The Putz - Operate

       It's 2014, 38 years since punk broke. What is punk? Is it a style of music? A state of mind? A slogan on a shirt? And is pop punk, punk??? I'm not sure what punk is anymore but pop punk has always featured heavily throughout it's history, right back to the likes of The Ramones, The Buzzcocks, The Dickies, The Rezillos etc etc etc..... There's loads of pop punk that I don't like, but who's to say I'm right and the pop punkers that get off their backsides to create the music that they love are wrong? There's also loads of pop punk that I love, going right back to the groups I mentioned earlier and hurtling through a history littered with a multitude of great bands (Lillingtons, Screeching Weasel, Queers, Descendants, FAR TOO MANY OTHERS TO MENTION!). I'm late to the party on The Putz but I'm adding the Indianapolis "pop punk rock" 3 piece to the list of pop punk bands that I like. They formed in 2009, released their first album (Hole In One) in 2010, spent years gigging with the likes of The Queers, The Parasites, The Dopamines (and probably a load of other pop punk bands who had "The" in front of their names). They won an award for best local punk band in 2012 and they released a couple of eps. It took the release of their new album, Knock It Off, on Eccentric Pop Records, for them to be picked up on my radar but I'm making up for lost time by keeping the record on repeat. I'm predicting that Billy Putz (bass, vocals), Tyler Wrong (guitar, vocals) and Dougie Tangent (drums) will be gaining more new fans than myself with this release.

In my intro above, I've written pop punk far too many times, but that was intentional. The song of the day is pop punk, pop punk at it's best. Catchy, fun but not too sickly sweet. It'll lodge in your head, it'll make you feel good, hopefully it'll make you want to track down the album. It's pop, it's punk, it's great. This is Operate.....