I finally came up with a term that perfectly describes punk rock and its derivatives: they’re musically sterile. Before you little spikey-haired bastards start going red in the face and throwing your Black Flag records at me, let me explain my reasoning first.

I’ll begin by explaining how punk rock is one of the most conservative forms of music out there, rivaled only by blues. By “conservative,” I don’t mean politically; I’m referring to the genre’s musical structure. Since punk’s inception over three decades ago, the song structure, chord changes, and even the lyrical styles are largely unchanged. Even punk’s primary offshoot, hardcore, hasn’t changed much in terms of musical structure. While that’s certainly to the genre’s credit, as they’ve stuck to their roots while every other genre has drastically changed over the years, it’s also kept punk treading water in a musical sense.

If the chords and structure are still the same, that means you’re not evolving, expanding the art form, or breaking any barriers. You don’t even have to be a progressive rock band to evolve musically; genres from jazz to heavy metal have all done it. Punk has not. Sure, there’s been a few changes since the 1970s, especially in terms of production quality. However, the basic structure is still the same old thing. It’s technically been an endless rehash ever since the beginning!

Even worse is the trap many punk bands (and fans) fall into when they try to break out of their boundaries. They’re either decried by the “old school” fans for not being “true” punk (which is utter nonsense), or they’re claiming to be another genre, when they’re still punk rock through and through. Let me examine both of these phenomena in a bit more detail.

“Old school” punk fans love to rail against groups like Blink 182 or Green Day, often making the preposterous claim that those bands aren’t real punk. This is certainly due to their incredible success in the pop sphere, and their detractors are simply wrong; those bands still qualify as punk rock. The musical structure is still the same. Opinions, styles, and attitude have absolutely nothing to do with placing music into genres. I don’t give a shit about the whole DIY scene, bands’ activism, or any of that nonsense; punk rock is music, a collection of sounds put to a rhythm, and that’s all we’re talking about here. Screw the scenester crap that’s been attached to much of it; if you use opinions, activism, image, and other bullshit as criteria for classifying music, you could logically throw any genre classification out the window, as you’re literally letting style override substance. We’re sticking with the facts, people.

Then we move on the various offshoots that claim to be something other than punk rock, but even a cursory examination of their musical structure proves otherwise. There’s no need to claim you’re a separate genre, when you clearly fit into another one. The latest example of this is metalcore, a genre I deconstructed last year. I made it quite clear in that post that metalcore is really just the latest front for popularizing punk rock, not a proper subgenre of heavy metal. It’s a perfect way for record companies to get impressionable punks into what they deem “metal,” and another lightning rod for longtime punk rockers to attack. Controversy equals interest, which translates to sales more often than not. (Metalcore is likely just a creation of marketing, much like deathcore, its Hot Topic-fueled sibling.) Just because you tune down your guitars and start screaming doesn’t mean you’re not a punk band anymore.

Fans (especially young ones) have loved punk rock for decades due to its simplicity, and record labels will continue to love it for the same reason: it takes little to no effort, talent, or skill to crank out a punk song, and the general public will snap it right up. But as someone with some knowledge of music theory, I need my music to evolve, not stay stuck far in the past with basic chord patterns a six-year-old could play. Punk rock fails the test on every level, and that’s why it’s musically sterile.

As many of you may know, I’m a huge fan of heavy metal. I always have been, even since I saw cheesy hair bands on MTV in the 1980s, and moved on to much more talented and technical bands in the following years. While most of my peers moved on to the alternative trend, then the rap-rock trend, and who knows what else, I stayed true to my metal roots.

Over the past decade or so, I’ve become much more interested in progressive metal, as well as extreme metal (such as black metal, death metal, and grindcore). The latter has made things exceptionally difficult when it comes to discussing music with other people, simply because I don’t know anyone else who’s into it. There’s a few exceptions when it comes to specific bands (for example, my brother also likes Dimmu Borgir, and I got my girlfriend into some of Devin Townsend‘s music), but they’re few and far between. By and large, the extreme metal I enjoy is unknown to others at best, and despised by them at worst.

It makes me feel uncomfortable when people ask me about my music. I do love talking about it, but I see folks’ eyes glaze over very quickly once I mention my favorite genres or bands. So, it’s really not worth talking about, now is it? Lately, I’m trying really hard to catch myself before I babble too much. I also try to change the subject, or answer any questions as briefly as possible.

I realize that a possible solution to this problem is to join some online message boards and other communities dedicated to extreme metal. However, that idea gives me pause. The Internet has contributed much to human culture and communication, but when it comes to bringing large groups of rabid fans together, I think it does more harm than good. (Like with video games.) I’ve lurked on a few metal boards, and the griping and flaming that goes on there makes me roll my eyes in disgust. A lot of the members there are kids who listen to extreme music as a form of rebellion; we’ve all been there at one point or another, but we outgrow it. The discussions rapidly devolve into flame wars, complete with horrendously bad spelling and grammar, and you know that ticks me off. These communities don’t look like places I’d want to spend a lot of time; plus, if I want to talk about music, it’s vastly preferable to do so with people who are actually in the room listening to it with you! (Oh well. I’m a member of far too many message boards and such as it is.)

A majority of my music listening is done in the car and at my desk at work. Both of those situations are ones in which I’m alone 99% of the time, anyway, so the solitary factor is one I’ve been able to get used to. Still, it blows not being able to share my love of intense music.

My post about downscaling my gaming habit got me thinking about my other hobbies, some of the unfortunate side effects they cause, and what to do about them. (And holy shit, did I file this under enough categories, or what?)

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate any of my hobbies; I’m just not pleased that I have far too many of them. In my neverending quest to become a somewhat decent human being, I do understand that sometimes the most innocuous hobbies can cause problems with one’s life. The main issue is that a majority of my hobbies revolve around acquiring some kind of physical object, such as an action figure, building set, video game, book, et cetera. As such, this immediately creates two problems: price and space. You need money to buy said item, and a place in which to display or store it. Both of these are serious issues, and even worse, they sometimes compound one another! I’m not affluent (or even upper middle class) by any stretch of the imagination, so indulging in my hobbies tends to have financial ramifications down the line that I’m not always prepared for. So what’s a man to do?

Here’s a rundown of my various hobbies, and the problems I’m running into while keeping up with them. Aside from giving you an insight into my madness, it’ll help me keep track of this stuff later on. I should point out that this stuff was all acquired over the course of a decade or two; I certainly don’t have the cash to acquire massive quantities of stuff in a short period of time!

• LEGO®. This one gives no quarter; the entire premise of being a LEGO® fan is based on the building sets themselves. You need to own at least a few in order to get involved! The upshot is that once you’ve got a good amount of bricks, you can create just about anything you want. You can display an official model for a while, then if you get tired of it, rebuild it into something else. It’s not like a collectible game, where you’re absolutely required to spend money on a regular basis just to stay competitive! (That’s the exact reason why I gave up on playing Magic: The Gathering long ago, and Axis & Allies Miniatures more recently.) With my LEGO® addiction, space has become my biggest challenge. I’ve completely run out of room to display my sets (mainly Star Wars ships), so I’ve been forced to disassemble many of them.

• Star Trek. The beloved science fiction franchise spans over forty years of history, twenty-nine seasons of television, and eleven films, not to mention all of the countless merchandising and other goodies. The television shows and films are most important to me; I own all of the films (save the newest one, which isn’t available on disc yet, and Star Trek V, which is crap), but only five of the twenty-nine seasons. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and that’s not going to be cheap. Granted, Voyager and the first two seasons of Enterprise can wait until the very end, but I’ve still got a majority of the original series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine to pick up.
• Star Wars. The core of this franchise is the films, and there’s not many of those; that made collecting them quite easy. I also enjoy reading some of the novels, and collecting the artbooks and other reference tomes. However, when it comes to Star Wars action figures…therein lies the rub. Even casual fans of the franchise know how addicting that can be, and I’m no different. I used to display them in my office at work (gotta be the stereotypical IT department, and all), but since we moved to a new location, I now have a cubicle rather than an office. Thus, I no longer have a door that I can lock. I don’t think anyone would pilfer or otherwise screw with my collection, but why not err on the side of caution? Since I’ve got nowhere else to put them, though, they now sit in a box in my apartment complex storage space.
• Model railroads. While this is one of my most enjoyed hobbies, it’s sadly one of the most neglected, simply to due to the high cost. I’m “over the hump,” as it were; the most expensive pieces of my layout were the tracks, locomotives, and control system. However, I’ve still got landscaping materials to buy, plus model cars and tiny little people. Those aren’t cheap! If I don’t finish my layout this summer, I’ve got a feeling it will be indefinitely shelved.
• Video games. Ouch. This one’s definitely the 800-pound gorilla in the room, since I play a lot of games. They’ve never been cheap, and with more and more titles coming out all the time, with more platforms competing for market share, costs can add up insanely fast. Part of this can be alleviated by renting games, but that creates two more problems. One, renting from chains like Blockbuster is a complete ripoff; the rental price is too high, and you’ve only got about five days to play! Two, even if you use a much better system like GameFly, now you run into the subscription problem. Here, you’re paying a flat fee per month to rent a certain number of titles (GameFly wisely offers a tiered system), but what if there’s a few months where nothing’s coming out, or there isn’t anything you’re interested in playing? Now you’re literally spending money on nothing. As far as older titles are concerned, emulation’s a quick solution, but legal issues aside, that doesn’t compare to playing original games on original hardware. It just doesn’t! (I keep a 13″ CRT TV in my room specifically for retrogaming, fer crissake.) I’ve focused much of my attention on my NES collection, but those still take up space. Right now, I’m using the ol’ cardboard-boxes-in-the-closet method, save for a small stack of cartridges I’m actively playing. Those get a place of honor on my desk. Classy.
• Heavy metal. You’d think that simply enjoying listening to music wouldn’t cost too much, since you don’t have to pay to use your ears. And as far as acquiring music goes, that’s inexpensive, too, especially in this day and age of iTunes and BitTorrent. Too bad I’m one of those old-fashioned fuckers who enjoys owning actual physical copies of his media! The backlog of discs I still want to buy would probably equal the down payment on a small house. Eesh. My subscriptions to Decibel magazine and the Requiem Metal Podcast have exacerbated this addiction by getting me into many new bands.
• Books. Normally, this isn’t a problem, as we have libraries for all of our reading needs. However, some of the licensed series I enjoy (particularly Star Trek novels) have little to no library presence. Translation: if you want to read it, you’d better buy it, and I’ve bitched about the ridiculous cost of paperbacks before. Even though the recent Star Trek film has breathed new life into the franchise, the books are still a relatively niche commodity. The Star Trek section at my local bookstores just keeps shrinking over time, and when new novels come out, you really need to nab them within a week or so of release, else you run the risk of missing them. Then, of course, there’s the fact that eventually, my bookshelves at home start to get very crowded.
• Manga. Since the stories I enjoy only come out every few months, this one’s at the bottom of the problem pile. Prices are on the rise, though, and I read much of my manga well in advance via scanlations. I buy the official collected English editions later on. If the prices get more annoying, I may dump the printed versions, and just stick to reading them online. And before you bitch at me about the “illegality” of scanlations, they’re not technically illegal, and publishers often use them as a way to gauge interest in localizing new series! Eat me.

As you can see, the solution to many of these issues falls under the usual purview of “stop buying shit.” Which, as it turns out, is something I’m actively working on, especially in the video game realm. I know that sooner or later I’m going to have to no choice but to severely scale back or ditch a few hobbies, but them’s the breaks. It’s happened before (like when I ditched that filthy comic book collectin’ habit), and I’d like to think I’m a better person for it. Life is more than just random collections.

Believe it or not, there are limits to my nerdity. Once such limit is nerd-themed bands that sing about specific science fiction franchise are other such geeky topics.

For example, I’m not a fan of Star Trek-themed bands. In fact, I can’t stand them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some anal retentive Star Trek fan who thinks that Trek should always be serious. No way; I enjoy nitpicking and making jokes as much as the next fan. Themed bands, however, take the silliness to a level I’m just not comfortable with. I don’t want to hear some whiny punk rock kid wailing about Kirk and Spock! It just sounds retarded.

It’s the same problem I have with nerdcore, though I don’t think the themed rock ‘n’ roll outfits are as pretentious as their hip-hop counterparts. It’s just retarded; maybe I’m “too old” for this kind of stuff, but I still think it’s stupid.

Every time Dream Theater comes to our local venue, I always attend along with a friend of mine. (Yes, that’s the same guy who runs Ryo-Ohki’s Anime Loft.) We’ve been going to these biennial shows for many years now, ever since we got out of college. Considering I’d also seen Dream Theater live before that, I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I’ve seen the band at this point. I’ve been a fan of theirs for seventeen years, after all!

However, after this summer’s show, this longstanding tradition may be coming to a close. It’s not the band’s fault. It’s the fault of the ticketing agency; in this, those fuckers at Live Nation. We all know ticket prices just keep skyrocketing, but it’s gotten beyond aggravating this time. The tickets for the upcoming Dream Theater show start at $38 for nosebleed seats, and $48 for regular seats. We opted for the regular ones, of course, since you get much better sound quality sitting there. I expected the usual annoying service charges on top of that. What I didn’t expect was just how high those charges have gotten: $12.50 per ticket! Altogether, a measly pair of concert tickets came to $121. That’s fucking insane. I don’t care how nice the venue is; that’s way too much money.

Dream Theater has always been one of my favorite bands, but this may be the final time I see them. I’m sorry, no band’s worth that much cash out of pocket. Fortunately, Dream Theater always puts on an excellent show, so I have no doubts that the upcoming concert will be a grand sendoff.