Undergroundnetwork

Every week I like to post quotes I have come across that I find thought provoking or sum up my opinion on something succinctly, and with wit. Instead, for a change, I’m going to occasionally select half a dozen songs that reflect my views on some particular issue. I’m going to start with my favourite band, on a topic of interest to me.

Here is Bad Religion on faith, God and atheism.

Bad Religion, as the name might suggest, are fairly critical of religion in their songs. That is perhaps an understatement! But instead of the mindless anti-religious abuse some bands have popularised, Bad Religion’s objections are considered and reasoned. This may have something to do with the bands front man Greg Graffin having a doctorate in evolutionary biology, but even before he obtained his degree the band has made intelligent philosophical statements in their music. Song writing duties are split between vocalist Graffin and guitarist Brett Gurewitz, and both musicians are equally capable of writing thought provoking intelligent lyrics.

So perhaps in the way the religious people reaffirm their beliefs through song, Bad Religion has written the perfect hymns for non-believers. However, Greg says in the song “No direction”, “no Bad Religion song can make your life complete”. They can make you stop and think though.

I’ve decided to be quite selective and only choose half a dozen Bad Religion songs, although there are of course many more to choose from. I’ve chosen no more than one from any one album, and added my interpretation of what I feel the song conveys. Enjoy. (more…)

In light of the announcement that Californian punk heavyweights No use for a name and Strung out are making their way to New Zealand and Australia in June, I reviewed the bands’ latest releases, Strung out’s “Blackhawks over Los Angeles” and No use for a name’s “The feel good record of the year”. This is a show that punk fans should not miss, as both these bands are amazing live. (more…)

I think punk message board forums are fascinating places. Maybe someone should do a thesis on them. (Greg Graffin maybe?)

Here a few observations I’ve made whilst wasting time on bands’ myspace pages when I should have been writing articles for Uni. (I apologise for grammatical errors, I haven’t a sub-editor.)

Perhaps the best place to gauge how fans feel about a recent album release is the band’s myspace page. The message board posts comprise of either the positive “love your new album” “please come to our city”, “your band inspires me” comments or the negative “that’s not punk”, “you’ve sold out”, “I used to like you guys”, “you’ve gone emo” comments, reflecting fans discontentment of their favourite bands new release. (more…)