EmptyBottle.org: Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Wonderchicken:
“Punk (with a large P for marketing –ed) got co-opted and marketed and corporatized, and it damn near died, as all Big Ideas do. That’s not to say that small-p punk is not still alive. It is, down in the ditches, where the spirit that drove the rage has morphed and moved on and dropped back under the monkeymass radar. Music and community is being made now that might not fit so easily into the same easy label, but there are folks out there making stuff that builds on and extends the best of the punk alt-rock scene from 20 years ago and more. Some of ’em are more relevant than others, sure, but the passion’s still out there. The anger, the love, the frustration, the woohoo. The party rolls on, even though the faces have changed.”
(Please read the whole thing: it’s worth it. And the Dave Eggers essay he mentions is a must read: I have it as a bookmark and dearly wish I had come to the realizations he describes much earlier. )
The whole ethic of DIY is compelling stuff, even 25 years after the Sex Pistols and Ramones mooned the industry. The punks were building on an ethos of free expression without commercial considerations.
Weblogging is coming up on 10 years, and you need even less talent and equipment than a punk band did. Enabling people to become producers as well as consumers is a radical idea today, though it had been SOP since time immemorial a couple of centuries back.
So, yes, it’s a party, it’s an art exhibition, it’s a jungle telegraph, it’s whatever the person pressing the Post button wants it to be. You write for yourself and if people read it, comment on it, link with a trackback, that’s gravy. I had never given much thought to subscribers, as opposed to individual pages being read, til this past week. Forty-some people: I couldn’t name 40 friends, and to be realistic, I would have to attribute those 40 as friends of the writing they find here. But it’s gratifying, nonetheless. I have never written as much or as well in old school paper journals. And that’s been worth it. Thanks for reading.
[Posted with ecto]