This song probably took the longest out of any Bomb the Music Industry! song I’ve ever written to finish, and that’s mainly because it was predicated on ridiculousness. The introduction was originally crafted to kick off “John Starks: Motherfucker”, a mini-punk-rock-opera based on the New York Knicks losing the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals, which I felt was the first time in my life I had a panic attack. I eventually decided to whittle it down to a two and a half minute song, but trying to write lyrics relating missing lay-ups to social anxiety to punk rock to the depressing nature of interacting with fake people all day... well, it wasn’t that it was tough as much as it was trite. It was boring and forced. My plan to place constraints on myself to write something outside of my own voice that was a bit different had become a failed experiment. During 2005 I had a job as a graphic designer at a venue in Long Island, and ended up seeing quite a few hardcore shows because of it. When I was a kid, I was originally attracted to hardcore because I didn’t feel like I was connecting with whatever it was the rest of the kids in junior high were feelin’. It pissed me when tough guys would start fights because it felt a lot like football, and watching hardcore shows today in Long Island, it has actually escalated to the point where gangs are involved. I feel like gangs are so against the punk rock mentality of thinking for yourself. Y’know, only in fucking Long Island. Eventually I clearly realized that this issue was something I felt a bit more passionately about than John Starks. Speaking of passionately, the moral of this song is that if you make out with a member of a hardcore gang, he’ll probably leave you alone because he is most likely a homophobe.
This song probably took the longest out of any Bomb the Music Industry! song I’ve ever written to finish, and that’s mainly because it was predicated on ridiculousness. The introduction was originally crafted to kick off “John Starks: Motherfucker”, a mini-punk-rock-opera based on the New York Knicks losing the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals, which I felt was the first time in my life I had a panic attack. I eventually decided to whittle it down to a two and a half minute song, but trying to write lyrics relating missing lay-ups to social anxiety to punk rock to the depressing nature of interacting with fake people all day... well, it wasn’t that it was tough as much as it was trite. It was boring and forced. My plan to place constraints on myself to write something outside of my own voice that was a bit different had become a failed experiment. During 2005 I had a job as a graphic designer at a venue in Long Island, and ended up seeing quite a few hardcore shows because of it. When I was a kid, I was originally attracted to hardcore because I didn’t feel like I was connecting with whatever it was the rest of the kids in junior high were feelin’. It pissed me when tough guys would start fights because it felt a lot like football, and watching hardcore shows today in Long Island, it has actually escalated to the point where gangs are involved. I feel like gangs are so against the punk rock mentality of thinking for yourself. Y’know, only in fucking Long Island. Eventually I clearly realized that this issue was something I felt a bit more passionately about than John Starks. Speaking of passionately, the moral of this song is that if you make out with a member of a hardcore gang, he’ll probably leave you alone because he is most likely a homophobe.