Bad Religion - Suffer
*albums in response to the death of George Floyd*
I want so badly to just run away and listen to something totally irrelevant, but it's impossible. That is the trouble with giving a narcissist power. Donald Trump lives in an imaginary playground in his own head where he never has to deal with caring about other people. He does whatever he wants to do and says "see, isn't this great? Everybody's happy. This is what you want. You want me to be in charge. I'm doing what the American people wanted me to do."
When a band does that they suck and they make terrible albums. He sucks and he makes the world terrible. He thinks the whole world revolves around him, and the whole damned world now revolves around him. He's the only thing we can pay attention to anymore. He's your company's douchiest executive. He's supposedly Billy Madison, but he's not. He's Eric Gordon. Billy Madison learned that he would be a really crappy executive and gave control of the company to whom? Anyone? Bueller? Matilda? No one?
CARL!!!! He said no dad, CARL. It's like you're not paying attention at all (which is exactly what i told you to do). I spent all day wrestling a weed whacker and all i got was this lousy bottle of beef joke.
Trump is a bad religion, so we all... anyone? Anyone? SUFFER.
When i bought this album (at a Borders of all places), the cashier said "this is a seriously good album." It is. I told you a long time ago that No Substance was my favorite, but Suffer, Recipe For Hate, and Stranger Than Fiction are tied for their best.
I've also told you that i think religion itself is a bad theory, but System of a Down's theory that spirit runs through all things doesn't do it for me either. I'm somewhere in the middle. Don't take that personally by the way, you can and should hold and practice whatever theory of the universe helps you exist in it. All i'm requesting is don't prey on me (that's from Recipe for Hate). I will gladly talk about any aspect i feel i can say something about, but i am an anarchist and organization feels incredibly uncomfortable to me. Anarchist in the classical sense, i believe in mutually agreed construction rather than centralized authority. If i can work around your ideas i will, i'm very adaptable. I can't work around Trump's ideas. They are garbage, and i'd light one of his hotels on fire after letting everyone else out and repeatedly warning them like Milton from Office Space.
Bad Religion doesn't like LA? I'm shocked!
When? has a really great opening lyric: i've seen a lot of things in 5 years....
The real crux of the issue though is the title track: the masses of humanity will always have to suffer.
Greg Graffin's Zoology PhD dissertation was an in depth study of the intellectual contradictions that plague the field of evolutionary biology. Specifically, the religious beliefs of prominent biologists throughout history were often highly contradictory, and sometimes downright damaging, to their research. Again, i'm not condemning anyone's religion. Whenever i can finally get someone to understand that i didn't even know what Christianity was until i was like 8 or 9, we start to talk about all the substitute things i used to fill those (call them) spiritual questions of existence, namely music. That's not a joke, when a friend tried to explain it to me in elementary school i though it was like a soccer team or a parent/teacher conference or something. It made absolutely no sense to me, so being repeatedly called a heathen was funny in my book. A few personal experiences did contribute to that breakdown i mentioned, but those might be the only subjects i won't talk about in any context (nothing sinister or evil or unlawful or gross, but highly psychologically damaging nonetheless).
Anywho, my point is that punk rock is meant to be confrontational. We sing about things that make us mad, and being mean about it is an unavoidable side product. We aren't mad at you the person, we're mad at an idea that stops us from functioning like human beings, and we take it out on the institution that espouses that idea. Much different than sending your army out to taser people who are already frightened for their lives on a daily basis.
So to sum up, i live out in the corn/soy fields of Iowa, only go to town to make money to buy the things i can't make for myself, and treat everyone i meet like they are my equal in every way, black white asian middle eastern hispanic orange short tall fat obnoxious sleazy high schizophrenic young old male female dogs cats chickens plants. The only things i hate are bad ideas. You can be wrong or dumb until the universe implodes (and so can i), but the only thing i won't let you do is mess up the brain i've delicately rebuilt half a dozen times thus far. I'll politely ask you to stop, and if worse comes to worst i'll just go for a walk outside until i calm back down and can be assured you'll leave me alone for a couple hours. Being mad is like asking that vampire of depression if he'd like to come in and throw trash on the floor.
I'm making it sound worse than it really is, but i've been called an enabler a time or two, and not in a nice way. For the record, i'm not an enabler, i just assume that you know what's best for you and sometimes that's not the case at all. Thanks for letting me recline on your couch.
Next
When a band does that they suck and they make terrible albums. He sucks and he makes the world terrible. He thinks the whole world revolves around him, and the whole damned world now revolves around him. He's the only thing we can pay attention to anymore. He's your company's douchiest executive. He's supposedly Billy Madison, but he's not. He's Eric Gordon. Billy Madison learned that he would be a really crappy executive and gave control of the company to whom? Anyone? Bueller? Matilda? No one?
CARL!!!! He said no dad, CARL. It's like you're not paying attention at all (which is exactly what i told you to do). I spent all day wrestling a weed whacker and all i got was this lousy bottle of beef joke.
Trump is a bad religion, so we all... anyone? Anyone? SUFFER.
When i bought this album (at a Borders of all places), the cashier said "this is a seriously good album." It is. I told you a long time ago that No Substance was my favorite, but Suffer, Recipe For Hate, and Stranger Than Fiction are tied for their best.
I've also told you that i think religion itself is a bad theory, but System of a Down's theory that spirit runs through all things doesn't do it for me either. I'm somewhere in the middle. Don't take that personally by the way, you can and should hold and practice whatever theory of the universe helps you exist in it. All i'm requesting is don't prey on me (that's from Recipe for Hate). I will gladly talk about any aspect i feel i can say something about, but i am an anarchist and organization feels incredibly uncomfortable to me. Anarchist in the classical sense, i believe in mutually agreed construction rather than centralized authority. If i can work around your ideas i will, i'm very adaptable. I can't work around Trump's ideas. They are garbage, and i'd light one of his hotels on fire after letting everyone else out and repeatedly warning them like Milton from Office Space.
Bad Religion doesn't like LA? I'm shocked!
When? has a really great opening lyric: i've seen a lot of things in 5 years....
The real crux of the issue though is the title track: the masses of humanity will always have to suffer.
Greg Graffin's Zoology PhD dissertation was an in depth study of the intellectual contradictions that plague the field of evolutionary biology. Specifically, the religious beliefs of prominent biologists throughout history were often highly contradictory, and sometimes downright damaging, to their research. Again, i'm not condemning anyone's religion. Whenever i can finally get someone to understand that i didn't even know what Christianity was until i was like 8 or 9, we start to talk about all the substitute things i used to fill those (call them) spiritual questions of existence, namely music. That's not a joke, when a friend tried to explain it to me in elementary school i though it was like a soccer team or a parent/teacher conference or something. It made absolutely no sense to me, so being repeatedly called a heathen was funny in my book. A few personal experiences did contribute to that breakdown i mentioned, but those might be the only subjects i won't talk about in any context (nothing sinister or evil or unlawful or gross, but highly psychologically damaging nonetheless).
Anywho, my point is that punk rock is meant to be confrontational. We sing about things that make us mad, and being mean about it is an unavoidable side product. We aren't mad at you the person, we're mad at an idea that stops us from functioning like human beings, and we take it out on the institution that espouses that idea. Much different than sending your army out to taser people who are already frightened for their lives on a daily basis.
So to sum up, i live out in the corn/soy fields of Iowa, only go to town to make money to buy the things i can't make for myself, and treat everyone i meet like they are my equal in every way, black white asian middle eastern hispanic orange short tall fat obnoxious sleazy high schizophrenic young old male female dogs cats chickens plants. The only things i hate are bad ideas. You can be wrong or dumb until the universe implodes (and so can i), but the only thing i won't let you do is mess up the brain i've delicately rebuilt half a dozen times thus far. I'll politely ask you to stop, and if worse comes to worst i'll just go for a walk outside until i calm back down and can be assured you'll leave me alone for a couple hours. Being mad is like asking that vampire of depression if he'd like to come in and throw trash on the floor.
I'm making it sound worse than it really is, but i've been called an enabler a time or two, and not in a nice way. For the record, i'm not an enabler, i just assume that you know what's best for you and sometimes that's not the case at all. Thanks for letting me recline on your couch.
Next
Comments
Post a Comment