Good Grief! Punk Rock Sez, YES to Troops-NO to Wars

I_want_out_w_return_addressOkay, this is not on my usual beat, and has only a very indirect connection with Quakerism.

But here’s the deal: Because of my work at Quaker House, involving GI counseling and jousting with the Demon of War, I subscribe to Army Times, a weekly dealing with — well, you can guess.

And in the Feb 1 issue of Army Times, there’s a feature section called “Off Duty,” in which there’s an article about how punk rock is getting on the bandwagon we’re been pushing ever since I got here in 2002. Namely the one that says YES to the troops while standing fast with NO to the wars.

Now all this is big news to me, for a couple reasons, including 1) I could never understand the lyrics, if that’s the right word, of punk songs; and 2) I only listened to that stuff when my beloved son, now almost 30, seized control  of my car’s CD/tape player, Back in His Day (not to be confused with that golden age, Back in THE Day).

But every little step helps, so if it’s good enough for Army Times and their readers, it okay by me.

And it’s worth quoting here, at some length. (You can’t really read it online unless you’re a subscriber.)

New generation of musicians shows support for military, but retains anti-war tradition
By Matt Schild

Punk rock used to be so nice, reli­able and predictable.

For decades, its almost religious suspicion of the military-industri­al complex was one of a handful of notions upon which its followers could agree.

Now, after 30 years ― the last nine with overseas military action ― the genre’s latest generation of movers and shakers are abandoning the traditional black-and-white opposition to all things military to fine-tune their criticism.

You’ll still be hard-pressed to find a gang of three-chord warriors who’ll be scheduling a tour stop at the Pentagon, but punk’s icy relationship with service members has thawed considerably in the past decade. Grizzled veterans such as Henry Rollins and The Vandals broke with expectations to perform in Iraq and Afghanistan for troops. Top-tier acts like Rancid, The Dropkick Murphys and Bouncing Souls have penned songs in tribute to today’s men and women at war. Even Rise Against, who caused a stir this fall after refusing to headline a show that would be played on a stage sponsored by Army re­cruiters, provided the USO with stacks of tickets to hand out to service members on its tour this summer.

After decades of confusing the two, punk is starting to grapple with the sub­tle distinction between opposing the war and opposing the veteran.

“With the old issues of punk rock, I’d like to believe that it was never about the soldiers; it was always about the gov­ernment,” explains Dropkick Murphys bagpiper Scruffy Wallace, who served with the infantry in the Canadian mili­tary. “That’s what the punk legends have always stood on, saying how much the government can [expletive] themselves.” That’s a sea change in punk bands’ position on military service. British acts with their roots in punk’s 1977 heyday, like The Clash, spared sol­diers little sympathy. Ameri­ca’s early adopters ― such as the Dead Kennedys ― echoed those sentiments. In fact, most mod­ern bands are just as belliger­ently pro-peace as their forefa­ thers. They’re just learning to distinguish policy from those whose job it is to carry out orders.

“I think it’s an important distinction to make,” Rise Against frontman Tim McIl­rath says, “because what it does is … em­power people to not be afraid to speak their mind about the war and what’s going on while still being able to support their brother or their sister or their mother or their father who is a proud member of the armed forces.” For many acts, they k now what it’s like to have a family that served. McIlrath’s father fought in Vietnam; his grandfather is also a vet. Rancid singer/guitarist Tim Armstrong’s brother retired from a career with the Army, and punk-folkie Tim Barry came from a line that included veterans of Vietnam, Korea and World War II.

“To betray the soldiers is betraying my family,” Barry says. “To not look at each person as an individual who made those decisions on their own or at the encour­agement of their community or as a re­sponse to something tragic that hap­pened, such as 9/11, would be to skew the reality of the situation.” Exposure to the troops eroded some of the antipathy toward the military for New Jersey’s Bouncing Souls. A Euro­pean tour brought the act to Schwein­furt, Germany, where the band played to soldiers on the verge of ship­ping to Iraq in the early stages of the war.

“I just couldn’t wrap my head around why anyone would do it or want to go there,” singer Greg Attonito says is reflection. “Then I met those guys and I could understand.” The Dropkick Murphys took a similar angle on “Last Letter Home,” a tune in­spired by fan Marine Sgt. Andrew Farrar and his final communication with his family, sent a couple weeks before he was scheduled to return to the States.

The song was especially poignant for Wallace, a combat veteran himself.

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“I know how hard it is coming back from combat, just trying to adapt to being in civilian life again,” he says.

Even the new breed of troop-friendly punk still rages at the machines that send men and women into war.

“Activists and punk rockers haven’t changed their tactics since Vietnam,” Barry says. “Let’s be realistic about this: There’s very little validity in walking around with a sign on a stick with a peace symbol. Everybody has to accli­mate and adjust to new situations.” “It is ridiculous to have someone say, ‘I don’t agree with this war. I think we should pull out.’ And then be, like, ‘So, what you’re saying is that you hate my brother in the Army?’ ” McIlrath says.

“It’s this kind of rhetoric that is designed to silence people, which is very un­American in itself.” □

2 thoughts on “Good Grief! Punk Rock Sez, YES to Troops-NO to Wars”

  1. I’ve been into punk all my life and though it may be naive I still say that if people didn’t join armies then there would be no wars. It took a robot of a man to drop a bomb on Hiroshima and he was made into a soulless machine by the military

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