2. 1994
Introduction
Given the autobiographical nature of this series, I start not with the start of punk rock in the seventies, but with what was the start of my journey with punk and its offshoots. There were four big releases in 1994, which, to me, symbolise punk’s journey from the anti-establishment hell-raising of its first couple of decades to a more commercial sound: the intensely relatable grooves of pop-punk. It’s this iteration of punk that brought me – along with millions of other preteens and teenagers – into punk’s fold. And it’s the iteration that, for most of us, began our journeys into those more fist-shaking works.
Pop-punk
What first attracted me to punk was pop-punk, not its trenchant critiques of capitalism, fascism, and all that’s wrong in the world. Pop-punk took a twelve-year-old’s state of perennial angst and turned those feelings inwards. It asked why, but more about one’s immediate surroundings than the macro stuff. Why do people behave this way? Why do they treat me, and each other, this way? Why do I feel this way? This music was upset, but not dangerously so. It had edges, but they weren’t too sharp. It was the sort of music that a preteen could stumble into and not find intimidating. It’s perhaps why, for most people my age, their gateway to punk was one of Green Day, Offspring or blink-182. And why, with the exception of my fortuitous discovery of Bad Religion’s Punk Rock Song and their much-maligned compilation, Punk Rock Songs (The Epic Years), my introduction to the world of punk was also through stray songs by blink-182, Offspring, and Green Day on bootlegged mp3 comps that belonged to the elder siblings of friends.
A pop-punk playlist of songs in this essay.
1994
When I discovered these bands – before easy access to high-speed internet, and time-wasting on Wikipedia – I thought they were all part of one giant scene: I didn’t know, for instance, that Bad Religion was an older band. And that their melodic hardcore was among the biggest influence on pop punk’s sound, which married the intensity of punk rock and its offshoots (particularly hardcore) with poppy melodies and harmonies. For instance, Offspring’s ‘94 debut, Smash, was not only released on Epitaph Records, the label run by BR’s guitarist, Brett Gurewitz, but also became its highest selling album upon release (and the highest selling independent record at the time). The skate punk sound of Offspring and many of their Epitaph labelmates was an extension of Bad Religion’s sound with the political stuff either entirely taken out, or toned down significantly. Just compare Smash to Bad Religion’s seminal ‘94 release, Stranger than Fiction (an album that, in addition to being one of my favourites, inspired the name of this magazine). Its first three singles – a re-recorded version of BR’s 1990 song, 21st Century Digital Boy, Infected, and Stranger than Fiction – were fist-shaking anthems against addiction to technology, greed, and social inequality and injustice. On the other hand, Smash’s three lead singles – Come Out And Play, Self Esteem, and Gotta Get Away – were less political than personal. With the exception of Come Out And Play, which deals with the personal toll of American gun violence, Self Esteem and Gotta Get Away were self-centred whines on wanting to become a better person by becoming less of a loser. Even musically, while Smash was similar to Stranger than Fiction, it was a tad slower, a little less trenchant, more reminiscent of punk than hardcore, and therefore more accessible. Today I believe that Stranger than Fiction ages better than Smash, but when I was first introduced to both sounds, it’s the poppier Offspring sound that was easier to digest.
However, it was neither of these albums that cemented my love of what was to me this totally new form of music. It was another 1994 release: a pop-punk classic that became the main reason I picked up the guitar as a fifteen year old – Green Day’s major label debut, Dookie. Years after discovering the singles from the album, I taught myself all of them on the guitar – Welcome to Paradise (a rerecording of their original 1991 version), Basket Case (a continued soundcheck favourite), Longview, When I Come Around, and my favourite to this day, She. Along with their 2004 breakaway from punk, American Idiot – a classic of noughties rock – the songs from this album formed the backbone of all my early guitar playing. It was the music I wanted to write. There was no punk scene where I grew up. I had nothing but my ear and what felt good to help me navigate through the world of music. And this is the stuff that my ear told me felt good.
What’s next
It was also when I got my hands on a guitar that I started to truly understand the world of albums – thanks in part to wanting to play of American Idiot on the guitar. And it was the months I spent hashing out Green Day songs on an acoustic guitar over my fifteenth summer that opened up the next streams of my exploration into the world of punk music. One stream went from straight from Green Day and Bad Religion to the original classics – the Ramones, the Clash, the Stranglers, X, and my personal favourites at the time, Buzzcocks. One went from blink-182’s Adam’s Song through the Cure’s goth rock to the post-punk of Joy Division, the Clash (again), Wire, and Television. And one sprouted from another 1994 classic, Weezer’s Blue Album, to the world of power pop, and ultimately alternative rock, where it collided with the nineties derivative of that previous post-punk stream. Next week, I’ll talk about my favourites from the early world of punk.
