October 25, 2011 -- This documentary film takes us inside the family life of some punk rockers, some professional skaters, extreme sport bikers and other edgy people who never thought they would have to settle down and accept family values. The other F word is fatherhood, and it has a funny way of changing a person's priorities, even people who live the nihilistic, rebellious life style of a punk rocker.

I'm not a punk fan, so I did not recognize most of the names of these bands, except for the Ramones, of course (who were not interviewed for this film). One of the central characters in the film is Jim Lindberg of the punk band Pennywise. He literally wrote the book on this subject (the name of his book is “Punk Rock Dad”). He is not the only punk rocker to feel the conflict between time spent touring and time with his family, but he is the most eloquent on the subject and the movie spends a lot of time with him and his family.

Other members of other bands tell other stories about fatherhood. Several said fatherhood made them resent their own fathers, who in some cases had abandoned them as children, or who had simply not put in much effort to be good parents. One punk rocker told a tragic tale about the death of his son in a traffic accident and how his other children had prevented his own suicide over the despair about his son's death. Some punk rockers vowed not to change, despite their new position as parents, but of course they do change. Others said it was their children who had given them a new, deeper meaning to their own lives.

The children of these people seem remarkably well adjusted, despite their offbeat parents. One of the funniest adjustments the punk rockers have to make is to avoid swearing in front of their young children. Lindberg said, “I never thought that I would be a parent and have to get the clean version of my music to play in the car.” The rockers felt strange having to discipline their children and try to stop them from doing the same dangerous stuff they used to do as kids. In some ways these families are even more tradtional than most because it appears that the wives of the punk rocekrs don't work. They stay home and take care of the kids while their husbands tour most of the year.

Their conflicted feelings almost seem like a kind of karmic payback for some of these punk rockers. Now they have to be father figures and be responsible for their children when they had spent so many years being irresponsible, embracing anarchy and rebellion. Several of them said they felt like they were turning into their own parents, or into Ozzie and Harriet. The film also explores the change in the music business caused by Napster and file sharing technologies. The music business changed. Bands could no longer make enough money on recordings to be independent. In order to make enough money to support their families, they had to tour most of the year. Before, they had toured very little. The hardest thing became trying to answer the persistent questions of their children, who kept asking when daddy is coming home.

As they get older, life on the road becomes harder to bear, the endless traveling, every town the same, bad food, bad coffee. What once was an attractive, envigorating lifestyle has now become like just another job to put food on the table. It becomes harder to justify missing a son's baseball game, a daughter's recital. Time starts going by faster and faster. Opportunities to spend time with the family slip away at an ever increasing speed. Being a rock star is heady stuff. The rewards and adulation still beckon to them, but a midlife crisis looms. The children, the most important thing in their lives, also beckon to them. It becomes impossible to resist that siren's call. Lindberg makes a great effort to make a special trip home to accompany his daughter to a father-daughter event at school. Others in the band complain he isn't spending enough time touring. A decision looms, and is finally made as the film ends.

Most red-blooded guys with the slightest amount of talent envision themselves as rock stars at some point, just as many envision themselves as sports stars. There is another side, a very personal side, to those coveted roles in society and this movie shows us the downside of being a rock star. As a consequence, it also makes these punk rockers very human, vulnerable and down to earth. This is a film with some powerful emotions on display, reminiscent of another recent rock documentary, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” and, of course, “This is Spinal Tap,” which is referred to directly in this film by one of the punk rockers, who say that movie seems to be about them, too. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2011 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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