Friday, February 18, 2011

MxPx "Move To Bremerton"

I am sensitive to the punctuation-ally challenged.

kd lang wants her name in all lower case, despite what Spell Check tells me.

If his name were William, it wouldn't be as interesting as Will.I.Am.

Was (not Was) needs those parentheses.

Panic! At The Disco wouldn't be as urgent without that exclamation point.

I'm sure it's frustrating when they see their names in print, spelled with incorrect punctuation.

And with a name like P.J., you know I know their pain.

When I was in Little League, we were having a championship season, and against one of our big rivals I had the game of my life. Not only did I get a hit all 4 times I went to bat, that last hit drove in the game winning, last inning run.

It made it to the local paper's sports page later that week, with the headline "Finns Fourth Hit Wins Game." I was thrilled, until I read the article.

In those pre-digital days, the coaches sent in hand-written notes to the newspaper for these articles. And when my coach wrote my name, instead of using dots to create periods in my name, he made little, tiny circles.

So the article, my glory story, instead of lauding the offensive prowess of "P.J. Finn," the sportswriter complimented "Pojo Finn."

Pojo.

You know, 30 years later, there are a couple of guys that I can still run into when I go back to my hometown, who'll see me and shout "Pojo! Good to see you!"

That's why I have sympathy for MxPx.

They were formerly Magnified Plaid. They had gotten so locally popular in their native Northwest, that they could produce hand-drawn show posters and abbreviate their name to M.P.

Only, the guy that wrote the posters, instead of drawing dots for periods, drew little x's. And the band suddenly became known as MxPx.

I feel their !@#$% punctuation pain.

1 comment:

  1. Move To Bremerton is a classic from one of my favorite punk bands. Mike (and Tom and Yuri) wrote some great songs. Chick Magnet is probably my favorite MxPx song, maybe because I'm a bass player and I dig any tracks with really standout bass lines. Their album Life In General is still the best punk album around, in my humble opinion. MxPx rocks!

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