Operation Ivy is awesome. Their sentiments sometimes really simplistic to me (“civilization, ha, I call it as I see it” or “no more bad town” – not exactly complex or novel ideas), but there’s something so compelling about that simplicity.
The thing is, what’s easy to overlook when critically analyzing their lyrics is that they rock. They’re fucking fun to listen to.
And this is coming from me; I hate fun. I would almost always rather be solving a complex logical problem than resting in contented happiness. (Not that that’s a good thing; it isn’t, but it’s truthful, some of the time.). I hate upbeat music, I hate ska, reggae, punk (when it’s upbeat), all that shit. That’s why hardcore has always been my preference, over punk, because its angsty. But even I can’t keep my head form bopping when the bass takes over.
And that’s the key to unlocking the lyrics. They’re fun. The lyrics can’t be understood at face value; they need to be understood in context.
Operation Ivy’s mood draws the listeners into a community. They’re a fun show, a street party, a shitty speaker blasting at the skatepark. They come on and every drunk punk in earshot starts singing along at the top of their lungs. They bring people into the community of punks. Their lyrics are, while simplistic, expressing radical leftist politics, in a real way, but in a deceptively boppy way.
We talk about honey instead of vinegar; we talk about how to convert magas to leftism. The only successful reports I’ve heard on that score are from ContraPoints, who speaks to magas compassionately and with genuine understanding. And that’s great. But a great deal of maga motivation comes from alienation. Operation Ivy welcomes everyone; you find yourself singing along without even knowing what you’re singing, and, after a few listens, you find yourself on the bus, or at work, or wherever, and a OI song gets stuck in your head, and you find yourself chanting the catchy, radical leftist politics with which you’ve been unwittingly singing along.
Was I indoctrinated into leftism? Was there a moment that I realized that leftist politics were not only the most human, but also the most logical? Or did I just sing along with Operation Ivy for so long that I found myself bent left without even realizing?