5 Feet of Fury

‘Unpopular Opinion: Punk Rock Is for Old Farts’

Nicholas Pell writes:

I love punk rock and I love old people music, so it doesn’t irk me that punk rock is now old people music. What bothers me is that it’s old people music masquerading as young people’s music. As Joe Gillis says in Sunset Boulevard, “There’s nothing wrong with being 50, as long as you don’t pretend that you’re 25!” (…)

I don’t expect punk rock to go away anytime soon. And hey, when I come across a new punk-rock band that’s worth something (what’s up, Black Mambas?), it’s a magical thing, transporting me back to being 13, when I realized there was something outside of my boring suburban adolescent existence. But maybe we can at least stop pretending that there’s been anything shocking or confrontational about punk rock for the last 25 years.