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How and when did you "become a punk"

Discussion in 'Music, punk scene & subcultures' started by punkdude, Sep 4, 2009.

  1. Vegetarian Barbarian

    Vegetarian Barbarian Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Oct 19, 2009
     
    I dont know why people deny the label "punk" everyone says "oh im just myself you know, but i listen to punk music" fuck you guys, have some PRIDE! \m/
     
  2. Wonder138

    Wonder138 Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Dec 2, 2009
     
    OI!!! PUNK TILL DEATH OR TILL I SELL OUT(jk)
    i think it might have to do with not wanting to look like a poser
    but yes i know im a punk and im pround but dotn let your pride destroy you at the same time dont let not having pride destroy you as well
     
  3. Wonder138

    Wonder138 Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Dec 2, 2009
     
    another BIG reason i got into punk kinda ashamed to say it but SLC PUNK(a movie) its on youtube watch it its rely good its not completey the best way to show what punk rely it but its a rely good movie none the less i sall it when i was like 6 my bro had it and wed watch it all the tiem it was one of his faves iv seen that moive leadrly about 300 or so times not joking
     
  4. ASA

    ASA Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Nov 2, 2009
     
    yea i dig idiot hipster scenesters claim to be too cool for school
     
  5. QueerPunk

    QueerPunk Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Dec 29, 2009
     
    I discovered Punk when I was about 13...with a mate from high-school...I remember picking up bass a bit later and jamming with him. We were still in high school and getting into Sex Pistols and all that UK stuff but I quickly got into other groups...

    But my taste has always been very very diverse to say the least. I grew up on Jazz, Soul, Classic, Rock and Reggae.
     
  6. Connorkillschildren

    Connorkillschildren Active Member Forum Member


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    Dec 31, 2009
     
    About 5 years ago, my sister's friend was quite the punk-rocker. She was about 13 at the time and i was about 9. She gave my sister a few of her cd's, and my sister, who wasn't and still isn't much into punk culture, let them collect dust in my basement. About two years ago i found myself with nothing to do so i dug up "Indestructable" by Rancid and fell in love with it instantly. After that, i picked up a few more of their albums, which then led me into bands like The Casualties, The Bastards (Featuring Lars Fredericksen, of course :lmao: ) and other well-known politically useless bands. Then my best friend Jack introduced me to less-known political bands like Crass, Aus-Rotten, Leftover Crack and others. I haven't been into punk culture long, as i'm only 14, so that's pretty much the whole story thus far.
     
  7. punkmar77

    punkmar77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    well you fuckin go boy! are you playing an instrument yet?
     
  8. Ring Of Truth

    Ring Of Truth Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Dec 28, 2009
     
    In my mind I was born punk, it wasn't something that I found and changed myself into. But I learned what punk was when I was in 3rd grade when I started skateboarding. I got into bands like Black Flag, but I was more at that time into bands like Def Leppard and Aerosmith, and the next time I got into punk music was when I was in seventh grade I heard Green Day (hated them at first too poppy sounding, but they grew on me), but I was more in to metal at the time. Being in a small town under ground punk was hard to come by. Then as a freshman in high school, I got into Christian music, bands like Unashamed, MxPx, Strongarm, Focused, The Crucified, Crashdog, Crux and others, and that is where I started finding underground punk oddly enough. As a Sr. in highschool my friend John got me into the Epitaph, Fat Wreckchords, Hopeless Records type stuff, and of course Minor Threat, then later that year (1999) my friend Bryon got me into Crass, and the Subhumans and I found what I had been missing all of my life, that there were people out there that thought and felt the way I felt.

    I always believed in anarchism even long before I knew what it was, and I have always felt what punk music is about.

    More recently I have been getting more varied in my music tastes, I really love all forms of music Punk, New Wave, Grunge, Metal, Crust, Folk....etc if has a sound and or lyrics that I can get into I enjoy it.
     
  9. Connorkillschildren

    Connorkillschildren Active Member Forum Member


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    Dec 31, 2009
     
    Yeah, I've been playing guitar for about a year now :) I play a Epiphone Studio Les Paul :) (I use it for the majority of the punk that I play) I also have a Fender Starcaster (First guitar, these days I only use it for crust punk for it's delicious low-output distortion) And a shit acoustic that I love to death.. I wrote a camp-fire cover of '53rd & 3rd' on it :D And a really nice acoustic that I never use :p
     
  10. Saering

    Saering Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Dec 18, 2009
     
    Alright Warning the following is a wall of text containing a brief summary of my life over the past year or so

    Well a bit like Ring here i never really fit the mold to begin with, i never understood why i should conform to the expectations of others (hell i got put in special ed in elementary and practically lived in the counselor's office [hey didn't we all?]) but i didn't REALLY come across punk till middle school, started off with bands like The Unseen and The Casualties, of course after a while i began to wonder if there was more to punk, so while searching for music i came across Rise Against got into them for a little while, and read the book Ishmael (as recommended by them) and through their cover songs was introduced to Black Flag, well at this point i was starting high school at the PAINFULLY christian Antonian College Prep (needless to say i did NOT belong there) as time went on i began to lose connection with my friends from middle school and began to feel very isolated, seeking out more and more music and literature reading books such as Fight Club and Brave New World, I then decided to reread Ishmael and its prequel My Ishmael (trying very hard to analyze the meanings behind them, being determined to build my own opinions and at long last establish a set of ideas that truly represented ME) I then started listening to bands like Crass and Conflict reading even more books, this time things like The Story of Crass and The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk, getting more and more deeply involved in the movement while becoming more and more hostile to the millions of voices preaching morality to me, i became a VERY large concern to the school, i started small writing simple protests in essay's (for example a breakdown of school uniforms the pros and cons of them and why they are COMPLETELY INSANE, doing book reports over books like Fight Club, so after being confronted about my behavior time and time again, i decided to be more upfront and in their face about it, as we were forced to wear uniforms i decided to do something with them, i took four safety pins and posted a sign to my back in big black letters that said: JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR HIS OWN SINS NOT MINE of course that stirred hell among the teachers and administrators, of course what REALLY put the nail in the coffin was when i did a how to speech on how to improvise weapons and constructed a shank out of plastic and electric tape as an example, the staff had bribed students with privileges to talk to me, told teachers to follow me around the halls, terrified that i would start another columbine (in this same year i was arrested for a bomb threat with the police [bomb squad, arson investigation you name it they were there] kicking down my door pointing a 9mm in my face at 6:00 am) after patching up relations with my family as best i could, reconnecting with some of my friends, and becoming closer to my girlfriend (all of whom i thank very much for the help and support they provided) i decided to further my growth as an anarcho punk, if anything i think i became a punk the moment i decided to try and change my life and the world around me. SO if you have managed to stick with this post to this point, im sorry about the life story but this thread gave me a good chance to reflect upon my life so far.
     
  11. Valsira

    Valsira Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Dec 14, 2009
     
    In 2006 (when I was 16) my friend introduced me to Anti-Flag and Rise Against, which were the first two punk bands I really listened to. After that I was introduced to Propagandhi by this guy on a gaming website I visit, and discovered a lot of other punk bands by browsing last.fm (Against Me!, Dropkick Murphys, Cólera, Minor Threat, Bikini Kill, Dead Kennedys) while also getting more into other genres as well (primarily post-punk and 90s alt rock).

    Anarchism I got into independently. First year at uni I did a course covering all the major political ideologies and while I wasn't convinced by it at the time I got interested enough in anarchism to do some further reading on it. Bought a book on the history of anarchism by Peter Marshall and read through that, then in my second year I had a couple of lecturers who were anarchists (one just a philosophical anarchist to my knowledge but the other anarcho-syndicalist). At this point I was of the mind that anarchism would be nice if it could be achieved which I doubted, but then in one of my courses there was a reading by a political philosopher called A. John Simmons criticising the liberal consent theories as a basis for political obligation, and it was that in the end which convinced me that the state was fundamentally unjust. I discovered Crass browsing the Wikipedia articles on anarchism and that's what got me into anarcho-punk (which eventually led me here!) :rock:

    I'm a bit of a closet punk though as I'm not into the fashion or friends with any other punks, and 'cause I do still listen to other kinds of music I don't think any of my friends would call me a punk. Also I'm not much of an activist ashamedly.
     
  12. punkmar77

    punkmar77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    Nov 13, 2009
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    HAHA but you are now infected with truth and you will only become more and more interested...no need to apologise
     
  13. New Face In Hell

    New Face In Hell Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Jan 22, 2010
     
    For years I had heard various punk songs from stuff like video games, but I didn't really get into it until 2004/2005.

    I liked the sound of the music. And the clothes played a part in it, too (I know at least some of you were drawn in by the fashion initially :p).

    Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, The Damned, Buzzcocks

    I haven't, to be honest.
     
  14. LucidStrike

    LucidStrike Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Nov 1, 2009
     
    I actually became "punk" AFTER I became anarchist. I like music that I can identify with or that otherwise expresses something important. In terms of anarchist politics, I was just bound to bump into punk and folk. When I did, I was just so amazed by Anti-Flag, as I hadn't heard overt politics like that before. I went to my sociology teacher to tell him about them, and he actually already had 'em in his ridiculously large iTunes library. He didn't have Crass tho.

    Also, I'm lookin' to play rhythm in a post-hardcore band, so there's that.

    Up until around 5 years ago, I listened almost exclusively to Hip Hop and R&B. Anytime we heard rock, we'd joke "What the hell are they yellin' for? Is it that serious?" LOL. Now, I know. :)

    I still don't dress "punk" tho, unless you count everything DIY. I was into patches for a while, but that it really clashed with my Hip Hop informed sensibilities, as does a lot of the more "punk" fashion. I now just screenprint and stencil my clothes if I want to, although I do use a lot of buttons and have a lot of home made patches I give away or sometimes sell for cheap.

    I have no problem with strange hairstyles, spikes, and "mismatched" designs, but my aesthetics are a bit different. They're closer to the anarcho-punk aesthetic, as I've always been into black. Most days, I pretty much just put on black work pants (Dickies), a (band) shirt, a black hoodie, a bandana, and a bookbag covered in writing and buttons, which is like an anarchist uniform. LOL.
     
  15. Derek Danger

    Derek Danger Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Jan 29, 2010
     
    I think it was around the time the doctors realised my mum's cancer was inoperable. I became really depressed and right when I needed it, there was punk music to distract me, and from the moment I realised how good it felt to just let go and be angry and try new shit I was a punk.

    The need to keep forward momentum in a way. At the time, I was really slowing down, creatively, emotionally, physically, and I saw punk as this thing where I could turn the ugly rural-suburban sprawl of my hometown into this exciting place where I could make my own fun where there wasn't any and just exist from one moment to the next. It was very romantic to me at the time, as an angry, frustrated, depressed country kid.

    First band was Chumbawamba. I've done a lot of thinking, and I know I'd heard others beforehand, but Chumbawamba really changed the way I thought definitively. Tubthumping the single was a gateway drug of sorts to Tubthumping the album and all of the other really good and underappreciated songs on it, and then from there on I just started working my way through their back catalogue, and then I'd take trips to the city and buy old punk records (if memory serves, Yes Sir, I Will by Crass and Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables by Dead Kennedys were my first two and still firm favourites). For a little while after my mum eventually died, I listened to bands like NOFX and Anti-Flag, but I think that was mainly because I only had one friend in Ballarat who listened to any punk music and those were the only bands she liked.

    I can't actually quite remember. I'd always been quite uncomfortable in the face of authority and quite resentful of people imposing their will upon me (my family used to do this a lot), so it definitely stems from that. I don't remember how I found out who they were, but I remember years ago paying a friend with a credit card to buy me a heap of stuff from the CrimethInc. website. From there on I rapidly became a lot more informed in my ideas and ideals, and so I suppose thats around the time I became more anarcho.

    I'm really sorry if I babbled, I tend to do that like crazy.
     
  16. drumdestroyer15

    drumdestroyer15 Active Member Forum Member


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    I came in to punk the reverse route.I started in metal i came in to that scene during the crappy nu-metal years and got bored since all the bands sounded the same. So i pushed forward to some harder stuff largely metalcore which also quickly became boring. Eventually i started really likeing death metal and some black metal. I then bought a book called Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. That book introduced me to all these older punk and thrash bands that influenced death metal and grindcore i never heard of. The first ones i reall y enjoyed were Cryptic Slaughter and Discharge and i liked that it wasn't as technical it had alot of message and the music just pounded on, it was perfect for headbanging. At some point after that i found Antischism which is one of my favorites and agreed with the most of the messages which i always thought but never really realized could be a form of Anarcho-syndicalism. Largely that people should be left alone in making there own choices as long as it hurts no one else, life should be respected, and the strong should support the weak. After that i got into all kinds of crust and grind although i wouldn't really say im a "punk", i'm just me.
     
  17. jessfive

    jessfive Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jan 27, 2010
     
    I was a late bloomer. I started getting into punk my freshman year of college. Someone called me straightedge and I was like what's that? So I found out about Minor Threat. Plus, my friend listened to Bikini Kill so I got into riot grrrl without knowing what it was. I didn't really explore punk until I was 21. I got into Anti-Flag and Bad Religion. Then, I took a trip to Europe so I got into The Clash and Sex Pistols. I bought my first pair of Tiger of London plaid pants. When I got back, I was talking to a friend of a friend and she told me about Crass. I went searching all the records stores on St. Mark's Place for a Crass album but they only carried mainstream stuff. After going to like seven record stores, I referred to Generations Records. They had Crass. So, I picked it up. I was hooked on the lyrics. I wanted more. I suppose that's when I became more anarcho. I got really into punk when most of my friends were outgrowing it (The same person who introduced me to Anti-Flag was the same person who told me we ought to grow up). I wanted anarchy and peace and they wanted a job and "security". We went our separate ways. I was a lone punk until I discovered Abc No Rio in NYC. I started going to shows and volunteering. I met some like minded people. What influenced me the most was a desire to get out of the system. I was aware I was a prisoner in a messed up system in a society that had values I didn't agree with. I went looking for the "exit." I didn't find the exit from capitalism because there is no escape but I did find I wasn't the only one raging against the machine and wanting change.
     
  18. Probe

    Probe Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    Jan 30, 2010
     
    How and when did you become a punk?
    Im not exactly the "Stereotipical Punk" just yet but im getting there ....anway....I got sick of the shit they show on MTV and stuff and i always liked being the one that stood out so i decided this is for me. The person tat got me into punk music was my guitar teacher ...
    What influenced you?
    Im mostly influenced by the early AFI, their fast paced faced, upbeat, sarcastic music really was awsomne
    What is the first bands you discovered?
    well....believe it or not but it was Green Day. then i got sick of them so i found other 70's punk bands and started listening to them
    When and how did you become more anarcho?
    Im not reaally a tight anarchist and i dont see my self like that either but my absolute hate not nazism and facism got me into this
     
  19. brandon

    brandon Member New Member


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    Jan 29, 2010
     
    I always liked fast music for some reason, but when I was about thirteen I heard Black Flag for the first time. I loved the raw, edgy sound that the music had and searched for more bands like them. Early Black Flag was definitely the biggest influence for me, because it was so simple and to the point. I searched for other punk bands and found The Exploited and The Casualties. I soon dismissed them as being punk bands due to them mostly just being meatheads smashing on guitars and singing about things that seemed very insincere to me. I found them to be rock stars, and not artists.

    I then found Minor Threat, Negative Approach, The Meatmen, Necros, The Middle Class, and other "hardcore" classics like those. Soon after, through the internet, I pursued the most unique and obscure music I could find as far as punk rock went. I found Crass, Flux Of Pink Indians, and other anarcho bands of similar taste. I then started to really listen to what was being said by these people, and adopted more and more of views associated with anarchism and "punk" ideologies such as anti-capitalism and care for the environment. Since then, I've just continued to find music that suits my taste, and still love edgy, fast, and aggressive music. Internet sites that have been important to me are 7inchpunk and Killed By Death, as they steered me in the direction of hidden gems that I otherwise would have never heard.

    When I was sixteen, I started to buy vinyl records and tapes, as well as go to small shows in Toronto, which is the closest big city to me. Records have a much more nostalgic feel to me and I pride my record collection much more than my CD or MP3 collection. Unfortunately, I live in a small town with barely anyone who's into music that I like, and I haven't had a band or anything, and then reverted to making music on my own as opposed to searching for other musicians.

    As far as fashion goes, I have a bomber jacket, Doc's, homemade shirts and patches, and other things of the like. I have had piercings but they got violently infected, and have two tattoos that I drew myself, then got my friend to do them on my arms.

    All in all, what's known as punk music and culture has helped shape me into a fairly decent person I'd say. The values that I instilled in myself after learning about them from punk rock music are ones that I am proud to have, and I'm thankful that I didn't get swept up in the brainwashing spree that got ahold of most kids my age.

    Oh and P.S., I didn't hear the Ramones until I was like, sixteen or something. I just always thought it was kind of funny seeing as they're so iconic in punk music, but had literally no meaning to me when I first discovered punk rock.
     
  20. SurgeryXdisaster

    SurgeryXdisaster Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Oct 8, 2009
     
    I became punk the first time someone told me I wasn't. probably 5 years ago, I am 19 now
    most of the punk kids at my high school either hated me or never spoke a word to me cuz of this douchebag they hungout with, who literally gave meaning the the anti-flag song: Punk by the Book
    but halfway through high school I made like 3 friends that were into punk with me

    I bought a punkcore records sampler from hot topic for like 6 bucks in my freshman year
    so i started off with bands like Casualties, The Virus, A.G.T., Varukers, Devotchkas, Defiance, and Clit 45...
    Street punk was alive and well in the early 2000's, I saw Cheap Sex one of the only times they came to Chicago haha

    I had heard bands like the ramones, the clash, the pistols but they were all old news and as boring to me as all the other rock stars of previous decades.

    Now I'm a punk junkie and ill be hooked for life!
     

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