Don't Turn Away

On the way home from our weekly Phoenix Improv Festival meeting, I told my fiancee to change CD's in the car stereo. She grabbed face to face's self titled major label debut¹. Before she even put the CD in, I did what I may perhaps arrogantly call a spot-on vocal impression of the opening bass line. “Wow,” she said when the real music came on and she realized what had just happened. “That's...sad.”

But the thing is, it isn't sad. I bought that CD on the day it came out—when I was in middle school—and I probably listened to it at least once a week until my junior year of high school. Was it a great album? I'm not sure that mattered. It was fast and loud and honest. And catchy. It straddled that prickly, fragmented fence between pop punk and hardcore. And now, I'm not entirely sure if I like them for nostalgia's sake or because they're good on their own merits, and I'm even less sure of what, if any, difference it makes.

face to face's Don't Turn Away was probably the first punk album I ever bought. I considered putting the word 'punk' in quotes in the preceding sentence, but you know what? That album is more punk than anything I have ever heard before or since. Now, I seriously considered deleting that entire last sentence because I am fully aware how utterly retarded it makes me sound. But I've never wanted to define punk in anything other than tenuous, subjective, and individual terms. I don't have faith in punk as a counter cultural force for changing the much-too-complex class relations of the world. To be sure, I feel that the 1-4-5 Empty Fifth Progression complete with with the Totally Killer Break-Down is insufficiently equipped to bring down thousands of years worth of ruling-class oppression. But damned if I'm not overcome with delight at the gumption, the suspension of common sense in favor of a beautiful and righteous idealism. And, unlike marijuana, face to face's Don't Turn Away was my gateway drug.

The intangible that I'm getting at—that I'm trying and failing to elucidate—is that sometimes music needs to be assessed by subjective means. Sometimes albums are great because they find you at a particularly vulnerable or unique time in your life. And it's important to realize that it doesn't make them any less great. I'm sick of hearing people say, “Well that album isn't very good but I listened to it all the time in high school because I was young and stupid and now that album makes me happy to listen to because I think of those great times and get nostalgic but I promise it has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the music.” Run on sentence aside, the sentiment itself is all too often either bogus or self-loathing. Sure, sometimes we listened to stupid stuff and we are ashamed because of how bad it was in retrospect. But more often we come to the realization that the music isn't “cool” and, therefore, turn our back on it.

Don't Turn Away is fast and loud. Their follow-up EP, called Over It, is similarly fast and loud. When I listen to these albums, I feel like I can take over whatever minute portion of the world that's worth taking over. I usually jam them in my car when I'm alone. I sing along loudly and bob my head up and down like a muppet with a Parkinson's ridden puppeteer. And sometimes when I pull up to a stoplight and catch the eye of the driver next to me, I feel a little ashamed. Then I feel ashamed for feeling ashamed because, really, I should just not give a fuck about this random stranger's disapproving—or, perhaps more accurately, bewildered—glare. But, like the knowledge that face to face aren't very “cool,” (after all, they released their third full-length through A&M) and certainly do not pass the standardized punk-rock litmus test that makes me feel like I shouldn't be listening to this music in the first place, I realize that this is just another institutionalized way to control my actions. And that's not very punk rock, is it?

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1I'm not being rude or careless by not capitalizing their name. They are the bell hooks of 90's punk rock. They prefer humility to convention, and on this point I'm rather ambivalent. As sincere as their intentions, it comes across as a somewhat calculated attempt at humility, which can be seen as more contrived than humble.