We were punks
What does it mean to be punk ? Listening to the music ? Wearing the style ?
The other day, while tidying up some old cardboard boxes in the communal cave , I found a treasure in a shoebox. One of those little LP booklet, you know the one, with all the lyrics. This one actually looked like a subway map with the lyrics following the train lines. A band named Hex & the Punks.
Punk and me, we did not have a lot of chances to meet up. Growing up in the 2000s, after the first vase, after grunge, this was not Top 40 material, especially in France. But pop punk did enter me and my sister's lives, mainly with Green Day and American idiot. Then there was Paramore, which I shared around my high school friends, Billy Talent, Rise Against and Vulgaires Machins.
I quickly went to the post-punk side of the force, what with the revival at the time, Interpol, Bloc Party, but also the pioneers, Bauhaus and Joy Division. My sister was the one in the more original punk side , when got this big sort of encyclopedia history book about punk. I wonder where it went… You know what, I’m gonna ask my Me from High School if he can read it to look for informations about Hex & the Punks. At this point in time, for sure the book is at home. On the other hand, he won't recognize himself if I call him Arsène so we'll use the old nickname, Lies.
[Sound of coins on a table]
Hey Lies, can you go into our sister’s room to check if the big book about punk is there ?
Heu..yes why, future me who is absolutely not disturbing me ?
I would like to know if a band called Hex & the Punks is in there.
She's not in her room right now so I think I can do that for you.
Hey Lies ?
What?
Were we Punks ?
[Punkish bassline]
Well we found only one mention of the band, seems to be an anecdote. While they were playing in an open air festival, a big, a huge storm started. The first power chords of their big hit, Green Dawn Mall, had just begun. Yet, despite the wind and turmoil, Hex continued to play. And while their music resonated in the tempest, while the singer screamed the lyrics, while the musicians fought with their instruments…
[sound of coins on a table]
During the course of a rage track, the course of an hail of equipments, the audience was spared from the surrounding rampage. Everything was collapsing around them without hitting them. Once the song was over, only then, the crowd was cleared out.
[plugging mic]
I thought you knew me, Arsène. Of course we weren’t! Punk ? In this high school ? Full of right wingers ?
Oh shit, I remember when they took the organizer from on of the few left leaning student and wrote crap like “communist” and “leftist” in it. In hindsight, that was very american republican of them.
That showed us it was better to stay quiet
You know, i have seen many of them go to a law degree like their idol.
-How do you know that?
-Same building where I was studying. I wonder how they reacted to his recent actuality.
- Oh ? what happened or will happen to him ? Time shenanigans are weird
- Spoilers
- Eurg, you nerd
But yes, I don’t remember any punk or someone overtly alt in their style.
Well… Maybe us, with all our skull t-shirts ?
I don’t want to dwell on this terrifying thought, thank you, I’m leaving
[detuned guitar chord ] shit the tuning !
When I started guitar and bass, I really appreciated the punk approach. No lessons, self-taught with starter books, magazines and internet. Just play as you like, 3 chords and the truth as Tvtropes says. Chaining the power chords while your hand wanders around the neck, trying to find good sounding combinations. Then when I started composing songs in another life, mixing instruments without preconceived groups, metal with saxophone, mixing approaches. Alright, it might not be the best way to progress but me, I was having fun, losing hours doodling on strings, repeating riffs and chords till I hypnotized myself, playing without plugging at night, only for the moon, the stars and me.
…[melancholic guitar]
Playing for others, it was only for the local Music Day before I went to Toulon. There something became my weekly rendez-vous, my half hour walk at sunset then at night along the sea, going to the open jam session at a local bar.
I was still Lies back then, I didn’t yet have my Miss Arsenic stage. hmm since he was in contact with musicians, I’m gonna ask this me to investigate a little.
[coins on a table]
Hey Lies, sorry to disturb you while you’re studying, but I have a favor to ask of you
Of course, what can I do for future me?
Can you ask the other musicians at the bar if they heard about a band called Hex & The Punks ?
Okay, I’m gonna go fishing for info for you.
And don’t forget to do the assignement for… fuck, he’s already gone. Well, I can only wait for now…
They brought me a zine named “Your mom is punk” with a mention of the band.
“Your mom is punk” well certainly not ours.
I can’t picture her ever being against the system.
I mean, with the grandma we have, stories would have been told…
Grandma as a punk, now that I can picture.
Anyway our mother was more french variety, and a bit of The Cure in their more pop era. Were I to make her listen to the gothic trilogy, my personal favorites of The Cure, I don’t think she would recognize them. Now what about this zine ?
Oh they suffered the same thing that Green Day did, their album recordings were stolen and never recovered. The story goes that, struck with this theft so close to the end of the recordings and to the end of the studio location, the band locked themselves in a frenzied creative process, without leaving, without eating, without drinking, to create a new LP.
Damn I feel that one. No theft but how many riffs and melodies did I lost in the wind by not writing them, thinking my memory would be enough and I would replay them easily with guitar in hand. How many times did I write poetry and songs in one go, automatic writing, letting the words and the strings carry me away. Yet it may be better this way, belonging to the ephemeral.
[Sad guitar reprise]
You know, Lies, I don’t sing as well as before. I fucked up my voice by being too loud, screaming emotions on guitars with too much distorsion. Sicknesses that left their after-effects, shortness of breath, throat in the abyss. I stopped the little neighbourhood lives and the open jam sessions when I moved out, having closer next door neighbors we don’t want to disturb.
We never did have a teenage rebellion, a big clash with our old folks. Maybe we didn’t have the best environment to discover nor express ourselves. But sometimes being punk is being the only boy at your conservative school to wear their hair long. Sometimes being punk is having a beard too lenghty that always make comments fly out of a family that seek to cut you down. Sometimes being punk is buying a long dress and wearing it to work.
Sometimes being punk is being a bespectacled teacher who writes games on toilet paper and whose name is Come Martin. It's exploring forms with subway maps and foldings. It’s publishing small games relentlessly, few words rather than impossible to read tomes. It's saying to fashs that we can go far even with emotional security. Sometimes being punk is finding a place where you can publish zines in abundance, explore ideas changing from the habits. Getting out of your borders.
One day, Lies, you will find the ones you can be a little punk with. Assembled around a table, a fake subway map spread out while we wonder how to get away from the kid that seeks to avenge their father’s arm wrestling defeat and keeps following us from station to station. The ones who will ask you if Huey, Dewey and Louie can have a bazooka. With whom you can make monster noises and laugh with them.
We never had the appearance of punk and its big bursts? But sometimes…sometimes we were punk and it was good.
"WE are Hex and the Punk and it's our show!" [guitar larsen]