When most people think of beautiful music, they think of a Beethoven symphony or even one of those mellow Death Cab for Cutie songs. Not me! I think of The Stooges, with Iggy Pop howling and contorting himself, or Sham 69, with Jimmy Percy singing in mangled Cockney about all sorts of British issues.
Punk is a very misunderstood type of music. Most people think that all punks are rude and dirty, addicted to drugs and always panhandling for money to buy beer. Of course, there are some of those. I see them every day, band patches safety-pinned on leather jackets and their hair sticky with glue or whatever they use to hold it into a mohawk or liberty spikes, out on the streets because mommy and daddy wouldn't let them wear a Discharge t-shirt to school.
Those punks might be cool people deep down, but they don't realize that punk is not only a lifestyle, but also a state of mind and a type of music. I don't live what most would call a punk lifestyle. I go to school every day and I don't drink myself into drunken oblivion on a street corner downtown. But I am a punk. I don't strive to conform to mainstream society. Politicians can go fuck themselves and the conventional American life disgusts me. I love the music, anything from the New York Dolls and The Ramones to Aus-Rotten and Minor Threat. I don't wear leather jackets and pants with band patches all over them. I don't necessarily have the punk look, but I couldn't care less. Punk is about being individual and not trying to fit in, so that's why you won't see me at a show looking like every other little punk brat. The people at shows might wonder why I'm there since I'm not covered in band names and I don't have sticky substances holding my hair as far as it can go in the air. But they can wonder, because at least I know that punk isn't a fashion statement.
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