THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY OF LIFE

I never thought the day would come where I could write about a band consisting of a bunch of british hippies from the nineties with dreadlock rat tails, and have the focus of the text not be about how much I want to kick their ass. But here I am, about to speak highly of such people, though affected by melancholy.

The Levellers were huge in Europe in the early to mid '90s. Or at least in the shitty town I grew up in. Back then you were either into house music and thus wore yellow or orange pants, or you were 'alternative' and your favorite bands were Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Levellers (if you were angry, you also liked ratm). The Levellers were on everyone's list, and their hit song "One Way" was everywhere, all the fucking time. Obviously I hated the shit. I hated Nirvana, hated grunge, hated anything that was not related to Slayer.

See, I had long hair my whole life and had spent most of it being called a "beatle", a "girl" or a "fag". Nirvana meant that all of a sudden, every douchebag who gave me shit for my hair was ripping knee holes in their jeans and wearing flannels. They were being me. Every girl I knew had a crush on Kurt Cobain, a long hair, and they all got into being touchy-feely to grunge hits. Fuck that, if a song didn't have lyrics about satan, gross diseases or mutilation, I didn't wanna hear it. In my teenage brain, grunge had taken my shit and made a more acceptable, pussy version of it. The day after Cobain died, tons of girls stayed home from school. Then "Kurt Lives" started to show up on all the school benches, to which I added clever lines such as "...in your ass".

Anyway, over fifteen years later and a long way from the shit town I grew up in, whenever the 'alternative' era would be brought up with canadian friends, I'd always mention the Levellers. Eventually I realized no one knew who the hell they are. I couldn't believe it. That song is such a classic of that era. So I did some research on them, and it turns out they were in fact huge in europe but never in the states. I also found out that despite being folk punk hippie commies with dreads and a violin, they were kind of cool. They went out there and spread a pretty decent message to the masses. I'm sure it was all lost on the braindead morons that were their fans, but the lyrics to this song are pretty good along with a few others songs that I remember of them.

I kind of like this song now, I don't know if it's actually good or if it's just nostalgia from hearing that voice sing that chorus fifteen years later and thinking back of those days. Fuck, I'm getting old. But check it out, it might be terrible but at the very least you get to hear a real forgotten classic of the early nineties alternative era, euro style.