Bad Religion "Stranger Than Fiction"

I didn't really discover punk rock until much later than the average punk rock kid.

Let's face it, I didn't have much of a punk rock upbringing.

And from the outside, in those years when fellow teens may have been turning their musical attention to the punk rock of the day, the music held no particular appeal to me.

As a gentle kid, I didn't respond to the anger.

As a low-key, under-the-radar flier, I didn't respond to the fly-in-your-face-ness.

And as a kid who felt like the only thing he had going for him was that he was smart, I didn't respond to the rebellion that I perceived as not only anti-authority, but anti-intellectual.

The very primal nature of the music, as well as the sneering disdain, struck me as kinda cretin-ish.

Later, in my mid-20s I was turned around on that, really, by this one song.

Going forward (and looking back at the much of the music I missed out on), I discovered that lost in the image (or anti-image) and the anger, was that there were some pretty amazing and literate people writing these songs.

The first time I heard this song, the very first sentence sent me running to the dictionary:

"A febrile shocking violent smack . . ."

I'd never had a song send me to the dictionary before.

But how many bands had lead singers who have a Ph.D. in zoology, and when they are not touring, teach Paleontology at Cornell?

This one song made me reconsider the form, and led me down some wonderful roads, to Rancid and The Descendants and Social Distortion. Bands I never would have considered, if I hadn't had my vocabulary challenged by Greg Graffin and Bad Religion.


Hear the song on Youtube.