Let’s talk about pop punk. It is a classic story in the indie scene, of a genre’s explosive birth, its early years in obscurity, its development to a peak of cultural relevance, a fall from grace followed by a rediscovery that saw it rise to its highest pinnacle only to become corrupted by the mainstream and then burn out in a circle of mediocrity and self recrimination.
I tell people that if I have to call one genre my home base it is punk, but it is really pop punk. I have mentioned previously that The Offspring and Green Day are my two first albums. These two bands spearheaded an all too brief takeover of the pop charts by pop punk bands including Bad Religion, NOFX, and Rancid that represented my musical coming of age. When these bands fell off the top 40 so did I, and I spent the next four years or so listening alternately to Celtic music and investigating the classic punk roots of the bands that I so admired.
The Punk explosion could be said to be the primordial ooze of all indie music. The first two genus to emerge were Punk and New Wave. Punk, represented by bands like The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, and (my personal favorites) The Clash, had its roots in the art rock scenes of New York and London. It wasn’t long before the art school dropouts that represented the majority of the scene became a bit disenchanted with only screaming, and they joined up with others that were more or less weird for its own sake, and began the New Wave scene, particularly including bands like Television, DEVO, The Talking Heads, and Blondie. The New Wave scene gave birth to diverse genres such as No Wave, Synth Pop, Grunge, and indie (which was originally meant as a blanket term for all music outside the mainstream….and is still often used that way, but also describes a specific genre….which has no single sound….anyway). Punk seemingly went in all directions at once. Many of those in the genre eventually moved into New Wave and its descendents while others were utterly destroyed by early pop success. Those influenced by early punk went on to form the Hardcore scene, which claimed to be the only group to uphold the true ethos of punk, defining themselves largely against those punk acts that had achieved mainstream success, as well as popular music as a whole.
The Ramones alone amongst the punk scene neither feared popular success nor achieved it, instead toiling away in that odd middle class of the musical world where you work hard and make just enough money to support your drug habit, but never really make enough to claim “success” or “all the drugs.” Their music was more melodic than others in the genre and contained a generous helping of pop hooks. While the hardcore scene came to disdain pop hooks and eventually anything that did not give you an immediate headache, those who drew inspiration from the Ramones, including the Replacements and the Screeching Weasels, began to attract the label “pop punk.” While the scene was widespread, the Southern California area seemed to produce a disproportionate number of punk bands, and as such became a locus for the pop punk scene, and eventually it was from here that Green Day and The Offspring emerged.
What it was about them that particularly spoke to me is hard to say now. I had enjoyed previous music on the top 40 that would be classified as post-grunge, but they all lacked the clarity and complete cynical rage that the pop punk acts possessed. Though grunge and post-grunge have some great song writing and word-play, I really can’t think of an act from those genres that does angry poetry as well as the 1994 crop of pop punk acts, with as much energy, and with such good pop hooks while still retaining substance and relevance.
What really characterized the 90s was genre hopping, and so it wasn’t long before pop punk faded from the top 40. Being very poorly locked into the underground part of the genre (I was 10, and knew no punk rockers. The internet was my only friend, when it was invented.), I was forced to move on. In places where pop punk was popular, ska began to catch on, and New Jersey was such a place. In the meantime The Offspring, Green Day, and their ilk, continued releasing albums that I liked and no one else did. This kind of culminated in Green Day’s “Warning,” which I do like but which, well, kind of also sucks. Around the same time The Offspring released “Americana” which really sucked but which broke them back into the mainstream. The next year Blink-182 made their mainstream breakthrough and my world crumbled around my ears.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Blink-182 at the time. But I also knew it was really shallow. I though that that was ok, because it was still punk, and at least they were fun and neither a boy band nor nu-metal (nor rap-rock like The Offspring increasingly are). But when their clones began to pop left and right and jock assholes began listening to them I knew something was seriously wrong.
I still love “Enema of the State,” it is good stupid fun and there is a bit more going on there than people realize, but there is a huge difference in writing quality between “Longview” and “What’s my Age Again.” Both are songs about being misunderstood 20-somethings that are too focused on sex and drugs and trying (and failing) to have a good time. But one has one of the finest bass lines ever written, while the other rapidly became as reviled as “Smoke on the Water” by Guitar Center employees.
But Blink-182 did not spring, as Athena, fully formed from Dexter Holland’s increasingly soulless brow. The scene that bore this thrice cursed spawn was undergoing a gradual evolution from the pop-punk of the early 90s, and was not yet entirely the cesspool that it became after Blink-182’s success. One of the occupants of this evolutionary mix, doomed yeast in the brewer’s mash of the pop punk scene, was The Ataris.
Formed in 1995, The Ataris spent the years before the pup punk explosion doing what all good indie musicians do, working hard at doing it themselves, writing their own music and touring like the iceman was on their heels. I bought this EP because I don’t own anything by the Ataris, I liked what I had heard, and I had been told that they are “The Thinking Man’s Blink-182.” It might also be said that they are the ones responsible for fusing pop-punk and emo, resulting in a five headed demon of unspeakable blandness and mediocrity. But that lay in the future.
This is pretty standard pop punk located halfway between anti-flag in their more stupid (fun) moments and Blink-182 in their more intelligent (good) moments. If you are looking for clever word play you should probably look elsewhere. There is some good songwriting here (for pop-punk songs), relying mostly on confessional songwriting techniques than the social commentary and sarcasm that I tend to prefer in my music. I would say that 50% of the songs manage to avoid outright cliché, which is probably a success for late 90s pop punk. As with most pop punk the saving grace here is the addictive amount of energy that is put into the music. “That Special Girl” in particular has some good energy, as does “Not A Worry in the World,” which also has the advantage of being angry. You know. Like a real punk song.
I really need to get an album before I make my decision on the Ataris. I will probably hold onto this EP until then, but I probably wouldn’t do the same if I were you.
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