The Weakerthans: An Examined Punk Life
Maybe it was the brutal Winnipeg winters. Maybe it was the crushing boredom. Whatever it was, John K. Samson’s old agitprop punk outfit, Propagandhi, came out of the gate spewing more vitriol and bile than any band since The Sex Pistols, and its discography may contain the highest FBD (F-Bomb Density) of any band in history. You certainly don’t write songs with titles like “Stick the Fucking flag Up Your Goddamn Ass, You Sonofabitch” and expect to win any sensitive singer/songwriter laurels.
But a funny thing happened shortly before the turn of the millennium. Samson emerged with a new band, The Weakerthans, and the monochromatic, balls-to-the-wall punk anthems grew more textured and nuanced. Keyboards and (gasp!) acoustic guitars appeared. The angry young man developed a conscience, and the finger-pointing rants grew more introspective, literary and surprisingly tender. The brash, foul-mouthed punk somehow, impossibly, became a great songwriter:
Doctors played your dosage like a card trick
Scrabbled down the hallways yelling Yahtzee
I brought books on Hopper, and the Arctic
Something called “The Politics Of Lonely”
A toothbrush and a quick-pick with the plus
You tried not to roll your sunken eyes and said
“Hey can you help me, I can’t reach it”
Pointed at the camera in the ceiling
I climbed up, blocked it so they couldn’t see
Turned to find you out of bed and kneeling
Before the nurses came, took you away
I stood there on a chair and watched you pray
I first heard this song, “Hospital Vespers,” during a season of my life when too many friends and loved ones were dying. I visited hospital rooms where the antiseptic smell could not mask the sickening stench of flesh rotting from the inside, and I held on to that song like a life preserver. Samson perfectly captured the helplessness and the hope, the one small but infinitely significant, defiant gesture that strikes a blow for humanity in the face of such unremitting, bureaucratic gloom. In slightly less than two minutes he managed to extend a raised middle finger to the impersonal nature of death in the 21st century that was far more powerful than any handful of Propagandhi albums.