I haven’t written much of anything about the re-election of You Know Who You Know Where, because, frankly, like an awful lot of people, I’m just (A. exhausted and (B. apathetic about the whole damned thing these days. I’ve said enough about it all the last 8-9 years or so. You do you, Yanks.
I do know one thing for the strange brave new world of 2025, though – I’m gonna keep listening to a lot of punk.
Loud music makes sense when the rest of the world doesn’t and while I’m an increasingly old geezer who doesn’t quite get what the youths are listening to these days, I’ve always got time for something with an echo of that Ramones/Sex Pistols/Bikini Kill vibe of reverb, snarl and rage. Nothing blocks out the crazy like a blast of guitar.
We went and saw Hüsker Dü’s legendary frontman Bob Mould perform a solo show in Auckland the other weekend, and it was a fantastic hurricane of sound – Mould, 64, put to shame kids half his age with his chaotic energy as he ripped apart Dü and his solo songs and put them back together in feedback-drenched blasts. He made a punk band’s worth of noise all by himself.
And meanwhile, I bought a ticket for an up and coming band who weren’t even born when Bob Mould put on a guitar strap, Melbourne’s terrific fun and filthy Amyl & The Sniffers. I know they’ll tear up the joint when they play Auckland in February and while I’m at least 20 years too old for the mosh pit I’ll try to get a good spot to watch the ecstatic release as they blast through their fiercely progressive, f- the Nazis and trolls tunes. Gacked on anger? Baby, we’re all gacked these days:
Punk is old and punk is young and everywhere in between, nearly 50 years after punk broke through.
What even is punk? Back in high school friends of mine wore mohawks and we chanted the chorus of Suicidal Tendencies “Institutionalized” at each other and that was already a good 10 years after punk’s first flames. These days who cares about genre taboos and what’s “proper” and what isn’t, really? “Selling out” is a gone concept in the viral age and if you like the music, good on ya. Sid Vicious is long dead and Johnny Rotten isn’t looking too hot himself. If it feels punk to you, it’s punk.
So for me listening to the Stooges over and over is punk, but hell, so is Nine Inch Nails banging on that downward spiral. Listen to Joy Division live and they were pretty punk even if they were post-punk. I can’t say I think Taylor Swift is punk, but Chappell Roan with her give-no-fucks attitude is definitely a little bit punk.
But that’s just me.
Everyone used to go on and on about the dangers of rock music and punk and metal and Satanists hiding in your backyard back in the day, but it turns out the ones to REALLY be afraid of are the dead-eyed compulsive liars, fascists and grifters and hustlers and un-Christian fundamentalists who just keep on coming back over and over again.
To quote someone most people don’t think of as punk, but whose whole career has been pretty punk as hell, Bob Dylan said it best: “I used to care, but things have changed.”
Stepping back from the situation for a while isn’t giving up forever. There’s still an awful lot of beauty out there away from the doomscrolling and outrage machine, no matter how bad it gets. It’s a pretty frustrating world, but god damn it, we’ll always have music.
Hey, ho, let’s go!
Nik Dirga 
I get it! In more ways than you can even imagine.
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