So this has been bothering me. I’ve brought it up in nearly every conversation I’ve had for the past week.

https://ricochet.com/186533/archives/what-are-the-six-songs-that-define-you/

That links to a music “questionnaire” that’s supposed to help you define yourself with six songs. My guitar teacher showed it to me last week. None of the questions were particularly stimulating, in my opinion. I mean, can you get more basic than “What song always gets you dancing?”

Yes, you can, as it turns out. Question 6: “A song that makes you, you.”

Bullshit. How can a song make me? How can I make a song? That I didn’t literally make, of course. The song and I would both have existed on our own independent paths until we happen to cross once. And of course we don’t remain intertwined, forever. I listen to a ton of songs in a day. And songs tend to be rather promiscuous themselves, being publicly available for anyone else to share in. How, then, can I call one mine? And in doing so, am I trying to impose my own experience/interpretation on a song made by some people some time who never knew me, or am I pigeon-holing myself to whatever the fancy of those people was at the time? And given the music I listen to, whoever wrote the song was probably high when they wrote it. They could be alcoholics. That’s not me. They could be assholes. They might hate me, if they knew me. There’s a 90% chance they’re white men, too. All of which is fine. But’s not me.

I’m not saying I’ve never felt defined by a song. And I mean, defined perfectly. Where it’s in my ears and the whole rest of the world seems to fall away, and I’m simply lost in whatever melody (or anti-melody) is tickling my eardrums.

It’s just that it’s never a full song, and it’s never fully me. It’s a song fragment, a hook, a particular nuance that happened to catch my attention this one time and momentarily obsesses me. I listen to it over and over, the same song, waiting for the one motif.

It’s never lasted more than a day. I’m a different person the next day. Or the next hour. How can a song make me, me?

Punk. 60’s garage rock. Noise rock. Anarcho-punk. Hardcore. Feminist punk. Alternative rock. Alternative metal. 80’s/90’s Indie rock. Grunge. Industrial rock.

All words I’ve heard used to define whatever I’m into right now. Does that mean they define me, too?

I’m even more hesitant to plaster myself in these labels (or is it on these labels?) knowing that I only discovered this little sub-culture/genre a mere few months ago. Before that, I was all metal. Now I don’t know the difference. Does that make my love, my feeling defined by this music, any less real?

It started with a Minneapolis band called (the) Cows, for me. Last September. I quoted them in the title. I’ll write more about them later.

A lot of the 80’s punk culture was sustained and propagated by underground, independently published “zines”. I don’t know when “zine” culture died out, but it certainly happened before I was born. My source for this information is Michael Azerrad’s “Our Band Could Be Your Life”, from 2001, wholly centered around documenting these mechanics by which punk lived and died under the noses of well, the rest of America, I guess.

All this to say that zines sometimes gave rise to music labels, and that for this reason fanbases were centered not only around bands, but around these labels and zines too.

All that to say that Amphetamine Reptile, or AmRep, responsible for “launching” the careers of many bands that I feel currently constitute my persona, is run by a super cool guy named Tom Hazelmeyer that to this day occasionally puts out little compilation albums featuring some of the artists he produced, affectionately titled Dope-Guns-‘N-Fucking in the Streets. There’s a compilation of these compilations, DGFITS 1-11, that I think summarizes pretty well the kind of stuff I intend to talk about, at least presently.

Because who knows what I’ll wanna talk about tomorrow.

So try the album if you want. Oh and the questionnaire, too. Maybe I’ll post my answers sometime (SPOILER: they’re not real answers, just rants).

-Mans

P. S. Say it like Hans, with an M. Or don’t. Fuck you.

P. P. S. The Cows song I quoted is called “The Man”, and is off their 1991 album Peacetika.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2dstRya21w