] "Punks will tell me, `Punk and capitalism don't go
] together,' " Mr. Rizzuto said. "I don't understand where
] they're coming from. The biggest punk scenes are in
] capitalist countries like the U.S., Canada and Japan. I
] haven't heard of any new North Korean punk bands coming
] out. There's no scene in Iran."

] "Punk has been hijacked by an extreme left-wing element,"
] Mr. Rizzuto said. "It's blame America first. Everything is
] America's fault, and everything is Bush's fault." Mr. Rizzuto
] said his goal "is rallying conservative punks and getting
] people to vote."

Punk is not dead, its just been adopted as a bipartisan political platform.

] By their own admission, conservative punks constitute a
] small percentage of their particular subculture. Around
] 200 liberal and left-oriented punk bands have come
] together under the banner of Punkvoter, a coalition
] founded by Mike Burkett — a k a Fat Mike — of the band
] NOFX, with the stated goal of organizing punk fans to
] vote against President Bush in November. Mr. Burkett
] started Punkvoter with $100,000 of his own money and
] has recruited crossover bands like Green Day and the
] Foo Fighters to his cause.

] "Our goal is to anger the youth of America, and to show
] them how the Bush administration is bad for them,"
] Mr. Burkett said.

I was at CBGBs the other night. Typical inward facing industry scene crowd. All the bands I saw were talented, but nothing that really lit my fire. Planning and practice get good product, but its not where the cutting edge seems to lie. Where is the excitement these days? There does not appear to be any life in the marketplace. At every point I did my chill in the back of the room and judge crowd reaction thing, it seemed like a damn wake. As usual, my group was seemingly the only source of havoc. At this point in the in history, you'd think New York would have something serious to say, and an attitude with which to say it. Sometimes it seems that New York Rock and Fashion Rock are the same thing.

If you are a band, and the local industry is your only crowd, you are doomed. If the industry isn't doing something actively to get your stuff in the face of a much larger audience, you are doomed. I use "industry" in the most vague of ways. This likely goes for anywhere.

The Punklitical Pandscrape