Punk Rock: A stage of our lives

The punk rock culture of today is different from 30 years. In our society, the youths are much less rebellious and tamer. This is our perspective of the punk rock culture.

My first encounter with punk rock was Simple Plan's “Addicted to You”. I remember my classmate was singing it out loud and we called him gay. In a way it was not a very strong music like heavy metal, but it wasn't that weak either. There's something about it that attracts us. Something innocent and sweet.

Avril Lavigne - the poster girl of the punk culture here.A few years back, you could walk around the streets and see plenty of 'Avril Lavignes'.

Then we started hearing Avril Lavigne – the all-time favourite of any young punk-loving(or emo) girls here. I remember going to her live performance at Suntec City Convention Center a few years back. She was singing “Sk8ter Boi” and everyone was jumping to the beat – a signature product of punk rock – and the whole convention center felt like it was going to collapse. After the performance, there were pieces of footwear of all sorts lying all over the arena. Whenever my friends and I talk about that, we'll always laugh at how stupid the whole thing was.

That is the appeal of punk rock – simple, innocent, energetic, stupid and basically fun. Some of us would go as far as to call it gay and 'emo'. It's basically a celebration of teenage childishness and dumbness – something that everyone has to go through. The lyrics says it all – falling in love, getting cheated, getting punished, getting girls, peer rivalry, parental issues, school issues, everything that you're made up of when you're a teenager and will find it stupid once you go into adult life.

Of course, who could forget the poster child of late 90s punk rock – Green Day. My favourite Green Day song is “Basket Case” - a song about, well, a basket case. Any young aspiring rockstar will definitely learn that song, because it is so easy but yet fun to play and sing at the same time. You could play the whole song in power chords and use only 3 fingers, although the 'official scorebook' says something more than that. With the palm mute technique, which is using your palm to mute the strings, you could play every punk songs ever written.

Green Day, the 'working class heroes' and poster boys of punk rock to the mainstream pop in the 90s. Basket Case was one of our 'childhood songs' and certainly the very few rare english songs that we remember by the words in this very chinese-dominated culture.

There are only 3 things you need to learn in order to play punk(pun intended) – power chord, palm mute and a voice that sound like you don't care. Drums are a little harder and it's not for everyone. That was the way punk rock was created. The very first punk rock band, The Ramones, showcased their very first punk songs in a little more than 15 minutes. The songs were so short that you hardly notice that they were a few songs. That basically ignited the fire in every underground rock band. They were thinking “Hey, we could do that too!”

Ya sure, that was what I thought too, as I was strumming to Green Day's Basket Case. “...Do you have the time...to listen to me whine...” as I waited for my friend's hi-hat to come in before bulding up to the catchy interlude. While waiting for the drums to join in, my tempo gets a little bit out of sync with the drummer. We always “NG-ed” this part of the song and start all over again. Sometimes we scold each other but laughed at ourselves in the end.

When I went to Junior College, I started to listen to more rock 'n roll than ever. There were also talent competitions in my school and so I went to see what people are singing. Back then, I was Djing abit and was into turntablism, not so much of a rock 'n roll kid yet. I went for the auditions and saw the band category auditioning too. Sad to say, even to this day, I don't get excited by any performance by my own fellow Singaporeans. There are some great Indie bands around today, but on the whole, I'm still not very thrilled with our talent scene in Singapore. Most bands in Singapore are 'playing it too safe'. There is hardly any innovation from the music scene in Singapore.

Bowling For Soup, 4 ordinary-looking guys from Texas was hardly on anyone's idol lis, but they produced a number of hit songs that, at some point of our lives, had really made our day.

Other than Green Day, another of my favourite band is Bowling for Soup. The first BFS song I heard was “1985” and it was the nicest song I've ever downloaded and the album “A Hangover You Don't Deserve” was the last physical music product that I ever bought. Yup, downloaded the song and bought the CD...how dumb can you get, right? But it was everything 'punk'!

Basically, any nice punk rock songs on my playlist will get on to my guitar and fingers. So did 1985. It was happy and kinda funny too. Now we need 2 guitarists to play this song. Again, catching the beat at the start of the song with the drums is a challenge for noobs. The cue for both sides to start was the “Woohoo-oo” in the beginning and I was the lead vocal. After the “Woohoo-oo”, both drums and guitars must start their part. I must have did that woohoo-oo like 17 times. Again, it was all in good fun and we had a great time in the end.

Sometimes it was hard to differentiate what is punk rock, what is alternative rock, what is a plain pop song. In my environment, nobody really differentiates genres. Everyone basically just grab any song that sounds pleasant to the ears. It was also not a very important thing to know the genres, especially when I was in a Science stream and everyone around me knows nothing about musical studies. It is not a surprising thing also, as the bands nowadays don't restrict themselves to just one genre. That's why they are labelled “Independent”.

Once I had a friend who broke up with this girl and he put the phrase “so much for my happy ending” on his MSN messenger nick. That was the 2004 Avril Lavigne song, which sings about a breakup with a guy who “was pretending all this time”. I chatted with him and discovered that he didn't know that a song like that existed. So I sent him the song and he has been listening to that ever since. Ok, I have no way of knowing if he's listening to it now, but I can assure you that he listened to that for at least 2 years before finding another girlfriend.

The thing that I liked about Avril Lavigne's My Happy Ending was the heavy strumming and that high-wailing voice of hers. Maybe most people would find that kind of voice irritating, but I feel that when you break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend for reasons other than yourself, you'll feel exactly like that. It's kinda angry and sad at the same time, but somehow, it is not anywhere near heavy metal. Unlike metal, there's just something about punk rock that makes it so harmless, although sometimes both expresses negative emotions.

Back in my friend's bedroom(aka our studio), I tried to sing My Happy Ending. I couldn't hit the notes and I was out of breath for most parts of the song. It was the toughest punk song for me so far. Well, the fact that it's sung by a female voice makes it difficult because girls generally have higher pitch voices. Finally I gave up trying to hit those notes and screamed instead as I strummed the notes Bm, G, D, A over and over again. It was still fun.

Blink 182, another American punk rock band, is quite popular here back in the early 2000s. Honestly, sometimes I really don't understand what the hell they're singing, but the tunes are catchy.

Maybe the difference between punk and metal is that punks just want to get sympathy and self-pity while metalheads wants to turn all their emotions into a destructive force. Punk rock singers doesn't use the roaring voice like metal does. It only screams at most. It also doesn't use that much of distortion either, like metal does. And it has lesser musical depth than metal.

I like both subgenres for different reasons. There are certain times in your life where you just want sympathy and self-pity, certain times you really want something to get done and something to change. Sometimes you just wanna fool around but sometimes you wanna get serious. 

Another great punk band is Blink 182. This time, I'm serving National Service on Tekong island where my platoon-mates will blast the song “All The Small Things” in the bunk everytime we have some free time. Another easy song for me, I went over to the same friend's house and jammed it on a weekend. The same feeling like Basket Case and 1985 hit me when I was singing this song. One thing about Blink 182 songs is that most of the time, they don't have a specific theme. It's just randomness. I don't even know what I'm singing sometimes. But again, it was all great fun.

Even now, at the age of 23, I still love listening and singing to the randomness and childishness of punk rock. Unfortunately, it isn't a very sustainable genre, as proven commercially. Strictly speaking, there aren't any classic punk rock songs that will last you throughout the ages. Punk rock will evolve with the mentality and maturity of teenagers in each coming age. In the 70s where punk rock first came out, the bands were rebelling against anything from the Vietname War to hippies and basically full of "f*** this, f*** that". In the 2000s, every punk band is singing about school, getting drunk, getting laid and getting ditched. So what could we expect to see from the punk rock culture in the next 10 years? I have no idea.

And seriously, I don't care. =)