately is now telling you the origin of the genre he is cashing in on. But what he's saying is based on revisionist history. He says this so he can cash in without "selling out" even though he already did.

The truth, as always, tells a different story from the cultist poseur version. Punk was not created as a political movement. It was co-opted by political wingnuts and poseurs in the '80s to push their views. And even then it remained a fringe part of the genre until the 2000s when 9/11 meant it was okay to attack anyone with different political views and to signal that you march in lockstep with the Good Guy Party. Because nothing says rebellious and punk than posing with millionaire politicians on the Late Show. But I'm getting off track. The '70s were not like this, for the most part.

Punk exists because hardcore conservative and Catholic Johnny Ramone listened to a Led Zeppelin song one too many times. He was disappointed in the modern state of rock music going up its rear with "progressive" nonsense and helped found a band to combat it. The Ramones deliberately wrote ridiculous and short, punchy songs to call back to when rock music was at its most popular and normie friendly, and were constantly trying to get a hit and achieve mega-fame while doing this. This is literally the exact opposite of what the genre became by the 2000s, and what the poseurs insist that it is. That's simply wrong.

All that other stuff was added later by poseurs who will now tell you the correct way the scene should be, and if you don't like it you're not one of them. So much for originality and the rebellious spirit!

Johnny Ramone created a new, sharper musical style devoid of pretension meant solely for entertainment and connecting directly with the audience. He built this monster which tore at the foundations of pompous overblown rock music meant to return it to its roots. That is until his monster was taken by political wonks to be used as a weapon against people who thought like him. This is how you ended up with the bloated mess that became Post-Punk, a musical style completely missing the point of the original and as ridiculous as early 70s prog was. Johnny's monster ended up eating him and the genre he created.

This is what happens when poseurs seize control. They always end up subverting the original intent of their obsession then telling the audience they are wrong for wanting it the way it used to be. Punk is exactly like this, and that's why it's dead.

Punk didn't start as anything it is now, and it is also irrelevant and dead due to the obsessive cultish behavior and choking of the scene to abide by strict guidelines that it didn't have when it began. Oh, and ignoring actual corporate interference and totalitarianism because they have the correct political alignment. The music is offensive, but only in acceptable ways! They can't even follow their own rules. Punk deserves to be dead.

In the 90s, what Punk there was really wasn't political at all outside of a handful of bands. The most popular styles were usually either pop punk (a misnomer for bands that ape The Ramones' original sound) and third wave ska revival, a subgenre that was mainly about goofy sophomoric humor and relationship woes, not unlike The Ramones, The Dictators, or New York Dolls. It was about as mainstream as the genre had been since the '70s and that is why it became popular again. They weren't political, they were fun, and this is why the genre got attention again after spending the '80s in closets.

One band from this era that quite nearly broke out was a band named Goldfinger. They epitomize much of what this period of music in the '90s was like, so I am going to use them as an example going forward. The era was known as the last time rock was relevant and there is a reason for that.

Goldfinger formed in 1994 and were almost popular overnight. They put out a major label self-titled record in 1996 and had a hit right out of the gate with Here in Your Bedroom. The four members formed the core of the sound that ran the gamut of late-20th century rock from punk to ska to alternative to pop to hard rock. Their songs spanned from goofy songs about showers to rants about LA to tracks about that special someone. Basically the album epitomizes what was expected and what listeners liked at the time.

The first album is still looked at as one of the best of the decade from genre fans and isn't too out of step with the spirit of the genre Johnny Ramone imagined. Coming at the height of the alternative boom in 1996 definitely helped with that. Things were looking up.

This was band on the rise, and they deserved it.

You've probably heard this one

Through 1997 and their even better follow-up, Hang-Ups, Goldfinger's song-craft grew stronger and they even put out one of the best known songs of the '90s in Superman. If you've played Tony Hawk Pro Skater then you've heard this one. All this from keeping it simple and delivering what the audience came to them for. They were getting even better and the audience was loving them for it. This is how things were supposed to work.

However, you might have noticed the year mentioned above. 1997 was not a good year in pop culture, and things only deteriorated from there in the wider culture. Everything that came next was a step down from what came before. Goldfinger was no exception to this rule.

It was with their third album, Stomping Ground, that things began to shift. Their bassist had left and their sound changed, for the worse. Released in 2000, after being recorded in 1999, Stomping Ground was an album that sounded like the year it was made: a loud album of only punk and hard rock tunes, ejecting their ska and pop sides entirely and focusing on lyrics that are way more standard and less interesting than the previous two albums. Very safe and straightforward. Outside of a handful of songs, including their well-known cover of 99 Red Balloons, it is also way less fun than the first two records.

Despite this, Stomping Ground is just a good album that came after two great ones. It's not bad, and in fact is worth the listen for genre fans. There isn't much of a misstep here aside from dumping half the appeal of their sound for chasing the mainstream dragon of early 2000s post-grunge bland rock. The album would have been twice as good if the lesser tracks were ejected for more songs like Disorder or I Need To Know from the previous album. This absence of a part of their sound just makes it far more dated than the first two albums are despite how '90s those were. It might be because '90s Punk has more character than 2000s Punk does. The same could be said of the overall culture, too.

But this is nothing. The problem is what came next. In case you forgot, September 11th, 2001, changed the entire western world. Overnight nothing was the same as it was before and we've still not recovered from it. Art was no exception to this.

9/11 destroyed a lot of bands. Things changed almost instantly from bland, inoffensive late '90s hard rock on the radio to whiny, soppy political screeds tearing into those who thought differently than the writer. Rock music became insufferable and went up its own rear tearing groups apart and spitting in faces for daring not to think like they did. This new climate of arrogant whining made rock bands far more preachy, sonically shallow, full of themselves, and just plain hateful. Rock music in the 00s was not pleasant to listen to, and it still isn't today.

I do wonder if the reason Millennials think everything has to be political is because they grew up in this climate unlike Generation Y and older who remember how different things were pre-9/11 and in the '90s. Yes, you can have art that isn't political propaganda--you just haven't had it n near two decades. Despite losing their guitarist after Stomping Ground, Goldfinger did not escape this detestable climate.

In 2002, Goldfinger put out Open Your Eyes, an album of full of misery, angst, and preachy animal rights politics. The songs continued their downturn from Stomping Ground with the band now solely delivering bland punk with lyrics that sound like a high school kid sitting alone at lunch and painting their nails black while writing into their tear-stained diary pages. The band that wrote Question (seriously look the lyrics up) in 1997 would have laughed the band who wrote Open Your Eyes out of the room. Emo was big at the time, folks, and everyone needed to cash in on it even if it has dated far worse than grunge or ska and had far less interesting songs than either to show for it by decade's end. Times were bad and we all needed to cry about it while we tore into our neighbors. Even in 2002 it felt like the '90s were a whole other world and an entirely different era lost forever. In many ways, they were.

Sales declined, there were no hit singles aside from a modest one on the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 soundtrack, and fans had to wait three years for a follow-up. It was clear the album was not what fans needed or hoped for, but being a rock fan in the '00s was like waiting for rain in the desert. Fans were hoping for better from a band who knew better than this and wanted some escapism from this miserable climate.

More than that, Gen Ys at the time instinctively knew that they didn't like the direction pop culture was going in. Perusing surviving message boards from the time will reveal teenagers unhappy at the sudden change in their scene, and they began to walk away. It was going inward, shunning social cohesion for mindless self-indulgence, and becoming much to stern and bitter. This is what had become of Johnny's monster, and now it was happening to those who had initially avoided that trap. Millennials only grew up in this inferior landscape: they missed out on what it had once been. That context is one of the most glaring dividing lines between them and Gen Y that exists. This a tale of two eras separated by tragedy.

This is why one must insist those who grew up in the '90s were not the same as those who grew up in the '00s. They objectively were not. Even without the internet, social media, and phones, this was an entirely different climate than what had come before in the modern world. It might also describe why Millennials are such a sour-faced and angry bunch. This is the joyless world they grew up in. They don't know what they lost, and that what they had was warmed over slop that was not as good as what came before them . Personally speaking, I know I would have hated growing up if all I was left with was what came out in the '00s. It was a very miserable and hopeless time. There is a reason no nostalgia has come out of that decade and ever will.

Music no one makes anymore

In the meantime, fun was absolutely beaten out of the musical landscape just as much as it was in the theater, comics, and on the TV. Even third wave ska bands, traditionally known for picking you up when you were down, began abandoning the style and cashing in on whiny, crybaby emo or injecting extremist politics in their music and chasing away more and more fans at the expense of their former calls for "Unity" and acceptance. If you want to know why ska all but disappeared and there are no more popular bands, this is exactly why. They threw away what drew people to them, and refused to ever course correct.

People get into bands for specific reasons. Once the bands deliberately wade into areas the audience is not interested in and refuse to course correct despite constant warnings, they walk away and they don't come back. Artists and patrons have a mutually beneficial relationship. When we find each other we connect over a specific bond. The artist's job is to honor that bond. In the '00s, it became about massaging artists' egos instead of respecting the audience and if you didn't like it you can go jump in a lake. As can be seen a decade after the fact, it clearly didn't work out well. But they still do it to this day.

In 2005, Goldfinger released Disconnection Notice, easily the most apt title of their career. They ditched their old goofy logo, made the politics more overt, and wrote some of the worst lyrics I've ever read coming from a mainstream rock band. Just look up the lyrics to Iron Fist and try to avoid having your spine sinking into your stomach. The rock also got blander and had less character than ever before becoming even more like every other flat characterless band at the time. In other words, they doubled down on the mistakes from Open Your Eyes and had learned exactly nothing.

But they did try one thing. They put in two ska songs after ignoring the style for two albums straight. I suppose it was safe for an edgy punk band to play unpopular musical styles again without fear of losing radio play. It is very punk to pray to the payola gods that they pass over them. However, one of the songs is ruined due to a PETA activist putting spoken word dialogue during the bridges. A speech that adds nothing to the song, I might add. The band hobbled what could have been a good song by insisting they put in a preaching message from PETA, of all things.

If that isn't an apt example of an artist destroying past goodwill with modern boneheaded arrogance then I haven't seen it. Bringing back part of the sound they abandoned only to absolutely ruin it is par for the course with most bands in the '00s. This is basically what Disconnection Notice was, and it was a failure. As one who was floating around the scene at the time I can say that no one was happy.

This album flopped without a single hit and sent Goldfinger to the minor leagues, but they weren't quite done yet. They still had one more album to close out this miserable decade with, and the last to regain the popularity that was rapidly fading. At this point they had to admit that the fans were right that were going in the wrong direction.

You see, Disconnection Notice, despite having a title similar to Hang-Ups, could not have been any further from where the band started. When they began they were apolitical, had a healthy view on relationships even when they went south, a hope for the future, and were about personal responsibility. At this point in time they were extremist leftists, moped about eras long since lost, whined in abject misery and preached heavy-handed politics to their audience with beyond clunky lyrics. For a band that wrote a song called Spokesman about not wanting to be that guy, they sure didn't have any problems being that guy. They were nothing like they were when they began and both critics and fans knew this, and the band suffered for it. Even they realized that a course correction was the only path they had left to take.

This band was long gone

This was why it took another 3 years for their next album, Hello Destiny. This album was a nail-biter for many at the time. If you were around then you would have caught how hard it was promoted as a return to form for Goldfinger. Many other bands from a decade before were floundering, and this gave hope that maybe there was hope to remember what was lost.

They brought back their guitarist who left after Stomping Ground, they brought back their logo, they reused the alien cover-lady from the first album, and the first songs previewed from it sounded like they could have come from their early days. It looked as if they learned and finally did what they should have done since the '90s closed. We could finally move on from this miserable era. After two whiffs in a row they had finally returned to what had brought them to prominence to begin with. That's what people thought going into Hello Destiny.

And then they heard the album.

Hello Destiny is an identity crisis in record form. Half the album is a mixture of genres like the first two albums with goofy lyrics and good relationship material, while the other half is written by a demented political wank who fell off the deep end into a shallow pool and fractured his brain on the fall. You get a brilliant ska song in If I'm Not Right and a wonderful throwback in One More Time, only to have it ruined by an out of place and wildly unfunny anti-Christian screed, a laughably bad anti-media hardcore rant from a band that can't do hardcore, and more animal rights activist doggerel pumped into your ears by the end. It's the sound of a band lost at sea. For every good song there is one of the worst they've ever recorded. Then there is the unfortunate reveal that a guest vocalist on one song was later convicted of sexual assault on minors. As a result instead of a decent EP you get a bad album. A good review from back in the day sums it up here.

This could have been the comeback the band needed, and it almost was. They nearly had it. But the band couldn't resist shoving their unwanted and badly expressed political and social content into the album. At this point it had become their religion, just as it had for too many rock bands at this time. Escapism was gone and dead. Fans wanted Johnny Ramone's punk, the one they got from Goldfinger in the '90s, and were instead getting fed diet Jello Biafra that they didn't want and had nothing to do with why the band got popular to begin with. Goldfinger's third strike had been delivered. They were out. And this has been the story of the entire genre in the '00s, and it is why rock music is irrelevant today.

At that point it became clear to everyone after three whiffs in a row that Goldfinger was unsalvageable and they moved on to greener pastures, what little was left in rock at the time. They would never get over their new found religion, and would keep getting more drunk of it even when they promised to stop hitting the bottle. There's no coincidence that after this album they said they would mostly be touring in the future and barely ever putting out new material. It was obvious to everyone in 2009 that Goldfinger was done.

A decade later the band (now with only one original member left) apparently released a new album, but most of us have long since left that place behind. That trust evaporated, and you just can't go back. The '00s was the decade of decay, and it left no survivors.

Politics can ruin many things, especially the bad and jarring sort at odds with what the audience wants. The audience buys your product to connect with you, so releasing material that goes against said message is inevitably divisive and needlessly arrogant. Johnny Ramone certainly thought so, which is why he strove to avoid putting such messages in his music, and as a result The Ramones still sound out of their era. This is what the genre began as, and what it was meant to be.

This isn't to say you can't put out political product and have an audience with it. It is just that the audience that wants political product is not the same that wants silly songs called 20 Cent Goodbye or My Girlfriend's Shower Sucks. Not everyone wants political propaganda shoved into every orifice of their lives, and there is nothing wrong with that. There wasn't before the '00s ruined the atmosphere of art.

But for at least two decades now there has arisen a class of artist that has rejected escapism for themselves and to any potential audience that won't toe the line they are told to shove off. What this leads to is a fractured and divided landscape of those who don't wish to conform over those who do. You can't base your whole identity on extreme individualism and then get mad when others won't individualize with you. This s why punk and ska are both dead, and why they will never rise again. Not as long as they reject Johnny Ramone's philosophy of entertainment first for their own private monster mutations of what he created.

Even older artists can't help themselves putting their politics above their audience. This is how you get the miserable post-9/11 world we are currently trapped in without any hope in a better future that doesn't involve your enemies crushed under your boot heel. Until we stop this madness don't expect entertainment to get better again anytime soon.

As I write this I wonder if this has more to do with the generational divide of Ys and Millennials that has recently been discussed. Those of Generation Y who were born from 1979 through 1989 came of age during Goldfinger's golden period of musically varied, apolitical, and exciting music, while Millennials grew up in the post-9/11 musical landscape of joyless, bland, and bitter yet opinionated protest rock of Goldfinger. Ys are constantly talking of better times while the time Millennials had were inferior to the ones Ys did. The two eras of the band are vastly different, and both represent each of their times well. But only one of them is listenable today.

While I doubt many of either generation have heard the band, the wider landscape was not much different for both generations. Perhaps this musical shift helps us to see the generational divide in a clearer light. One wanted to unite, the other wants to divide. Those were different times, and those who grew up in each would turn out to be entirely different people with different hopes and dreams for the world and the future. But I digress as the divide is not one to celebrate.

Art is meant to bring us together. If that is an inherently political or religious statement then so be it, but it's true. The longer we focus on what divides us we will never have art worth indulging in again and will instead keep sniping at each other to conform to the other's whims. This only ends with corpses, and if that's what you want then you need to reevaluate why we are where we are as a culture. The future this mindset has led to it one with political pamphlets disguised as entertainment and those who dislike it are branded as heretics and need to be dragged out of the public square. This is not a world with a hopeful future.

I don't know about you, but that's not a world I want to live in. I would much rather hope for bigger and happier things, and one day, when this madness passes, maybe we can write silly songs and have a laugh about this dumpster fire of an era around the campfire. Campfire songs were at least made to unite.

Johnny's Little Monster was meant for more than this. Perhaps its time to finally give the man his due and go back to basics. We have much more to look forward to than misery, and we should act like it. It won't always be this way. Put on a smile and get dancing. I've got a good feeling, and hopefully that will mean something someday.

At the same time I'm working on stories of my own. Should you want weird adventures about heroes and distant planets then check out Gemini Warrior. I'm coming for ya!

Find it Here!