(Originally appeared in early 2001 on the now-defunct website of a guy named Jim Repulsive who e-mailed me out of the blue and asked for some Yale-Jabber® to help get his website rolling)

Twice! Twice in one day I found myself tongue-tied trying to field the question: "So, what kind of music do you listen to?" This happens fairly infrequently, but the outcome is always the same. I never see the question coming, and when it comes, I'm always unprepared. Should I try to explain ten-plus years' of obsessive music listening, and all the different affiliates of punk rock? Should I just say "punk rock" and leave the inquisitor thinking I'm only into the Sex Pistols?

The first time it happened that day, a girl at my workplace stopped by my little cubicle, and I happened to be looking at photos of the Fireballs of Freedom. Her interested seemed to be piqued, and she asked what kind of music they play. Now, how the fuck am I supposed to answer that question to this girl who's into stuff like Creed and whatever other bullshit is being played on the radio these days? As usual, I got kinda flustered and just said, "uh... kinda punk rock sorta..." She then launched into the most offensive little pantomime of what apparently comes to her mind when the phrase "punk rock" is mentioned. You've all seen it before, I'm sure. They go into this phlegm-intensive headbanging and air-guitar thing, and maybe throw in a screamed "Kill your mother! Kill your father!" lyrical interlude for good measure. That's what most people perceive punk rock as being, and every time I witness it, I am reminded of the huge chasm between myself and others in this society. Not that I'm so smart and hip or anything, but it reminds me that there are people that are only equipped to absorb the most basic, facile, and explicit messages from music. That's precisely why gangsta rap is so huge. You don't have to think about it at all. None of your critical faculties (if you have any) need to be engaged. It's a pre-fabricated lifestyle: if you listen to this type of music, you are into this, this, and this. It says so right there in the lyrics and in the video; make no mistake about it.

Later that night, I was having dinner with my aunt and uncle. I had recently flown to Chicago to see the Swingin' Neckbreakers and they were asking me about it.

"So, you flew to Chicago just to see a concert?"

"Yup."

"So it must've been a pretty big deal. Who'd you go see?" (here, they're expecting me to say Billy Joel or U2 or something)

"Uh... they're called the... Swingin' Neckbreakers.'

"Oh, so they're a swing band?"

"Uh, no. Not exactly."

"Well, what kind of music is it?"

"Uh... um... kind of like Creedence Clearwater Revival type of thing..." [Fuck off! It's all I could come up with!]

"Hmmm. I've never heard of them. Where'd they play?" (expecting me to say Wrigley Field, or at least House of Blues)

"It was at this bar called the Empty Bottle."

"So you flew to Chicago to see a band play in a bar?!?"

So you can see the predicament I'm in here. I don't think it's at all strange to fly to Chicago to see a band I like that much. And I don't want them thinking I'm insane or anything, so I'm forced to dumb it down for their benefit.

Another example: one day at work, a girl (different girl than above) started telling me about this really cool band she's into. We got to talking about seeing live music, and I mentioned I enjoy seeing live music as well. She seemed like she was pretty cool and on top of things. But ss soon as the sentence left my mouth, I regretted having said it. I could almost see the words come out of her mouth in big slow-motion 3-D letters: "So... what... kind... of... music... do... you... like...?"

At the time, I was in a real heavy surf phase, so I said, "I'm really into surf these days." Innocent enough, right? That should narrow it down enough to qualify as a coherent answer. Wrong. She then gets this sort of perturbed look on her face and says, "Surf music? Oh. Wait, what's surf music?"

I'm sunk. If someone hasn't at least heard of surf music, there's really no point in trying to explain it to them, so, with a sentence I hope to never utter again in my natural-born life, I tell her, "you remember the movie "Pulp Fiction?' Well, there was a lot of surf music on that soundtrack." In fact, Mr. Tarantino did a wonderful job of using Dick Dale's "Miserlou" at top volume as a segue into the intro credits of that flick. And that seemed to clear things up for her. But I felt like a major stunod for having to grasp for that kind of reference.

If you've ever been in a band, you've dealt with a similar problem: how to explain what type of music it is you play to your grandparents and other relatives. My grandmother was a church organist. When I was a kid, she was forever trying to teach me to play piano. But she is very out of it when it comes to any form of music that is not a church organ song. Still, she feels the need to try and talk music with me at every opportunity.

One time while she was visiting, my mom brought up that I had been playing in a band. I had just given my mom one of Humpy's records. She got it out of the desk drawer (yeah, that's where I keep my records too!) and handed it to my grandma. I knew what the first question would be before it had even formed in her brain: "Oh, I didn't know they still made records!" That one's a little easier to field; I just say that a lot fewer records are made today, but yes, they do in fact still make them.

"So what kind of music do you guys play?" Shit. How am I gonna explain Humpy to my grandma? Do I tell her that we take old punk rock, give it kind of a stoner twist, throw in some Montana mining and labor history and a few Rush riffs for laughs, and that we pour beer down each other's pants before shows?

I cop out and just say, "oh, you know; rock music." But she's not done with me yet. Not by a damn sight. She finds out I'm the drummer.

"So you must be a pretty good drummer to be in a band that has a record out?"

This is another tough one. Nobody in Humpy was what you'd call a "real musician." I mean, we could get the job done, but we were by no means fundamentally sound players of our respective instruments. When Humpy started, I'd been playing drums maybe six months. Andy could barely tune his guitar. Dave and Justin knew their way around a guitar, but I don't think either of them considered themselves to be official "guitarists." I certainly wasn't an official "drummer." We learned as we went, and that was what made it so much fun.

"Do you make a lot of money doing it?"

People have a really hard time with this one. Humpy typically played for free beer at first. When we started to make money, it was usually like ten bucks apiece, and we put it into a band fund to pay for gas and new strings and shit. I know this is nothing out ofthe ordinary for bands, but to tell your grandma that you don't make any money at it, she must think you were clubbed at birth or something.

The last thing I'd like to mention is the weird looks you get when you tell people you're into punk rock. "Well why don't you have green hair and a nose ring?" is a typical rebuttal. Thanks to the fucking Sex Pistols and those episodes of "Quincy" and "CHiPs" which feature stereotypical snarling, dope-addled punks, now people think that's the lifestyle you automatically espouse when you're a punk rocker. We also have the new batch of mainstream punk bands to thank for this, as they almost go out of their way to propagate their punk rock image with tattoos and shit.

But there's a great upside to all of this! If you're into punk rock or general underground...

...I should have done this at the beginning, but I have to pause here to state that when I say "punk rock," I mean any sort of weird underground shit. To me, punk rock is not a specific style of music, but rather an approach, or philosophy, if you will. So I consider Sonic Youth, Unwound, Meat Puppets, Nels Cline, garage, surf, rockabilly, andlots of other shit all to be punk rock.

So, like I was saying, if you're into punk rock or general underground shit, you got the upper hand on almost all the rest of the people in the world! Why? Because, generally speaking, you can wrap your brain around anything they're into-- you understand all the crap they hold dear to their hearts, be it Jimmy Buffet, Mariah Carey, or whatever. They in turn cannot get a grasp on punk rock. To them it's Sid Vicious and Blink 182. Unless it's a math professor or something, their interests are but a subset of yours!