They say you never forget your first time. That’s definitely true for me.
Mine was The Dead Milkmen with Phunhog at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit. It was an eye-opener for me, to know that even though I was into punk rock, and my friends were too, there was the whole scene going on that I wasn’t aware of. The Dead Milkmen played all my favorite songs, and while I was yelling the lyrics back at them, I realized everybody else was, too. Up until that point, in my world I was one of three people who even knew who the Dead Milkmen were, let alone knew the words to their songs. And here was a whole crowd of people who not only paid to see them, but knew them just as well as I did. It was awesome.
For My First Time, AK Press has assembled 40-some stories of writers, musicians and assorted scenesters from all over to write about their first punk show stories. The assembled writer list is pretty impressive; it includes pro skater Scott Bourne, Blag Dahlia of the Dwarves, Chumbawamba’s Boff Wheley and <i>maximumrocknroll</i> columnist Al Quint.
The amazing thing is that, no matter who is writing, where the show was or who they were seeing, so many of the stories convey the same idea – a wide-eyed first awareness of the concept of a scene. With many of the stories, whether it’s Scott Kelly of Neurosis writing about T.S.O.L. in San Diego or Econochrists’s Ben Sizemore writing about seeing Channel 3 in Memphis, are about discovering a scene and discovering that those punk bands you like actually play shows and you can go see them. They are all about discovering that there is and entire punk scene out there, full of people that like the same stuff you do. The stories paint the punk show as a life-altering experience. I’d have to agree.
Some of the best stories come out of left field. Ann Kanaan’s story, “How A Punk’s Mom Became A Bouncer!” is about exactly that – filling in as a bouncer so her son’s band can play their local community hall. It’s as educational for her as for the kids who go to the show. And when Pete Slovely relates getting picked up by the police for violating curfew while waiting for his mom to pick him up after a Circle Jerks show, it was one of those moments that is instantly priceless – several years after the fact.
The stories are all short and punchy anecdotes, amazingly presenting the same idea over and over again without getting boring (although writer Steven Sciiscent’s bizarrely nostalgic and meandering story about the Ramones was an awkward stumbler, it was the only lull I encountered), because each story presented a similar feeling of “yes! I know what you’re talking about!” It’s a feeling like you’re connecting with a bunch of kindred spirits.
This book is a fun little read. It stimulates my memories of shows, and lets me know that, as I discovered a punk scene that was ever-expanding and reaching out, all over the world other kids were doing the exact same thing.
