by Kai Stromler » Wed Jan 15, 2003 3:22 pm
Once upon a time a small town held a "battle of the high school bands" for the town, and, since the town in question regularly has high school graduating classes of 40 people, the "surrounding communities". This happened on what is called the "North Shore", which is spiritually adjunct to that greater nation of Suburbia, but geographically next to a few places that are Definitely Not.
Anyhow, a lot of bands showed up, and since this was a "battle of the high school bands", most of them were punk bands, as one of the defining characteristics of punk rock is that the musicians involved need not know how to play their instruments with any special competency. And again, because this was a "battle of the high school bands", most of these "punk" bands were actually Fake Plastic Radio Punk Rock Bands, as they came from Suburbia and wouldn't know a "Germs burn" if it came after them with a rocket launcher.
But not all. There was one band that came from a town that was Definitely Not Suburbia. This band was called the Vicious Bastards. They were a For-Real Anarchist Punk Band, and the organizers had No Idea What The Hell To Do With Them, since this was a "battle of the high school bands" and had rules like No Swearing and No Sexually Explicit Lyrics and No Violence On Stage that any For-Real Anarchist Punk Band could be expected to break in about 30 seconds.
So one of these organizers, having No Idea What The Hell They Were Dealing With, warned the band to change their lyrics to get rid of Objectionable Content, and to accept being introduced as "the VBs", if they didn't want to get Disqualified. Anyone who has ever been around a For-Real Anarchist Punk Band should have a pretty good idea of what happened next.
The singer of "the VBs" took a paper copy of the rules on stage, and proceeded to violate each and every one of them in the most extravagant way possible. He then chewed up the paper and spat it out over the crowd before the band started playing, with of course the Objectionable Content still in the lyrics. A few parents hustled their younger children (maybe middle-school-age) out of the hall, while other high school students, having spent their whole prior lives in Suburbia, stood shocked and stunned until the the band finished its set, and closed by flipping off the organizers.
Everybody came away with a positive experience: the concert promoters learned to acually listen to bands before signing them up, the Vicious Bastards got major Punk Rock Points for playing a concert in front of people less punk than them and Horrifying Them By Acting Like Dicks, and almost four hundred kids from Suburbia, for the first and quite possibly last time in their lives, got to see what punk is really all about.
Why is this posted here? Because it's another way to laugh at emo and Fake Plastic Radio Punk people, who deserve it if they can really be horrified by a guy with a weird haircut and plaid pants standing on stage telling authority figures to fuck off.
--K