Winnipeg straight-edge punks, Commitment, have, in three short songs on Demo 2025, created a kind of constitution of sorts, a series of principles by which they’ll live the good (punk) life.
First off, they will abstain from drugs and alcohol. Such poisons, they say, cloud the mind and make cogent and coherent thought impossible. It destroys families and friends, and leads to a procession of improprieties, embarrassments, and regrets. A noble pursuit, and I wish them luck.
Secondly, knowledge – truth – is paramount; and this requires a healthy freedom to inquire, an honest respect for facts and evidence, and a diversity of viewpoints; without which, Commitment reasons, they will descend into the fiery pits of ideology, groupthink, and emotional justification; and certainly self-censorship will quickly follow in their wake – a surefire recipe for the proliferation of terrible ideas (and terrible ideas necessarily have terrible consequences.)
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
