Minor Threat - "Cashing In" (1983, from
Out of Step)
No one becomes a Rocker without accepting its limitations: three-chords, three-minutes, usually about sex or the lack thereof. Perversely, though, almost everyone who becomes a Punk rocker thinks that they've stumbled over the Rosetta Stone, a way to make pure aggressive music that's
about something. And, to a degree they're right. Sometimes I like to annoy the more preachy spike-heads by comparing Punk to Christianity: no matter how many times it's declared dead, the sumbitch never manages to belly-up. But that persistence is the result of a stylish musical perversity: deliberately making songs that are un-lovely, raw to the point of amateurishness, fit only for a declaration of ephemeral rage that only adolescents, with their complete lack of self-awareness, are capable of.
Added to that is the fact that Punk lost it's spiritual purity, whatever that might have been, some time ago. People like to fling feces at Hot Topic for commodifying the genre's image and ersatz rebellion, but frankly, that's all poppycock. Yes, someone who walked into a Hot Topic one day a straight-laced jock and walked out a harDCore Goth Punk would be a doofus, and deserving of every slur that could be marshalled against them. But almost nobody does that. Plus, 90% of the music sold there is stuff you can't find at the Sam Goody at the other end of the mall, all on indie labels and unavailable otherwise to the market they serve. And where else in the suburbs am I supposed to find Misfits records on vinyl?
Besides, Hot Topic is but a descendant of commerical enterprises that have been selling Punk style from the masses since the beginning: from Commander Salamander to Malcom McClaren's Sex, there have always been stores offering instant punk uniforms. Nor were they ashamed about it: shifting the culture was the whole point. The Clash didn't form their own record label and sell their stuff out of the back of the tour van; they signed to CBS Records in 1976 for £100,000. This DIY-purity, we-hate-every-band-that-more-that-50-people-know-about routine didn't come until the early-to-mid 80's,
after British Punk had imploded and American Punk utterly failed to make it on the radio.
A lot of people like to edit that out of their thinking, and in most cases that leads to a lot of treacly diatribes as a part of a lot of formulaic songs by a lot of punk-by-numbers bands. But occasionally a band will dismount its high horse and take a righteous slash at its own self-righteousness, and so did Minor Threat, by all accounts one of the preachiest bands of a preachy genre, do in '82 with "Cashing In."
First off, the song starts with a bouncy, almost hilarious bass line that indicates a departure from the wholesale ranting that's come before. Ian "My Coolness Weighs Upon Me Like An Albatross" MacKaye starts mock-laughing, and we could be sure he'd be pulling his moustache if he hadn't had all hair as completely removed from his body as an Egyptian priest. And then the swirling guitars come in, and our song is complete: awaiting only the words of Ian the Great, Gatekeeper to Henry Rollins' Scenemaster (enjoy that image for a moment before pressing on):
How do you do?
I don't think that we've met
My name is Ian,
I'm in Minor Threat
Yes, it's a first person song, which means SARCASM writ as large as a movie promo. But it's a first person song about himself, which means MacKaye is being sarcastic about himself and his work, which is a damn fine thing for any rock or pop star to be doing, and for which he should be commended. After a somewhat garbled line about "making money out of every set," we have the chorus:
We don't care
We don't pose
We'll steal your money
We'll steal your show
This last is song by what appears to be the whole band, or at any rate, multiple voices, giving the impression of mass input. No more is merely the Magnificent Ian to be subject to the acid disdain of a harDCore song, nor even merely the band Minor Threat, but the whole harDCore scene, and, by implication, the whole punk movement, promising solidarity but still competing for the necessities of their careers.
Now if the song went thusly for a few turns and then stomped on the brakes, it would already be one of the better tracks in Minor Threat's catalogue, but it doesn't do that. Instead, the song dramatically shifts, in tempo and style, into an elongated outro, and in function from a satire to a requiem:
There's no place like home
There's no place like home
There's no place like home
So where am I?
This repeats, with slightly different emphasis on different syllables each time, until the instruments climax and drain away, and Ian actually sings the last line, actually uses his voicebox as a mutual intrument instead of a megaphone, and the self and the band and the scene and the movement fade away, the Jeremiad that this song has been dead with them, leaving only a desolate wasteland, fit for Lamentations.
Naturally, Minor Threat were done after this. Saint Ian of the Community Center does not tarry with things that he deems impure. But for a brief shining moment before running with the eternal experiment Fugazi, His Punkness actually destroyed his adolescence so that he could grow into something else, and missed it as it went. That's more up-front honesty than any pop song has dared in a long time.
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