Magus Lal
Dallas’ punk rock scene is like the homeowners’ association in the seven-figure-suburb part of town — run by draft-dodgers, rife with infighting, and, most of the time, better off dead. But as the Elm Street Kennedy Splatters’ “Fuck the Government” Tour lit up the night with scratchy power chords and billowing fog machine clouds, the metroplex’s punk community set aside its divisions to unite around what makes the genre so special: screaming really loudly about not that much at all.
Openers Cumguzzlage and Mr. President They Hit The Second Tower, both homegrown Dallas bands, set the mood for the evening with powerful, aggressive tracks that shook the venue walls. Mr. President’s song “Fight the System” drove the crowd into a spirited frenzy, resulting in a circle pit that lasted an impressive eight seconds before everyone stopped to catch their breath and pop on their CPAP machines.
“I’m glad to hear that Dallas has still got it,” Mr. President frontman Jason Nimby said after the fiery performance. “We wrote that song for all of y’all who are angry at the world, who want change.”
When asked after the concert what specific social ills “Fuck the System” is critiquing, Nimby, a heterosexually married landlord with three kids and a hired domestic servant, shrugged and gestured vaguely.
“You know, things,” he said. “Stuff. The system, you know? The man. It all needs to change, like, right now.”
After “Fuck the System,” the two openers joined forces onstage amid an electrifying backdrop of strobing red lights to cover the famous ’80s punk hit “Holiday in Cambodia.” Written as a biting critique of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and its spillover into neighboring Southeast Asian countries, the bands’ frontmen told the crowd before playing that they struggled to adapt it to a modern audience.
“When we were working on this cover, we really wanted to tear into current issues with it, but we also don’t wanna offend anybody in the crowd,” Cumguzzlage frontman and lead guitarist Nathan Bothe-Sydes III said. “Punk is for everyone, no matter what you believe.”
Bothe-Sydes said they discussed changing the lyrics to “Holiday in Afghanistan” or “Holiday in Palestine,” but were afraid of pushback from their multimillion-dollar record label. To ensure everyone felt heard no matter their stances on the world’s most morally cut-and-dry issues, the band agreed to sing “It’s a holiday in…” and not name any country at all during the chorus.
“It sure was a twist on the old classic, but I loved it! What an improvement,” concertgoer Malcolm Rhea Publakynn said during an interview between sets. “I reckon we should do that modernizing thing with more songs — like with ‘Blitzkrieg Bop,’ you know, I’ve got friends who are put off punk entirely by that anti-Axis language. A rebrand could make the songs work for everyone.”
However, the Splatters, headlining the world tour with their iconically shaggy hairstyles and devilish synth melodies, were unafraid to make their opinions known. Bassist Jonny Bravo introduced the band with a shockingly brave, cutting statement that drew raucous applause and cheering from the crowd: “We love this country, but it’s got a flaw here and there.”
After the show, audience members were still discussing how much guts and resilience it takes for a middle-class white man, whose biggest struggle was dropping out of college after greening out for three semesters straight, to make such an incisive and radical remark.
“I almost thought ICE was going to bust down the door and take him away for daring to be so critical,” concertgoer Ben Paxton said in an interview right after the fact.
The Splatters then launched headfirst into their best-known album, “The Government is My Wife Who I Beat Every Day.” Its most famous track, “Gay People Are Alright (Just Keep That Shit Off My Lawn)” ended with frontman Billy Rockefeller surfing through the crowd — and, amusingly, being dropped on his face before making it back to the stage.
“I just freaked out a little, okay?” concertgoer Kenneth Kox-Klein said on behalf of himself and his golfing buddies, the group of which had failed to catch Rockefeller and hoist him back onstage. “We all just kind of froze and didn’t know what to do. The frontman is a quarter Jewish, you know, and we’ve just never had to, well, be so close and personal with someone like that before. I mean, appreciating the music and actually, you know, he’s right there touching my Anglo-Saxon fingertips, you know, those are two different things.”
Between the dancing mirage of lights, breakneck drumbeats, and crowd-pleasers like toilet paper cannons, the next two hours melted by in mere seconds. By the time the fog machine backwash and secondhand smoke had hotboxed the crowd into a stupor, the night was drawing to a close.
As a treat for their home city of Dallas, the Splatters belted out a yet-unreleased single from their newest album, a song called “Kamala’s Too Female, Run Buttigieg in 2028 (After Conversion Therapy of Course)” — arguably the highlight of the whole evening. The venue, awash in scalding blue hues and the band’s grittiest guitar tones yet, was riled up into one great big circle pit that lasted fifteen whole milliseconds, hitherto unseen among a crowd averaging 45 years of age and a 0.15 BAC that had been on its feet for the better part of the evening.
As the crash cymbals faded out on the final song of the night, Bravo spared a moment for some intimate crowd work.
“All of you, never forget tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’re all going back to our nine-to-fives and hedge funds and yachts and summer estates and all that, back to the daily grind. But even when you’re far away from here, you know, on the phone with Wall Street or at dinner with Greg Abbott, never forget what radical changemakers you are.”