Punk Paradox by Greg Graffin

Author:Greg Graffin [Graffin, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2022-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

And on and on this went throughout the recording sessions, wasting time coming up with songs and lyrics that would never appear on any album. Through it all we failed to arrive at a visual concept for the album cover. In fact, other than the first EP cover art, which was Brett’s logo idea, and our first album cover, which was my own idea, every subsequent album was created by outside artists who were inspired by song concepts that Brett and I presented to them. Jerry’s “suffer-boy” image would become iconic.

After we were done recording, I couldn’t wait to get Jerry and Brett together because they both were my friends, yet from different backgrounds, and they both shared deeply philosophical interests. The lyrical concepts on the album were a true reflection of Brett’s and my take on a hodgepodge of philosophical topics from evolutionary biology, Marxist ideology, and capitalism to religious fanaticism. I was eager to see what illustrations Jerry could add to the mix with his Buddhist leanings and critical eye on society. Having heard some of the rough mixes without formally being hired as our artist, Jerry just started working on his own, creating sketches.

The song “Suffer” was one of the first that Jerry homed in on. He wasn’t really into punk music per se, but he dug the words and appreciated the artistic integrity of the sound. He could tell, as we all could, that this was a serious album that could raise a lot of eyebrows if people would give it a close listen. Most of all, he loved how the concept of “Suffer” jibed with his Buddhist philosophy. He rendered a sketch of a kid, no more than twelve years old, stamping his feet in protest and shoving his fists down to his sides as if there were a fierce wind trying to blow him over. I wasn’t sure where Jerry was going with this concept, but his sketches of the kid looked believable. Like some SoCal skateboarder who was getting booted out of a store’s parking lot or something. A few days later, Jerry showed me the next rendering of the sketch. He had added a setting that resembled any of the thousands of nameless neighborhoods in the flat, inland basins of Southern California, just like ours in Canoga Park. Now I started to see what he was getting at. This kid is in the foreground, pissed off at his neighborhood.

But the clincher in the illustration came a few days later when Jerry married his Buddhist influences and philosophical leanings with what he perceived as the mundane reality of Southern California lifestyle. Jerry added a burning flame billowing from the kid’s head. It represented the suffering that links the notorious Buddhist monk self-immolation image (in protest to the Catholic-led repression of South Vietnamese Buddhists in 1963) with the current trend of skateboarding and punk rock protest against the complacency of life in the suburbs. This absurdly interesting juxtaposition gave Jerry’s image a deeper philosophical

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.