I Kill Everything I Fuck - GG Allin

I get it. I really do.

The whole Punk Rock Posing thing. I understand it now. Once you apply the Jock mentality to it, the mentality that it thrives on nowadays, the mentality that says, I need to win, no matter what, the "winning is everything" line of thinking, the I need ringers on my bowling team because I really wanna win and be the "cool" team at the festival this year mentality. Is that what's considered Punk nowadays? Yeah, it is. PRP said so. New rule: if your bowling team is named after a band, then it should only be the band members allowed to bowl on that team. Make it fun again, and not like a beer pong tournament played at some fraternity house.

Good to see my friends bands playing the festival. I'm sure all your Facebook likes went up by the thousands because of it. I'm sure the labels you're signed too are being buried in the massive amount of orders of your latest musical masterpiece. The major labels are drawing up the contracts as we speak. Congratulations! You're about to join the elite group of Superstardom, just like all the other Local bands that played PRB before you... oh wait. ;-)

I heard all about it, and winced with every bit of information I was given. All the Stupidity, the Drama, the Security Hassles, the Rip-Offs from other Punks, the Shitting and Pissing Videos, the Mike The Pipe Kook thing, the Chicken, the Passed Out Punks Instagram gheyness, and everything else that went on.I was embarrassed, ashamed, and mainly dumbstruck as to how something that was once about being an Individual and being better than 'Them' had morphed into this money making farce to be just like 'Them' that brought about thousands of clowns in uniform, all willing to get fleeced like the dumb Tourists that they are, all trying to get drunk and stupid and dance the night away, just like the beautiful people in the clubs inside the casinos you can't afford to be a part of. You're all just as vapid as the Kardashians, and since you can't be in their world, you fuckwads have to turn Punk Rock into your own little version of their plastique existence. How many Punk "models" were walking around shooting photos and posing with anyone and everyone they could, all for a precious hashtag or Instagram Twitter shout out. More than one is too many for me. You can't get a picture with Kanye, but you can get one with Mike The Pipe, which just makes you the coolest person ever!! Would you give a fuck if he wasn't Cindy from the Brady Bunch's kid? Probably not.

Look, I get it. For those of you who don't troll the clubs and the bars all year long like I do, seeing bands that may end up playing Punk Rock Posing in 20 years or so, when you'll see them, because you're too old for that shit, and it's too much effort to stay up that late, right, and because you got a job and a house and kids and a career and shit, and you're tired and you'd rather just stay home, then Punk Rock Posing is perfect for you. Get all your Punking out done all at once! Reminisce and wax nostalgic for a time that either you were once a part of, when you weren't an old thick lazy lump, or as a remembrance of a time and era you can only dream of participating in, because you were born too many years too late. Listen to bands sell you Nostalgia by playing a set of songs 30 years old, with an occasional new song snuck into the set list. Go for it! Nobody's paying attention, it's alright. The crowd is too busy talking selfies to notice what the band is playing, that is, until they play that one song that meant sooo much to them during high school - then it's straight to the pit to wreck fools and mosh it up!! LOL Or better yet, be part of the bourgeois elite by paying that extra $$$ for VIP status - that's the best way to do PRP, right? Comfort, Cleanliness, Civility - that's what Punk Rock is all about! Yeah. All that bullshit is disgusting. Makes you no better than a Shriner or a Trekkie or an MAGIC imbecile, somebody that comes to our town and puts on a costume and gets drunk and acts like an ass with others wearing the same costume as you. It's the only time of year you can do it. Might as well make the most of it. Jello Biafra once wrote a song called Halloween about being against that sort of mentality. At Punk Rock Posing, he perpetrated it for profit. Why didn't he do any of his stuff from his new album, that album full of New Orleans Soul and R & B? Oh, that's right - no money to be made off of that.

He who fucks Nuns, will later join the Church. Joe Strummer would of played Punk Rock Posing gladly. The Clash wouldn't of. See if you can figure out why.

And this is not about lamenting the fact that Punk is or isn't dead. I don't think it's dead because I see it in all sorts of young hungry bands, bashing it out in the bars and clubs on weeknights to an audience of nobody. That's how I like to see bands, up close and personal, not in a parking lot from yards away, on a giant stage they have no business being on. Call me silly, I know. For every young butt flap sporting, patches sewn on pants, studded jacket Poseur Punk that trolls around Punk Rock Posing, if even 1 out of every 10 of them sticks with the whole Punk Rock thing past their 30's, then maybe there's hope. As long as they don't turn into that rambling drunk guy at the Dive bar at 3:30 in the morning, telling everyone how he used to be Punk and have a leather jacket and mohawk, then everything will be fine.

I love that the Local scene here had their own gigs and whatnot all over town, at bars, venues, and at houses, alternatives to the overpriced sellout Tourist bullshit that the Stern Brothers try to shove down your mouths as real Punk Rock. I've been screaming for years that Vegas needed to do that, offer an alternative for the royal fucking the Sterns give the Local music scene every year, and people laughed and said I should just shut up and participate in PRP and have fun with it. Yeah, fuck you. Glad to see that the Local scene sees through the bullshit and realizes that the insulting practice of PRP coming to Vegas and giving 3 spots for Local bands to play, when nobody's there and people are standing in line waiting to get in, is a joke. Takes a while but people figure things out. Eventually.

The most Punk Rock Local bands, based on how many appearances they made at gigs all around town during the weekend, are not even Punk Rock in any way, shape or form of the word, but that was par for a lot of the bands that played the festival. And at the club shows, Beardcore mediocrity ran rampant. The easiest way to get on a bill for any gig is to just beg and plead. No talent or guitar player necessary. Don't touch that cunt from that one Local shit band in the pit at the Double Clown, or else you'll be called a sexist pig. The Punk bands that busk on Fremont are still 'quirky' and 'cool', and Beardcore Punks strum acoustic guitars and lead sing alongs in hotel rooms, looking like a bunch of dirty fucking Hippies from 1960 singing Kumbaya or some shit like that.

Punk Rock Posing 2015. Whoop dee fucking doo. You can have it. Gladly.