WHERE IS THAT PUNK?



by Lou Toad

I saw it young. My sister was running with the Boston punk scene in the late ’90s, early 2000s. I was the metal kid in the corner, chewing on riffs and album covers, but I could see it clear as day: these punks were the same as the assholes at my high school. Same pecking order, same insider smirks, just with mohawks instead of letterman jackets. A country club in spikes and pins.

Then I read Please Kill Me. YES. Finally. There it was, the real deal. The filthy, chaotic, anything-goes punk. Not the cosplay of rebellion, but the raw nerve. Kids who didn’t fit anywhere else, dragging themselves into bars, lofts, and backrooms, starting bands not because they knew how but because they couldn’t not. It wasn’t about being “in.” It was about not belonging anywhere, so you made a world from scratch.

The Ramones wanted to be on the radio. That’s the truth no one wants to admit. They weren’t guarding the gates, they were battering them down. Punk in its original DNA is populist. All welcome. Anyone can play. Everyone belongs. Pick up a guitar, bash it until it screams, shout your lungs out — you’re in. No permission slip required.

But the moment punk became a “scene,” it betrayed itself. Suddenly you needed the handshake, the vest, the patchwork résumé of obscure bands. You had to dress right, know the lingo, buy the membership card to the spiked country club. A velvet rope wrapped in barbed wire. Gatekeeping with safety pins.

Where is that punk? Where is the noise that didn’t care if it was allowed? Where is the wide-open field where the freaks, the losers, the burnouts, the artists, the nobodies, and the nobodies-yet-to-be could make something new?

I’ll tell you where: it’s the library. The real punk space. Anybody can walk in. Anybody can grab a book, an album, a poem, a spell. No cover charge. No doorman. No costume. The shelves are waiting, and everything belongs to you if you’ve got the nerve to pick it up. Punk should have been the library — a place where knowledge, sound, and chaos are free to all.

Instead it became a social club. Just another high school cafeteria with a different soundtrack.

So here’s my challenge: tear up the membership card. Forget the dress code. Go back to the library. Plug your guitar straight into the wall. Copy and paste from the stacks. Start a band with whatever’s in your hands right now.

Because punk isn’t a scene. Punk is permission.

— Lou out.


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