Hazen St.

Dear Benji and Joel Madden: For the last couple of years I’ve been saying that your band, Good Charlotte, would be the death of punk rock as we know it. You wannabe goth poseur fucks have managed to co-opt everything that’s dangerous and rebellious about the genre and turn it into mass-marketed, mall-friendly fodder for 14-year old girls. Your latest "find,” Hazen St., is another slap in the face to punk. You guys have taken a band that features the vocalists from H2O and Madball, the drummer from the Cro-Mags and Bad Brains, and members of other hardcore bands who ought to know better, signed them to your major label-affiliated imprint and made them softer and more useless than John Holmes after a session with Traci Lords. If this band’s tepid, insincere pap is what passes for punk rock in 2004, we should all give up right now. I know you are to blame for it, too. There is no way this roster of veterans created this mess without your meddling. For the sake of the music so many people love, please take off the eyeliner, get haircuts and form the boy band you’ve always wanted to be in before you do any more damage. The sooner the better.