I was just reading "Cash" by Johnny Cash and came across a passage worth posting here.
"Are there still places where a young boy can leave his house after breakfast with just a fishing pole and spend the whole day rambling and adventuring alone, unsupervised and unafraid, trusted and un-feared for?
   Perhaps there are.  I hope so.  But I suspect otherwise.  I think that even if such places do exist, our televisions have blinded us to them.
   I was talking with a friend of mine about this the other day: that country life as I knew it might really be a thing of the past and when music people today, performers and fans alike, talk about being "country," they don't mean they know or even care about the land and the life it sustains and regulates.  They're talking more about choices--a way to look, a group to belong to, a kind of music to call their own.  Which begs the question: Is there anything behind the symbols of modern "country," or are the symbols themselves the whole story?  Are the hats, the boots, the pickup trucks, and the honky-tonking poses all that's left of a disintegrating culture?  Back in Arkansas, a way of life produced a certain way of music.  Does a certain kind of music now produce a way of life?  Maybe that's OK, I don't know.
   Perhaps I'm just alienated, feeling the cold wind of exclusion blowing my way.  The "country" music establishment, including "country" radio and the "Country" Music Association, does after all seem to have decided that whatever "country" is, some of us aren't.
   I wonder how many of those people ever filled a cotton sack."

Amen, brother.  While I can't say I ever picked cotton, I got to experience leaving after breakfast, and with the exception of a quick stop for lunch or Kool-Aid, being able to be left to my own devices until dinner.  There was nothing like sitting at a pond with a fishing rod and a bag of bread (worked better than worms) and catching fish all day, or climbing trees, or whatever else I wanted.  I'd like to think that there's an underground to the whole "country" establishment...those of us who lived part of what it was like, or maybe none of it at all, and try to keep the traditions going as a way of remembering, or of mourning their loss.  That's what my little attempts are about on Tuesday, anyway.

Another thing that comes to mind is how easily this applies to the "new punk" scene, it's becoming less and less about pissed off kids making music and more about music making pissed off kids who aren't even sure what they're supposed to be pissed off about, and who feel the only way to express it is to shop at fucking Hot Topic.  Sad, really.  Same goes for you garage fucks, too.