Welly Artcore
I first really became aware of music in 1979 via the top 40 on the radio and former jukebox 7”s they’d sell cheap in a local store. In autumn ’79 I became fully obsessed with…
Tag: punkrockoriginstories
Elise Thompson
“It caused complete mayhem, freaking out all of the nuns, and I felt like it was the greatest moment of my life.”…
Michael
Growing up in the Midwest, there was nothing in Junction City, Kansas resembling a punk scene in the early 1980’s. And I was brought up going to Sunday school and church in a strict home,…
M.J. Stevens
I do have to credit Punk Rock and that early LA Punk scene for showing me a way out of the tedious and stale suburban Christian life.…
Aaron Leatherbarrow
I was 14. I found a cassette tape called Pokinatcha by MXPX in a Christian book store in Cincinnati, OH. I found hope that day. I was constantly oppressed by religion, right wings, and suburbia.…
Mark Bishop
The first records I remember are Millie Small’s 1964 hit “My Boy Lollipop” and Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Just Like Me” (from a collection called “The Best of ‘66”). They were castoffs from my…
Ziggy/Linda D
My Punk Rock story is not always a ‘pretty one’. It is a miracle I am alive. I was homeless on the street at 14, very out of my mind, traumatized, mentally ill, drugged up,…
Edward “EJ” Giles
I was 15 years old, and living in Long Island City, Queens with my parents, and “Punk Rock” was breaking in the US. There was a television news highlight on “punk” and I thought it…
Bob Lee
I remember getting really into Patti Smith in summer of 78, friends of my mom had Radio Ethiopia, and I’d get real into playing it. My first experience with punk up close was the band…
Jeffrey Vallance
Punk Scene and Solid Eye Punk Scene From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, there was a unique relationship between the art world and the punk rock scene in Los Angeles. I hung out…
Jim Ruland
When I was 15 my mom took me and my younger brother to see the Ramones at the Wax Museum. It wasn’t just my first punk rock show, but the first rock concert I attended.…
Big Pete Markowicz
I was a lost kid that did not fit in with the guidos surrounding me in the suburbs of Clifton, New Jersey. I was about 12 years old and was in the boy scouts. I…
Billy Lorance
Full-blown hippie life was before me as a child. Our house had waterbeds, water pillows, water couches, and water pipes. Psychedelic colored bean bag chairs adorned the living room floor and coffee colored beads hung…
Joe Mendelson
My overwhelming passion for rock music began in 3rd grade, although I have a very distinct memory of being completely mesmerized by The Who’s I can see for miles that I heard on my sister’s…
Johnny Stingray
I guess it was ‘75 or so, I was working at an appliance store in Burbank, CA and living in Santa Monica with Kidd Spike (then known as Jeff Austin) and his sister, Gaye. Gaye…
Aleks Shaulov
I first fell in love with the superficial idea of punk as a kid in Soviet Union. When I was about 6 or 7 there was a program on TV that highlighted the corrosive effects…
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…
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.…