What is Antifolk?
Might mention Billy Bragg, Lach, Jonathan Richman,
Ani DeFranco.
Might talk about acoustic guitars with punks or tattooed urchins
on freight trains.
Antifolk is a name for Suckaz to cling to.
Antifolk is what you hear when you're not listening to Jim Carrol
spoken word and Mom's playing Crosby, Nash and Neil
Still Young downstairs and some pimp drives by blasting
Wu-Tang Clan in a suped-up beamer.
Antifolk is Method Man's misplaced diamond and gold mouthpiece
turning up in Iggy Pop's armpit.
Antifolk is Mouldy Peaches on the Dead Blonde Girlfriend for which
Hammel is on trial.
Antifolk is extracting thirteen dollars and seventy-five cents from an open mic in a hick bar in
Des Moines, Iowa. And sleeping on the greasy floor of the one tweeker in the place knows
who white stripes are.
Antifolk is Punk/Blues.
Antifolk is the barnacle on my left testicle as it flips off onto my other's ovary and becomes
kudzu rosebush that shoots off into the universe, stronger than honeysuckle in the Huntsville
Spring/Summer.
Antifolk is Paul Bunyon making love to Joe Hill.
Antifolk is Pete Seeger sticking a middle finger up his Johnny Cash nose.
Antifolk is coming home broke.
Antifolk is Hasil Adkins extracting heart-ache from a home made guitar with barber-wire strings
with a lipstick pick-up and mixing it with used car parts, black lung and Boone County wine
and making the innoculation to immunize lost fouls to the venemous bite of the vampirical
monolith of mainstream music.
Antifolk is the inside of Bab Log's helmet.
Antifolk is the funk under Johnny Thunder's hat.
Antifolk is Misfits unplugged.
Antifolk is the difference between what you're thinkin' now and four years later when you're
buying yet another Mike iLL album.
Antifolk is anti "cut your hair and get a job" and even anti "don't quit your day job."
Antifolk is anti stylized regurgitation in coprorate "hippie" coffee houses.
And if you can't dig it, then folk off.
--
Mad Happy
