Muscle – S.N.L.
There are people who save up money for years and years, catch a big plane that takes them to France, and go insane the moment they witness Paris. There’s nothing in the water, and the French pastries are good as you’d imagine. But little else is, as far as most people are concerned. Not good enough to dedicate your life to seeing it anyway. It’s fine, I guess. But “fine” doesn’t justify a global fascination.
SNL, like Bruce Springsteen and Watergate, are part of a history that keeps getting retold and mythologized in the U.S.A. Outside of it, nearly nobody cares or could answer you who John Belushi was or why they call Springsteen “The Boss.” But these things are out there; they’re making their way through pop culture, and they’ll arrive at you one at a time or another. SNL is unavoidable, for example, just not very funny.
The news that the sketch show might be retired has been met with sighs of indifference and chants of “You’re getting sacked in the morning!” Confrontational, aggressive, brilliant punk band Muscle are among those unwilling to forget all of the horrors that the show is responsible for in the U.S. And, by the sound of the lyrics, the band isn’t willing to part politely by saying, “Well, it was funny in the ‘90s when Norm MacDonald was on, I guess.” Nah, to them, American pop culture is a growing infection and there’s little of it meant to be celebrated. Besides, Muscle has just the power to put the agents of American corporate entertainment in their place.
The Scoffs – Never Might Be Too Soon
I suppose that the modern world is built so that your average person is, at least, mildly polite to everyone they encounter. That sure beats wars, violence, and confrontation. But it’s such a chore!
We look at the people who jump up on a stage as characters who have different kind of bravery than ours. They are the ones we’d like to be like. They are the ones we naturally imagine who don’t always have to live with the law.
Punk-rock bands were especially shocking initially because they didn’t write love songs, weren’t obsessed with pleasing everyone, and brought a confrontational kind of energy with which many felt an immediate connection.
The Scoffs like classic punk-rock, especially punk’s outlook on life. On “Never Might Be Too Soon,” The Scoffs tell off fake friends and boring acquaintances. They do this while using the kind of melodic, fast rock formula to which the original CBGB bands adhered and while looking like students at the Johnny Thunders School of Fashion. Above everything, even the undeniable chorus, it’s nice to know some people can still get by while refusing to be polite and giving the middle thinger to those who’ve crossed them.
