How and when did you "become a punk"

Never had many friends when I was younger, pretty much hated anyone, listened to the music and sought out the community.

Typical starters. Rancid, Casualties, and The Unseen mainly.

I adopted the anarchist label before I really understood what it entailed. Around 15 I began reading Kropotkin and solidified my position. I dropped any trace of individualism, and became an Anarchist-Communist, and have gotten into contact with local and national organizations (I may go to the Class Struggle Anarchist Conference in Detroit if I play my cards right). I also left the punk scene (I still go to shows sometimes, though) as part of that.

 

In the last couple of years, really. There used to be a punk store in Ipswich run by Rikki Flag from Red Flag 77 and Andrew Culture, and i'd go in there and buy just random albums, and one day i bought Fuck Peaceville by Doom and hated it. A few months later, it was possibly the best thing which had ever graced my ears. Got speaking to Rikki, and started going to punk gigs, and as ENT are Ipswich based, started seeing them around town aswell. I liked the messages all these anarcho punk bands were giving and started making my own tshirts etc and wearing them round town, and was approached by like minded indivduals who pointed me in the direction of other media. I've never really been a full on punk though. I am myself, as i'll say a lot on here.

So, i'm a pretty simple person, basically.

 

in about 1980 / 81 i remember hearing adam and the ants kings of the wild frontier on the radio, and everybody in school was running about singing it, i then got into em and bought everything i could.

then in about 1983 my mate gave me a couple of punk records he'd got off his older brother (sex pistols - my way 12", angelic upstarts - i'm an upstart (green vinyl) 7") and thats what lead me down the path i lead.
first records i remember buying we're second hand copies of Crass - reality asylum, GBH - sick boy

2 things that got me onto a path of anarchism (apart from the crass single obviously) were:-

1: coming home with a swastika drawn on the back of my bomber jacket (cos i stupidly thought all punks were into nazis) and my dad beat me stupid round the kitchen.

2: and we used to draw swastikas and stuff on bus shelters etc where we used to hang around, and this younger anarchist guy used to do anti nazi / anarchist graffiti over ours, later on we met and became good friends......not seen him for about 17 years tho cos he joined the jesus army and lived in their commune, really screwed his head up

so i suppose musically / lifestyle wise i went from

pop
punk
anarcho punk
crust / grind / thrash metal etc
free festival / hippy / reggae / rave

to where i am now, love "most" types of music.........but essentially im still an old punker (mainly anarcho)

 

Started in the 90's with mostly pop stuff (Offspring, Greenday etc.) Got into rancid and NOFX through that, then got right into the pop punk (Blink 182, NFG, Sum 41). Eventually i started to wonder about the roots of the poppier stuff, and started getting into Black Flag, Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys etc. First anarchy experience was Antiflag, then worked back from there into crass and such. I'm still a passive anarchist, trying to figure out what it all means/is about, which is partly why i am here, to learn.

 

what band are you playing in in your avatar spider? i got a feeling i know you.

this topic is cute.

i don't think i ever "became a punk", more that i'm one by default. i've been non-racist, non-genderist, non-homophobic and anti-hierarchal since i can remember. i first got into the punk thing via community radio when i lived in the country. i had a favourite mix tape from the local punk show in the early 90s with DEAD KENNEDYS, FREE KITTEN, BIKINI KILL, MINOR THREAT etc on it. the rest is, as they say, his-story.

 

first base. We've played a fair few arty shows, maybe through that? Otherwise possibly met through Pepper?

 

probably the former, considering that's where i live! come say g'day next time you visit, i'm easy to spot.

 

About 4 years ago a friend of mine got me into both The Sex Pistols and The Dead Kennedys. At the time I was listening to nothing but Soundgarden and Nirvana, not anymore. I got started in the usuals (Casualties, Clash, Damned, DOA, ect) and then moved into US 80's hardcore and then to 80's UK hardcore. I got into anarcho when I decided to buy Crass' first album. After that I found grind and crust.

Today I listen to mainly crust and anarcho. It's fun to look back and see how naiive I was when I first got into punk.

 

first @ghost in a void: nice, that at least another one is in doubt about an existence as punk...

well, what is "punk"?
who is punk?
it is simply an outfit? (many people I met, seem to think so..)
it is a certain kind to live?
it is a state of mind?
maybe a mixture of all?
maybe nothing of all?

I don't know...
and: I don't know if I am or I ever was a punk.

first contact to punk was "punk is dead" by crass in the early 80s...
the statements on the records gave some orientation to me in a merely conservative environment and show me, that there're other ways to live than simply be against nearly anything but drugs, which seems the most important for many people who claim to be punk. especially those often turned out to be more conservative, unprogressive and intolerant than the conservative ones...
well, I don't want to attack any one, who think (s)he is punk, but the classification by this term doesn't help anyone.
well I would amplify these things a bit, but my english vocabulary isn't very good, so I've to first check many words in a dictionary and this take much time, which I don't have too much of.
so, please also be patient if you answer this post...

 

i think i know what your getting at

in my experience i have found punk quite elitest in some quarters, plastic in others.........and as you say, sometimes almost exactly what they are railing against...conservative, dressing the same, non individualistic.

but then punks too big a genre now to just quantify in 1 way. it encompasses noise, folk, spoken word, jazz, pop amongst others..........that are very different from the "norm" that we come to know from punk....in the media

as for drugs?........well yes im not perfect, and im afraid ive always been more drunk edge than straight edge

 

well to clarify things: there's rather nothing that I have to say against drugs. Even there're always some people, that doesn't know their personal limits, which leads in best case to lethargy or in worst case to high-aggression, I don't judge people due to their drug-usage. Their are enough people, who use drugs, but keep their character on each level and there're enough people, which use drugs more intensive than me, but highly impress me with their thoughts and conclusions.

the only reason, why I have mentioned drugs here is, that there were a couple of people, which only have the next beer in mind, say only stupid things, act without any regard to others, a.s.o. and call themselves "punk".

and: I don't think I was free of it all my life, but I think it's really good, that I can't be confronted with myself in age 15/16.

punk means for me today to be sincere and without prejudice, pursuit of freedom for all, but not necessarily be political "active" in common sense.
my interest for anarchy came after my interest for punk. it was a logical step in my eyes. Sorry, I've neither read the books of bakunin or others nor other theories or philosophies (even I try to keep a rough overview), but try to listen to people, watch them how they act, have a look at those to which they refer, which have lead me at last to the conclusion that anarchism could be a way to live for myself.

 

My older sister was into various subgenres of punk music, so I basically grew up on it. My first vivid memory of a song was Teenage Time Killer by Rudimentary Peni when I was about 7 years old. Of course, I didn't start listening to them myself, and knew who they were until a few years later...
When I was 12, I got into The Misfits, Dead Kennedy's, Black Flag etc., eventually got tired of them, started listening to The Partisans, Angelic Upstarts, Cockney Rejects etc, and then re-discovered Rudimentary Peni, which led me to Crass, which led me to a whole bunch of anarcho punk bands, then eventually led me to crust.
Rudimentary Peni is my favorite band, and yes, I even love Cacophony, Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric, and Archaic even though those aren't their more popular "anarcho" albums.
My musical interests mostly lean towards the anarcho/crust punk side, but I enjoy other genres including and not including the subgenres of punk. A couple other random favorite punk bands are; The Mob, Flux of Pink Indians, Amebix, Icons of Filth, Nausea, Antischism.
Also, at 13, I adopted the "punk" look, kept that through my teenage years, and eventually realized I can dress however I want to. I have a passionate hate for people who think in order to be "punk" you must dress the part...I listen to what I want, like what I like, think what I think and dress how I want to dress. I don't feel the need to live up to the standards that punk elitists have come up with. I know who I am, and that's all that matters.

Sorry for the mini-rant.

 

a kindred spirit.

 

Here here.

 

I think I was bitten.

 

Well it's really hard to pin point an exact moment in time, as my life often tends to be more evolution than revolution... I grew up in the 80's so punk was always around mentioned here and there you could here Clash on the radio from time to time some local new wave/early punk too. Se weird looking teenagers in the street... But, I didn't take much notice of it at a young age, first music that caught my ears besides the ever present synth pop was metal. In a way I have come a full circle as in recent years I have listened to a lot of older metal and realized just how great Jimmy Sommerville was...

Anyway at certain point in the early nineties Biohazard and a lot of similar boring bands became popular among the metal media and as radio and tv stuff were my main source of music at that time, I gave up on metal. Which in retrospect was a good thing... After discovering Captain Beefheart in the meantime, pop punk bands like Offspring and Green Day appeared in the media and I liked that better than other stuff at the time. After that I started slowly discovering other punk, at first it was mostly more mainstream local stuff, then moving on to '77 and UK 82 stuff, than anrcho and crust and beyond...

Due to the civil war that was going on in former Yugoslavia during the 90's, Serbia was kind of closed off to the rest of the world. So there were no foreign bands coming through on tours and getting new releases was kind of tricky. So all the shows I went to in high school were just local bands. At the time american style hard core was very popular, but I never enjoyed those shows, and went to a relatively small number of proper punk shows. But, in '98 things changed GBH played in Belgrade, that was the first foreign punk band to play in Serbia in quite a while, and first "big punk" show I went to. Up to that point I knew a relatively small number of people that were into punk mostly from my high school and neighborhood, and I was amazed to see hundreds upon hundreds of like minded people and all the mohaws, makeshift studs and what not. I started meeting more people into punk after that...

Around the end of 98 the first and Infoshop in Belgrade opened and GLIB collective/whatever was formed. That's were I met more anarchist oriented people and first read Kropotkin and similar stuff...

After a few years of that I kind of got fed up and kind of went a away from the punk scene. There was the same old same old going on and a people I knew from high school also dropped out, and it felt strange going to a show or whatever type of punk event. Some years, some personal tragedies, considerable hospital time and a lot of reflecting later I decided to go to a punk show. At that point I was really pissed of by some people mainly of the university student type and just glad I could go somewhere after a while. So as I said, went to a punk show met a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time, heard new exciting bands and learned about stuff that was going on at the time which was great. It took of from there...

Now I'm probably more active in the local scene than ever... Also was never into punk clothes that much. It looks great on some people but never really was my thing. Most of the time I look like average guy on the street, but in recent years I have developed a taste for flashier less usual clothes. from time to time...

Just felt like adding always thought that team anarchy race driver look was really bad...

 

Not much of a punk myself, just dig the music.

Am a big metal fan, so crust/d-beat was the first stuff I was introduced to, beyond post-punk shit like Wire.

First crust band? Wolfbrigade. Still one of my all time favorites.

Anarchist? Nah, or not at least until bitches can make it work realistically. If they can, then all the way got my support. Any attempts at anarchist states? Like towns or some shit? Just to see how it has performed?

 

there are anarchist communities all over the world, mostly communes in rural areas, but some are in metropolitan areas as well, such as some squats. some work really well, others are dubious at least in terms of how "anarchist" they really are. not sure what female dogs have to do with anything though, but having lots of puppies can be handy so when they grow up they can bite nazis. arff.

 

First started listening to mainstream punk bands (Pennywise, Anti-Flag, The Casualties) when I was 13.

Had a couple of friends who listened to punk, also the overwhelming urge to fit in. I also viewed punk as dangerous, and therefore attractive.

See above.

When I was 15 I dated a girl who listened to Crass, Conflict, Aus-Rotten, etc. Went downhill (lolz) from there. Got really into crust for several years. I was really into Conflict, Aus-Rotten, Anti-Product and Witch Hunt for the longest time.

A few years later I started listening to hardcore and fastcore, the former leading me into the skinhead scene for a bit. Now I pretty much only listen to rap, hardcore, and oi! ( I honestly think anarchist punks are listening to wrong form of punk rock. Oi! is where it's at, and is the most class conscious music, along with rap.). Favorite bands/musicians right now are Dropkick Murphys, The Oppressed, Ice Cube, Young Jeezy, Death Before Dishonor, Despised Icon, and R.A.M.B.O.