Have you been out on the indie/punk/rock music streets lately? It is BRUTAL. Total carnage. It’s like West Side Story, except the Sharks and Jets are fighting over a single block, and the block is a NFT, and instead of Maria and Tony it’s Scene Police, CREEM’s official drama-rama column, and you. Let’s drink the gossip poison together!
I Only Like the First Album
Remember Jan. 6th? It was kind of like V For Vendetta if, instead of a single anarchist in a Guy Fawkes mask, it was a few thousand OnlyFan reply guys whose politics largely consisted of “I will literally believe the stupidest shit imaginable (and, also, racism).” You know, guys who wore masks made of Blue Lives Matter Punisher skulls, wraparound sunglasses, and cheese curd crumble.
Anyway, there were some hearings in D.C. about it. Pretty normal stuff, totally outside the Scene Police purview! EXCEPT: one of the witnesses, a former spokesperson for the fascist paramilitary group Oath Keepers (a far-right organization of strict Constitutionalists—in that they want to bring back slavery—sympathetic to King Leopold’s aims but not formed in response to the Belgian hardcore/metal band Oathbreaker) named Jason Van Tatenhove showed up wearing a Descendents’ Everything Sucks t-shirt, under a denim jacket with Deftones pins.
The Descendents, perhaps hoping to avoid any connecting of dots between the lyrics of “Clean Sheets”* and incel culture, issued a response on Twitter saying, “We completely disavow groups like the Oath Keepers and in no way condone their hateful ideology.” Deftones did not comment. Possibly because they either saw all the “fucking PUNK ROCK” comments posted in response to the Descendents’ tweet, and opted to avoid the cringe. Or because their guitarist and noted antivaxer, Stephen Carpenter, didn’t want it to look like the band was working for the lizard people.
It should be noted that Van Tatenhove was appearing before the committee to denounce the Oath Keepers. Describing how the group’s fascist tendencies eventually became too fascist for his taste, Van Tatenhove told the assorted senators, “I only like the first album.”
*Tensions were high in the squad car as Scene Police debated, Training Day style, whether “Bikage”, “Hope”, “Kabuki Girl”, “Myage”, “Catalina”, “Sour Grapes”, or “I'm Not a Loser” worked best for this joke.
