Wherein I Introduce To You The Dumbest Article Ever To Appear On A Music Website

Sweet merciful Jesus, Popmatters.com. You've really outdone yourself this time.

I occasionally visit that website. Only occasionally, because I'm of the opinion that while pretention is generally an ugly characteristic, it can be pulled off if you actually have taste to back it up, and ol' Popmatters most certainly do not. So, they can continue to do Cultural Studies backed breakdowns of 4 Non-Blondes remasterings (what does it MEAN, in a post-Foucauldian framework, to BE a "non" blonde? And what is this thing I speak of, to "be"?). Or perhaps just tell us what sociologists might observe in Kung Fu Panda, followed by a discussion of "the new textualism," whatever the fuck that means.

In any event, now I'm actually pissed off, because the following link is just about as dumb (and did I mention pretentious?) as anything I've ever read about punk music.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/57020/blink-182-no-sell-out/

Here's a choice sample:

People tend to think in terms of polar opposites, as anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss famously observed. He argued that our worldviews are structured in terms of opposites that organize our experience. But the poststructuralists who came after him pointed out that seeing the world in black and white is overly simplistic. The practice of deconstruction reveals that these dichotomies are actually also affinities, that the opposites rely on each other in order to mean anything at all.

And that's fine. Seriously, saying pop & punk can be reconciled because of some Claude Levi-Strauss theorem about dichotomies being affinities: I could just happily pretend I didn't hear you say that and move on. Therefore, the argument goes, Johnny Rotten's complaints about Blink 182 are ill founded, because while the Sex Pistols were apparently a real punk band (huh?) and Johnny Rotten ever knew anything about punk rock between 1978-2008 (wha'?), when Blink 182 invented pop punk (say-say-say-say whaAaaA?), they were, y'know, validated by poststructuralism or whatever.

Oh, Housley, you magnificent bastard. Have you ever heard of the Ramones? Yes, of course you have. Have you ever HEARD the Ramones? They were, arguably, the first punk band (y'see, buddy, it sort of depends on how you characterize the Stooges, the MC5, the New York Dolls, maybe the Sonics...oh, nevermind). Their first album was released in 1976. That was kind of a long time ago. Does their music, perhaps, sound poppy to you? Does it sound like--despite the driving guitars, ferocious time and crazy lyrics--maybe it's using conventional pop and rock song structures, kind of like if the Beach Boys were from Queens and dropped out of high school?

Or let's go even further back in time. Ever heard of the Modern Lovers? Not exactly the most obscure band in the world, I'm not asking you if you've heard of a band that provided a bonus track to a reissue of a Killed by Death compilation that only released one song on audio cassette. You know: the Modern Lovers. Actually, your realest punk band ever, the Sex Pistols (WHAT?!?!?), a/k/a Walt Disney prezeeeents the Sex Pistols, even covered "Road Runner." Yeah, well, depending on who you ask, they were either a punk band or protopunk. Well, everything off their first album was recorded in 1972. Released a bit later, but that's when it was recorded. Does any of it sound, hmmm, maybe like it's kind of poppy? Maybe, let's say, a poppy kind of punk? What should we call that? Can we call it down the middle and say "pop punk"? Just checking. That sounds like a useful term. Oh yeah, how about the fucking Vibrators, for the love of God? THE BUZZCOCKS??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? They were the poppiest thing ever. How about the goddamned Undertones? None of these bands are the slightest bit obscure if you've ever heard of punk before Jacques Derrida's corpse bought you your first Simple Plan album.

But forget the first wave, maybe they don't count. Let's not count them. Seems like an arbitrary decision, but fine. Let's deal with that vast wasteland between 1979-2000 or 1999 or whenever the hell it is Blink-182 broke and also invented pop punk. Or maybe Green Day helped invent it back in '94, though you never really mentioned that (which is fine, because it would just have been additional bullshit). Either way, they brought back punk music and made it poppy, because it had gone extinct in the meantime and all sounded like Crass, apparently. You can go look up Crass in the index of your postmodern reader, if you must.

Anyway, consider this like a library list of bands you should look into before your next opus on this subject: Social Distortion (70s-90s), Naked Raygun (80s), The Descendents (80s-90s), Screeching Weasel (80s-90s), Gaunt (90s), the Queers (80s-90s), The Vindictives (90s), The Parasites (90s), the Beatnik Termites (90s), Weston (90s), Jawbreaker (90s), The Invalids (90s), The Mr. T Experience (80s-90s), virtually everything on Lookout!, Pop Mutant, or Mint Records... That is not exactly an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination, by the way, just off the top of my head albums that happen to be sitting across the room from me. Hey even NOFX (maybe especially them, if we're talking the Southern California version of pop punk, which I sort of hate). They got together in 1983, for what it's worth, so they weren't just stealing Blink 182's poststructuralist "invention," if anyone requires that clarification. With the exception of NOFX, none of these pop punk bands--pop punk being a well established genre of punk music since the 1970s, for fuck's sake, I must remind you--sound exactly like Blink 182. Some are more Ramonesy, more Chicago style, etc. Blink 182 do, however, sound almost exactly like some NOFX songs, because, y'know, they were WRITING A FORM OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA POP PUNK MUSIC THAT WAS WELL ESTABLISHED BEFORE THEY WERE OUT OF FUCKING MIDDLE SCHOOL.

Blink 182 didn't invent anything. In the interest of full disclosure, they were a halfway decent band, they wrote some hooky stuff, if not exactly my cup of tea. However, they didn't usher us into a poststructualist, ney, even a post-poststructuralsit utopia in which anything is possible--because "pop" and "punk" were finally together despite how mindblowing that is to people without your particular variety of masters degree. Have you ever HEARD "Oh, Oh, I Love Her So" by the Ramones? Seriously. Don't ask John "Rotten" Lydon's opinion. He doesn't fucking know anything. I used to be in grad school myself, and one of the keys to sourcing something halfway decently is to find a source that has the slightest idea what the hell they're talking about. Y'know, this isn't exactly an anti-intellectual thing, because: (A.) You're ignorant, so it doesn't apply; (B.) I'm actually glancing over at my bookshelf at an ol' winner titled Gendered Strife & Confusion. Oh yeah, I've done the grad school thing, chief.

Anyway, the following paragraph implies--if a little late--that he may be talking about popularity and a pop sound rather than a pop sound exclusively, which the earlier part of the essay shows is not in fact true, but I digress & will happily pretend that's the argument:

The core of Rotten’s and others’ resentment of pop punk was in the new prominence of the punk aesthetic in pop culture. The backlash against Blink 182 was the last throes of an identity crisis, a desperate attempt to keep the purity of the old categories by denying the punkness of something popular. But denouncements of pop punk didn’t kill it. Appeals to the virtues of the original punk mentality fell largely on deaf ears.

Whatever, dude. The Ramones tried to break their whole career. They were in movies. Their famous t-shirt is iconic in the US and around the world. They've been on movie & television soundtracks for 30 years. Their earliest albums make it into "top albums of all time" lists all the fucking time. Social D got a shitload of radio play in the 80s and 90s, "Story of My Life" was a video on MTV in 1990, and they were on Sony Records for chrissakes. I should mention "Punk Rock Girl" by the Dead Milkmen was also popular on MTV in those days, although I'm going to guess you've never heard of them either. Screeching Weasel & the Queers sold quite well for punk bands (and remember when what's-his-face from Green Day wore that Screeching Weasel t-shirt for, like, an entire tour back in '94/'95?), and influenced bands all over the place.

Despite the pretentiousness of the essay--which would be fine if you knew what you were talking about, I guess--you have no idea what you're talking about. Really. REALLY. Instead of being offended, take a deep breath and save the cultural studies analysis for something you actually know something about, it tends to work better that way. Then you can actually get away with scoffing at charges of pretentiousness, because your "scholarship" (reminder: we're talking about Blink 182, in case anyone forgot) wouldn't be an abject failure.

In closing, I'd like all of my friends to understand why I'm quite literally about to commit suicide. After reading it, maybe you'll understand. Before shooting myself, I do, of course plan on examining what Wittgenstein might have to say about the dialogue in The Wire teleplays and submitting to Pop Matters, but after that:

The old narratives of “punk”—as philosophically impossible as all narratives, even in its inception—could no longer hold together in light of a radically new culture. The old pop/punk opposition no longer fit, and pop punk, the manifestation of pop culture’s deconstruction, left the constraining categories behind. Blink 182 may be able to do the same for you.

Jesus Christ.