We thought Left Spine Down bassist Denyss Mcknight had some interesting things to say about using technology to keep the punk ( or “cyberpunk”) spirit alive in his recent blog, so we published it here.
People need a soundtrack to what’s happening right now.
Cyberpunk really IS the new punk rock movement in my eyes. There are so many people who feel rejected, cast aside and ignored. Even by the sub-cultures that were first established for them, by them.
My response to that?
We’re the new outcasts and pirates of our generation.
It’s always been there, there was a huge regression of it in the 90s, and it’s been largely ignored until now. Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Billy Idol and Billy Idol were the first wave, but it died as soon as it came. There was an initial romance with the idea of it that submerged immediately. I still believe that one of the original cyberpunk anthems was SS Sputnik‘s ‘Love Missile F-11‘. It showed that that there was something else possible.
Fast forward to the early 90s.
With Atari Teenage Riot, there was a bit of hope, but it was a little too vitriolic to really make an impact. They brought an idea so hard that it scared people. Only the ones with the really true constitution stayed with the idea.
The Prodigy came in and helped giving a sound to things, but nobody really combined the punk aspect with the new strain of bullshit today’s youth have to deal with.
It’s just all a little too safe and nothing is really being addressed.
As far as keeping the ideology alive, it can be done, and it should be done.
Use current technology to keep an old tradition alive.
Thus my saying, ‘Old War/New Weapon.’
Like, the idea behind keeping that tradition of rebellion and general dissent should always stay with people, otherwise how would we challenge belief structures?
But with every generation, we’re given new means to do it, and to me, the cyber culture is the new way to really fuck with things and just say, “No, I’m not really into this”, especially with how easily information is transferred and shared now.
Just like Refused said a few years back, we need some new noise to get peoples’ attention again. When the “punk sound” becomes such a marketable thing like it has, the dirtiness of it is just cut out and the remainder gets processed and compromised.
So the challenge for the new generation of “punks”, however you want to interpret that, is to find a new way to grab the world by the balls again, and I think we have those tools now, or the New Weapon.
For more information visit Left Spine Down’s Myspace and check out our interview here.
Check out the video for ‘Last Daze’ below:
