Aspies into punk rock!

Post Reply New Topic

Punk!, I was there man!

I lived in South London in the mid seventies when it took off.

Was a member of the Roxy Club, every weekend we would go to the likes of The Marquee or the Vortex
.
It was an ideal social life for an Aspie, we made our own clothes then, I had this new fluorescent pink towel that I ripped the edges off, slashed a hole in the middle for my head to poke through, slash in the front and then held the sides together with safety pins.
I sewed long red zips all over a pair of black and skin tight jeans that I still have, but can no longer get in!

And the dancing!, didnt have to learn any moves or look graceful, you just clamped your arms by your sides and leapt up and down energetically and swaying from side to side.

Saw loads of the new bands, the Damned twice, supported by the Dead Boys, once at the Red Cow I went to stand up from sitting on the stage but couldn't as Poly Styrene of X-Ray Specs was standing on my coat as she was singing, thats how close the bands where with the public, every time we saw 999 they would get all the audience up on the stage pogo-ing.


Its the first and only time I ever felt I belonged too, or was a part of a social structure.
I can still remember the excitement and feeling of belonging when we went out, all dressed up and getting looked at, then standing in the queue with all the other weirdos, (for that was how we where perceived to a far more conservative general public than today).

A fella called Captain Zip took a few home movies of Punks down the Kings Road in the late 70s which are good from a nostalgic angle though of course they cannot capture the excitement of when it was new, there are some you tube films of early punk in the venues.

We stopped going around 1979 as by then everybody seemed to be becoming a punk and it lost its specialness.

Heres a Captain Zip film.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxoymq-uah0[/youtube]

In 1976 my friend and I were the first punks at school, and probably the first 2 in the western hemisphere in Europe...What i see as punk now...neo. has nothing to do with what it initially started like. Even Johnny Rotten gave it a thought: why did I ever create this and so many morons who followed me...

My two favorite punk groups are Rancid and Operation Ivy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc30gQSFLFU[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN5D84bxTLE[/youtube]

bringing this thread back, I love punk, more specifically hardcore; jams lately have included Cro-Mags, Malfunction, Brainwreck, Rotting Out, The Mongoloids, Incendiary and the Descendants.

I am sort of in a 'punk' band, This is a recent development. I'm going to get a synth next time I get paid, so we're going for more of an electro sound.

My band is only 'punk' because we're weird and quite s**t, but we don't care. It's in the attitude.

I actually consider myself a punk rocker. I pretty much know hundreds of bands from Crust, UK82, Oi!, American Hardcore, D-Beat, Streetpunk, late seventies British Punk, late 70s American punk, punk from many countries Holland, Japan, Sweden, Russia, Ireland you name it I probably know it. Favorites would have to be The Varukers, Special Duties, The Templars (New York Oi!), The Restarts (awesome British Hardcore punk), Rancid (Let's Go especially don't like the newer stuff really), Anything that Lars Fredericksen does (The Bastards, Old Firm Casuals), Motorhead (yeah every real punk likes Motorhead not punk but I always lump them in), Any band that Duane Peters was or is in (US Bomb, The Hunns, Gunfight, Exploding F&%$ Dolls), Social Distortion (Mike is a god), Lower Class Brats ( awesome Austin, TX band originally from San Diego), Anything that Rob or Mark Lind does (Blood for Blood, Ducky Boys, Sinners and Saints), and I really like any punk band out of Boston they used to have a great scene in the late 90s and still has a pretty decent punk scene today. Well although with quite a bit of infighting sadly. I have not been around it much anymore. Sadly, I mainly listen to the music these days. I am not really involved like I used to be. Graduated from college finally and looking for a job in my other passion: video games and video game art.

I played in a Streetpunk band in the late 90s (called No Regard) that went nowhere but it was a blast. Lots of drinking during that time. Way too much. But it was fun. I also wrote pretty much all the music and lyrics sans drums. We were basically an Oi! band pretty straight forward stuff nothing fancy. And no politics. haha.

I was also a Traditional Skinhead in the late 90s and to this day it is still with me. I am both punk and skin and always will be. You cannot kill the pride and integrity of being a skin once you got it you got it for life. I still got my awesome Gripfast boots that seriously never fall apart. Best boots in the world and they are made in England to this day. Doc Martens are a joke and are not even made in England anymore. I love Fred Perry shirts, Ben Sherman shirts, Lonsdale clothing, bleached jeans (more of an Oi! Skin thing than Trad but I still love pouring bleach on my jeans. I cannot believe they sell them like that now. I always did it myself before and still do.

The main thing that punk means to me is a different state of mind. If you are punk you already know what it means. It is a way of life. A life filled with your own choices and your own dreams and even living without a home, it doesn't matter. Do whatever you want, that is punk rock. Most importantly make your own style. There is no limit. Basic or over-the-top doesn't matter what clothes you wear its what's inside that really matters.

And the way I feel about success in punk rock is keep doing that. Show the world that punk is here to stay since it is the best music in the world. Everyone should know about it. Do you really think Rancid does what they do for the money. No way. They are true punk rockers carrying the message of punk rock.

Here is something from the Oi! band, The Templars. They are actually pretty much my favorite band besides the Varukers. Just a good combo of mod rock, Oi! and Glam Rock (kind of hard to discern but it is apparent somewhat in some of their stuff) among other influences. It is what makes the Templars great they are extremely unique. Plus they had two black skinheads in the band but only one now I think, the drummer, Phil (the one in the photo standing on the left). The other guy is Carl the singer and guitarist and the main songwriter. Even has his own clothing line called Hammersmith clothing. selling his own Fred Perry and Ben Sherman style shirts along with standards like army fatigues.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_T-R6e_FUY[/youtube]

Once upon a time a bunch of baby boomer outcasts of various stripes and from various places of the world independently of each other (no internet then) got bored with what was going on be it post hippie hypocrisy or 20 minute drum solos, "soft" rock or disco and made music most of the music industry and fellow rock fans despised. To degenerate them the media called it punk

It started in the 60's during the heart of the hippie era
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hugY9CwhfzE[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BINOU2zh6Ac[/youtube]


It bloomed in the mid 1970s and late 1970s
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8pKfwuc_kc[/youtube]


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy9fs3cndrQ[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFvhd--qDDU[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Tb3DT-mjA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvkzQmc68Y[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AH5sE7d47U[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTfyUqVqX-0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9eLeZS9OeY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogypBUCb7DA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfKdzpta-Ss[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGfHoPvOi3g[/youtube]


It morphed into hardcore in the early 1980s
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIqESwzCGg4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXRvPPS2VkQ[/youtube]


It continued to evolve into a mind blurring number of sub genres as well a giving birth to New Wave, Post Punk and Alternative/Indie Rock

It's 2013 and some of us old misfits are still around
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhipr-n7Wa8[/youtube]

Punk came into my life around the time I was sixteen. I loved it immediately. Most kids at my high school dressed the same, a lot of them listened to rap/whatever MTV was spewing out. A lot of people there loved sports, while I didn't, I thought sports were boring. I guess part of the reason punk appealed to me was because it was the music of the angry outsider, the non-conformist. I went to my first punk concert at sixteen as well, I went to see The Adolescents, who used to be part of the old southern California punk scene. I had a blast, and I've been to many punk shows since then. It's by far my favorite genre of music, and it probably always will be.

some of my favorites include-

Black Flag

The Dead Kennedys

The Clash

The Germs

The Ramones

Screeching Weasel

The Adolescents

Reagan Youth

(old) Green Day

The Descendents

Rancid

Minor Threat

To really get the feel of what Punk Rock meant to us teenagers back in the day, the quite interesting Glam rock period had pretty much faded away and been replaced with the likes of Barry White or the Four Tops, a Teenage boys favourite programme, "Top of the Pops", actually became unwatchable, so dire and dreary it had become.

So put yourself in the mood of the music and cultural scene of the time that went from this:-



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIXtHIti9Xc[/youtube]

Then one day we heard this:-



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHpDgrG9H1k[/youtube]

And instantly my 17 year old friend and I burned a trail to Goodness Records on our Motorbikes.

Regarding the Motorbikes, British and iconic of the re-emerging Teddy-Boy scene, we used to ride to the Punk Venues on my old Triumph, stopping outside a McDonalds after a concert, there where these two Teddy-Boys standing there, probably only 15 or 16, initially mouths gaping in admiration of my Motorcycle, then we saw one of them raise his eyes to take in us, the change of expression as there was animosity between the two cultures, and he is fertivly elbowing his friend saying, "the're Punks, the're Punks!.

Anyone remember Johhny Moped from the next town?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UI48HKarcY[/youtube]

Punk & its sub-genres are a lot of what I listen to: crust, hardcore, anarcho-punk, street punk & oi!, old-school, queercore, folk punk, pop-punk, goth-punk, emo/screamo, etc.

Bread and Water, Harum-Scarum, Aus-Rotten, Oxymoron, The Clash, The Ramones, The Distillers, Witch Hunt, Amebix, Ballast, Subhumans (UK), Black Flag, Trash Talk, Limp Wrist, The Dead End Boys, Appalachian Terror Unit, Burnt Cross, etc