About a year ago, my big sister found some new friends. She started dressing all punk rawk and misspelling words like rock. The kids all wear cutoff pants, spiked belts and backwards baseball caps. They skateboard, tell a lot of dumb fart jokes and get high. They talk a lot about how they're rebels, and how dumb fashion is but I see Jessica, my sister, spend an hour in the mirror everyday before school trying to look like them. And all of them watch MTV to check out the newest punk rawk bands that misspell words like rock. It's really bad music; me and mom talk about how bad it is sometimes, but Jessica and her friends don't seem to notice. They even make fun of the Buddy Holly albums that dad gave me. I don't like them very much and I'm pretty sure she's doing it with one or two of them. Her and her dumb friends have been listening to a band called Yellowcard lately that sounds just like every other band they listen to except with a violin. When they smoke pot in the basement after school they talk about how, "it's like … classical punk rock, man."
It's not.
I was trying to read my fantasy novels yesterday afternoon and she wouldn't stop blasting this album. I couldn't keep my concentration at all. In fact I didn't even know it was this crappy band until I heard the violin sounding like shit. Then I said, "Oh, must be that yellow-whatever band." I guess the band thinks the violin is unique or something, but other than that they really don't try. Most of the time the violin is buried below the other instruments. Either that or it just sounds really cheesy most of the time. Instead of changing their music to use the violin better, they just play the same bad music everyone else does except they jam a violin into it.
"Empty Apartment" totally rips off that Dashboard Confessional guy that Jessica listens to when she masturbates alone in her room. It's a rip off right down to the bad poetry lyrics, rhyme scheme and vocal rhythm. Then at the end they rip off New Found Glory instead, right down to the annoying high-pitched vocals and harmonies. "Life of a Salesman," goes in a different direction, ripping off Good Charlotte instead. Jessica used to love that band but now she hates them because they're "too commercial and teenybopper." But she first heard them on TRL! I don't understand. Anyway, the song has a rapid vocal delivery and dad-focused lyrics, just like anything on The Young and the Hopeless. "What's a dad for, dad / tell me why I'm here, dad / whisper in my ear, dad / I'm growing up to be a better man, dad," I write better than that and I'm only 11! Then it has that thing where different parts of the song are all sung over each other at the end. Yeah it's pretty bad.
They also walk close to MxPx, with half-disguised Christian Youth Group preaching. "How it feels to be alone and not believe in anything," is the chorus of "Way Away" and "If we all believe in Heaven / then we will make it through one more year down here" is the chorus of "View From Heaven." It's pretty lame, especially when my sister and her friends talk about how they hate Christianity and the government while they're high, "Like, it totally sucks sitting in Church listening to that dude talk about God all the time. God can't tell me what to do, man! I'm a punk!" Then I catch them singing along to this shit a half-hour later.
I really hope this is just a phase like mom says. She said cousin Ryan went through something similar in high school too, except he had lopsided spiked hair too. I hope she's right cause I can't stand much more. Jessica's in the basement so much that me and my friends can't play Dungeons & Dragons down there like we used to every Saturday. How am I supposed to make level 14 when I can't even play? Man, Yellowcard blows.
-Timmy, Age 11
9/7/03 |
