Is the Pomona Stop on the Vans Warped Tour Mosh Ado About Nothing?
Is God dead? Don’t care. Is punk dead? Now that’s a real question. Or maybe not. Yes, obviously. Punk is dead—has been since the ’90s, or the late ’80s, or the early ’80s. Did a degenerative-on-purpose genre ever exist? And yet, no, punk lives, with renewed intent and energy courtesy of the same kinds of angry, anti-establishment kids as those who were there first, albeit in vastly different contexts. And yet! What remains is that the issue itself is boring and definitely anti-punk in its heavy-handed, rules-based constructions. There remains a punk continuum, populated by all manner of still-at-it oldsters, Euro crusties, metal hybrids, the earnestly and explicitly political, the self-important fashion monsters, and, somehow, Pete Wentz. It exists, yeah, but the kinds of values and the kinds of rebellion inherent in the music that most kids consider “punk” (and “most kids” is a big and important proposition) are in no way marginalized, outsider or anti-authority values. That fact feel
