Classic teenage rebellion. Well to be fair…not really. No smoking. No drinking. No combative, destructive behavior or partying. And more suburban. More…nerdy? Dammit was I deep into punk music, though.
I heard them say that the meek shall reign on earth / Phantasmal myriads of sane bucolic birth. / I’ve seen the rapture in a starving baby’s eyes, / Inchoate beatitude, the Lord of the Flies.
It was the winter of 1996 and I was in my high school’s television studio. It was a Sunday afternoon and we were cleaning up from doing a set of live broadcasts for an open house. As we wound microphone cables, a junior anchorman switched on the studio CD player. Stranger Than Fiction came roaring out, so fierce and fresh to my alternative, grunge-trained senses. This was entirely different from what I was listening to, and I was intoxicated. I scoured the used CD bins at my favorite sanctuary until I found a copy, less than a week later.
Over the next few months, I devoured their entire back catalog. Relentless drums set in double-time filled my bedroom at night. Gone were the doleful mumblings of Cobain and the shrill, nasal meows of Corgan. Instead, crisp harmonies singing pointed, condemning lyrics consumed my attention. They demanded it. It appealed so fittingly to my cynical sense of humor. I was, after all, a snarky sophomore in a well-to-do suburban high school. I had a lot to be self-righteous about. Or so I thought.
I don’t know if the billions will survive / but I’ll believe in god when one and one are five. / My moniker is man and I’m rotten to the core / I’ll tear down the building just to pass through the door.
Bad Religion was one of the few bands that my group of friends enjoyed collectively. Rare EPs were sought after and Jason even had LP covers framed on his bedroom wall. Tyler and I would listen to Against the Grain on repeat during commutes downtown to crew practice. Regatta trips were made more tolerable with a set of headphones and the comforting-yet-castigating lyrics of Greg Graffin. Girlfriends hated it, but we didn’t care. We loved the intellectual investment. I think we also loved that you wouldn’t hear them on the radio. They were The Beach Boys played by The Germs. They were the love-child of Elvis Costello and The Ramones.
11 years after I discovered Bad Religion I can easily see how they helped shape my taste in music and why they’ve stuck with me for so long. I was raised on a combination of Michael Jackson and The Doors, Phil Collins and The Byrds. Indulgent pop artists alongside socially consciousness bands. And while the more foundational groups like The Clash and Black Flag never found permanent home in my collection, it wasn’t because I was at a loss for appreciation. It merely seemed to be angst without direction, without purpose. And while the Ramones might smash guitars with anarchic abandon, I preferred the acerbic, biting lyrics of Brett Gurewitz to show my lack of faith in the establishment. I was rebelling, I just didn’t want to destroy.
The ghost of their lyrical ideologies still haunts me. I still feel the internal jump to cut down someone’s assumed belief, to shake them into questioning and not blindly accepting. Above all, I think the band taught me the power of choice, not the misanthropic anti-theist rhetoric that one might imagine. They explored ideas of materialism and free-will, determinism and evolutionary biology, entropy and reciprocal-altruism. They quoted works of B.F. Skinner, Diogenes and Ludwig Boltzmann. And while I did not agree with their condemnation of organized systems of faith (as a practicing Roman Catholic), I understood that they used the construct of religion as a metaphor for politics. Listening to their music got me to understand why politics demands passionate interest. Their music got me to cast aside apathy and to simply care.
A few years back, my friend Tyler asked me if I thought I’d be listening to Bad Religion when I was a parent, or if it was just a phase that we had passed through. Simple. Developmental. Expected. And while my appetite for this simple song structure has waned, I’m still reminded of a quote from Tommy Ramone, “…I knew that what was needed was some pure, stripped down, no bullshit rock ‘n’ roll.” And judging by what’s on the radio right now, I couldn’t agree more.
I’m a 21st century digital boy. / I don’t know how to live but I’ve got a lot of toys. / My daddy is a lazy middle class intellectual, my mommy’s on Valium, she’s so ineffectual. / Ain’t life a mystery?
