Venture into the grind of melancholic catharsis with me, won’t you? Back to the days of the Reagan administration, when “them damn punk kids” knew what they were talking about and had a real battle to fight. The world was a dreary place, not because “we the people” deemed it so, but because the suburban gestapo took the reigns of so many young minds, transforming rebellious hopefuls into beer guzzling, problem solvers with only one hope: work the 9 to 5 and hope to get something back on your taxes at the end of the year.
The world just plainly sucked, and the youth willing to admit it, began a steady climb up this castle of lies. From 1981 to 1989, the need for social rebellion became prominent, something that could make a statement, no matter if it fixed the problem completely or not. Just something that kept the Republican inquisition from thinking they had complete control.
Some of us took to our furnished front porches and neighborhoods, just to be seen. A lot of us infested the underground. Many more of us took to the streets, punk rock piercing our ears, fueling our already twisted minds, pushing us onward into a sea of passive-aggressive hostility made up of the parents and figure heads of the time, to destroy the power trippers. To destroy the wretched hags festering in our town halls, spending the money of our worn hands work, using it as a crutch.
Punks. Hard-headed, stubbornly free-minded, rebels with one purpose: Sever the head of the administration from it’s prying tentacles, reaching in and taking what we knew was rightfully ours in the first place. Whatever the race. Whatever the look. These rebels with a cause, were a hope in a progressively wasting world. One in need of a change.
”Kerosene” by Big Black, is a wickedly, righteous testament to the anti-suburban culture. A song that describes the bore of living out the perfect lie, and what one must do to tear away old habits and routines to make life worth while. While main member, and culture shouter Steve Albini may not look, by today’s standards, very “punk rock”, he’s a true, living, breathing monument of what “punk” truly is: A mindset, and yes, a true set of values that counter and absolve us of our dirty little habits that send us to a lethargic and streamlined fate.
Read up on Big Black and their album “Atomizer”, for which “Kerosene” is taken from, here.
