Sunday Music: Bad Religion’s 4th Turning Soundtrack – The Gray Race

Don’t you love the way books/ideas sequentially appear in your life? 

I do. Even when they’re a little doomy with a side of optimism. I’ll plug the “Optimism” episode of Breaking News we just released where we wrestle with all this stuff if you’re interested, but I know you’re here on a Sunday because Sunday’s are all about how music intersects with the rest of life here at Cultish Creative. Some people go to church. I check in with the musical gods, who aren’t offended by my breaking of tradition.

When Bad Religion’s The Gray Race came out in 1996, I was one of the teenagers who got the CD at the local record store. I still remember the cardboard slip-sleeve over the jewel case and how I’d carefully take it off to open it up every time. A little tedious, but I can still picture doing it. 

“A Walk” was actually getting some radio play and it felt “cool.” The cross buster was so much more profound than any Green Day, Rancid, or other mainstreamed punk symbolism. Even if Bad Religion were a little past their prime/80s hardcore years, a new record from them was still of interest if not downright iconic for us young gen-x/elder millennial teens.

Plus, post band related drama, Minor Threat’s guitarist (Brian Baker) was in the band now and who didn’t want to know what they’d be like without Brett Gurewitz but with little more Minor Threat/Dag Nasty?! 

In Do What You Want: The Story of Bad Religion this period is understandably rough. Lives are evolving and friends are splitting apart. Holes are being plugged. They’re all (re)figuring out what they’re good at and should be focused on for themselves (Brett focused on running/building Epitaph, Greg focused on his education and seriously, these lyrics). 

Is it a midlife crisis? Possibly the start of one. 

Is it a precursor of the 4th turning, or the generational shift from the early 90s into where we are today? In hindsight, I think so. 

Give the whole record a listen, but here are some snippets of the lyrics. Since I finished the Bad Religion book not that long after The Fourth Turning is Here, and thinking about my own life in the late 90s, I’m awash in where we’ve been and where we’re going feels. 

From the opening track:

The framework of the worldIs black and whiteThe infrastructure buildersFlex their mightTurning true emotionInto digital expressionOne by one we all fall downThe gray race shrivelsTrapped inside the world it createsIt’s black and white

And that song gets followed up with, 

Hate is a simple manifestationOf the deep seated self directed frustrationAll it does is promote fear and consternationIt’s the inabilityTo justify the enemyAnd it fills us all with trepidationThem and usBending the significance to match a whimsied fableThem and usTumult for the ignorant and purpose for the violenceA confused loose alliance formingThem and usAnd I heard him sayWe can take them all (we can take them all)We can take them all, that’s what he saidWe can take them allBut he didn’t know who we wereAnd he didn’t know who they were.And there wasn’t any reason orMotive, or value, to his story,Just allegory, imitation glory,And a desperate feeble search for a friend

And then on “Parallel,” which is some serious widening-gyre stuff:

Sleeping on a time bomb, staring into spaceThere’s an ocean of unpleasantries we are not prepared to faceSitting on the fence post to watch the storm roll inAnd terrified of the damage it will bring when it beginsIt will beginSplintered dreams of unity (our lives are parallel)So far from reality (our lives are parallel)Independent trajectories (our lives are parallel)Separate terms of equality (our lives are parallel)

Pair the Do What You Want book with The Fourth Turning is Here, and don’t sleep on The Gray Race.