The thing to understand about punk rock is that it's not music. It's not even really a subculture. In truth, it's a coping mechanism. Have you ever noticed that it attracts all these broken people? The lifers? The ones who treat it like it has some adhesive quality that keeps the rest of the world from a state of irreversible disrepair? In psychology that's known as -- I think; I never studied psychology and Wikipedia'd a hunch -- displacement.

Displacement can act in a chain-reaction, with people unwittingly becoming both the victim and perpetrator of displacement. For example, a man is angry with his boss, but he cannot express this so he hits his wife. The wife hits one of the children, possibly disguising this as punishment (rationalization).

Why sugarcoat it? It's an ugly thing. You love something because you're in pain and you associate it with a moment when you felt less pain, and that passes for love, but you can't understand why that's both comforting and incomplete and it can't love you back like you deserve and that becomes obsession. All obsessions are solipsistic. Projecting them onto other people is unfair and self-destructive. Punk rock is an acceptable alternative to doing so. See? Coping mechanism.

I mentioned earlier that I never saw Rancid before tonight. That was actually a failure of character. It wasn't that I didn't want to see Rancid when I was 15 -- I remember sneaking a furtive, illicit peek at their November 1995 SNL performance ("this is for all the bands on Epitaph records!") -- it was that in New York mid-nineties punk rock that just wasn't done. Cowardly! Sometimes punk rock is the least punk-rock thing there is. So today, at 28 years old, I made amends with rectified a 13-year lapse. [Wow that was some sloppy writing there.]

Another unpunkrock thing that punk rockers do -- or, at least, did; I'm not going to any meetings of the collective or anything -- is decide that any band can cover any song except if a band is comprised of ex-members of the band that wrote a particular song. Anyone but Shelter, for instance, could cover a Youth of Today song. (...Why did I come up with that example?) Rancid, of course, contains half of Operation Ivy, but for some reason it was decided long ago that only 14 year olds in basements and VFW halls can play Op IV songs. Because if a great band that pretty much wrote Op IV's amazing catalogue actually played that material, it would be... tacky. Inauthentic. Punk rock is filled with such rules, and you pick them up as you go along.

And then you get rid of them, as when Rancid played "Knowledge." "Knowledge" is the marijuana of punk rock, a gateway, a perfect little minute and a half of distilled agitation, anxiety, self-doubt, omnidirectional fury and then, unexpectedly, acceptance. You hear that and you figure, Hmmmm, that makes a lot of sense. What else of this kind of thing makes that kind of sense? To see Rancid play "Knowledge" was -- well, it can't be as pure as it would be if it happened when I was 15, but it was wistful and felt, again, like an old wrong was being righted.

Another thing about punk rock that will make me burst into tears if I think about it for too long: you can be knocked in the head, completely disoriented, and many many large men will barrel into you before you regain your bearings, but when a bunch of people see you have a distressed look on your face and you drop to the floor to find, say, your glasses, they will ensure that a space is cleared for you and will remain clear until you emerge. (With your glasses, in this case.) Why? Because you'd do it for them. In this miserable, debased world, how many things can you say that about?

So: got a big bump above my right eyebrow that may or may not be discolored in the morning but otherwise am unbruised. Rancid did not heed my last post's wishes and play anything from the first record except "Adina," but you know what, I wasn't the only person at the show so jeeeeeez what do I expect. They did practically everything off Wolves except "Avenues & Alleyways" "She's Automatic" and, crucially, "You Don't Care Nothin'." Now, that one is really important: Jenny DeMilo, who rejects Lars in the song for no good reason, will recur again and again and again in your life, in one form or another, and when she does, you point her out, give her that name, give yourself a point of reference, and then -- in my case at least -- send her an email or a text naming her by her real, true, essential name. And then you can deal with her and what it was and then it's... well, if not fine, it's manageable. See? A coping mechanism.