If Sheena Is a Punk Rocker, I Hope She Gets CNN AND al Jazeera

I was reading a good friend of mine's blog and he began to soapbox about the state of what he used to consider "punk." Now most of the time I wholeheartedly agree with what this guys says, but today he threw me. This is something I've been thinking about for a while and I decided to take his blog as an opportunity for me to spit off on the topic.

I was a punk in high school. No, I didn't dress like one or start my own punk band, but it's what I listened to and it's what I identified as. Since then, I've grown and matured and shifted my beliefs. Would I still consider myself punk? Yes.

Punk, at least what was once considered "punk," is dead. The mohawk, leather jacket, cigarette smoker with the tattoos and raised fist isn't punk anymore. It's style. Singing about hating the government is punk anymore, it's consciousness. The alternatives have become a social norm.

But if you ask anyone who still believes in punk what they consider it to be, they wont say what's been listed above. To these people, myself included, punk isn't what you where, what music you listen to/write, or the way your body looks. It's an attitude. Don't scoff. I don't mean that punk is angsty or rebellious, though that's what it started as and still can be. Punk is passion and reform. When bands like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, or the Velvet Underground started making music, it was passionate. Sure, it was rebellious, loud, and anarchistic, but it was purposeful, something that a lot of music from that era wasn't before. By that logic, would I consider Bob Dylan punk? Hell yea. He came up at a time in which people didn't know this genre and he made it say something he felt needed to be said. Is his music punk rock? No. But there's a difference between being a punk and recording punk rock.

I think people get those two things mixed up, and that's why people say that punk is dead. They see what punk rockers looked like and sounded like back when punk rock started, and they see that's all gone now, leading them to say that it's dead. Had some band released Never Mind the Bullocks in 2007, nobody would have bought it. This is true. But that was punk at the time.

What we need is the punk of today. If distortion, mohawks, and anti-American rants are social norms and no longer respected, then we need to find how we can change things now. At this point I see punk as those who read a lot, become politically aware of their surroundings, formulate their opinions, and use this knowledge to fight against what they see as the cause for these injustices and fight for improvement. The social reformists, the people who question everything around them, and resist the want to be content with what's been given, these are our punks. They don't have a haircut, or a clothing line, but they have ideas.