Daydream Nationalism

The perfect punk song should, in theory, be impossible to find let alone to write. If perfection were punk’s endgame there would be no point in it. Pop music is perfection embodied. The recurring search for the one hook that will bring the greatest number of people to a single spot in the shortest possible time requires a comfort with excellence. It was punk’s mission to take that blueprint and make it repellant to all but a handful of masochists. True, anyone who has heard even one Misfits or Ramones song may be inclined to disagree. But we have been desensitized by major cultural shifts, which I will get to, and are apt to miss the brute force of both in the immediate moment. The classic songwriting gifts of Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only or of Joey and Johnny Ramone are incidental as against the aggression that is controlling your reaction to the songs.