Friday, January 8, 2010
Music More Problems With Populism! NOFX vs. Green Day
Posted by Mike Conklin on Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 11:20 AM
Anyway, back to the thing in The Onion. It's credited to multiple writers—Jason Heller, Steven Hyden, Josh Modell, Sean O'Neal and Keith Phipps—so I'm not sure who's responsible for this:
"The shittiness of pop radio (and how bands turn themselves to shit in order to get airtime) was a running gag among punk bands throughout the 90s. The truth, of course, was that B-level bands like the jokey SoCal outfit NOFX simply weren't good enough to be played next to Green Day."
Oh, of course. Of course that's the truth, right? Because the truth couldn't possibly be that some bands have different goals and, god forbid, different principles than other bands, right? Right: the truth is that, like NOFX, Fugazi always wanted to be on the radio, and that if they were half as good as Soundgarden or Matchbox 20, then they may have had a shot, but they weren't, because everything that's on the radio is better than everything that's not on the radio, because that's just how it is.
This is preposterous and infuriating and we're talking ourselves into a corner here, where counter-culture ideals are viewed as childish, and where the only way to measure the quality of a piece of art is to look at how many people like it. Please stop doing that.
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