Erin says punk "releases my artistic side." ABOVE: Erin displaying teenage angst and anti-socialism by drawing pretty leaves.
SAN DIEGO– Erin Foster, 17, a self-proclaimed “huge punk music fan” strangely has never heard a punk music song in her entire life. The soon-to-be high school senior owns a sizable record collection and cites punk and alternative as her favorite genres, yet nothing punk nor alternative can be found within her 150-plus records.
“Right now I'm really into Good Charlotte,” she said, referring to a popular band whose music revolves around petty teenage angst, and not anti-establishment ideas, a staple of punk music.
Foster is also a fan of the Canadian teen singer Avril Lavigne, who, like Good Charlotte, sings about clothing and juvenile problems.
“She's so independent and has such an attitude like, ‘I just don't care,” said Foster, grasping only a minutia of what punk means while ironically attributing uniqueness to a prepackaged pop star. “She's cool.”
Foster has never heard the Sex Pistols’ classic “Never Mind the Bollocks,” cannot name one Clash song, and has never heard of proto-punk pioneers MC5 and the Velvet Underground. She has, perhaps surprisingly, heard of both the Who and the Ramones, and can name one song between the two of them.
“I'm usually into new stuff, but I have some old stuff, too,” she continued. “Like Blink-182 and Green Day,” the former of whom made their name singing about relationships and dates gone awry. Green Day primarily sings about malaise in suburbia.
Though no punk can be found in Foster's collection, one common thread ties all the CDs together: they are popular, a fact which may lead one to believe she would be open to popular music that could at least be described as “punkish.” Intriguingly though, she dismisses the massively popular band Radiohead, whose lyrics of alienation, political indictment, and social commentary—and even more so their sophisticated chord progressions and captivating arrangements—Foster decries as “really weird sounding.”
