Ever since I started this column, I have wanted to explore identity as it relates to enjoying punk music. Regardless of how much I connect with it now, there was a period where I was actively shuffling through record bins at Second Spin or Fingerprints looking for something to let my anger out. At the same time, I didn’t want to pick a “great” record that symbolized the artistry. I wanted to focus on something that embodied how I perceived the music as a teenager who was not all that familiar with nuance and mostly saw the genre as an excuse to rebel. To me, rebellion wasn’t sincere. To be punk was sarcastic, going against the grain less for personal beliefs and more because you could annoy people and point out how stupid society was. Yes, I was that kind of fan.
It wasn’t to say that I only listened to records that were sarcastic. I recognized the value of pop-punk bands creating their own stories with genuine emotion set in a subversive take of A-B-A pop structure. Still, you even looked at the dominant names of the early 2000s, like Green Day, and they were as likely to make you feel the deepest emotion you ever felt one minute on “Redundant” and laugh your head off during “King for a Day.” Seeing punk and ultimately rebellion as sarcastic meant I struggled to see a lot of personal nuance during a formative time in my life. To me, everything wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.
That is why, after rummaging through my own collection, I landed on one release that encapsulated it all. My struggles with identity in my youth could all be tied to one album. I would never say that it was a favorite record, but as a high schooler, it was one of those revelatory experiences that you need. Coming out of Catholic school where buying parental advisory albums was peak taboo, the need to embrace something vulgar and unpleasant was almost necessary. I needed to find ways to cut ties with who I was and find something new. It wasn’t the first punk record I got, let alone from the band in question, but in under a half hour, it came to represent everything that I struggled with because of the messaging.
For the first time since gaining my high school G.E.D., and by a few more years still, I decided to pop on Guttermouth’s 1997 release “Musical Monkey.” Playing it on Spotify, I was reminded of how different the mentality was in the late 2000s. I knew that it was offensive. I could’ve picked “Friendly People,” “Gorgeous,” “Eat Your Face,” or “Shave the Planet” and gotten similar results. However, this was Guttermouth at their perceived best, or at least the end of their peak era when people recognized that they still had that bite. They were always a scathing band known for being equal-opportunity offenders. The only difference between them and other “intentionally comedic” bands like The Vandals or NOFX was that there was never a minute they expected you to like them. They were just singing “Lipstick” from the perspective of a spoiled brat in order to convey some mean-spirited humor. It doesn’t take long for a song to discuss carelessly hunting animals in a manner that’s over the top. It would be funny if gun control in the 25 years since didn’t just get so out of hand.
So, what was it that drew me to Guttermouth? To dig deeper, I came to realize that the punk bands I liked tended to share a similar songwriting style. I am someone who appreciates storytelling within music, and Guttermouth was basically doing it through a punchline-execution format every time. You get through “Perfect World” and you have a vision of who this protagonist is. Every song is saying something unique and I think it spoke to me to hear an album stray so far from conventions. There wasn’t the clean and polished sound of Top 40. Even compared to most punk bands who had the cheeky number or two, Guttermouth leaned way too heavily into what I’ll just call “satire.” I don’t know that it’s good satire, but I have trouble believing any of these songs are sincere. They were all jokes. That’s how I saw it then and how I see it now. Every second of this album is yelling out for attention while manically waving its hands in the air. To a teenage me, that was punk.
A lot of it may have just been a byproduct of being in Catholic school and beginning to question everything. By eighth grade, I was beginning to buy punk records and wrote these empty gesture songs about rebellion. Anything that didn’t involve a uniform and prayer seemed cool to me. It was the idea of self-destruction. I wanted to see the dark corners of the world without care of how I would take it. I’ll admit that I could never stand the violent corners, but it quickly became clear that to even be on the precipice of a boys’ club was to enter a world of aggression. I want to one day do an essay on misinterpreting the appeal of people like Sid Vicious or Darby Crash who were both icons and tragic, mentally ill figures.
So yes, by high school it was the symbol of a new start. I could be punk. I found local bands on Myspace that I could befriend and enjoy. It was also here that punk as a concept began to take root. For something so rebellious, it was way too masculine. You had to be tough. Because this was still the waning days of the 90s Gen-X mentality, you also had to be D.I.Y. because “selling out” was the worst thing you could be. I looked at figures like Lars Fredericksen of Rancid and thought “THAT was punk.” Sure, their music is still great but that’s because I’ve come to realize Rancid was sincere. Still, you had to fight back and put up with bad behavior just to be accepted. There was the sense of holding your clothes together with bobby pins. To put it simply, punk was the act of being an outsider and being proud of it. Even then, I saw people like Captain Sensible of The Damned in a nurse’s outfit and thought it was all a joke. Queerness is a joke.
Which brings me back to “Musical Monkey.” This was the late 2000s and I was growing up during the George W. Bush era. America was in The War on Terrorism. Everything felt charged and the divides were becoming clearer. I can’t say that I was actively engaged with any of the rhetoric, but it’s hard not to feel like the world had some despair over it. Movies became more serious. Action movies had buildings topple over like some shorthand symbolism. We were in a time of heightened tension. Everything felt a little hostile even as we searched for some greater unity. On top of that, I had only heard of being gay as either a joke or an abomination. Things that were genuinely interesting to me were a joke, so I figure that’s maybe why I veered into comedy. I was insecure and figured the easiest way to connect with people was to laugh.
It was also a time when I was living with my father who indulged in my interests. He would see that I had punk records and be cool with me playing them. Much like my recent exodus from Catholic school, I think he took my public school years as a chance to rebel. The only difference is it seems stranger when you’re an adult with responsibilities. Even at 34, I am confused about what seems cool about still liking “Musical Monkey.” It’s a mean-spirited record where the singer is always better than his counterparts. It was a bully mentality. I think to some extent, I was witnessing my dad experiencing a “second childhood,” which has left a lot of conflicting emotions. Maybe it was some crisis of his own following the fresh separation from my mom, but I’m not here to discuss that.
But one day I remember we started the record and “What’s the Big Deal?” came on. He personally walked over to me and said that this song was punk. Given that he’s suggested in the past year that a very exclusionary song by The Surf Punks was also punk, it makes me believe that I was picking up on his definition as much as what the internet was saying. At the same time, I don’t believe that my father was ever punk rock. I’m sure he saw one or two bands in his day, but picking up cues from him was a bad start. He was always into antagonism, and “Musical Monkey” was pretty damn antagonizing. The opening song was a rabid celebration of gun nuts going into nature and shooting moose and birds with reckless abandon. The moral of the story? It’s fun to destroy nature. It’s not that new of a concept from them. They sang of burning down forests to build a "Disneyland" a few albums prior. Still, taken as a joke, the punchline ultimately was “Let’s be as hostile as we can. Who cares what happens?”
We’re less than two minutes into the record, and I could already feel pangs of regret from how I saw the world as a teenager. I was never an outwardly violent or mean person, but the reliance on sarcasm and finding injury funny was more prominent than I’d like to admit. Maybe it was the rise of Jackass and its many spin-offs or that there were cute cartoon animals getting violently maimed online. Whatever it was, I didn’t have the tools to deconstruct what was going on. I took it all as absurdism, kind of like Andy Kaufman. Only by Kaufman, I was beginning to understand how layered comedy could be. With Guttermouth, it was all sarcasm and borderline endorsement. I want to believe I was smart enough to know better, but as the record goes, I do genuinely believe that this might’ve been how I saw punk in general.
Again, being crass was kind of the point. You were supposed to feel uncomfortable and, because this was the 2000s, gross-out sex comedies were the rage. “Lucky the Donkey” doesn’t have much to offer except that it’s about the singer’s mother putting on a donkey show in Mexico. While it definitely reeks of shock for shock’s sake, I think it was the first sign of a larger trend on the album. Whereas the opener was just psychopathic and heartless, “Lucky the Donkey” embodied the joke of misogyny that would be central to the rest of the album. Much like “S.D.F.B.” focusing on a groupie that is demonized or “Abort Mission” focusing on the singer’s frustration with a vegan girlfriend, “Musical Monkey” is an album that is obsessed with dehumanizing the other. These women are more freak shows. There are no bigger lessons here. Whereas “S.D.F.B.” could be spun comedically to be about an awkward sex experience, it’s more about how a woman sleeping with everyone is a bad thing.
And of course, there’s “Lipstick.” If you know one song from this album, it’s “Lipstick.” It’s a late 90s punk standard at this point and maybe the most sarcastic. I have trouble believing that the singer openly dislikes his mother to the point of putting her in jail and stealing her money. It’s more of a satire on the troubled youth phenomenon and I think has some excellent jokes within it (“Now mom writes me letters/I write return to sender”). It may still be ultimately an attack on women, which the band claims “isn’t to be taken seriously,” but from my vulnerable perspective, it probably was more harmful than it seemed. After all, my father was dealing with a separation and I didn’t see my mom a lot during this time. Either that or it was just a common source of humor at the time, especially as Wedding Crashers (2006) focused on how cool it was to sleep with unnamed bridesmaids at weddings in order to be seen as manly.
Speaking of masculinity, we’re only three songs in and I find yet another reason to cringe. While the most homophobic thing that Guttermouth ever did would appear on the cover of “Gorgeous,” I think of whatever madness the 83 seconds of “Big Pink Dress” had on me. Given that I saw sexuality as performative, it’s hard to not see this song as perpetuating the belief that being gay was a joke. Even the fact that the singer seems to think it’s optional by declaring they have nothing to lose. It’s treated more as a hobby like fishing. By the end, the singer has gay sex, gets married, and then divorced. Again, it’s treated as shock for shock’s sake, and another insecure sign of emasculation. Pairing it with “Do the Hustle” which focuses on how annoying roller skaters are compared to skaters, it’s easy to see this all as an attack on heteronormavity. Even then, I think it’s more to rile people up than say anything meaningful. Also, the idea of calling roller skaters the f-slur in “Do the Hustle” before running them over suggests all sorts of hostility that remains real.
The third and final side of this album is the satire on what it means to be punk in general. “Bakers Dozen” proudly declares “I want to be unusual/I wanna be punk rock.” It’s maybe the closest that the band comes to satire that actually says something deeper than surface level. By commenting on how ridiculous labels are, they’re recognizing how limited it is to be rebellious and only be punk rock in one way. It’s the most enjoyable lane of the album because it’s less about attacking people than it is about noticing the spirit behind everything. It’s why their sarcastic takedowns of metal (“Corpse Rotting in Hell”) or bands looking for new singers (“What If?”) are very silly and fun to me. Sure, some of them are more prodding like the Anti-Ozzy Osbourne number “When Hell Freezes Over” or bad journalism in “Musical Monkey,” but they feel less like gripes and more like someone who simply disagrees. It’s not a case of feeling superior like the other songs and just effort to be punk and annoying.
Oh, and then there’s the absolute best song on the album. It may be just as careless and attention-seeking as the rest, but “Perfect World” is strangely both prophetic and very funny. If you put aside that some of these conflicts run rampant in more ignorant portions of America, it’s a satirical take on how far freedom of speech can be pushed. The singer would just embrace “nacho cheese and anarchy.” It’s silly and doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s a perfect parody of those feel-good songs about making the world a better place. Maybe it’s just that it has a great hook, but it bypasses the offensive and focuses on the fun. I don’t know that it’s the punk ethos. Nothing on this album is punk besides the need to express how you really feel. However, it’s really fun.
Looking back on “Musical Monkey” is a real time capsule. On the one hand, I can’t be too filled with regret because I was the target audience. This album was meant for teens, and I only ever indulged in it during high school. It definitely captures that spirit very well even if it’s troublesome if taken too literally. I don’t enjoy a lot of it as comedy anymore, but I do think it embodies a lot of struggles I faced throughout my early life. As I rebelled through my early 20s, I struggled to feel like more than an outsider. Connecting was difficult. It may be why I still feel occasionally skeptical of well-produced media. Something feels like a misdirection. Guttermouth was always about pointing out poor messaging. Even then, I listen to “Little Pink Dress” and don’t hear something that is subversively empowering like Screeching Weasel’s “I Wanna Be A Homosexual.” I hear a straight man making fun of gay people and their love of exhibitionism because he knows it’ll make straight people squirm. Also, it does suggest some negative stereotypes that I wish we’d get past. Given that gay marriage wouldn’t be legal for another 18 years from this album’s release, I hesitate to find punching down as the best call, even if it was the norm.
So yes, part of the appeal of punk music was that it was about being rowdy and unpredictable. I’d argue it came at exposing certain biases because of the freedom of topics. Whereas I look at Guttermouth now and see harmful takes on queerness, I look at NOFX with songs like “Liza & Louise” and see more curious and accepting corners of punk. It may be why I still enjoy putting that record on. It sounds fun because, while profane and ridiculously stupid, it’s inclusive. Even The Vandals have a warm heart underneath their jabs. Still, when making fun of gay people was part of the messaging around being punk and that was the music you liked listening to, Guttermouth definitely didn’t help matters.
It may explain why discovering their later career is just as predictable as you’d expect. Their 10 albums are all filled with jokes. Ask singer Mark Adkins if he’ll get any more nuanced, and he’ll yell at you. His music doesn’t need to be deep. He resents the expectations that punk music needs to have a serious message. At the same time, he’s been banned at various points from Canada and Australia. In 2004, Guttermouth infamously got kicked off The Vans Warped Tour for insulting My Chemical Romance for being Anti-Bush. In a 2016 interview, I remember the strange distinction of him pointing out that Hillary Clinton was a crook but not commenting on any competitor. Maybe Adkins’ cards are finally being revealed and explain why the band’s release schedule is notoriously infrequent now.
I’m aware that there are certain things that you’ll just outgrow. If judged solely as shock for shock’s sake, I understand what was so appealing about the band as a teenager. It was a new way of looking at the world. You became curious about it because it was everything you were taught was wrong. While there’s a lot of music I still explore that my Catholic school days would deem as “wrong,” I think I’ve come to understand the difference between wrong for moral reasons and wrong for logical reasons. Guttermouth is wrong for logical reasons. They openly joked about misogyny, homophobia, zoophilia, aging bands, veganism, and so much more. They were politically incorrect. Morally, some of it is wrong because it suggests that Adkins always saw himself as better than the world around him. It’s funny when you’re a teen and want to stand up to authority. It’s also fairly juvenile compared to more conventional standards of teenage angst like Black Flag’s “Damaged.” Still, I was never comfortable being that dark. I think I was just finding ways to evade that responsibility.
So it goes in many directions. On the one hand, bands like Guttermouth taught me that it was okay to speak out about things I enjoyed no matter how much it offended people. However, I needed to find better ways than simply being annoying. There is a need to find ways to make people stick around and want to listen. Sure, not everything needs to be meaningful. But maybe there should be something once in a while that does. I am nervous to wonder if Guttermouth wasn’t ever satirical and was always as mean-spirited as they claimed to be. If so, then I’m thankful to be on the other side of this maze.
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