When I was finding myself in my early teens, I clung to punk rock. I was growing up and becoming more critical and cynical. While I still hung onto bands like Weezer and the Foo Fighters, who weren’t necessarily punk rock, I started looking beyond the dial. In junior high, I met people who had a decent amount of influence on my taste in music. One album my non-punk and punk rock friends agreed on was Life in General from MxPx.
MxPx is a band from Bremerton, Washington formed in 1992 by Mike Herrera and Yuri Ruley and released their first album, Pokinatcha in 1994. They would later be joined by guitarist, Tom Wizniewski, in 1995 before recording their second album, Teenage Politics. This was the same lineup that recorded Life in General and continues to be the most consistent throughout their career.
I heard this album for the first time when I was over at my friend's house for her birthday party in seventh grade. Her parents were extremely religious. It was my first real birthday party without either of my parents being there. It wasn’t what I had expected for my first junior high party. Being into movies, I was expecting this hormone-fueled make-out party, but it wasn’t. Also, no one wants to make out with the kid wearing a glow-in-the-dark Misfits shirt.
MxPx was one of the first bands I got into that a grown-up in my family hadn’t introduced to me. When I started high school, a good number of the punk rock kids at my high school were into this album. Most of them were non-secular, and MxPx was a big contrast from the other bands they were into. Why did this album get a pass? While Life in General’s songs are mostly short and fast, the lyrics come off like Cool Youth Pastor: the album. "You know who also had problems with girls and growing up?"
It never feels overly preachy, which probably made it appeal more than other Christian music, but I digress. None of their songs directly say Jesus is the way, but there are lyrics like, "You already have the book with all the answers to all your questions," from the song, "Correct Me If I'm Wrong," or on "Do Your Feet Hurt?" when the lyrics in the bridge say, "I know that you believe in the one true God above, and that's why you're waiting for your one and only love." The album's opener, "Middlename", dares whoever it is written about to, "Go, on go. Bury me with self-righteousness.”
Why was MxPx’s Life in General given a pass with punk rockers? MxPx is a very safe band, and pretty chaste. One friend laughed and said it was probably mostly white, suburban, pop punk kids, who were probably Christian who had a lot of affinity for the content and guarded angst against parents, God, and ambiguous authority figures in high school ecosystems. She also chalked it up to the skate punk sound. When I responded, I knew people who liked much harder bands, my friend stuck to the same argument, you can be both street punk and suburban.
I got this album for Christmas 1997, my freshman year of high school. Down the street from my grandma's house were two brothers whose family was Christian. Their parents were very selective of what content their kids could consume. One time, I let one of the kids borrow Castlevania for Nintendo. When their parents saw what he was playing, they immediately asked him to trade back whatever game he had lent me. I was happy that I could bring this album over. The other Christian music they had shown me had sucked. When I brought my copy over, they already had the album along with the other MxPx albums released at that point
Another friend said young skate punkers who liked MxPx, Blink 182, The Offspring, and Less Than Jake didn't pay too close attention to specific messages, backgrounds, or even the stories lyrics tend to tell. We were all just sucked in by that fast double kick and melodic pop-punk sound a lot of these bands had. That's why you see a lot of the same people listening to bands like Propagandhi, NOFX, and Guttermouth. All these bands had different messages and beliefs, yet nobody seemed to care as long as they sounded good.
This broad appeal to the non-secular is similar to C.S. Lewis, who was most popular for writing the Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931 at age thirty-three, He was considered one of the most intellectual and influential writers of his day and wrote books of fiction and philosophy, including Mere Christianity and the Screwtape Letters.
C.S. Lewis wouldn’t publish The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia, until 1950. He would go on to write six more novels in the series, publishing about one a year until 1956. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the first novel, has been adapted multiple times including three times for British television, a 10-part serial in 1967, an animated version by Bill Melendez in 1979, a live-action mini-series for the BBC in 1988 and an attempt at a movie franchise made through Walt Disney Pictures in the mid 2000s. These adaptations have not made it past the Silver Chair, the fourth book of the series. Despite being on the banned book list in some states for depictions of graphic violence, mysticism, and gore, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was once required reading in schools.
I asked a friend and former Christian about both, MxPx and the Narnia books. While being less receptive about liking MxPx, she remembered loving the Narnia books because fantasy was the only genre she was interested in as a child. She knew the references to Christianity were there but didn’t pay attention to them, and instead, chose to focus on the centaurs, mermaids, and other magical beings. She never read anything from C.S. Lewis beyond the Narnia books. After seeing how abusive Christianity was for her, she isn’t able to get past the subliminal bullshit and wouldn’t read them again. While this blurs the lines between brainwashing and allegory, it can be a valid concern.
My friends who were fans of MxPx and Life in General said the same thing about the music. The songs are catchy and fun with relatable lyrics to situations we were experiencing growing up. Also, there weren’t a lot of resources to find new music at the time either. Napster wouldn't be a thing for a few more years, and if you didn't like what the radio was playing, you were at the mercy of some punk rock kid who had the resources to get to shows and record stores or had older siblings and friends who passed music on to them. In Orange County and Los Angeles, there were some shows on local TV featuring punk rock. While it was a good alternative to MTV, it was on for about an hour a week and late Saturday nights.
MxPx did break through to commercial radio with Life in General. The album went to number sixteen on the Top Contemporary Christian music charts but also got to number twenty-two on the Billboard Top Heatseekers. As soon as they did fans were constantly talking about how the band was distancing itself from being considered Christian. The most common response from MxPx was that they were Christian, but they don't write Christian songs, anymore. I heard this actively until I stopped regularly listening to them around 2004. While I did buy the two records after this album, I don't remember hearing nearly as many references to Christianity, but also admit I did not listen to them nearly as much as I did, Life in General. In 2005, MxPx contributed a song co-written by Mark Hoppus from Blink 182 for an album of songs related to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. The album itself won a Gospel Music Association (GMA) award for Special Event Album of the Year. In 2015, while being interviewed on the Weasel Radio podcast, Mike Herrera stated he does not follow Christianity any longer. He stated the band was never meant to be a Christian band but was signed to Tooth and Nail, a Christian label. He was tired of being labeled Christian because he did not feel like he belonged. As he got older, he disagreed with what was considered a sin or not. Mostly citing social issues the Christian faith is against. MxPx re-recorded Life in General in 2016 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the album's release. It sounds like a live recording of the band playing the album from beginning to end and was eventually released for free. It's a weird flex, for a punk rock band, whose album sounds great for being on an indie label. MxPx is still kicking today. In 2017, Mike Herrera moved to Texas and constructed a studio in his house, where he produces and releases records independently through MxPx Global Enterprises. Most of the newer songs still have that skate-punk sound they have been great at for so long.
Punk rock is a broad spectrum. While it should be a place where ideas are traded no matter how taboo or innocent, it gets bogged down by people who say it has to be his one thing when it should be up for interpretation. There isn't one punk rock scene, there are multiple from derived from things like genre, location, and even religion. There will always be naysayers and people who push back, but we should just shut up and enjoy what's been contributed to punk rock in general.