Punk Rock Dad Read online

  PUNK ROCK DAD

  NO RULES,

  JUST REAL LIFE

  JIM LINDBERG

  for my girls

  CONTENTS

  Intro

  1 Story of My Life

  2 Party at Ground Zero

  3 Hey, Ho! Let’s Go!

  4 Mommy’s Little Monster

  5 Anarchy in the Pre-K

  6 We’re a Happy Family

  7 F@#K Authority?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  INTRO

  PARENTS’ NIGHT

  We recently had parents’ night at our kids’ school, which is usually a lot of fun for a punk rock dad. This is when the school has the parents come in so they can prove to you they’ve actually been teaching your kids something and not just locking them up in a closet somewhere after you’ve dropped them off. Daughter number two’s preschool class had a project for Father’s Day where each four-year-old child came to class dressed like their dad at work, in his own actual clothes, to have their picture taken by the teacher. The other dads and I filed in and politely shuffled by the row of our daughters’ portraits, which were neatly lined up on a table beneath the chalkboard in the classroom. Most of the little girls in the pictures were wearing a suit and tie like their businessman or lawyer dads, some were in fireman or paramedic uniforms, and a few were in construction worker’s or plumber’s clothes. Last in line, on the very end, was my daughter, proudly holding my beaten-up electric guitar, which was painted in silver sparkles, emblazoned with various offensive decals, and held together by duct tape. She was wearing my torn up jeans and black hi-tops, her hair was tucked up under the tattered green and white trucker hat I always wear, and draped across her tiny frame was my faded red T-shirt that looked like it had a Nike logo across the front, but instead of the company name, it said “RIOT!”

  Needless to say, our picture got the most comments out of the class projects, with the dads chortling and guffawing and pointing it out to other guys in line. At that moment I wasn’t sure if I should be proud or if I should punch someone.

  This is pretty much the case whenever the parents get together for an official or unofficial school function. At PTA meetings, award ceremonies, T-ball games, and Christmas parties, the first question out of everyone’s mouth when you meet someone new in the parenting world is, “So what do you do?” The acceptable and consistently offered responses are usually, “I’m a lawyer,” or “stockbroker,” or “account executive.” It’s usually some very official, very important-sounding position at a major law firm or huge corporation involved in world domination. When I have to respond with what I do for a living, it becomes a game of Twenty Questions, because the truth is I’d give anything to give one of those answers. I don’t want to stand out or receive any extra attention. I wish I could just say I’m in plastics or software development or something that sounds solid and stoic. Instead, since I don’t like to lie or play games, I swallow quickly and murmur that I’m a musician.

  Now when most people hear this they will usually think one of three things: (A) you’re a loser who plays guitar and takes bong hits in the garage all day while your wife supports you and your family, (B) you’re a Christian musical director at the local evangelical church who wears Birkenstocks and sings worship songs about Jesus and the mountain with your eyes closed while your wife supports you and your family, or (C) you’re in some horrible third-rate Jimmy Buffett jazz fusion cover band with no chance in hell of ever making it and you’re about two seconds away from handing them your fifth attempt at a demo CD to give to anyone they may know in the record business, and your wife supports you and your family. Any way you slice it, it’s not good. If it were Bruce Springsteen or Steve Tyler standing in front of them, they wouldn’t have to ask. Otherwise they think to themselves, “If you’re a musician you’re obviously a failure, or I would recognize you, and since I don’t, you probably should just give it up because everyone I know has a guitar or banjo or saxophone in the garage or the attic somewhere but they don’t call themselves musicians. They dust it off every once in a while and try to remember the three chords they learned in high school, but at some point they have enough sense to hang it up and get a real job.”

  Most people are nice so they’ll repress the urge to smile and walk away to find someone they can better network with, and they’ll ask another question or two.

  “Oh really, what do you play?” they’ll ask politely.

  “Well, I’m in a band.”

  “What kind of music?”

  “Well, it’s like hard rock or…punk rock, whatever you wanna call it.”

  “No shit, really? Hey, honey, this guy’s in a punk rock band! Do you guys play local? What’s it called?”

  “Well, we tour a lot. We’re called Pennywise.”

  “Pennywise? Huh, never heard of it. Carol! Ever heard of Pennywise? No? Wow, that’s fantastic. Do you have any records out?”

  “Yeah, we’ve actually put out eight albums.”

  “Jesus, you’ve been at it a long time.”

  “Yep, fifteen years. So what do you do?”

  “I’m in plastics. What instrument do you play?”

  “Well, I’m the singer.”

  “The singer? Wow! You don’t look like a singer!”

  It’s funny how often I get this response. It’s incredible that people don’t see that statement as being completely offensive. When you imagine a lead singer, you think of an incredibly good-looking, charismatic, charming, sexy, hot stud. So saying I don’t look like a singer is basically telling me I’m cosmically boring and unattractive. I’ve often thought that to counteract this I should enter these events wearing a spandex pantsuit with the entire abdomen cut out and holding a microphone screaming, “WHAT’S UP, MEADOWS ELEMENTARY? HOW YOU FEELING?”

  So we walk around the classroom and see all the finger-painted rainbows, the Thanksgiving turkeys made by tracing their hands on construction paper, the clay statues of some kind of animal, and the squiggly, crayon line drawings of our family (I’m usually making an angry face and screaming into a microphone). We sit in their little chairs at their little tables and look at all the “See Jane Run” books they are reading, the carpet games they play, and the cubbyholes where they keep their stuff. It’s all very nice and quaint and Little House on the Prairie-ish, and for some reason I feel slightly embarrassed to be there and can’t stop thinking I could still be kept after school for something.

  We eventually meet the incredibly sweet and cordial teacher, who has the calm, almost Buddhist-like temperament you’d need to corral thirty raging five-year-olds all day and not go completely postal on them at one point or another. She of course drops the “So what do you do?” bomb right away. I tell her I’m a musician and the name of our band, and I’m amazed and somewhat terrified to find out that she’s familiar with our music.

  “Don’t you have a song on KROQ right now?” Suddenly an ice shard has replaced my spine.

  “Um, yes we do…. Oh, doesn’t her Thanksgiving turkey look nice. Did she trace her hand to do that?”

  “Yes, she did. What’s the song called, the one about authority or something?”

  “Um, yeah, that’s the one…. Oh, honey, look at the drawing of us—she even drew Hamtaro the hamster!”

  “Isn’t it called ‘Fuck Authority’?”

  At that moment I realized that this was probably the first time a kindergarten teacher has ever spoken the f-word to a parent on parents’ night when she wasn’t referring to something their little turd had written on the blackboard, or where the phrase wasn’t followed by some kind of psychological freak-out and eventual lawsuit. It was
actually used in polite conversation, and it was about me and my song on the radio. I began to feel the parallel layers of the universe collapse in around me.

  “Um, yeah. That’s the one.”

  This is when I go into my explanation that everyone in the band writes songs and this is one the guitarist wrote, and he’s a certifiable psychopath and has always had problems with authority, and really it’s not my favorite song, either, to tell you the truth, and I have no idea why the radio picked that song to play when we really have a lot of songs that are positive and life-affirming and this one really isn’t representative of the band and I wish they wouldn’t even play that one and “…oh my, look at that clay sculpture! Is that a cow or a hippopotamus?”

  This brings up an important subject about being a dad from the punk world. How do you reconcile the “Fuck Authority” attitude that punk rock has always championed when you are trying to teach your kids to respect authority, especially your own? How can I go out every night and sing that song at the top of my lungs and the next time I tell my six-year-old to quit goofing around and go to bed not expect her to come over and flip me the bird and tell me where to cram it because I’m the Man and I’ve been repressing six-year-olds like her for centuries? Shouldn’t I be proud at that moment, that is, if I wasn’t the world’s biggest sellout hypocrite? If I expect her to follow my rules, shouldn’t I preface my introduction to the song each time we play it by saying, “Well, yes, technically, ‘Fuck Authority,’ but really only when you’re old enough and it’s appropriate, otherwise you should probably do what you’re told or you could be grounded.”

  PUNK ROCK DAD

  I am a punk rock dad. When I drive my kids to school in the morning, we listen to the Ramones, the Clash, or the Descendents and nothing else. They can listen to whatever former Mouseketeer they want to hear chirping out the latest pop hit crafted by a Swedish songwriting team when I’m not around, but when I’m behind the wheel, it’s the Ramones, the Clash, or the Descendents, and that’s it. I go to all the soccer games, dance rehearsals, and piano recitals like all the other dads, but when I feel the need, I also go to punk shows and run into the slam pit and come home bruised and beaten, but somehow feeling strangely better. While the other dads dye their hair brown to cover the gray, I dye mine blue from time to time. I make their lunches, kiss their boo-boos, and tuck them in at night, and then go in the garage and play Black Flag and Minor Threat songs at criminal volume. I pay my taxes, vote in all presidential and gubernatorial elections, serve jury duty, and reserve the right to believe that most political figures are hopelessly corrupt, that there’s a vast right wing conspiracy to screw the working man out of his social security benefits, and that the head of the PTA at school is possibly in on it. The first record I ever bought was Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, and I’ve never owned an Eagles or Led Zeppelin album, but most importantly, I came of age in the late 1970s and early ’80s, and took part in the revolution when punk rock tore open the flaccid music scene and altered the cultural landscape the world over. This is what makes me a punk rock dad.

  THE BLANK GENERATION

  There are millions of other dads out there just like me who grew up in the 1970s. Our first memories of TV were when our favorite episode of Casper, the Friendly Ghost was preempted by President Nixon’s sweating face resigning after the Watergate scandal. We remember block-long oil embargo gas lines, manic disco dancing, the Iran hostage takeover, and strangely buoyant hair-styles. Three’s Company and Fleetwood Mac ruled the airwaves. The political mood was the confusing aftermath of America’s loss of innocence with JFK, the Vietnam War, Kent State, and the paranoid factoids in Time magazine telling us that our combined nuclear arsenals could blow up the world ten times over. The peace-and-love movement of smoking weed and “lovin’ the one you’re with” had crashed and burned into the “Me decade” of mutual distrust, mountains of cocaine, and a spiraling divorce rate.

  The 1970s became one long valium-addicted hangover from the 1960s, where our parents went into scream therapy with their psychiatrists and decided it was their happiness that mattered most, not their kids’, so they split up, and Dad started spending his weekends with his secretary in a condo down in Baja. All of a sudden, we were having two Christmases and two Thanksgivings every year, one in Mexico and another spent decorating the tree and passing the turkey to your mom’s new boyfriend, Doug. We became latchkey kids, left home alone in our rooms playing Pong with our Pet Rock and spanking it to our Farrah Fawcett poster while the parents worked two jobs to save up for another vacation in Acapulco for more disco dancing, piña coladas, and wife swapping. We were bored, disenfranchised, and frustrated with everything. Music and TV sucked, as did the whole seemingly hopeless direction of the entire human race.

  Punk rock came along at the end of the decade just when we needed it most, and in the chaos of it, everything made perfect sense. The music was fast, furious, and seethed with adolescent resentment and frustration. It was anti-fashion, anti-authority, anti-everything. Verbose social critics saw it as a postmodern expression of Dadaism, an exercise in semiotics, the rejection of traditional cultural values, and the symptom of an underlying societal disease. We saw it as a righteous way to blow off steam and piss off the status quo. We would shove their screwed-up world right back in their faces, wear torn-up clothes, and put a middle finger up to the mainstream. We would never grow up, never sell out, and never give in. We’d change the world with distortion, anarchy, and angst. Just as our parents used Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Beatles as the soundtrack to their adolescent rebellion, we would use Johnny Rotten, Keith Morris, and Joey Ramone.

  I don’t wanna live, to be thirty seven

  I’m living in hell, is there a heaven?

  Live fast, die young

  Live fast, die young

  Live fast, die young

  —The Circle Jerks

  Music had never been this pissed off before. Up until then, American music had been about the backwoods twang of hillbilly country, Delta Blues, smooth jazz, the jovial bebop of rock ’n’ roll, the spaced out sounds of psychedelia, and most nauseatingly, the pilled out lethargy of 1970s FM soft rock, but punk music, almost more than any other musical revolution before it, perfectly captured the bilious spirit of the age. With the cold war, nuclear proliferation, and political corruption rampant, there was a sense at the end of the decade that the human condition had become pointless, plastic, and corrupt. Punk rock emerged as a reaction to a world “falling apart at the rifts” and served to give us a sense of power and identity when we had none. For a few brief years we felt unity and pride in the fact that we had responded to the ruined society we’d inherited from our parents by emphatically rejecting it, and if we had to go down in a nuclear holocaust, we would go down singing a fast, angry punk song and bashing into each other in the slam pit in some bizarre nihilistic, cathartic purge, our song a caterwaul from the blank generation.

  What about afterward? Most of the good punk bands broke up, sold out, or imploded. New wave and heavy metal took over where punk rock left off and MTV packaged it and sold it in a medium that was easily digested by the masses. Seemingly overnight, the rage had been extinguished by commerce and complacency. Most of us finished high school and then had to get real jobs. We went to college and training seminars, got the company car, the 401(k), the expense account, and the tiny cubicle with our very own computer. We found a cheap apartment in town somewhere and spent our weekends drinking and smoking at the local bar, wondering what the hell we were doing with our lives.

  So how were we to know that one day we’d find our perfect mate in a dingy club or used record store somewhere, and after going through so many one-sided crushes and high-maintenance psycho girlfriends, we thought we’d never find a nice one, so we asked her to marry us just because we felt lucky that anyone would want to hang around with someone who looks, acts, and smells like we do. We got married and soon after were hearing the pitter-patter of
little Doc Marten–adorned feet. Then one day, out of nowhere, we have three kids and a minivan, we’re going to T-ball games and spending five hours a night trying to put to bed what will not go to bed without a heroic battle. We are pleading with them to eat their peas and carrots because “Goddamn it they can’t just eat French fries for every meal,” and then we’re fist fighting with some other dad at Wal-Mart at eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve over the last Cabbage Patch doll and getting the stomach flu twice a year when our daughter brings it home from basketball camp. Before we knew it, we were unwillingly thrust into a world of boring PTA meetings, psycho Stepford moms, contentious weekend soccer games, and playgrounds teeming with snot-nosed kindergartners. Just when we had successfully rebelled against our parents, we became them.

  SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN

  The great news is that after having spent the first half of our lives pissed off and complaining and feeling frustrated all the time, we find that becoming parents can be the one thing that gives our meaningless lives a sense of purpose. It’s the most fucked up, difficult, heartbreaking thing in the world to take on, but, apologies to those who don’t have kids for whatever reason, it’s why we’re here. It’s part of the deal. Someone gave birth to you and wiped your ass and listened to you whine and cry all day and night, and now you get to do it for someone else so we can procreate this messed up species. Believe in whatever man-made religion, celebrity science-fiction cult, or boogeyman you want to donate ten percent of your life savings to, but having children is one thing we know our species is biologically driven to do; if it wasn’t, none of us would be here, simple as that. With over-population and the lack of good health care, it’s actually great that some people choose not to have kids, but for many of us, it can be the one thing that gives you a shot at true happiness in what can otherwise seem like a cold, forbidding world, and it may even help you begin to finally accept some of the responsibilities you’ve been actively rebelling against your whole life.