The Same But Different

THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT

"You're not punk and I'm telling everyone
save your breath, I never was one.
You don't know what I'm all about
like killing cops and reading Kerouac.

- Jawbreaker 'Boxcar'

03.12.2003

A chasm a mile wide opens within my head, into which falls all I ever knew. It rips me open at the seams, leaves a bloody broken mess; reassembles me into new forms before destroying me once more. I am my own death. I am a being reborn of hope and fury, of sound and sweat. Broken down into my component elements, remade in form familiar and utterly alien. I peer through these virgin eyes and the world is not as it was.

My teeth chatter from distorted bass frequencies that quake the ground beneath my feet. A ground beer sodden and adhesive. Saliva and sweat fly through the air, the moisture evacuating bodies in desperation to be part of the atmosphere. Fists punch the air in defiance against forces unseen. Hoarse voices bellow in unison, echoing those tattooed and pierced men on the loose definition of a stage no more than three feet in front of me. I look to my left through an adrenaline-blurred haze, sweat painfully trickling into my eyeballs. I squint and see Paul, his lip swollen, bleeding, black T-shirt ripped and torn at one shoulder, his glasses long lost into the partisan crowd. He looks at me with a grin, shouts at me the next opening line as the band kick in without break or breather.

I grin back, echo his cry and my fist joins the others held aloft. I push pasts two sweat drenched girls with dripping mascara staining their cheeks, feel an elbow connect with my ribs as the top-naked hulking skinhead who dances alone goes into spasm, wince, and lean into Paul's bruised face
- This is fucking mega, man!

I feel a tap on the shoulder just as the pit erupts, turn and see David grinning at me the same mad look of joy we all sport at times like this. He downs his the remainder of his pint, throws the plastic container into the throng, and dives past me and Paul, slapping us hard on the backs, shouting ' I'll see you boys later, and dives into the seething morass that constitutes this gig.

Fucking Strike Anywhere at the Ferryboat, man, this is the fucking bollocks. The place is absolutely heaving, every square inch filled with sweating human flesh, emblazoned with logos, symbols, a culture supposedly long dead in fine fucking form. Two black haired straight-edgers hang upside down in the rafters, the crowd cheers them on with a roar, and one falls but is caught, pulled to his feet, carries on dancing. His partner, apelike in the rafters, hangs perilously with one arm and roars in approval. Friends are hugging, couples rise and fall in unison, strangers sing together. The band sing of liberty and togetherness, unity and positivity, politics and change, their words echoed by the two hundred people that comprise the amorphous mass of bodies that seethe and spill, break apart and pull together.

The youth of today, eh? Apathetic bunch of wankers. Not like it was in the old days.

- How did that happen, I shout to Paul
- The mic got thrust right into my face. Punk. Fuckin. Rock
- Nice one, mate, I say with a smile.

I look in front of me, see Dave's long hair whip up and down, watch the dreadlocked leader of the band thrust the mic to his mouth. Dave grabs it with gusto, bellows the required line, hands it back, and resumes his drunken protest dance. Grins are everywhere, surrounding me. I'm very close to happiness. To contentment.

ON THE WALL

We sit outside on the wall facing the pub. The wolves have come out of the walls, and it's all over. Steam rises off our molten bodies into the December air, mingling with our cigarette smoke. Dave hacks and coughs and dislodges a lump of green-grey phlegm onto the cracked pavement. I don't know how he smokes that Samson shit, it's even rougher than Drum. Paul sits and stares at nothing in particular; his lip swollen and blood scabbed. His pale shoulder protrudes from the rip in his sodden T-shirt. I roll a cigarette with damp Rizla, swear as the paper tears, begin again, succeed this time and ignite. I draw in the smoke and hold it against the wishes of my lungs. I exhale, a being of breath, smoke and steam. A young man with nothing and everything to live for.

- That was fucking ace, says Dave after the eternal silence.
- Fucking right, affirms Paul, lighting his Marlboro with a grin.
- Mmm, I say, distracted by a girl across the road with her tits spilling from her top.

We sit that like for an aeon. Seasons come and go, empires rise and fall, couples explode and make up, species evolve and reach extinction. Here on the wall we sit, the cold brick and mortar beneath us, the clear winter sky above, shrouded in smoke, stinking of a two hundred individuals. Women pass, we watch and approve and rate them, converse with the ones we know, ogle the ones we don't.

I could do this for fucking ever. I never want to stop.

WHY I LOVE PUNK ROCK AND OTHER RELATED GENRES

My dad loved the Pistols. Eight years old, and I heard the phrase 'never mind the bollocks'. I laughed at the expletive.

Eleven years old, I heard Green Day. First year of secondary school, a friend long forgotten gave me a tape. - When I Come Around he said to me with a grin.

Fifteen years old. I hear 'Boys Don't Cry'. I masturbate over a girl I think I love, who I barely remember, and I listen to The Cure.

Sixteen years old. I buy 'Bakesale'. I suddenly get Sebadoh.

Seventeen years old. I'm in Dublin. Great Guinness, obviously. In Tower Records, I find Hot Water Music.

Eighteen years old. Hot Water Music at Highbury Garage. A man is held aloft upside down, walks the ceiling. A fight breaks out. The band stop playing with frowns. I have just finished my A-Levels; I leave for University in three weeks.

Nineteen years old. Alone, Jawbreaker blow my mind.

Twenty years old. Strike Anywhere at the Ferryboat. Friends from Cape Town, San Francisco, Cambridge. We are alive, now, together, stinking beings of blood, sweat and testosterone. Single, free, existing only in the present tense.

Twenty-one years old. I'm getting tired of punk rock. I still love it, but there's so much more out there. I am listening to 'At Folsom Prison' and 'Rain Dogs'.

Twenty-two years old. In Cambridge, I buy 'The Boatman's Call' for five pounds. I've just read Kelly + Victor. She told me to read it and I fucking love it, that book, that record. I love this girl I've been with for nine months. As we punt down the river past the colleges and the swans, past the drunkards in summer haze, I feel what I felt on that wall. Trite, clichéd, hackneyed emotion that is so fucking pure, so fucking real that it scares you shitless, makes you want to run back to your misery because now you've found what you've always wanted and you can barely handle it. You want to rip your face off, you want time to move in fast forward, you want to hide in your cynicism and bad jokes, it makes life bearable. View your life through irony-tinted glasses, accept routine democratic atrocities, say things will never change, say we're all alone, wallow in the darkness; it makes you cool, right? Criticise those who get off their arses and do something when all you do is complain, you fucking post-modern over-read under-educated twat. Read your books and let your own life fall apart. Listen to your songs and neglect what's around you. You're not a character in a novel, a film, a song. You're alive now, in the present tense. You've got someone. Don't fuck it up.

That was a good day, that day in Cambridge.

MY TOP TEN PUNK ALBUMS

1. Jawbreaker ' 24 hour revenge therapy
2. Husker Du ' zen arcade
3. The Birthday Party ' prayers on fire
4. Fugazi ' repeater
5. Strike Anywhere ' change is a sound
6. Hot Water Music ' no division
7. Leatherface ' mush
8. Alkaline Trio ' maybe i'll catch fire
9. The Lawrence Arms ' the greatest story ever told
10. Black Flag ' damaged

STILL ON THE WALL

Paul stubs his Marlboro out on the wall. He immediately lights another. Dave's lank and greasy hair hangs weed-like from his head. His head nods almost imperceptibly, the music still running through his synapses, still thrilling.

The moisture that adheres to my skin evaporates, taking with it my contentment, diluting it in the atmosphere, mingling with Marlboro smoke, being sucked into our lungs. I want to move, to go home, to get foetal in bed.

Still on the wall, the future dissolving in front of our eyes.

ONE FINE DAY IN A FINE CITY

I step out of the door into a puddle of putrefaction. The ammonia stench of stagnant urine hits me; I retch and empty my stomach, topping up that pool of filth with a splash. I blink; it's not merely a puddle, a pool, not even a lake. It is an ocean, of shit and piss, bile and pus. The yellow-green waves lap at my feet. I fight the rising bile within me. Wade into that ocean like Reginald Perrin. I do this every fucking day.

STILL ON THE WALL

- You got a light? comes a voice outside my field of vision.
- I've got one, gimme two secs, blurts Dave, fumbling in his damp jeans for his Zippo.

I turn to see a young girl, sixteen maybe seventeen, with three of her mates standing guard behind her. All the same, black hair, maybe a piercing unapproved by father. Streaked eyeliner. The eyes aflame with the thrill of finding this underground cave. One with Good Charlotte. One with Thursday. One plain black. One stripy with exposed underdeveloped tits. Fucking wannabe bitches, I can't fucking stand them, I really can't, I'd say that they've got their hearts in the right place, but have they? I used to think that this, all of this, 'punk rock'¦I used to believe in it. Just saying that in my head makes me cringe, let alone out loud. What the hell am I doing here, I'm twenty one years old and feeling like I'm past it, worrying that little girls won't think that I'm down with the scene. I want to scream at them, rip apart their eardrums with tales of what REAL punk is and how they don't have a fucking clue what REAL punk is and how REAL punk is about pain and suffering and fighting for what you believe and not dressing like very other fucker in the place, not about piercings or Mohawks that you have to protect with an umbrella, what the hell am I doing here I'm not I'm happy but angry and I believe in it but I but I can't stand them I wished I looked better and had dyed hair but punk isn't about that but it is, it is like everything-fucking-thing else out there and I was trying to escape but it's like I thought I was going somewhere and carving out something new a fusion of punk ethics and literature but I've landed on a snake, a big fucking python, a fucking anaconda and I'm sliding down it like Aladdin in the Disney film and I'll be right back to square one without a ladder in sight an feel like I'm in that Cure song lullaby I'm being eaten by a thousand million shivering furry holes, and I hate these wannabes I'm a wannabe I want to it to be the way I believe in it not this fucking showcase for Atticus and Vans I want people to realise it in its wider social context but they won't they don't want it what I thought I had found was false like everything else but I can still believe in it and apply that to how I think and act and feel I feel like I'm coming apart sometimes the chasm that had closed reopens, it splits me into two mirror images each other's doppelganger who shake hands and smile and greet and one is the past and one is me now the present or the future? I don't know I feel like I'm coming apart sometimes god I need a woman those girls are young but I would and I need a cigarette and they don't know what REAL PUNK IS but I don't either and I need a fag and I'm coming apart but I'll be alright and I'm lighting a cigarette and I feel better and it's passing they seem alright really.

- Andrew! Dave shouts at me, his sharp voice cutting through my daze
- Mmm, I reply
- You got a light, boi? He says in mock-norfolk
- What? Yeah, yeah, I say pulling out my cheap plastic.
- You're away with the fucking fairies mate, laughs Paul
- Just tired

I look up at the girl. An uncomfortable look as she lights her Bensons.

NOW I THINK I'D LIKE TO WRITE

Sitting at the electric glow of the monitor. My sentences snake across the screen. I reread them and don't like them. Highlight. Delete. Begin again. I contemplate writing about myself writing but realise even that's derivative. It probably only occurred to me because I've been reading John Fante and Charles Bukowski. I'll never be as good as those guys.

Perhaps I should invent an alter ego who worries about what I worry about. Who has the same problems, but in poetic prose that will astound critics and casual readers alike.

I get up from my hard wooden chair, and pick up, flip it upside down and jiggle the wobbly leg again. Perhaps I should get some wood glue.

STILL ON THE WALL

- That was a great concert, the Thursday girl says to Dave.

For a greasy longhair, he gets a lot of female attention. At the mention of the word 'concert' Paul rolls his eyes and I take a drag.

- Yeah, it was, he replies. You ever seen em before?
- No
- Yeah, we saw em last year in Camden. It was a mad night
- You got stuck in the tube doors and frightened those old ladies, I say
- My bag got stuck, Dave replies without taking his eyes off Thursday girl.

It's amazing how one's attitudes, ethics and opinions change in certain situations. The mere whiff of a shag and all integrity goes out the window. I'd call him a hypocrite, but that would make me one. The other three just stand, the one with the Bensons ignited by my flame puffing and looking impatient. Her two handmaids talk with low voices between themselves. Dave and Thursday girl are still talking, she giggles and he sports a look that reminds me of a great white approaching a seal. I can't be bothered with this, I'm not his wingman.

- I'm going home. You coming Paul?
- Yeah.
- Dave? I say

He looks up, lines of annoyance across his brow.

- Um, yeah I guess so. If we're off. Which way you walking? he asks Thursday girl.
- That way, she says gesturing to the left.

With a raise of his hands, he informs her that we go right. Paul and I rise, Dave takes Thursday girl's number and we stroll off down the road towards pizza, marijuana and Evil Dead 2. I notice that there are three sweaty imprints left on the cold brick. Soon lost forever.

THOUGHTS

Like a lot of things, the punk scene is about one-upmanship. It's about who has the best tattoo from the most highly regarded tattoo parlour. It's about who has a flesh tube. It's about who saw Breathe In at the Camden Underworld and bought the T-shirt and hung with the band after the show to do an interview for their fanzine. It's about those who not only know what Deep Elm records is, but who reject it as too commercial. Why did I do it? It gave me something. Community. Identity. Enjoyment. Why did I stop, sell half my CD collection? I found nothing new.

Did you see (a) supported by (b) at (c)?

I was there.

That was a great gig.

What's the score?

Ó Gary Budden