Infected
A Bad Religion Playlist for the New Dark Ages
I want to start this note off by letting you know that all is well in Casa Underworld. No one in my extended family has gotten sick (knocks wood) and we are all in regular communication with each other.
Today marks my fifteenth day of staying at home. As a freelance writer, my schedule hasn’t been affected, but my working environment has changed because I’m no longer home alone during the day. And that’s a good thing.
While cycling through my favorite Bad Religion songs this week, it occurred to me that many of them speak to the pandemic. I went through the band’s catalog and found a plethora of songs relevant to our present scientific, social, and political situation.
So I made a playlist of Bad Religion songs about the COVID-19 crisis in no particular order. (I also created a playlist on Spotify so you can listen along as you read.) It’s worth noting that Bad Religion had nothing to do with this little endeavor.
1. “Infected” from Stranger Than Fiction
This song is about a toxic mix of love and drugs, but applies to our present condition. Songwriter Brett Gurewitz told me a lot of interesting things about the writing of this song that I don’t want to spoil because they’re in Do What You Want, which you should pre-order right now. The chorus (You and me have a disease) speaks to what it might be like to be quarantined with someone you love. (Not you Nuvia!)
2. “New Dark Ages” from New Maps of Hell
Let’s face it: we’ve never been in a situation like this before. Most of us have some awareness of the Black Death that ravaged Europe during the Middle Ages, even if it’s from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (“Bring out your dead!”), which is currently on Netflix. But the bubonic plague isn’t the only reason they were called the Dark Ages. What sticks out about the Middle Ages is a general lack of progress after the so-called gains in so-called civilization made by the Roman Empire. It was a backward time when the fruits of science, art, culture, and politics were at society’s disposal, but the fiefdoms of Europe reverted back to feudal systems ruled by squabbling tyrants. Is there a lesson we can learn from this or is the coronavirus the catalyst for a New Dark Age?
Welcome to the new Dark Ages
Yeah, I hope you're living right
In case you missed the memo, “living right” means “staying home.” By the way, this song isn’t a product of the 1980s when many punk and hardcore bands were giving voice to the outrage they felt about living in the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. This album came out in 2007, just two years after the outbreak of avian influenza in 2005.
3. “We’re Only Gonna Die (From Our Own Arrogance)” from How Could Hell Be Any Worse?
This song comes from Bad Religion’s first album and the songwriter, Greg Graffin, was still in high school when he wrote the lyrics. Greg was fascinated by paleontology and would go on to get a PhD in evolutionary biology. The lyrics echo a line from the book Origins by Richard Leakey and Robert Lewin, “To have arrived on this Earth … only to depart it through arrogance, would be the ultimate irony." I’ve always been fascinated by the inclusion of the word “only” in the title, but arrogance is obviously the key to the song and key to what makes Bad Religion Bad Religion. The song was famously covered by Sublime and, you can’t make this up, Biohazard. I’m not going to link to those bands because we’ve all suffered enough.
4. “Watch It Die” from Recipe for Hate
When Greg was a student at UCLA he did a lot of work in the field that took him to far-flung places in North and South America. On these trips he discovered that just beneath the earth’s surface lies the secrets of the planet’s past, a geological record untroubled by human history. Yet our time on this ball of confusion has been a fucking mess. Greg has a great deal to say about all this. To cut through religious dogma, political manipulation, and the noise of the modern world, Greg’s lyrics can be pitilessly succinct, but never more so than in the first verse of “Watch It Die”:
I was born on planet earth
The rotating ball where man comes first
It's been around for a long, long time
But now it's time to watch it die
5. “Boot Stamping on a Human Face Forever” from The Empire Strikes First
The title of this song comes from a line in George Orwell’s 1984. The full quote reads: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” The song is from Bad Religion’s angriest album: The Empire Strikes First, a howl of rage at the United States government for launching an unprovoked attack on Iraq. Brett’s lyrics, however, are intimate and conjure up a picture of ennui in a grim situation. Here’s the opening verse:
Drop dead, it doesn't matter, she said
It only hurts when I laugh, she said
Sometimes it's never a crime
To spend the day in bed
It’s one of the slowest songs on the album, and the lyrics are slippery, but these last lines give me chills:
"And is it possible too many have died?"
It's only natural to reply.
6. “Anxiety” from No Control
The strange phenomenon of toilet paper hoarding is going to go down in history as one of the signifiers of this strange time. I can look at video of people fighting over TP in the grocery store with indignation, but at the same time there’s a voice inside me that wonders if I have enough. Even though I know that’s not the voice of logic and reason, it’s still there, and I hate it.
It's a world of bogus feelings
And a world of slow decay
I’m cherry picking lines here, but bogus feelings in the face of slow decay is a pretty good summation of how I’m feeling 24/7 right now.
7. “Pessimistic Lines” from Suffer
In the summer of 2018 I followed Bad Religion around Europe for a bit. It was the 30th anniversary of Suffer and I had the privilege of watching the band play the record from start to finish on about a dozen occasions. Typically, the band would play a set, and then play Suffer as an encore. The last song on Suffer is “Pessimistic Lines” which has an oddly mournful tone. It’s essentially an address to people who can see things clearly but as a result of this moral clarity will find little consolation in “the modern age’s lies.” Seeking the truth, calling out falsehoods, and holding people accountable for their actions are necessary but joyless endeavors—as anyone who has tried to convince a friend or family member of the seriousness of COVID-19. Bad Religion has never been a rabble rousing “Fuck authority!” band. They are truth tellers, the consolations of which are few. Bad Religion challenges listeners to think. What the listener does with that knowledge is up to them.
8. “Nobody Listens” from The Gray Race
This is a deep cut that I don’t think I’ve ever heard the band play live, but it sums up my frustration of watching footage of kids partying in Florida during a global pandemic.
Is it any wonder
Things seem so awry?
The masses are cloaked in confusion?
We don't have to think to survive
So nobody listens
9. “End of History” from Age of Unreason
I could have picked any number of songs from the latest record (“The Approach,” “My Sanity”) and while this is clearly an anti-Trump song (“I don’t believe in Golden Ages or presidents who put kids in cages”) it gets down to the nitty-gritty—not with a statement but with a question:
Now we're in the last second of our December
Tell me how do you want to be remembered?
For generosity or a fucking monstrosity?
This for me is what it comes down to. None of us are getting through this alone. At a time of enforced social distancing, we need each other now more than ever. I’m choosing generosity with my vote, but also with my heart. If the result of this pandemic is that we start putting other people’s needs ahead of our own—not just occasionally, but on the regular—maybe, just maybe, we can change course and avoid the next catastrophe.
10. “Fuck Armageddon… This Is Hell” from How Could Hell Be Any Worse
This is one of my favorite songs and its message is simple: Your make believe hell doesn’t hold a candle to the shit show we’ve created here on earth. Bad Religion often closes out its encore with this song, as it did when Nuvia and I went to see the band in Mexico City in May of 2018. Here’s a video I took from backstage of that very happy occasion. I hope it’s not long before we can all get together like this again!
Hey, punker dunkers…
Tomorrow I was supposed to go to the Hollywood Palladium to see Bad Religion, but like everything else, the show was cancelled. I was counting on Bad Religion’s spring tour to help get the word out about Do What You Want, the book I wrote with Bad Religion. That’s not going to happen.
So if you enjoyed reading this playlist, please share with the punk rockers in your life—from a safe social distance, of course. You can spread the word on social media or forward it via email. Whatever you do, I appreciate it.
Junk Mail from Dystopia
If you’re like me, you’ve been bombarded with emails from every company or organization that has got you on its mailing list. I actually like reading these messages. I want to know how institutions are dealing with the crisis because it’s going to inform how I spend my money in the future. This stuff matters to me.
That includes emails from corporations. One of my credit cards wanted to let me know they were there for me by telling me all the ways I could manage my banking online. Not helpful. Whereas Volkswagen credit stated that if I was going to have a problem making payments, I should contact them directly to work something out. I’m not having trouble paying my bills right now, but I appreciate the concern. One company made a gesture; the other offered assistance. The messaging is important.
In September of 2001, I was working at an ad agency and we had a client in the travel sector that had a problem. After 9/11, they had a number of customers who worked in the Twin Towers that used their office as their mailing address. Now that the towers were no longer standing, they were sending out a letter to these folks at their billing address to try and re-establish communication. Here’s the tricky part: they had no way of knowing if those people had died in the towers on 9/11. I was tasked with writing this letter.
Long story short: I put a lot of time and effort into the letter, but my carefully thought out missive was shitcanned and rewritten by corporate ghouls. It basically went like this, “Dear John Q. Sample, we are writing to you at this address because the address you provided no longer exists.”
I was furious. No longer exists? I tried to explain that the person opening the envelope might be the customer’s husband, wife, son or daughter who might be offended by this stunning lack of tact, but my protests fell on deaf ears.
I remember walking out of the office and walking down Wilshire Boulevard sick with sadness and rage. No longer exists floated through my brain like a mantra. I went back to the office later that afternoon and continued with my meaningless work, but I lost an enormous amount of respect for everyone involved and things, as they say, were never the same.
So today I thought I’d share with you some of the things that have come my way via email that might be interest you.
Shop Local in San Diego
I got jealous of all the people putting puzzles together on Instagram so I ordered one from The Book Catapult, a locally owned independent bookstore in South Park. They have 6,000 books in stock (plus all kinds of puzzles and activities for kids) and will happily ship your order via media mail. I also ordered a pair of books I’ve been wanting to check out: Ander Monson’s I Will Take the Answers: Essays and Jennifer Offill’s novel Weather. I’m a big fan of both writers and I’ll probably have something to say about them here before too long.
I love coffee and divide my business depending on where I am and what mood I’m in; but all of my favorite places closed by order of the governor. Dark Horse Coffee Roasters has stepped up in a big way. Because DHCR roasts its own coffee, it can supply online orders. Not only do they make delicious coffee, the staff is super friendly. They created a new blend called Social Distancing, which bears a slight resemblance to the Social Distortion logo, and 100% of the proceeds go to the baristas during the shutdown. How cool is that?
Miscellaneous
Want to learn more about the city of Wuhan? This charming comic by Laura Gao is a great start. (From Submittable)
Are you a podcast person? Pen America has launched The Pen Pod.
The UC Press has made access to all of its journals free through June 2020. This is a pretty big deal. Check out the full list of affiliated journals here. (From Music Journalism Insider)
San Diego’s Museum of Photographic Arts has opened up many of its exhibits and archives to the public. Such as this exhibit of Edward S. Curtis’s problematic photo portraits of native communities in North America.
Deals
Melville House has put the e-book version of their bestselling novels on sale for $1.99. Maybe curling up with Every Man Dies Alone doesn’t sound too appealing right now, but it’s a stirring story of resistance. It’s also my cousin Noreen’s favorite novel. (Hi Noreen!) Or, read Juliet the Maniac by my friend Juliet Escoria. This announcement went out on Saturday and the will last “the next week” so don’t sleep on this one.
Do you like board games? Exploding Kittens is a fun, irreverent card game that’s very popular in our house. They’ve branched out and created a bunch of other games and right now they’re all 30% off and shipping is free.
Prospect Park Books is offering 20% off its entire inventory, plus free shipping. I suggest Sean Carswell’s Dead Extra. In addition, you can get a free e-book by Naomi Hirahara just by writing hello@prospectparkbooks.com.
PM Press is offering 40% off its entire stock of books, e-books, CDs, and DVDs.
Have you always wanted to write a screenplay? Final Draft is offering 20% off the software that’s used throughout the industry. You can also try it for free for 30 days.
Archipelago Books is offering 30 e-books free through April 2, 2020.
Lastly, the Paris Review has opened up its archives. Yes, that includes the world-famous interviews. Don’t believe me? Here’s some Borges for you.
Take care of yourself and be good to those around you. We need each more than we know.