What We Do Is Not So Secret: My Punk Rock-Part 1

Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like
a state
of mind. - Mike Watt of the Minutemen

It's very cliched to go, 'You're not punk.'
We don't care if we are, and we don't care if we aren't. - Joel Madden of Good Charlotte

I remember that Nirvana's 'Nevermind' was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own allowance. I remember always wondering why anyone would fish for a naked baby in the water with U.S. currency as the bait, but before I even heard a note from the band, the seemingly obscene image of an infant penis was enough to make me wonder, "Can they really get away with something like that on an album cover?" In truth, I can't remember where I first heard of Nirvana [although I am quick to say that I heard the Weird Al Yankovic parody first], but I can certainly tell you the circumstances of my life at that point.

I was midway through elementary school. I was, for the sake of classification, a textbook nerd. I read Bruce Coville's entire 'My Teacher Is An Alien' book series, and I was convinced that they should be made into a movie series in the vain of Star Wars. My favorite band at the time was Spinal Tap. Though I knew they went by different [real] names outside of the band, I wasn't at an age at which I could fully comprehend that Spinal Tap was fake. In a way, they weren't fake at all to me; in a true breaking down of the fourth wall, my dad took me to see them at the Fox Theatre on their 1992 'Break Like the Wind' Tour. I was a registered member of the Barney the Dinosaur Fan Club, right before the peak of his PBS notoriety, when his videos were the only way in which to watch him. I was overweight; I wore thick-rimmed glasses [at a point when it was not the height of hipster fashion]. I sucked at sports during an era of public school systems when Dodgeball was still an acceptable form of atheletic competition. My left ear was pierced which left me open to a neverending string of jokes that suggested I was, therefore, gay [although schoolyard folklore specifically stated that this was signified by a piercing of the right ear]. My naturally thick, curly hair was in a constant, involuntary state of fluctuation between "pompadour" and "afro" stylings. I had the biggest crush on a girl named Katie Rutledge, the most beautiful girl in the entire elementary school, who, with the enchantment of those sparkling eyes and flowing, dark blonde hair, seemed to be able to easily win the hearts and undying devotion of every single bully in the school. My best friend at the time was Joey, a guy who, when I wasn't around, found it in his heart to tell all of these bullies about my crush on Katie Rutledge. In short, besides lunch, school really sucked for me. Picture the often-forgotten movie 'Angus', only I don't get the secretly bulemic homecoming queen in the end.

Bearing all this in mind, 'Nevermind' was a 12-song overture to embrace my loser within. It was like nothing I had ever seen or heard before. I remember opening up the jewel case to find the blurred band shot with Kurt Cobain flipping of the camera, sneering in a way that seemed more sinister than playful. I didn't know who this guy was, but I could tell before hearing the first immortal riff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that he was pissed about something and he was going to tell me about it. Every song hit me like a freight train. The lyrics were mysteriously vague, therefore symbolic for whatever bits of frustration and angst I was harboring. I felt stupid and contagious. I found my friends, and they're in my head. Through the voice of Kurt, I could tell these handsome bullies, "I'm so ugly, but that's okay 'cause so are you." Through the eyes of this musical vision I could see my buddy Joey as a friend, as known enemy. Just because I was paranoid, didn't mean that they weren't after me. For the first time, a band was able to give me a musical outlet, and they communicated it in a way that I somehow understood for a very tender age.

Needless to say, I dove into Nirvana and the Seattle scene that followed it. I went back and bought 'Bleach', Nirvana's debut release on Sub-Pop Records. "About a Girl" served as my unrequited love ballad to a Katie, who barely knew I existed [if at all]. I purchased all of the singles for the unreleased recordings and b-sides, my favorite of which was "Even In His Youth", a song that seemed to convey disfunctional family life in a recurring cycle. Though my homelife was certainly a fine one, it somehow became my anthem for a while; call it angst. I found that Kurt Cobain released a single entitled "The Priest They Called Him" accompanying a really old fellow named William S. Burroughs; I wasn't even 11 years old, so of course I couldn't make the connection of any significance in this collaboration. Of course, on several levels , I certainly do now. I got into the Melvins, on the strength of the fact that Dale Crover played with Nirvana on several recordings, and Kurt Cobain produced one of their albums. I checked out the Pixies only to find that Kurt wasn't lying when he said he kind of ripped their style off. By fifth grade, I was into Sonic Youth, L7, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, and Pearl Jam. I absorbed the lyrics like the poetry of Poe [author of 'The Raven', not to be confused in this context with the mid-90's singer]; these were words of dark, frustrated, unhappy, and even lonely young men. The voice of Generation X just happened to fall directly on my young ears. This was my punk rock.

Of course, listening to this music made me even more uncool in the eyes of my 5th grade peers. I actually got beat up by a kid for saying that Nirvana was better than Guns 'N Roses, which at the time was blasphemy. 'In Utero' was retarded and yet the video for "November Rain" was Oscar-worthy. I was picked on as it was, and I now found myself defending this band that no other 11 year old kid seemed to get, that is, until around April of 1994.

My family and I were spending April 27 at our weekend getaway, a trailer home on the edge of Lake Hartwell near the Georgia-South Carolina border. We had gone swimming that morning and I distinctly remember my dad leaving to run some errands and buy groceries. When he came back, he overheard through the static reception of the AM radio a news report claiming that Kurt Cobain was discovered dead in his Washington home of an apparent suicide. My first reaction was to flip the TV to MTV, at which point I truly felt the crushing blow of reality. Never before had I felt the loss of such a close friend, a friend that didn't even know who I was. He didn't write those songs specifically for me, but he inadvertantly spoke volumes to me. Kurt was gone, and with him, I truly think I lost a little bit more of my childhood innocence. The weekend would soon be over, but needless to say, there were no more jokes about Nirvana once I got back to school. It's as though even the bullies had nothing to laugh about. They felt stupid and contagious, too.