There is a fine line one can draw in regards to pop punk. Like all genres of music, it has evolved over the years and became more and more fitting of the “pop” label. The genre was clearly started with the Ramones in New York and moved over to the UK with bands like The Buzzcocks and The Undertones throughout the 70’s and 80’s. Besides The Ramones though, pop punk didn’t seem to receive too much attention until the early 90’s when bands like Bad Religion, NOFX, and Propagandhi started creating a buzz in the scene. In ’94, the labels found the band that could lead the charge for pop punk and released Green Day’s “Dookie” with great success and The Offspring was quick to follow with “Smash.” Two albums I consider extremely influential on me as a person.
Pop punk had thrown itself into the public’s eye on the heels of the grunge movement, but there was still a little more emphasis on the “punk” side of things. Bands like Rancid, Pennywise, Lagwagon, Anti-Flag, The Ataris, MxPx, and No Use For A Name carried the torch with catchy hooks and fast drum beats, truly embodying what pop punk was all about. This is the era of music I got caught up in and it absorbed me like a whirlpool. It was fun, yet rebellious, and made fucking sense. For me, these bands spoke about every single thing I was thinking about and experiencing, which as a teenager at the time, made life so much easier.
Let’s consider that my Allen Cross impression, shall we?
The great thing about pop punk is that you can always run back to it. Granted, some of it you wish you could wipe from your memory “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” styles, but most of it is still pretty fun. And as you can probably tell by this article, I’ve been on a big pop punk nostalgia kick recently. It’s the simplicity that I’ve always loved and that's something that everyone needs in their life from time to time.
I’ve been all about the Ataris as of late; mainly due to “So Long, Astoria” and “Blue Skies… Broken Hearts… Next 12 Exits.” When you’re missing someone like I am at the moment, these albums do exactly what they did to me when they were first released: put the words scrambled in my head to music and shouted them out through a speaker system. I tend to find shouting is done best through speakers of some sort anyway.
Coincidentally, Kristopher Roe has been on tour over the past little while for the 9th or 10th anniversary of “Blue Skies… Broken Hearts…” and doing acoustic sets using material from that album and “So Long, Astoria.” He is hitting Canada in July and for you 905ers, he rolls through Burlington next week (Friday July 4th, flyer to the left) and is playing with our very own Bombing Neverland, Ashley Sloggett, and Aitch. All of whom will also be doing acoustic (slash normal) sets. He’ll be hitting Toronto the very next night and playing at the Kathedral.
Pop punk, in my mind, gets slammed a little too hard. I’ll be the first one to make fun of what it became after the success of Blink 182, after all, bands like Simple Plan and Good Charlotte are a bit of a joke. But notice these bands were brought in to capitalize on pop punk’s mainstream success and have just as easily switched styles to accommodate whatever the kids are listening to these days. All musicians grow, but these kinds of bands seem to “switch” to what will sell them more records. But hey, more power to them and at least they’re writing their own shit.
And those bands that play pop punk because that’s just what comes out of their instruments are still kicking. The Ataris for example are working on a new album, coming back full circle and creating a much more simplistic record. +44 continued where Blink left off and bands like Motion City Soundtrack seem to be putting their own twist on the genre.
Evolution is a funny thing in the music industry, but at its core, pop punk is still catchy sounding music with an innocence that is hard to find in the real world. The Ataris say it best: “Being grown up isn’t half as fun as growing up.”
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