Steve Frisvold
Ok, I have been avoiding this for long enough. It’s with clenched teeth I write this, deleting the second sentence over and over. Not sure how to say this, afraid to let out my big…
Category: Punk Rock Origin Stories
Stepping back and looking
I had been thinking about starting this project for about 20 years. Initially, I wanted to shoot photos of people because at the time I was really into photography. But I put photography on the…
Kevin Z
The first time I became aware of punk rock I was in the 5th grade. The Sex Pistols were in the news and coming to the states and the hype was such that people were…
Jesse Luscious
My family was the stereotypical northeast liberal family. Grandma served in WW2 w/ the WAVES (the Navy Women’s auxiliary force) and my Grandfather served in the US Coast Guard before getting a deferment since he…
KRK
In the 6th grade my buddy had an older sister that was in the Hollywood KBD punk band, Deprogamer. She’d come around once in a while and give him (us) magazines. She turned us onto…
David Markey
Before Punk, as a pre-teen, I was all about making 8mm films that I shot with my dad’s hand wound Brownie. I began making films at the age of 11. This would be 1974, before…
Jon Charles Newman
(In memory of Brady Rifkin.) For most of 1977 I was 13 years old. I was a proghead, and from what I’d seen of UK punk, I thought it was silly. But I heard “God…
Hudley Flipside (HUD)
People treated me as though I was insane. They would throw things out of their car windows at me while I waited at the bus stop. They would call me names too, oh the nasty…
Video Louis Elovitz
“MY PLEASURE!“ There are a multitude of reasons why I say this to those who enjoy any of my filmings. Of course I am proud of my filmings, and the music is great, paraphrasing D.…
Tony Cimo
My first experience with punk was negative, in that I hated that my favorite music magazine at the time – Cream – was featuring more stories on the Sex Pistols and Ramones then my favorite…
Sean Saley
It’s all my uncle Mickey’s fault. Up until I was about 13 years old, my musical taste was pretty mainstream. It was 1980 and my uncle had started to discover bands that wouldn’t necessarily fully…
John Marr
A couple years ago someone published an anthology of first punk rock gig stories called MY FIRST TIME or something. I was annoyed that they didn’t ask me because my first punk rock show was…
Aaron Moore
In 1977 I was 6 years old and there’s an intriguing song on the radio, It’s called Peaches and it’s by a group called The Stranglers. My intrigue is piqued as the BBC have bleeped…
Felicia
I can’t remember exactly how it started. I have always loved music, especially from the 60s. Then I found The Ramones. Probably heard them on KROQ. From there I started hearing more of the local bands.…
Gene Mullett
I was all-metal all-the-time in high school & then I got to Ohio University in the fall of 1985. A friend’s dorm where I used to hang had some guys living on his floor that…
Otto Von Stroheim
I got into Punk Rock very slowly. Around 1977 I heard The Sex Pistols and Patti Smith on KROQ and saw pictures of them in mainstream rock n roll magazines like Creem. I bought Elvis…
Alison Braun
I was bored with school and needed a way looking for something meaningful to put my energy into: So I started going to punk shows and bringing my camera. It was a way to contribute…
Bob Durkee
First of all, let’s get a few facts out of the way. I was not there at the beginning. I did not go to the Masque, or any of the landmark first shows that started…
Al Quint
My punk rock origin was probably something I didn’t realize was my punk rock origin, at least at the time. I’ve been a music fan my entire life, going back to when I was 4…
Brady Rifkin
I moved to L.A. in 1979 and soon fell in with the “New Wave” crowd at my new school. They turned me on to KROQ and through that, Rodney Bingenheimer’s program. Right about that time…
Danny Gromfin
In the 70s I was a massive Devo fan. I was a pre-teen spud boy. A member of their fan club (still have the membership card!), made my own Devo buttons, etc. When punk started…