The Power of Punk Rock (Or, How I Sat Down to Write About Music and Instead Wrote About Angst)

I feel pretty pretentious writing about “the power of punk rock” because though it might hold value to me in a certain way, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it holds value to anyone else in the same way. I could quote Kurt Cobain – “To me, punk rock is musical freedom” – but that, as well, seems wrong.

I guess I should start at the beginning. Well, there are several beginnings, but this is the one that seems the most right. For the first year and a half of middle school, I was shy, awkward, and quiet. My only friend for most of that time was a girl with whom I never spoke – we would sit at the same table at lunchtime, exchange a simple “hi, what’s up?” and then pull out our respective books and read for forty five minutes, occasionally sharing a carrot from her lunch or a cracker from mine. By the time seventh grade rolled around, we had amassed a group of book-lovers big enough to call a friend group, tied together with the weak fibers of a shared love for literature.

A lot of us received our first mp3 players as Christmas gifts, winter of the 7^th grade. Then began the frenzy of sharing and trading music, occasional adventures to Amoeba Records or to a big sibling’s bedroom in order to find something cooler to play than the others. I did my best to stay out of this frenzy, as her Gregorian Chants or her Katy Perry didn’t really interest me all that much. Instead, I quietly surfed YouTube and Google, immersing myself in the popular bands of the day – band that I’m halfway ashamed to admit that I liked, now, but that still made quite an impact on me then.

One Tuesday evening, February of 7^th grade – I remember, as I was nibbling on leftover birthday cake – reading AFI’s Wikipedia article for the umpteenth time as I waited for their album to come out (I’d have to wait another year and a half, unfortunately), my eye caught a certain phrase:

“…began performing at various small punk venues in Northern California, most notably the 924 Gilman Street Project in Berkeley.”

Berkeley? I thought. That’s where I live!

That night, I announced to my parents that, that Friday, I was going to go to my very first rock concert at a punk rock club.

Sure, my parents said. Please. Anything to get you out of the house.

So I went to Gilman and loved it – big surprise. I’ve written about the change that people saw in me after that night various times, but I suppose I’d better write it again. After that night, I discarded cargo pants and hiking boots for jeans and sneakers, plain shirts and a jewfro for band tees and a Mohawk, my grandmother’s sewing and playing cello (I was shit at it, anyway) for patches and a beat-up electric guitar that I still quite don’t know how to play.

“Stop trying to be a rebel, Mari. It’s dumb.”

See, I wasn’t trying to rebel. I was trying to grow up. I was trying to find myself. And I did, in some strange way – though part of me will always be a sad history nerd with a laptop, the other part will always belong in dingy clubs and dirty sidewalks, screaming my lungs out while my ears bleed and while the band plays and the people mosh. Or no, not even – the other part of me will always belong with the radicals, the readers, the ones questioning everything and living life to the fullest.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I’d like to think of myself as one of them.

So I’m six hundred words into this and I’m not quite sure where the other four hundred will come from. I suppose I could talk about being bullied as a middle schooler and as a freshman, and how one of the only things that kept me sane was the group of fucked-up teenagers wearing ripped black clothing at Gilman who adopted me as one of their own. How I would leave school angry and walk straight down the road to the club by the train tracks, throw my backpack into the corner of the sound booth, and then expel my anger in the mosh pit.

            How through Gilman, I met and made friends and connections that stick with me to this day. Found music, listened to that music, obsessed over that music, started a band just to try and create that music for myself.

            How, through punk rock, I found myself.

            Yeah. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I found myself through punk rock. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a punk, but punk rock certainly helped me find myself. It helped me learn who I am.

            However, that said, this story isn’t everyone’s story. It’s probably similar, sure – punk rock changes a lot of lives – but my story is my own.

            I don’t know. I sat down to write about the power of punk rock and instead I told you a story of my personal experience with it. I suppose that’s the same thing, though. Go out and listen to any band that came out post-1975, and you’ll hear the exact same power in that band that I felt in myself.

            So yeah. That’s the power of punk rock. It changes you. It helps you grow up. It shows you who you are.

            What the hell am I writing.

            If you want to hear the power of punk rock, go listen to “Suffer” by Bad Religion. That will show you much better the power of punk rock than any badly-written blog post by an 18-year-old senior in high school could.