I hate punk rock.

Actually, that’s not true; I kind of like punk rock, sometimes. What I hate are people who love punk rock. There has never been a genre of anything that has made more people confused about what art is capable of doing, and they all refuse to shut up about it.

A few years ago, one of my favorite humans of all time died from bone cancer. A few hours after the funeral, I found myself in a conversation with someone who was as depressed as I was and almost as drunk. But - in order to avoid talking about our friend, probably - we started talking about pop mmusic, and this guy kept saying, “Punk rock saved my life.” He said it like four times in ten minutes. “When I was in high school,” he insisted, “punk totally saved my life. If not for that music, I wouldn’t be here today. Punk rock saved my life, man.”

I have heard those exact words said thousands of time by hundreds of people, and none of them are ever joking. They exist in a culture of certainty. They want to believe what they are saying so much. They want to believe that this sentiment is literally true. And all I could do while I listened to this dude tell me how punk rock saved his life was think, Wow. Why did my friend waste all that time going to chemotherapy? I guess we should have just played him a bunch of shitty Black Flag records.