Warning: this is one of those ‘back in my day…’ [wags finger] posts.

I’m still a little deaf, battered and bruised after last night’s great Hard-Ons 30th anniversary gig at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. There was lots of jumping around, crowd-surfing, stage diving, beer spitting and rushing the stage. It was messy, loud and lots of fun.

The Hard-Ons aren’t the most political of punk bands. But Ray Ahn slipped in a few wry, funny comments on the current state of Australia. After pointing out the diverse backgrounds of the band members – Korean (Ray), Sri Lankan (Keish), Croatian (Blackie) and Polish (Murray) – he threw up the middle finger to our Prime Minister and his refugee policies with a heart-felt ‘fuck you’. And he noted that our current political climate made it the perfect time for young people (not old bastards like the Hard-Ons) to start lots of punk bands.

“The more severe the political landscape becomes, the more oppressive, the more valuable the imagination becomes.” (Jim Jarmusch in Punk: Attitude, a film by Don Letts)

While the New York punk scene was not overly political in the 1970s, UK punk came out of a particular socio-political moment. So did some of Brisbane’s punk bands here in Australia. And US punk politicised through bands like Dead Kennedys.

“Punk definitely had a major influence in the eruption of militant anti-corporate activism that first came to light over here in the Seattle protest … Fuck you to corporations, fuck you to branding everything, and fuck you to corporations having dictatorial control over society and governments.” (Jello Biafra in Punk: Attitude, a film by Don Letts)

In the late 1980s and into the 1990s we also had heavily political rap like Public Enemy and N.W.A., and the riot grrrl movement (which had a big influence on me). Music can be a powerful tool for social and political comment, critique and satire. But I get the sense music in the new millennium has been partly about apolitical musical creativity (if we’re lucky) and mostly about cashing in. When people think politics and music they don’t think of pissed off marginalised young people with loud guitars, they think of Bono.

It’s time that changed. Admittedly, it might have changed already. There might be a new generation of bands coming through who refuse to accept the current state of politics and our rampantly capitalist society. Hopefully they exist and I’m just too old or out of the loop to know about them.

But if they don’t exist, they bloody well should. [Wags finger.]