Dreams, Blood-red, Putrefication

When did this all go to shit? The scene, the people, the music. Where did it leap from the broken asphalt of near-forgotten avenues to the even concrete of freeway, smooth, even, palatable, contractually obligated to offend but not to harm, made-for-TV, turgid, glutted?

Nothing really wrong with the structure, the new adaptations, resurfacing of the same power chords, a polishing of the melodies. The people are the same jaded, creative, independent-minded thinkers, artists, survivors.

The scene, then. The difference lies therein, with its corporate sponsored, massive, televised, homogenized, super-shows, gelded and soul-less, Vans can go fuck itself, thank you, right there in its sweat shops, lubricated with the sweat of child labor. You have bought and sold the PunkAmerican Dream, Freedom's pimp, Liberty in name but not in action, antithesis of rebellion.

Is this fair, though? I mean, there are stockholders and employees relying on this machine, those with fates tied to this Corporation, and many others, even in the death rattles of the Music Industry Giants, Titans crippled and maimed, principles ignored; the lives of many depend on its machinations.

But the point is RIGHT THERE, nestled in Pandora's handbag next to the tissues and blood-red lipstick, Old-Lady smell and hard candies: Punks make the music but someone else, something else, makes the recording, packages it, sprays it with Eau de Dollar, the purpose is profit, not art. Rebellion sold is not rebellion at all, just more diversion, more masks for the machine. Gone are the artist owned labels, or if not gone, then crippled by infighting and creative control battles, ego, avarice.

The scene limps along, blind, beaten and bloodied, surviving on the hopes that control will return to these Punks, that they, WE, find a longer lever, and pry the fuckers off our art, our dreams. But the system has been bought, sold, signed for, and sullied, making it difficult to recognize the flashes of truth, making us question the nature of its aspects. And when we reach the apex, the point where we no longer recognize our own principles, when we hear them echoed back at us with new inflection, with twisted interpretation, there is only one course:

TEAR DOWN THE SYSTEM. SEDITION. OPEN REVOLT.

...and the two teams, laughing, jeering, point at the people, the "masses", getting ever fatter, ever gross, unable to move on their own but only by the million hands on their gilded litter...Freedom putrefies, Liberty is consumed, America is diseased.