#2: TO NOFX, WITH LOVE…
A snob to my own people, a pariah among brothers, a born outsider lost in the haze amidst other outsiders. Such were the feelings that overcame me as I watched Fat Mike, El Hefe, Melvin and Smelly take the Palace stage for their third and final Melbourne show.
I couldn’t put my finger on it. I’d been excited about this tour for months, Bad Religion had just blitzed the stage as the “warm up” act and now I was getting good NOFX, not drunk, sloppy NOFX. Even Fat Mike’s jokes were funny.
NOFX had been the first punk I’d ever listened to as a clueless, chubby 16 year old. I still fondly remember the day when one of my friends (who was one of those damnable cool kids yet for some unknown reason he still chose to hang out with me) shoved Pump up the Valuum into my Sony Discman and said “Listen to this.” It was a watershed moment that changed the course of my life.
So here I was at the Palace seeing these punk stalwarts deliver some great tunes in between their comedy stylings. I should’ve been lapping it up, instead I felt like a black man at a KKK meeting. I felt at odds with my own nature and I didn’t know why.
I carried out a flight check.
The bill? A NOFX/Bad Religion double header is the average punk’s wet dream so it couldn’t be that.
The performances? Bad Religion was strong as expected. “Generator,” “Let Them Eat War” and “Infected” were delivered with vigour. At the same time it’s well known that NOFX can be a mixed bag live. Great one night, sloppy, lazy and stand offish the next but tonight they’d brought their A-game which meant there were no problems with the performances.
I felt lost and as I looked around me, the answer for my confusion slowly dawned on me. It wasn’t what was happening on the stage that had me at sixes and sevens; it was the audience. I was surrounded not by people but by a mass of conformist sheep, sporting perfectly sculpted mohawks, carefully ripped jeans with spikes thrown in for that added “I’m hard” effect.
I know you think you’re trying to make a statement with your massive mohawk, but here’s a newsflash: You look like a cliché, and not just any kind of cliché. You’re the kind of cliché that used to have meaning and substance but has now been reduced to a mainstream commodity. Put the safety pins away and try think for yourself.
Cokie the Clown
These weren’t my people at all. They looked less like actual punks and more like automatons fresh off the Dangerfield production line. Manufactured and soulless, devoid of personality or free thought. It’s sobering to see punk rock, the proud bastion of independence and non-conformity, transformed into an exercise in marketing and consumerism.
Worse still, NOFX are for many people the only punk band they’ve ever listened to, by virtue of the fact that they’ve sold six million records and when these neophytes breeze into a show they have no idea what to do or how to act. So their kneejerk reaction is to aggravate as many people as possible, because, like, that’s what punk is all about yeah, bro? The average punter needed to be on full alert as these knuckle dragging douche bags marauded their way through the venue, knocking drinks over and barging into people while screaming “Fuck yeaaaaaaah motherfuckers!” two inches from your face.
It was a strange experience. Here was NOFX, a band I’d loved for years, playing live right before my eyes yet it was at this exact moment I realised we’d grown apart. I tried in vain to recall the last time I’d listened to a NOFX record in its entirety. I couldn’t even remember the last time I listened to a Fat Wreck band. What was once a main staple of my listening habits had been reduced to the occasional play on iTunes and while I was asleep at the wheel a bunch of illiterate apes had taken over.
The Fat Wreck label had come to embody the type of punk rock that I looked down on. Fun for the most part, but ultimately unsatisfying. Bozo skate punk was something I’d long since moved on from but nostalgia and affection had prevented me from pulling the plug once and for all.
I gazed at the crowd. Once I might’ve been one of them; boorish, obnoxious and carefully dressed to fit in. I looked back at the stage. Fat Mike was still the same snotty sixteen year old with suspenders and fluoro hair. But that wasn’t me anymore. It was a bittersweet moment but I didn’t feel all that sad, instead I felt free.
As Melvin broke out his trusty accordion to close the set with “Theme From a NOFX Album” (a long time personal favourite) I was closing a chapter that had been written some time ago. It just took me a little longer to realise it.
We’ve shared many good times over the years and I’ll always treasure those memories. I shudder to think where I might’ve ended up if we’d never met but time is the enemy and our romance has petered out. We’ll always have “The Decline” and “Kill All the White Man” but this is where we say goodbye.
Farewell NOFX.
