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| EDITION 1 | |||||||
| I would like to welcome you to the first edition of The Voice Of Reason. I am Dave Hanthorn, the informed angry man, and a punk purist. In this, the first edition, I will be talking about the state of modern punk, because, if you look at what punk has become, it is sickening. The general consensus among punk bands now is that if you have simple chord progressions, teenaged members, and a witty (maybe double entendre) band name, you are a punk band. The fact that this is the vast majority of punk bands, as well as the vast majority of the radio sheep, makes it a lot harder for REAL punk bands to convince people that they stay true to what punk really is, since they have been conditioned to preconceived notions that once someone calls themselves a "punk band," this is what to expect. In reality, punk is a raw, visceral energy that comes straight from the soul and channelled through a musical medium with as little filter as possible. Punk is an angry voice in a crowd of silent complacence. Punk is the soundtrack to rebellion. The fact of the matter is, at least seventy-five percent of all bands calling themselves punk have absolutely no idea what punk really stands for. Pop-punk is the worst of the bunch. Pop culture is one of the main enemies of true punk (the other being authority) and they have happily embraced it, thereby eliminating "punk" status. Therefore, the phrase "pop-punk" should be eliminated, because its completely contradictory. I won't even get into Christian pop-punk, because religion is a symbol of the status quo of which punk is such an enemy. Or at least used to be. As I alluded to earlier, punk has been transformed, changed, mutated, and perverted from its true state to sugarcoated bullshit that is served in big helpings to the sheeplike conformist nation in which we currently reside. Record companies and radio stations force-feed the sheep these easy-to-swallow versions of a once great form of music. Thankfully, bands like Conservative Chaos are helping change that image back to what it was in the early 80s, when bands like Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys introduced the idea that the assumed platform of authority is but mere inches off the ground, enough to knock them off and create your own rules. Keep true punk alive. Fight authority, fight complacency, and fight the notion that others can control you. 9/15/03 | |||||||
| EDITION 2 | |||||||
| Conformity. That word sends shivers up my spine and fills me with anger. The very notion that people are constantly changing because someone else tells them to sickens me. There are many examples of this. The most glaring examples of this are smoking, alcohol, and drugs. You can think I'm some weak, pansy-ass after-school special if you want. Think whatever you want to think. Do whatever you want to do. It's just that my opinion is based on fact. The facts are as follows: Drugs kill. Smoking kills. Drinking kills. I constantly see stories of how people die EVERY DAY from these activities. Countless sports heroes, musical geniuses, actors, as well as regular joes die every damn day because of these stupid, pointless vices. How many people would be alive today if they hadn't been stupid and done these idiotic pasttimes? How fucking weak-willed do you have to be to think that the only way to be "cool" is to destroy your only life? I personally think that, if one wants to have fun, just do it. You don't need a foreign substance floating around in your bloodstream to enjoy yourself. Not only will you be able to have just as much fun, if not more, you'll remember it the next morning, too! How novel. What a fucking idea: to remember what happened 10 hours ago. Why didn't anyone think of that before? I have asked people on a couple different occasions why they drink, smoke, or do drugs (weed, pills, acid, that kind of stupid bullshit.) Their answer is always the same: "I don't know." Sometimes they follow it up with "My dad smokes and/or drinks and/or does drugs..." Let me tell you something. I truly understand how one wants to be like their father or mother or brother or sister or aunt or uncle or whoever you look up to. But there has always been something wrong in my mind about lighting a bunch of leaves (marijuana or tobacco) and sucking in the fire. Then blowing out the smoke, thinking you're a badass or whatever. Now getting to drinking, I was always fine drinking Faygo Redpop (we couldn't afford real Coke and Pepsi and stuff like that when I was young.) I never understood why people need to drink something that, I'm told, takes time to like!!! So, you drink this stuff for the first few times, and you say "Shit, man, that's nasty." However, everyone else is doing it, so you keep doing it, because, of course, you don't want to disappoint these empty "friends" by not drinking. So you keep drinking this nasty shit that smell like the piss of a retarded camel in heat, in hopes that someone you think is cool will think you are cool. Eventually you "develop a taste" of the camel piss, and you begin drinking it to excess, throwing up, passing out, and upon waking up, not knowing what happened after about 10:15 last night. For all you know, you were gang-raped by a bunch of escaped Pink-Bellied African Screaming Penguins. All you know is that you remember falling over and pissing on the bar floor, then you blacked out, and now you wake up with a cowboy hat on one head and a party hat on the other, there's a used condom sticking out of your shoes, and you have either motor oil or cherry syrup all over your ass (you can't tell which, since it is difficult for one to see one's own ass.) This may sound ridiculous, but you know what? So are drinking, smoking and doing drugs. People who do these things are stupid conformists. People who do these things and don't think they are stupid conformists are people who are delusional stupid conformists. Period. End of story. The end. 10/08/03 | |||||||
| EDITION 3 | |||||||
| In the last edition of VOR, I touched on drugs, alcohol, and smoking. A couple people wrote me and said "What did you think about Woodstock? That's a part of rock history, and drugs were running rampant there." As far as Woodstock goes, I think it was more of an excuse to get together and do drugs, more than music, or making a statement of some kind. I personally think the true importance of Woodstock has been blown WAY out of proportion since then. But since then, all around us, the world has grown stupider and stupider. Case in point: people actually doubt that drugs are bad for you. If I even need to go over that... go to the link with the old VORs. Read the last column. The trend of people doing drugs and drinking and basically acting like an idiot is so bad, the people who don't do that shit are in the minority. It's a sickening thing to think about. And we are raising yet another generation of morons who will go nowhere with their lives. Corporate America knows this, and revels in it. I will not be surprised if ,by the time I die, marijuana will have been legalized. I'll be pissed, but not surprised. Shit, why not legalize everything? Crack, coke, meth, heroin, ecstacy, etc. That way America, Inc. will know that whatever they say, the sheep will do. And alcohol? To me, it seems to be nothing more than a legal drug. Refer to my last VOR once again to get a longer message on the complete stupidity of drinking. There are no good reasons to drink, to smoke, to do drugs, or any of this other boneheaded shit that seems to popular to do now. Everyone thinks they need to do this shit to fit in. People now are all the same. They wear the same clothes, watch the same movies, use the same slang, drink the same alcohol, and do the same drugs. The sheeping starts with the clothes. Walk through the mall one time, and count the people who are wearing clothes with "Abercrombie," "Aeropostale," "Quiksilver," or any of these other popular companies embroidered across their chests. Notice the similarites to one another, even if they're not together. It's rather striking. The way they walk, the way they talk, their hairstyles, their footwear... it's like these people are a walking billboard for the fad of the moment. It is truly sickening. Conformity does that to me. Continued next edition. 10/21/03 | |||||||
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