Pop Punk Invades Baltimore

June 27, 2008 by Peter  Send to a Friend

Shhhhh. Wait. I think they’re gone guys.
Someone pop your head out of the foxhole we’ve been in since 1999 and see if they’re still around. Spot anything with make up and Blink 182 shirt and a leather jacket they bought from Hot Topic with a prefab Green Day patch safety-pinned on? No? Good Charlotte? More like Good Riddance!

Now we can emerge, those who remember the time before pop-punk became synonymous with boring over produced fake garbage (as opposed to real trash)…before the third wave swept everything fun and dark and dumb about punk rock into a pile of sarcastic Soup Bowling fatguy turds, whiny SR-71 emo accessories and NOFX jock junk, now we can sift through the dump and pull out the shiniest plastic, the non-biodegradable shit, the pop so poppy it’s a fucking biohazard, and we can listen to them brand-new, and maybe even make 1-4-5 harmonizing punk that’s worthy of the name.

Insubordination Fest (sponsored by the great Insubordination Records) could be the first step in this renovation.

Frankly I doubt it will be too populated because Baltimore’s too filled with art school dropout jackoffery these days to attend a show without a DJ, but maybe all the kids from State College and Western MD and Richmond and Jersey will bus in and make this two day festival of pure rawking to indigestible nuggets of 90s punk fury a glorious celebration of the heyday of the movement where your band was your last name and being polished was the only thing worse than being sober.

A Guide to Some Highlights:

Weston

Nobody on earth was as perfect a punk band as Weston was when this video was shot. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to this skate park in Southern PA that they’re playing in and nobody ever danced there because skaters would run you over.) They made sappy off-key brilliantly written songs about being a loser because what other choice did they have? I’m pretty sure they were straight edge for the same reasons so many of us were in High School—they were too dorky to go to parties and too scared of Nancy Reagan to smoke pot. This is rare reunion worth the price of the ticket by itself, buy Get Beat Up on the way there and by the time you get to Sonar you’ll know all the tunes.

Parasites

Remember when you found out Nikki Parasite was gay? Somehow his presence in the scene justified all the homophobia and constant use of “fag” to denote bad people like indie rockers and club kids, none of whom we actually thought were gay. Actual gay people were cool, probably, and wrote entirely brilliantly miserable albums like Punchline that were almost too well produced but made perfect break-up mixtape side closers.

Beatnik Termites:

These guys sounded way way better on vinyl than on CD. The dude’s nasally voice and the backup’s doo-wopwopwops came out of the tinny scratchy speakers on my best friend’s one speaker 45-only vintage phonograph player (or even better taped onto a cassette from the record and played in her car’s doubly shitty all treble stereo system) was the ultimate expression of 50s-style punk rock. It was so thin and disposable it was like sticking a tampon in your ear, soaked in honey. On record it sounded a bit posed and hollow, but I bet they’re almost as sonically belligerent live.

Try playing a Fallout Boy song on the piano it sounds even shittier than this.

Queers:

The Queers. The fucking Queers. The foundation of all and everything. I once swore that I would only date girls that like Screeching Weasel and the Queers, but what I really meant was that I wanted to find a girl who ONLY liked Screeching Weasel and the Queers, and you could easily have dropped the Weasel. They conquered the world, and they’re still on top. Joe even dances around a little bit now. Let’s hope Wimpy’s there even though he is a confirmed wimp because he is a wimp.

Sweet Baby

Besides Sloppy Seconds, these cats are one of the only reps of Second Wave 80s West Coast pop punk at this showcase (mainly because the best stuff came from the South, Midwest and Canada) but they are so fundamental its nutty. Signed 5 years before Green Day, they embodied major labels interest in the Gilman Street scene—in that their album was so pure and fun and wacky that the douche-bags dropped it before it even came out. Imagine if every greasy dissatisfied kid at Lollapalooza learned how to play Trinidad or Baby Baby Baby Baby Baby Baby Baby Baby (I Love You) instead of Longview…how much better of a planet would we be living on? If you’re really lucky they might crack out some Hi-Fives < href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW7yBwdzwN4">covers!

PS My only claim to fame is that the brothers swam in my Dad’s swimming pool in 1998. Sorry guys that place is gone but if you want we could sneak out to Beaver Dam and 3am and go skinny dipping?

Cletus:
Their live show was always way better than their records, pretty much true of anything on Johan’s Face, so don’t miss them. The lead singer once told me GG Allin died in his apartment, and it’s certainly true spiritually if not literally.

And the Crumbs and Kepi from the Groovie Ghoulies and Doc Hopper and so many more. (check the muxtape for answers: http://thapunx.muxtape.com/ )

The Ergs:

These Jerseyites are so popular they must be doing something wrong but I can’t figure it out yet. All the earmarks of a bunch of hipsters with rich parents and manager but with stupidly clever lyrics and tunes so catchy you could set a Gertrude Stein poem to them and be hitmakers.

Cross your fingers they’ll do their crossover thrash song.

Dead Mechanical
Local band more along the lines of the Fuses or the Briefs but still really catchy and good.

Short attention:

A side project of several other good new bands, but they should be a full time group since their recipe for success is so genius. 1. Take poppunk songs and distill them down to one micro-verse and one mini-chorus (if necessary). 2. Write A Million of them about whatever crosses your mind (but mostly high-school and TV). 3. Release a 30 song 7 inch or two. 4. Call yourself: “Like WarioWare, except with songs” Voila: the best new hope for the future. Serve with Flavor Ice frosting. And lots and lots of Bud.

You still want to go?
click here for details.

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