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Guttermouth | Gusto

Been there, done that. Now grow up. Please.
CD, Epitaph

Tekst: Manuel Aalbers

Publicatiedatum: 18 augustus 2002

You're a white, middle-class, California guy in your early twenties, without a college degree or anything close to a work habit: So what do you do? You pretend you're still fourteen, you hang out with your friends in your pa's garage where you practice on the instruments that same daddy bought you. There you "sing" songs about how much your pa sucks (because he always tells you how to live your life) — and your girlfriend too (because she makes you sick and tired while you were already so busy doing nothing). And let's not forget school, because school was (and for some reason still is) the reason why your whole life sucks (although you wouldn't mind a scholarship in punk). Fortunately, there's an upside: It's called alcohol, and it's really cool (lemon water on the other hand is a major turnoff).

Then you go to a record label and say: We wrote some Californian punk rock "shit" (not to be confused with the other "shit" that means the opposite, namely "lousy"). And then, if your tunes are really average, your lyrics just below average at best, and your skills as a musician, again, really average, this label will release ten to twenty of your songs. The record company is gonna hype you, and irrespective of the reviews, you're gonna make it somewhere — probably not California, but maybe Germany or Australia.

Then, about every other year, this process repeats itself. All the song lyrics still deal with the same issues and have titles like Camp Fire Girl #62 and Pee In The Shower. The tunes are as simple as possible (you don't forget your fan base of middle-class teenagers in oversized clothes, who celebrate their first holiday without their parents in a coffeeshop in Amsterdam, at a Greek liquor store, and of course, with their head in the toilet), and you give interviews in which you make clear statements that you're one of those bands that chooses to sing about real stuff and that you're as true to your punk rock roots (which roots?) as you have ever been.

And of course you wonder, why would I bother? (Well, I don't.)

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/guttermouth/gusto/1782/
Meer Guttermouth op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/guttermouth