THE OFFICIAL™ PUNK ROCK CODE OF VIOLATIONS AND CIVIL FORFEITURES FOR THE 1997 TOURING SEASON
INFRACTION: Performing Screeching Weasel cover. FORFEITURE:
$10 per offense, $50 if there are backing vocals involved.
INFRACTION: Ending set with Screeching Weasel cover. FORFEITURE:
100% of pay.
INFRACTION: Ending set with "Hey Suburbia." FORFEITURE: How much
you got, kid?
INFRACTION: Performing post-Wimpy-era Queers cover. FORFEITURE:
$10, or 25% of evening's pay, whichever is greater (odds are real strong
it's the $10).
INFRACTION: Performing Queers cover off "Love Songs For The Retarded."
FORFEITURE: $20 and two hours alone with your high school sophomore girlfriend.
INFRACTION: Performing Queers cover off "Love Songs For The Retarded"
if you are the Potatomen. FORFEITURE: Life imprisonment.
INFRACTION: Performing Sonics cover. FORFEITURE: All your beer.
INFRACTION: Performing Sonics cover "with attitude." FORFEITURE:
And all your dope, too.
INFRACTION: Informing audience that band has t-shirts and CDs
for sale in circumstances when it is blatantly obvious that band has t-shirts
and CDs for sale. FORFEITURE: Anyone who somehow managed to hack their
way through the dense forest of humanity no doubt clustered around the
band's merchandising stand to make a purchase prior to this announcement
gets their money back. Everyone else gets whatever they want for free,
although this is somewhat of an empty threat because, had people actually
wanted their stupid shit, they wouldnt've needed to have been told where
the merch was anyway.
INFRACTION: Performing bad Descendents cover. FORFEITURE: $50
per minute. Bad Descendents covers under one minute in duration still free.
INFRACTION: Performing multiple bad Descendents covers. FORFEITURE:
Yeah, like this band is gonna get paid anything anyway!
INFRACTION: Performing pre-"Yesterday Started Tomorrow" Angry
Samoans cover. FORFEITURE: Children 14 and under -- free. All others, it's
$1 per member per year over 14 years of age, except in cases where the
band members are actually older than the Samoans themselves, then it's
half-price.
INFRACTION: Performing in front of any type of banner or backdrop
which utilizes a skull as a prominent design element. FORFEITURE: Ah, fuck
it. Tim Yo'll just take it out of your ass.
INFRACTION: "Teenage Kicks." FORFEITURE: Band must pay each and
every audience member $1 cash and apologize for wasting their time.
INFRACTION: Band utilizes stage patter from KISS "Alive" album.
FORFEITURE: $20 per minute.
INFRACTION: Band utilizes stage patter from KISS"Alive II" album.
FORFEITURE: $20 per second.
INFRACTION: Band utilizes stage patter from introduction to "Cold
Gin." FORFEITURE: Enter line 31 from federal Form 1040, line 16 of federal
Form 1040A, or line 4 of federal Form 1040EZ.
INFRACTION: Bad 80's cover (e.g., Bow Wow Wow, Adam & The
Ants, J. Geils, Billy Idol, Culture Club, etc.) FORFEITURE: Sherman, set
the Waybac controls for 1983, and bust the control panels when you've returned
from stranding the idiots!
INFRACTION: Band perpetuates recently-cultivated myth that running
all one's songs together with few or no breaks between them ("like the
Ramones, dude!") somehow excuses the performer from having to move around
on stage or exhibit some type of personality or stage presence. FORFEITURE:
I say we just all go on stage and start kicking these fuckers in the butt
until they start moving. Goddammit, they can't ignore us all! I mean, what
the fuck??? Do they REALLY think that they're the fucking RAMONES and we're
just gonna stand there and watch them stand there and get BLOWN AWAY by
their fucking unbridled genius just because they don't have any goddamn
breaks between their songs, when their songs aren't even taxing to play
in the first place? Hello? Earth to Captain Excitement! The rubes want
more gruel, sir! (there are attempts to refute this complaint on the grounds
that bands such as these generally only play for like 20 or 25 minutes
or something, as if this is yet another brilliant achievement on their
part. I dunno 'bout you, but i'd rather watch a fun band play for 45 minutes
than a boring band play a 22-minute set any day. THE MATH IS THERE, PAL,
THE MATH IS THERE!!!)
INFRACTION: Guest vocalist. FORFEITURE: I dunno, is it Ryan Poortenga?
INFRACTION: Performing Operation Ivy cover. FORFEITURE: Well,
if they apologize afterwards, only like fifty bucks or something.
INFRACTION: Whining about the monitors after set has commenced.
FORFEITURE: First offense - no charge. Second offense $10. Fine doubles
with each subsequent infraction.
INFRACTION: Being the Horshacks. FORFEITURE: Being the Horshacks.
INFRACTION: Audience member impersonating guitar player during
"Kick Out The Jams." FORFEITURE: Uh, slap on the wrist?
INFRACTION: Guitar player impersonating guitar player during
"Kick Out The Jams." FORFEITURE: $100, which will be used to fund counter-revolutionary
activities.
INFRACTION: Hank Williams cover. FORFEITURE: Firing squad.
INFRACTION: Reminding me of Social Distortion. FORFEITURE: Firing
squad.
INFRACTION: Reminding me of Social Distortion performing a Hank
Williams cover. FORFEITURE: Genital mutilation, then firing squad.
INFRACTION: Wedging butt of lit cigarette underneath strings
near guitar's bridge during set. FORFEITURE: Come on, bands don't really
do that anymore, do they???
INFRACTION: Drum Machine. FORFEITURE: Band members must spend
six hours bouncing nude on a trampoline with a similarly-unclad Bobby Steele.
INFRACTION: Band plays songs which are apparently supposed to
sound like the Ramones or something, but have a marked tendency to change
chords at exactly two measure intervals (i mean, holy fuck, try this once
if you're ever watching a pop-punk band and you can't figure out exactly
why it is they're so goddamn boring other than the fact that they're just
so goddamn boring: Tap your foot to the beat, and count how many beats
they stay on each chord. In a ludicrously large amount of cases, you'll
find that your counts go 8, 8, 8, 8...and this is TOTALLY FUCKING BORING.
This is, i reckon, the longest you can hold chords in a chord progression
with the chord progression still constituting the melody of the song [holding
chords any longer than two measures {i.e., eight beats} shifts the guitar's
duties from a melody-creatin' angle to a tension-building, non-melodic
purpose. I think?]. You look at the Ramones [no, YOU look at the Ramones!
I just ate!],they never wrote songs with chord changes every eight beats
-- their chord progressions either changed a lot more quickly than once
every two measures, or they hung on one chord for substantially longer
than two measures [first two examples that come to mind are "Beat On The
Brat" and "Judy Is A Punk"], then broke into a little tizzy of chord changes
after proper Charles Atlas Dynamic Tension™ had been established. And yet,
these DORKS who have more or less devoted their life to cluelessly ripping
off the Ramones have never noticed this, and are generally hard-pressed
to come up with a good reason why they're so goddamn boring. I always get
the impression bands like these leave the stage muttering things like "Hmm,
I THOUGHT I had the right kind of U.S. pin on the lapel of my black leather
jacket! Maybe if I get a better one, we will be considered more exciting!").
FORFEITURE: A lifetime of opening up for bands who are much less talented
and much less boring than they are.
INFRACTION: Band takes three minutes to explain lyrics of a one-minute
hardcore song. FORFEITURE: 10¢ per noun, 15¢ per verb, 50¢
per adjective, adverbs free because i like to encourage adverb usage, 5¢
for conjunctions and prepositions, and $50 for each occurrence of "support,"
"think" and "dude."
INFRACTION: Band uses the phrase "punk rock show" in the lyrics
of a song. FORFEITURE: ...sizzle...sizzle...sizzle...shift uncomfortably...
sizzle...sniff... (hey, do you smell gunpowder?) ...sizzle... (pregnant
pause for dramatic effect, not unlike those found on the "Disney's Sounds
of the Thrilling, Chilling Haunted House" LP) ... sputter... fizzle...
Pizzle... (total silence) ... ...FUCKING DEATH!!! FUCKING MUTILATION!!!
FUCKING TORTURE!!! FUCKING HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS!!! FUCKING HUMAN FUCK
VIOLATIONS!!! STABBINGS!!! DISMEMBERMENTS!!! DISEMBOWELINGS!!! HIGH CROSS
BODY BLOCKS!!! THE CLAW!!! THE IRISH WHIP!!! THE BELLY-TO-BELLY SUPLEX!!!
THE BIONIC ELBOW!!! KNEEDROPS!!! RUSSIAN LEG SWEEPS!!! MANGLINGS!!! MAIMINGS!!!
CIRCUMCISIONS!!! BEATINGS!!! HEADS HELD UNDER A SLIMY OAKEN MOP BUCKET
FILLED WITH COLD 7-UP™ FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME!!! PUMMELLINGS!!! STOMPINGS!!!
BURNINGS AT THE STAKE!!! DEFENESTRATIONS!!! PISTOL WHIPPINGS!!! GANG RAPES!!!
VISITS FROM JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES!!! FREE RECONNECTION TO AT&T LONG DISTANCE
SERVICE!!! SLAPPINGS, WHAPPINGS, POUNDINGS, DROWNINGS, SKEWERINGS, MANURINGS,
LOBOTOMIES, TRACHEOTOMIES, LYNCHINGS, FLINCHINGS, ROMAN CANDLES UP THE
ASS, FORCED LARD CONSUMPTION, PAUL #2 FARTING ON YOUR FACE DURING
69 and 50% of the evening's pay. I fucking HATE that. I mean, i REALLY
fucking hate it. I didn't realize i hated it so much until fairly recently,
when i was standing at a, uh, punk rock show, i guess, mentally tabulating
how much money i would be raking in if i could start levying and collecting
fines from weak-tit punk bands, and this sort of traditionally dreary new-school
pop-punk band, who shall go nameless, gets on stage, and i'm thinking god,
this band is probably gonna sing about a "punk rock show" or some such
dreck, and, lo and behold, the first words out of the singer's mouth involve
some doggerel about a "punk rock show." Boy, no telegraph on that mighty
punch! Regardless, i am so amused by things running so true to form that
i go home and start writing a parody pop-punk song called "Blue Popsicle™,"
with the hopes of creating THE worst new-school pop-punk song ever. The
words go like this: "i bought her a blue Popsicle™, whoa/then we went to
the punk rock show/then i said 'way-uh-whuh-uh-oh-oh'" I never bother to
finish the song, because i quickly come to the tragic conclusion that if
i were to write a song such as this, no one would get the fact that it
was intended as a parody. Score one for the dumbing-down of America! Regardless,
i'm still not in a homicidal frenzy about the inclusion of the phrase "punk
rock show" in contemporary punk lyrics at this point, on accounta it really
doesn't seem like The Devil's Work yet, just some garden variety lameness
(i trace this back to Screeching Weasel [as with many of the world's ills],
and their song "Guest List." Look, kids, punk rock is sort of like a knock-knock
joke. It sort of always works and works only once simultaneously. Orange
you glad i didn't say banana?). But! Scant days later! I get an e-mail
from one of my e-mail buddies, who shall also remain nameless (Timbo from
Mutant Pop Records) (i know, i know, you're saying gosh dammit all, Rev.
Nørb, your 50 free hours of AOL must have certainly been exhausted
by this time! How do you justify your continued connection to the dweebazoidal
cyber-nursery of AOL? My response: Like everyone else, i remain on-line
because i think it'll help me get pussy), who is so excited about the great
and wondrous lyrics on one of his forthcoming releases that he can't help
but sharing one particularly savory couplet with me, to wit: "I wanna lick
her Oreos/and take her to the PUNK ROCK SHOW" (last twelve capital letters
mine). Like i occasionally say to the dispenser at Taco Bell™, this is
the last fucking straw! I mean, doofus kids using "punk rock show"
in lyrics of (alleged) punk rock songs is one thing (further, i thought
the Oreo remark was somewhat ill-formed; certainly no competition for real
morons-cum-songsmiths like Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lea of Slade, whose "I
wanted to suck your candy/I wanted to smell your barn" remains the high/low-water
mark against which all else shall be judged). Real live grownups encouraging
-- nay, praising -- them for same is A FUCKING STATE OF AFFAIRS SO SORRY
AND SORDID THAT ITS SORRINESS AND SORDIDNESS VERITABLY BUGGERS PRESCRIPTION!!!
This ain't no silly black-leather-jacket-vs.-white-leather-jacket quasi-comic
squabble, THIS IS A PUNK ROCK STATE OF SEIGE!!! This is Sugar-Frosted Leukemia!!!
CANDY-COATED ANEURYSMS!!! PRE-SWEETENED BRAIN TUMORS!!! By what fucking
right, by whose divine leave, by what giddy, mal-calculated brain fart
do these people get off fucking trivializing MY culture??? By whose fucking
authority are these crimes committed??? By golly, as a card-carrying white,
hetero, geek-ass American male, my opportunities for embracing any sorta
valid cultural heritage are, like, slim-verging-on-skeletal. Okay, sure,
we got the Beats (shockingly out-of-place Go-Go's pun!), we got the Abstract
Expressionists, we got Walt Whitman, we got Dr. Seuss, we got the neutron
bomb and the Brady Bunch, blah blah blah, but what do we have that isn't
either a) completely disposable consumer culture or b) totally confined
to some specific time period in the past??? Not much, Dutch. I mean, you
don't gotta start fitting me for a septum ring or anything, but hey, sad
as this may sound, punk rock is pretty much the closest thing to any kind
of quasi-valid culture (i.e., above and beyond Nick at Nite and Rubik's
Cubes and NFL highlight videos) a lot of people have, or ever will have,
myself included. Tim's defense that "Punk Rock Show = Burger King" -- i.e.,
"punk rock show" equals a cute, generic location to insert in an "Oh Oh
I Love Her So" type song -- was like fighting a forest fire with a hydrogen
bomb. "Punk Rock Show = Burger King?!" Jeezus fuck, think about
it! ("punk rock show = Burger King" in a cynical sense would be okay; this
is not the case here) To see ye olde Punk Rock Show dragged down to the
level of adolescent puerility heretofore reserved for the Malt Shoppe and
the Sock Hop Ball and the local equivalent of Inspiration Point ("Lover's
Hill" according to the gospel of "Flea Brain" by Gene Vincent , but "Lookout
Hill" in "Weekend" by Eddie Cochran, the sellout) really burns my Rice-A-Roni™
because, by golly, maybe the plethora of punk rock in recent years has
all but eroded this from the collective consciousness of punkdom, but,
goddammit, at one point in time, the punk rock show was sacred. All week
-- or, often more aptly, all month -- you'd be essentially rejected by
more or less everyone you came in contact with, just because of the music
you liked. The kids at school thought you sucked, the people on the bus
thought you sucked, the people at McDonald's thought you sucked and your
parents thought you were on drugs, just because you didn't own any Billy
Squier albums or some god damn thing. But then! The punk rock show! You'd
go there, and it was like somebody flipped a negative sign in front of
quantity the rest of the world -- instead of automatic exclusion, there
was automatic inclusion.You know, "100 Punks Rule" and all that hokey shit.
A punk rock show was no more a we-both-kicked-off-our-shoes-oh-i-dig-those-rhythm-and-blues
lame teen dance than a bunch of Native Americans shakin' their groove tushies
to the BeeGees at a disco constitutes a pow-wow (and have you ever been
to a pow-wow where the drummers and chanters do a song with lyrics about
"going to the pow-wow?" A HA! Case closed!). As of 11:00 PM CDT 5.15.97,
any band who uses the phrase "punk rock show" in their lyrics sucks totally,
and will be tried for contempt on the grounds of trivializing my culture
(Goddammit! I'm pissed about this! One's culture can be defaced, embraced,
disgraced, replaced, spat on, shat on, rejected, infected, denounced, renounced,
decried, defied, defiled, lampooned, harpooned, festooned and aquamarooned
[i made that word up], but -- god DAMN it! -- it should never be trivialized,
especially not in some woeful, piss-ass attempt to pass oneself off as
a cute and/or clever lyricist). "Rock and roll show" is still quite acceptable,
however (oh, fuck!!! I just remembered that the first line in "She Said
Yeah" by the Rip Offs is "met her at a punk rock show!" Oh well, never
mind then i guess) (and, of course, there's "My World" by the Descendents,
but i think "punk rock show" is a-ok in this context because the song is
about how various institutions [incl. punk rock shows] are failing to fulfill
the protagonist's needs, which seems like it falls under the "fair use"
clause) (actually, my rule can still stand, it just needs a grandfather
clause or something -- as in "anyone who's old enough to be my grandfather,
like Jon Von, can use 'punk rock show' at will." Haw haw).
INFRACTION: Stupid dancing, annoying DJ voice, bad jokes, white
leather jacket, antlers. FORFEITURE: Violator must perform four hours of
volunteer cunnilingus work with troubled teens in van after show.
ATTENTION: PROMOTERS
PLEASE POST IN A CONSPICUOUS PLACE
Remit all fines collected to: Keeper Of The Fines, Box 1173, Green
Bay WI 54305. Make money orders out to "CASH.