i like asking questions too

[emily]

What attracted you to punk rock in the first place?

I think I didn't really know what punk was when I started going to shows at the Daily Grind, GEEE coffee, etc. I just went where the kids were, and thought it was cool that people were kind of weird looking. I'd always been sorta weird looking, so it was comfortable for me. Politics came later. I liked that the music was angry. I was angry too.

I've never felt a part of punk as a really coherant community, but that's mostly because I'm shy and historically socially awkward. It still makes more sense to me than being a hippie though!

Actual conversation from last night:

Dude: Hippies are nice, but punks are just mean. Why would anyone be a punk?

Me: It's better to be mad and grouchy if it propels you into doing something constructive than it is to sit around and smoke pot and hit on fourteen year olds. Why would anyone be a hippie... unless they were stupid or creepy?

Ha ha. No really - you can be a hippie if you want to. But I might make fun of you. Just a little bit.

[Will 2]

I got into "punk" because it was and is a natural extent of my behavior and mindset. When I first heard the Sex Pistols, Crass, PiL, and Buzzcocks, it was kind of my attitude for a long time. I'm just lucky I got into that music. I think tons more kids would get turned on to (real) punk and hardcore if they knew it existed. If they can dig on the fake anger of toughguy hardcore and "metalcore," then I'd imagine they'd really like the genuine article.

-Will Marinovic

[ek]

Oh man Crass flipped my shit upside down! I was so excited! Same for Bikini Kill and other riot grrl stuff - actually it was feminism that got me into punk-ish stuff before anything else. I didn't actually know any other riot girls or even feminist punks until I was maybe 16. That sucked.

[thousandaire]

still dont think ive ever really been "punk" or into it. i got into the "underground" via indie-rock like built to spill and that sort of stuff back in like 1994, and feel like i appreciate a lot of punk as an outsider, but never felt like i identified with that community really. otherwise i was firsdt genuinely drawn to it by the sheer music quality and learned about the "scene" after the fact.

[laz]

nirvana.

[matt judge]

nirvana. by way of them, fugazi. also thanks to the controlled and the sloppy popsicles.

and i went to a catholic boys' high school where a fair amount of the student population consisted of the dumbest cruelest rich motherfuckers you will find, and man i didn't want to grow up to work for them. especially since a couple of the teachers were great examples of the ultra-systematized, emotionally broken human beings that end up getting fired out the other end of the system. that wasn't the future i was interested in. and punk rock dovetailed pretty well anyway with my left wing catholic upbringing and then also with my loss of hope in almost every part of that. here i am.

also, like will, i don't know how punk i actually am. but whatever

[mookie]

my older brother gave me the dead kennedys "Frankenchrist" when i was nine years old. threw me for a loop. shortly thereafter i was 20 years old and foulmouthed.

[Prolific Tom]

My very first band played really fast, loud music and thought we sounded like the deftones (i was 15 gimme a break). In reality we sucked and I soon noticed we had more in common with the few "punk" bands I'd heard at the time. Decided if we sounded like punk, than we must be a punk band and dove head first into the whole mess. The rest of the band thought I was nuts for degrading their "artistic vision" by claiming it was punk so the band ended shortly there-after. Pretty much, traced music backwards from GreenDay, the offspring etc. back to the early 80's stuff and have been smashing my skull into that ever since.

[benaddict]

i thought there was absolutely nothing attractive about punk rock at all at first glance. i remember some kids who were a year younger than me were really into it and i was mostly into ska and ska/punk and skating. yeah...being 14! they asked me to play drums in their band because they knew i could...and i just imitated various punk drummers they played for me. after that, i started drinking (which actually had a lot to do with my warming up to punk rock), going to shows etc. then my whole life sort of started to make more sense than it ever had before. i met lots of people (all of you that i know!) and got to play/see tons of awesome shows and pretty much have the best time ever! so long and thanks for all the shoes!

[re thanks for the shoes]

you get free shoes when you're a punk? i should try that..

[laz]

ok i was being lazy. here's more details into my personal punk rock family tree

nirvana/early-mid 90s alt. rock > black flag/ramones > nofx/poppunk/skapunk (this about the time i start going to shows at the daily grind. 1996.) > minor threat/gorilla biscuits/hc (none of which i could see live) > mid to late 90s emo & indie rock (sunny day real estate, early get up kids, fugazi, braid, pavement, etc. most shows were seen at all ages bottleneck shows and maybe harmon park) > stumble upon to diy hardcore/punk/indie bands and the wild concept of house shows (this actually wasnt until 1999. also the year i booked my first show...which oddly enough was....the faint! featuring the debut of the brett ray holocaust. sorry guys.)

thats as far punk goes. ive listened to a million other genres of music and still do to this day. but that is a far more complicated tree.

as for politics and punk...i dunno. ive always had left leaning politics because they just made sense to me. being from a working class immigrant family and growing up in a mostly white american working class neighborhood made me really aware of the blatant racism that i was surrounded by...so i was always into the idea of "social justice" and "anti-racism". i didnt really begin to think of politics in terms of class struggle and the existence of any sort of global movement until around 1999/2000. WTO protests in seattle of course played a large part of making me aware of that but i'd say that personally the people's rally in kc in 2000 really woke me up to a lot of things goin on in the world. in retrospect the rally seems totally insane with all of the different causes being supported and the million different picket signs but i think that seeing so many different causes come together at once was i really important for me even if it was TOTALLY overwhelming. what any of this has to do with punk...um...not sure. BUT lost pride played and that my friends was awesome. had i not been down with da punx at the time i probably wouldve never made it to that rally and thus never really gotten involved with anything at all, read a couple more books, or met some people that totally endeup changing my outlook on the world.

[jh]

i got in to punk cuz of girls. my first girlfriend was punk. sold all my black flag records cuz they were alternative. ordered an extreme noise terror, crass and assrash tape along with a confuse t-stirt (cuz they had spiked hair) from havoc records. this is the price you pay for growing up in borance kansas.

[JORDAN ALERT!]

i got into punk because i had huge liberty spikes in school just cause i thought they were rad... turns out they'repunk too, who'd of thought. so people would come up to me and be all like.. hey i bet you like punk, listen to 'this' or something.
i basically listened to primus and nine inch nails and elastica, you know, alternative!
then i started hanging out with travis blackout via our mutual friend. around the same time i met all the kearney kids (ritalin kids, annie on my mind folk... john, ashley, mike, jenni, steve, paul) who hung out in liberty at perkins cause it was way better than kearney and holt. then half of those kids moved in an apartment down the street from my mom's house so i hung uot there all the time.
those days consisted of listening to pop punk i.e. ALL, descendents, anything chad price had ever done, fugazi, the queers, ramones, and pre-pewep recordings/dance parties at best westerns along with country a la whoever that dude is that greiner's tatoo is from. ohyeah, neophytes show in ashley's mom's costume shop. midwestfests 1, 2, 2.5, 3... youknow, you're standard stuff.

that post kind of lost relevancy... oh well it all happened.

[justin anxiety]

i got into punk officially when i was about 11 going on 12. i'd never really fit in with the kids at school, i always got along but never felt like i was a part of anything, you know.

around that tiem i was listening to butt rock, metal, and rap like whitesnake, metallica and run dmc. and me and my brother were into skating near the end of the heyday of the "bones brigade" era powell period. it was skating that got us into punk really. there were some older skate kids around and this one dude gave my brother a dubbed copy of the misfits "collection 1" tape and told him it was a new record by some rock band we liked at the time.

he brought it home and we were like holy shit! this was the coolest thing we had ever heard growing up in redneck crap ass Oklahoma city. after that some other dude gave us a comp tape he made with angry samoans, minor threat, replacements, husker du and a bunch of other stuff. after a while we found fugazi, black flag, beastie boys "pollywog stew" (when you could still find it on cassette at the mall) flex your head, agnostic front, bad brains and all kinds of stuff.

i think that was the first time where even though early on we didn't really know any punk kids (all the skaters listened to punk and hardcore back then it was almost required) i felt like i found something that made sense to me. i mean hell as a 12 year old kid in Oklahoma a bunch of dudes in tight leather pants with big hair singing about scoring with girls wasn't something i could relate to at all. but when i heard black flag do depression off the damaged tape that was something i could completely relate to.

i guess i was really lucky though because even though Oklahoma really sucked we had one guy who booked good shows when he could so we got to see fugazi, bikini kill, nation of Ulysses and a bunch of other stuff (huggy bear came but i couldn't make it). so those things gave me exposure to a lot of great music and ideas early on.

though i've never felt real comfortable labeling myself as anything i've always felt okay saying that i'm a punk. it's kind of like ian mackeye said in an interview a few years ago. he said something like "yeah i'm a punk and yeah fugazi is a punk band. we may not look or sound just like the cartoon image but that's part of why we are punks is that i don't want the people who don't really give a shit to take that away.

or something like that, but i digress.

i guess that another thign is that from day one punk music has been the one stable thing in my life, it's always felt like home. i've always listened to lots of other stuff and still do but it's the one thing that i can really count on. it's like a good family.

[nicholas]

i don't care.