Just now I was listening to Ian MacKaye (of Minor Threat and Fugazi) on the Sound of Young America podcast. He said something which, in retrospect, was obvious. I’d just never quite put it so succinctly:

[I have a friend from high school who] has a 13 year old son. And his 13 year old son is a massive Minor Threat fan. In 2009! And I think that’s just incredible! The idea that music, if it’s created in a way that is honest, can still resonate. Kids can still be like, “Yeah, that means something to me.”

It’s interesting how transcendent honesty can be. How the teenybopper pop from the 70s and 80s (Leif Garrett anyone?) has almost zero relevance now while punk rock still inspires and expands, and is well on its way to powering through three generations.

What else are people doing now with music that will still resonate and inspire in 30 years? It’s certainly not “Party in the USA” or that damn Justin Bieber song. It’s what the teenagers do who aren’t listening to top 40 radio or the top-purchased pop songs on iTunes.

I don’t know what that is because I’m an old fogey already at the ripe age of 25. (Seriously, I felt like a grandpa when I saw Vampire Weekend last month.) Maybe it’s a kid writing the next Heartbreaker or some high-schooler learning how to use Ableton Live and a synthesizer, or Talbot Tagora, who are sneaking into their 20s and already touring the US as a noise rock trio (music I’m just now learning to appreciate and understand). Those damn kids and their music.

I just finished watching the documentary American Hardcore, which covers the six-year span of punk’s first (and some would say only) wave in America. It covers the rise and fall of Black Flag, Bad Brains (pre-reggae), Minor Threat and pretty much all the bands I wish I’d been alive to appreciate. (Yeah, I was definitely two years old when Black Flag broke up. Oh well. I’ve seen Henry Rollins do a speaking gig. Does that count?)

Anyway, I noticed something at the beginning of the film, when all these punk icons are explaining how and why the punk scene happened. As many know, it was in large part in reaction to a poor economy, Reagan and the Sex Pistols. But most of the big names on the screen had something else in common: they came from DC, the OC and any other place in the country that is or was a pinnacle of suburban American life. The men and women on screen talk about discontent with a world of order and institution. Many of them had parents who were heads of corporate and political America. And all these kids wanted to do was hang out 7 days a week in a grungy club and beat each other bloody to music that was 1% order and 99% energy.

Sounds familiar. Kind of exactly like the feelings the people in So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore had about being trapped in the institutional church. Not that I expect those of you that are discontent at church to start beating the crap out of each other and yelling into microphones but, you know, at least they were doing something they enjoyed rather than wasting their life following the straight line.

Punks getting tired of the scene getting uber-violent ended the whole thing. Black Flag quit, Bad Brains went reggae, Ian Mackaye started Fugazi. Maybe it’s human nature to fluctuate between order and chaos and to react with a drastic shift in the other direction when things go too far.

(Side note: I’m currently listening to AFI’s The Art of Drowning: one of the better hardcore punk albums of my generation that kids in ’84 probably wouldn’t have hated. Someone please verify.)